Islam - Current Day - Explosions in Mogadishu; Fire at Brit Migrant Center; Danish Sermon Laws Generate Backlash

Major blast rocks Somalia’s capital Mogadishu, gunfire reported

31 Jan 2021 15:21

At least one large explosion has occurred in Somalia’s capital city Mogadishu. The blast, said to have happened near a popular hotel, was reportedly followed by intense gunfire.

The incident occurred in the capital city on Sunday. Imagery circulating online shows a large plume of white smoke and dust emitting after the blast.

While there has been no official word on the explosion, local media reports have suggested the blast occurred at the popular Hotel Afrik, located to the north of the city’s international airport. The explosion was followed by intense gunfire, Reuters reported.

The first blast was reportedly followed by up to two more powerful explosions. So far, no information on potential casualties or damage has emerged.

“There must be casualties because the militants first started the attack with a suicide car bomb against the wall,” a police spokesman Sadik Ali told Reuters, revealing that multiple people have been evacuated safely from the hotel. “The operation still goes on, casualties will be known later.”

Some media outlets have already pinned the blame for the apparent terrorist attack on Al-Shabaab – a local hard-line Islamist militant group that has ties to Al-Qaeda. The group’s militants have repeatedly attacked various targets across the capital in the past, including some of its hotels frequented by local political and business elite. However, no one has claimed responsibility for the attack so far.

British authorities arrest 5 after fire at center for asylum seekers

By Christen McCurdy

British Secretary of State for the Home Department Priti Patel, shown here in September 2020, said a fire set at a center for asylum seekers was deeply offensive to British taxpayers. Photo by Andy Rain/EPA-EFE

Jan. 30 (UPI) -- British authorities say five men have been arrested after a fire at a center where asylum seekers are being held.

According to Kent Police, one man was held on suspicion of assaulting a security guard and four in connection with a Friday fire at Napier Barracks, a decommissioned military barracks that houses an estimated 300 to 400 people seeking asylum in Britain.

No injuries were reported.

Officials said the barracks remained "calm" Saturday, and police said they are working with other authorities to "establish the full circumstances and identify any individuals involved."

Britain's Home Office, which oversees immigration and security in the country, said there had been a disturbance at the site after asylum seekers objected to not being moved from the site after a COVID-19 outbreak.

The outbreak infected at least 120 people, and the charity Care4Calais wrote on Facebook Friday that many residents are still "very sick" with the virus."

"They appear to have been completely abandoned by the authorities," without food, drink or heating, Care4Calais wrote.

The charity has called for the closure of the facility, and at least one community leader in Folkestone, the southeast England port community where the barracks is located, has asked that residents be moved to hotels.

"One building has been virtually destroyed, but there is no intention to remove the people from the site," said Folkestone council leader David Monk.

He also said he never believed it was a good idea to put a large group of young men in one place, saying, "It is not a surprise to me that tensions have eventually overridden common sense."

British Secretary of State for the Home Department Priti Patel wrote on Twitter Friday that the fire is "deeply offensive to the taxpayers of this country who are providing this accommodation while asylum claims are being processed."

"This site has previously accommodated our brave soldiers and army personnel -- it is an insult to say that it is not good enough for these individuals," Patel wrote. "I am fixing our broken asylum system, and will be bringing forward legislation this year to deliver on that commitment."

Patel doesn't sound the least bit empathetic toward the migrants. Considering her grandparents emigrated to Uganda, and her parents emigrated to Britain, that's a little surprising.

Denmark sermons law could stifle free worship, warns C of E bishop

Robert Innes says proposed translation law could have affect

on religious freedoms across Europe

The Anglican community in Denmark centres around the early 19th-century Church of St Albans in Copenhagen’s Churchill Park. Photograph: Reuters Staff/Reuters

Daniel Boffey in Brussels

Sun 31 Jan 2021 13.07 GMT

The liberties of the centuries-old community of Anglicans in Denmark are being threatened by a draft law requiring all sermons to be translated and submitted to the state, the Church of England’s bishop in Europe has said.

Robert Innes, whose diocese stretches across mainland Europe, has written to the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, expressing his alarm at what he describes as an “overly restrictive” bind on freedom of expression.

The “several-hundred strong” Anglican community in Denmark centres around the early 19th-century Church of St Albans in Copenhagen’s Churchill Park, designed by Arthur Blomfield in the style of an English parish church.

Denmark’s parliament is expected to debate the legislation, known as the law on sermons in languages ​​other than Danish, in the coming days, after the government said it was necessary to curb the growth of Islamist extremism.

Innes told the Guardian he feared the law, if backed in the Danish parliament, the Folketing, would be replicated elsewhere in Europe at a time when religious minorities were generally finding their freedoms being encroached upon.

“I am sure it comes from a genuine concern about the security of the estate and the monitoring of all religious minorities who might be perceived as a security risk,” Innes said. “I share the ambition of the Danish government to ensure safety and security and the desire that all religious organisations in Denmark conduct their act peacefully but to require translation of sermons into the national language goes too far. It goes in a concerning anti-liberal direction.

Oh no! Not anti-liberal!!

The government has said the aim of the law is to “enlarge the transparency of religious events and sermons in Denmark, when these are given in a language other than Danish”.

There is a growing level of concern at a perceived rise of Islamist extremism among the 270,000 Muslims who live in Denmark. Most of the sermons preached in mosques are in Arabic. But Innes said the Danish government should be working with religious organisations rather than resorting to a “negative and legalistic” attack on the rights of minority groups.

The bishop said it was unclear whether the law would require translations to be sent to the government before or after being given, but that in either case it was an impractical and illegitimate constraint.

He said: “Preachers don’t always write full text of their sermons, they might write notes. They might preach extempore as the archbishop of Canterbury sometimes does and there are questions of idiom and nuance which requires a high level of skill in translation of course. It is a high bar. It is a skilled art and it is an expensive skill as well.”

A range of European churches have also voiced their concerns, including the Evangelical Lutheran church in Denmark, the Lutheran World Federation, the Roman Catholic Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union, and the Conference of European Churches.

Innes said there was a worrying trend towards impinging on minority groups across Europe. “There is a wide sense of concern about this. I am genuinely concerned at what I detect to be a growth of an anti-liberal government legislation and freedom of religion threats in Europe as a whole.

“This is not an isolated incident. I do think that we need to be alert to the encroachment on our freedom to practice our religions. Little by little, minority groups are being treated with increasing suspicion.

Hmmmm. Gosh, I wonder why?

“For example, in Switzerland our clergy have been informed that they can’t work part time, they can only work full time, because there is a suspicion at what they might be doing in the other half of their time. In France, minority religious groups are required to have their accounts subject to a particularly invasive investigation and to re-register as religious associations every five years.

“I think overall there is a suspicion of people using languages that are not the native languages of the country concerned and that is in contravention of the article 9 of the convention of freedom of thought, comment and religion, which does guarantee for people to manifest their own religion and belief in worship teaching practice and observance, which must include the freedom to worship in your maternal tongue.”

'To worship in your maternal tongue'! To inspire jihad is something else altogether. I am quite sure that the Danish gov't is not worried about the Church of England being insurrectionist. Islam is something else. Far-right extremists are also something else, although fairly few and far between.

The gov't cannot force only Islam to subject their sermons to review, so must include all churches. However, I don't think the system will work as written sermons may differ substantially from spoken sermons. Do you think a Jihadi cleric is going to give you an honest interpretation of his call to arms? Don't be rediculous! 

Better for churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples to provide a video of every sermon, sermonette, spoken in their church. The gov't can do the translating if the paid reviewers feel there is something wrong in the video.

The ‘Farcical and Empty Claims’ of Islam’s Greatest University - Al Azhar

01/28/2021 

by Raymond Ibrahim

Al Azhar, the Muslim world’s most prestigious if not authoritative Islamic university, recently blasted Jerome, the archbishop of Athens and all Greece, for saying during a January 14 interview that: “Islam, its people, is not a religion but a political party” — that Muslims are “the people of war … who seek expansion,” which is a “characteristic of Islam.”

Instead of replying with outrage and accusations of “Islamophobia” — as Turkey and other nations did, on January 19, the Observatory, a branch of Al Azhar, denounced “these irresponsible statements by the archbishop of Athens,” adding that they are “merely farcical and empty claims — trivialities unworthy of responding to or discussing.”

Why?  Because, continued Al Azhar, “Islam is the final, heavenly message that Allah Almighty sent to our master Muhammad, the seal of the prophets and apostles, to bring humanity from out of the darkness and clutches of ignorance and into the light of truth and the sun of guidance.”

To anyone unconvinced by this hagiographic explanation, Al Azhar continued:

Accusing Muslims of being people of war and expansion is a pure lie — a fraud and falsification of Muslim history, which is replete with forgiveness and pardon[.] … The Prophet’s invasions were either in defense of Muslims or to discipline those who reneged on their pacts[.] … [Islamic history] is inconsistent with the claim that Muslims want to expand!

Indeed, the only thing not inconsistent here is Al Azhar’s denial of the militant, expansionist history of Islam.  For example, on April 30, 2020, during his televised program, which is watched by millions in Egypt and the Arab world, Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb — Al Azhar’s grand imam and Pope Francis’s close ally — declared that “Islam doesn’t seek war or bloodshed, and Muslims only fight back to defend themselves.”

This somewhat surreal claim was even the grand conclusion reached at — and therefore making a mockery of — a recent mega-conference dedicated to finding solutions to “extremism.”  Hosted in Egypt by Al Azhar, and attended by leading representatives from 46 Muslim nations, al-Tayeb capped off the two-day conference by again declaring:

Jihad in Islam is not synonymous with fighting; rather, the fighting practiced by Prophet Muhammad and his companions is one of its types; and it is to ward off the aggression of the aggressors against Muslims, as opposed to killing those who offend in [matters of] religion, as the extremists claim.  The established sharia rule in Islam bans antagonism for those who oppose the religion.  Fighting them is forbidden — as long as they do not fight Muslims.

Needless to say, such claims fly in the face of more than a millennium of well documented Islamic history.  Beginning with Muhammad — whose later wars were hardly defensive, but rather raids meant to empower and aggrandize himself and his followers over non-Muslims — and under the first “righteous” caliphs and virtually all subsequent sultans and rulers, jihad consisted of “inviting” neighboring non-Muslims to embrace Islam or at the very least submit themselves to its political authority (as second-class dhimmis); if non-Muslims refused, as they almost always did, if they insisted on maintaining their own religious identity and freedom from Islam, then jihad was proclaimed, the non-Muslims’ lands were invaded, and the aftermath looked like an ISIS setting, with pyramids of heads, burned churches and other temples of worship, and slave markets of women and children littering the landscape.

One need only look at a map of the Muslim world today and realize that the vast majority of it — all of the Middle East, North Africa, Turkey, Central Asia, as far east as Pakistan and farther — was taken by violent conquest in the name of jihad.  There is nothing “defensive” about that.

Indeed, within the context of his interview, Archbishop Jerome’s words were especially accurate, for he was discussing the Islamic conquest of Constantinople in 1453.  As with the aforementioned Muslim conquests preceding it, the only reason it was attacked and its citizens treated in mind-boggling ways is because it refused to submit to Islam, preferring to remain Christian, as it had been for over a thousand years.

In short, the history and subsequent expansion of Islam is almost entirely based on violent conquest, or jihad.  Anyone who denies that — and that goes for the Muslim world’s most prestigious and authoritative institution, Al Azhar — is the one making “farcical and empty claims — trivialities unworthy of responding to or discussing.”

Raymond Ibrahim, author of Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.

Islam - Current Day - Some Chibok Girls Escape; Bangladeshi MP - 4 Years for Trafficking; Syrian Woman Kills Husband of 35 Years; Greek AB Calls Islam What it is; Sharia Gangs in Austria

..

More 'Chibok Girls' escape Boko Haram in Nigeria, parents say

By Clyde Hughes

Nearly 300 schoolgirls were abducted from Chibok, Nigeria, in 2014. Parents in a support group say more have escaped from the Boko Haram militant group. File Photo by EPA

Jan. 29 (UPI) -- Several of the missing "Chibok Girls" who were abducted in Nigeria several years ago have escaped African militant group Boko Haram, some of their parents say.

Emmanuel Ogebe and Lawal Zannah, members of the Chibok Parents Association, said some of the more than 100 girls still missing after the 2014 mass kidnapping have fled from their captors.

They didn't say exactly how many had escaped from the terrorist group.

"Information currently available to us indicates that there are other escapees with the army whom parents are anxiously waiting to identify," Ogebe said.

Boko Haram raided a boarding school in Chibok, Nigeria, in 2014 and abducted nearly 300 schoolgirls. The mass abduction prompted global outrage and widespread social media campaigns condemning the kidnappings and demanding the girls' return.

Some girls escaped immediately and others were released as part of a deal with the Nigerian government in 2016. Dozens more were freed in a prisoner exchange in 2017.

Officials had estimated that about 112 of the Chibok girls were still missing.

"We heard that some of our girls have escaped from the forest, but we are yet to get the detail about their number," Zannah said.

Boko Haram has fought the Nigerian government since 2009 and has also spread into nearby Niger, Chad and Cameroon. It pledged allegiance to the Islamic State terror group in 2015.

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau and several commanders broke away from the group in 2016, citing ideological differences, to form their own militant faction.

Search this blog for 'Chibok' for many more stories, none of which are very encouraging.

Kuwait: Bangladeshi MP gets 4 years in jail, fined KD1.9m

for human trafficking

..

2 Kuwaiti officials handed down same sentence and ordered to be dismissed from job

Published:  January 29, 2021 16:44

Ramadan Al Sherbini, Correspondent, Gulf News

  

Cairo: A Kuwaiti criminal court has sentenced a Bangladeshi lawmaker to four years in prison and ordered him to pay a fine of KD1.9 million on charges of human trafficking and bribery in a high-profile case, local media reported.

The lawmaker, named in the media as Mohammed Shahid Islam, was charged with receiving money from dozens of workers in return for bringing them in from Bangladesh to Kuwait through a company he managed with illegal assistance from Kuwaiti officials charged in the case.

He has reportedly amassed KD5 million worth of assets in the Gulf country.

The court also sentenced Undersecretary of the Kuwaiti Interior Ministry Maj. Gen. Mazen Al Jarrah; Hassan Al Khedr, a manpower director; and ex-parliamentarian Nawaf Al Muteiri to four years in prison each in the same case. Both officials were charged with receiving bribes in return for illegally facilitating the Bangladeshi lawmaker’s transactions.

The court ordered Al Jarrah and Al Muteiri to pay a fine of KD1.9 million each while it fined Al Khedr KD180,000. The court ordered Al Jarrah and Al Khedr be dismissed from their government jobs.

A fugitive Syrian man and a Bangladeshi defendant were also handed down three years in jail each and ordered their deportation from Kuwait after serving the sentencing.

Meanwhile, sitting MP Saadoun Hamad and ex-lawmaker Salah Khurshed were acquitted of charges of influence peddling and receiving bribery from the Bangladeshi defendant.

All the rulings can be appealed.

During the court hearings, the defendants had denied charges of human trafficking, bribery and power abuse.

Al Qabas newspaper quoted an unnamed source close to investigations as saying that the defendants are still connected to a separate case of money laundering that prosecutors are still investigating.

Syria: Woman kills husband after 35 years of marriage

Woman claims she was humiliated, beaten and mistreated for many years

Published:  January 29, 2021 15:34

Tawfiq Nasrallah, Senior News Editor, Gulf News

  

Dubai: A Syrian woman killed her husband with a razor blade after allegedly being mistreated for 35 years, local media reported.

According to the Syrian Minister of Interior, the woman has been arrested after being found guilty of intentionally killing her husband, who is in his 70s.

While being interrogated she tried to fabricate stories about the incident in order to mislead the police, but eventually admitted to killing her husband after 35 years of unhappy marriage during which she claimed she was humiliated, beaten and mistreated.

On the day of the incident, the woman said she slashed her husband with a razor in his hand and kept slashing him until she reached his neck.

After the victim fell to the ground, the perpetrator went to spend a night with her relatives to prove that she was outside the house. She then returned home as if nothing had happened in an attempt to hide her crime and claimed that her husband had committed suicide.

It may have been a planned murder, but it certainly wasn't a well-planned murder. At least she doesn't have to clean up the bloody mess.

Greek Archbishop Tells the Truth About Islam, Muslim Leaders Enraged

..

Noticing the obvious is forbidden

Thu Jan 28, 2021

Robert Spencer, Front Page Mag

Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens and all Greece touched off a firestorm in mid-January when he dared to note, according to the Orthodox Times, that “Islam was not a religion but a political party.” He added: “They are the people of war.” In response, Muslim leaders the world over have rained down condemnations upon the archbishop. He spoke inaccurately when he said that Islam was not a religion at all, but proof that he was wrong about Islam having a political aspect has not been forthcoming.

Muslims in Greece were outraged. The Western Thrace Turkish Minority Consultation Council (BTTADK) declared: “We condemn the statement of the Archbishop of Greece, Mr. Ieronimos….We hope a more peaceful language to be used instead of anti-Islamic discourse in such difficult times of pandemic.” The Xanthi Turkish Union added that Ieronymos’ words were an “Islamophobic attack” and even a “hate crime.” It thundered: “The fact that these statements, filled with insults, came from the number one name in the Greek church increases the gravity of the situation. We see this move as one of the typical examples of the rising Islamophobia and xenophobia in Greece in recent years.”

For its part, the Western Thrace Imam-hatip Schools Graduates and Members Association (BIHLIMDER) asserted that the archbishop was displaying “ambition and jealousy,” and stated: “We are leaving the examination of the psychological state of this person, who uses words that even the most ordinary people wouldn’t use, to the experts. We are condemning such a hostile attitude.” Ahmet Ibram, deputy head of the province of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, said fancifully: “One of Islam’s basic beliefs is to have life based on peace between religions. It can never be accepted to have grudge and hostility against other religions’ members.”

What planet has he been on for the last 1400 years?

The Turkish Foreign Ministry also issued a statement: “These provocative expressions of Archbishop Ieronimos, which incite the society to hostility and violence against Islam, also show the frightening level Islamophobia has reached. Such malign ideas are also responsible for the increase of racism, Islamophobia and xenophobia in Europe.”

Anyone with half a brain knows that Islamophobia and xenophobia (particularly Antisemitism) is directly proportional to the increase in Muslims in Europe. Consider what Muslim migrants have contributed to European countries in the past half a dozen years - criminal gangs, drug gangs, thousands of rapes and gang rapes of young European girls, no-go zones, burning cars, etc., etc. 

The fact that the Turkish Foreign Ministry would attack the Archbishop of Athens for abetting “the increase of racism, Islamophobia and xenophobia in Europe” confirms that the concept of “Islamophobia” is an illegitimate conflation of two distinct phenomena: crimes against innocent Muslims, which are never justified, and honest analysis of the motivating ideology of jihad terror, which is always necessary. Archbishop Ieronymos pointed out that Islam was political and expansionist, which its scripture, doctrine, and history show it to be.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry knows that Archbishop Ieronymos is right. In January 2018, as Turkish troops launched a military operation in Syria against the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), 90,000 mosques in Turkey prayed the Qur’an’s “Conquest” sura, sura 48, which calls upon Muslims to be “ruthless against unbelievers.” Why did they do that, unless they assumed that their military action had an Islamic aspect? And in November 2019, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said: “Our God commands us to be violent towards the kuffar (infidels). Who are we? The ummah [nation] of Mohammed. So [God] also commands us to be merciful to each other. So we will be merciful to each other. And we will be violent to the kuffar. Like in Syria.”

Archbishop Ieronymos said: “Islam, its people, is not a religion but a political party and are the people of war…They are the people who seek expansion, that is the characteristic of Islam.” Erdogan proved him right.

Nonetheless, all this led the unnerved Archdiocese of Athens to issue a clarification, claiming that Archbishop Ieronymos was “meaning nothing more than the distortion of the Muslim religion itself by a handful of extreme fundamentalists, who wreak death and destruction all over the world. These are exactly the people the Archbishop was referring to, that is, people who instrumentalize Islam and turn it into a deadly weapon against all those who have a different view from that of ‘unbelievers,’ even that of believers.”

Except it is not a handful - they are numbered in the hundreds of millions. And those who are not radicalized can be radicalized in a New York minute.

It is understandable that the archdiocese would release this clarification in light of all these denunciations of the archbishop. The archdiocese doesn’t want any violence from Muslims who believe that perceived insults to their faith should be requited with violent attacks, after the pattern of the prophet of Islam himself. But that proves the archbishop’s point yet again.

Austria: Muslim gang of Sharia enforcers threatens to behead children

JAN 30, 2021 4:00 PM

BY ROBERT SPENCER2 COMMENTS

“When you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks…” (Qur’an 47:4)

“The moral guardian gang threatened children with beheading,” translated from “Sittenwächter-Bande drohte Kindern mit Enthauptung,” by Christoph Budin, Kronen Zeitung, January 24, 2021:

The notorious moral guardian gang of devout Muslim Chechens does not shy away from the brutal extortion of protection money. A father of two was threatened in Vienna with the beheading of his sons – police protection for the family and handcuffs for four young suspects!

The Caucasus gang – among them mostly recognized or tolerated war refugees – had already made headlines several times in the federal capital and Linz. Their compatriot women always had to wear headscarves. And if their behavior was too “Western” or, in their eyes, their values ​​did not correspond (photos in swimwear or meetings with non-Chechen men were sufficient), the victims and their families were severely threatened and persecuted.

“Take your sons head off”

Now apparently blackmail has been added to the long criminal list of arms trafficking, imprisonment, grievous bodily harm, car theft and burglary. Because four young Chechens between the ages of 21 and 25, who are apparently part of the large group, are said to have scared a father in Vienna via WhatsApp.

They know where he works, where his family lives and where his two children go to school. If he doesn’t pay 5000 euros, then, according to the gloomy message in bad German, they will “take your sons’ heads off”.

The blackmailers were also so cheeky as to pretend to be protectors (“solve the problem”) and to demand money again. While the threatened family was under police protection, the quartet was arrested by the WEGA.

Islam - Current Day - Daniel Pearl's Murderers Freed in Pakistan; French Convert to Islam After Jihad Booty

..

France: Man converts to Islam, joins two other Muslims in robbery plot

to get ‘jihadist booty’

JAN 26, 2021 1:00 PM 

BY ROBERT SPENCER19 COMMENTS

There is a whole chapter of the Qur’an entitled “Booty,” or “The Spoils of War”: sura 8. It details how Muslims can collect such booty in battle and how they must pay a fifth to the Islamic authorities (see 8:41).

“Robbery and terrorism project: three Stéphanois radicalized in court,” translated from “Projet de braquage et terrorisme: trois Stéphanois radicalisés devant la justice,” by Hélène Jaffiol, Le Progrès, January 22, 2021:

A threat of an attack, radicalized profiles, and Act I of the yellow vests as a backdrop … The affair caused a stir right up to the top of the state. The Minister of the Interior, in person, Christophe Castaner, congratulated himself, in front of the cameras, for having avoided a bloodbath on the first day of the yellow vest protests, on November 17, 2018.

Two scheming brothers and a converted former soldier

Arrested a few days earlier, the plans of the four individuals, three of whom live in Saint-Etienne, were investigated, but the terrorist case gradually weakened. It is finally for a robbery project, against a backdrop of jihadist booty, that they will appear before the Paris Criminal Court, this Friday, January 22.

Who are the protagonists of Saint-Etienne? Two radicalized brothers, Kamel and Hilial A, and Rémi M. a 50-year-old converted father of four children. Ms. Léa Dordilly, lawyer for the youngest of the siblings, Hilial, 24, paints his portrait: “He broke up with the rest of his well-integrated family. He lets himself slip and lives between petty crimes, shenanigans and swindling. ”

Under the influence of his older brother, who has just been released from prison, the young man slips into radical Islam in a matter of months. While wiretapped, they speak of “the Islamic State”, rage against “disbelievers” and speak of “taking action”.

“It is not enough to have a radicalized profile to link everything to terrorism”

In their wake appears Rémi M., 54, a former soldier, whom he met on leaving the mosque: “He had a complicated life, experienced a phase of alcoholism. He converted about fifteen years ago and practices a rigorous Islam”, emphasizes his lawyer, Mr. Michaël Bendavid. It was he who sent the text “It will bleed on 17 [November]” which accelerated the anti-terrorist operation in Saint-Etienne (see box).

But instead of an attack, it was a project to rob a van or an ATM that they seemed to be preparing on the sidelines of the yellow vest protests. A plan that was still “in its infancy”, according to Ms. Dordilly, who also referred to an attempted purchase … in a toy store in Lyon: “It was for a dummy weapon. The seller got suspicious, so my client gave up. ”

But for the lawyer, like her colleagues in the defense, it is the notion of jihadist booty, “the ghanima”, attributed to this robbery project which raises questions in this file: “We could not hold against them the preparation of an attack then we say that the robbery was intended to finance a hypothetical future action. But just having a radicalized profile is not enough to link everything to terrorism.”

Pakistan’s Supreme Court frees man convicted then acquitted for role in beheading death of US journalist Daniel Pearl

28 Jan 2021 12:13

File photo showing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl at an undisclosed location with a copy of Pakistan's English language newspaper Dawn. © THE WASHINGTON POST / AFP

Pakistan’s Supreme Court has ordered the release of Pakistani-British man Ahmad Saeed Omar Sheikh, who was convicted but later acquitted for his role in the beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002.

The court also dismissed an appeal launched by Pearl's family after Ahmad Saeed Omar Sheikh was acquitted, but it remains unclear whether or not he will also be freed from custody on Thursday.

Three other Pakistanis convicted of playing a role in Pearl's kidnapping and death were also ordered to be released. 

Pearl's beheading and dismemberment, confirmed in an autopsy, shocked the world in 2002, long before Islamic State employed the tactic of videoing the gruesome murder of journalists and activists in the years that followed. 

His dismembered remains were discovered in a shallow grave shortly after a video of his killing arrived at the US consulate in Karachi. 

Pearl's family called the court ruling “a complete travesty of justice” and called on both the US and Pakistan to “correct this injustice” which they said endangers journalists the world over.

Sheikh was convicted of luring Pearl, who was investigating the so-called "Shoe bomber" Richard Reid and his link to Pakistani militants, to a site in Karachi from where he was kidnapped. 

Sheikh has remained on death row since his initial conviction but the Supreme Court ruling upheld his acquittal and ordered his release. 

Authorities in Washington said previously that, in the event that Sheikh were released, they would seek his extradition to the US to be tried. 

Whether an extradition request materializes, and in what form, remains to be seen, in what marks the first major test for the newly-minted Biden administration and its relationship with Pakistan. 

“The Pearl family is in complete shock by the majority decision of the Supreme Court of Pakistan to acquit and release Ahmed Omer Sheikh and the other accused persons who kidnapped and killed Daniel Pearl,” the Pearl family lawyer Faisal Siddiqi said in a statement.

Don't know why you would be shocked? You might have suspected this - An American Jew being beheaded by a Pakistani Muslim. It's a wonder the Supreme Court didn't give him a gold watch?

Pandemic - Big Pharma - AstraZeneca Vaccine Should be Restricted to Ages 18-64 - German Gov't

..

More ill tidings for EU as startling German announcement states AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine should only be given to under 65s

28 Jan 2021 13:08

AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine illustration, October 31, 2020 © REUTERS / Dado Ruvic

Germany's expert vaccine commission has said that the AstraZeneca Covid-19 jab should only be given to people between the ages of 18 and 64, in a startling statement that further dents the EU’s flailing vaccine rollout.

"There are currently insufficient data available to assess the vaccine efficacy from 65 years of age," the Standing Vaccine Commission said in the resolution made available by the German health ministry on Thursday.

The AstraZeneca vaccine, unlike the mRNA vaccines, should only be offered to people aged 18-64 years at each stage.

The European Medicines Agency is expected to make its own decision regarding the approval of the AstraZeneca vaccine on Friday.

AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soirot previously acknowledged that restrictions in terms of demographics suitable for his company's vaccine were a possibility. 

"It's possible that some countries, out of caution, will use our vaccine for the younger group. But honestly, it is fine,” Soirot said in a recent interview, adding that given the challenges in rolling out vaccines to as many people as possible, such measures might make sense. 

“There's not enough vaccines for everybody. So if they want to use another vaccine for older people and our vaccine for younger people, what’s the problem?”

Big pharmaceutical companies, in my humble opinion, don't care in the least if people die after taking their vaccine because it was ineffective. If they did, they would have come out with this recommendation before the government. At least, that's my humble opinion.

The statement comes as the EU and the British-Swedish pharmaceutical firm are embroiled in an increasingly bitter dispute about supplies. The bloc is pushing the company to deliver more doses of its vaccine after AstraZeneca announced delivery delays.

Meanwhile, the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines which have both been approved by EU regulators were considered “equivalent in terms of safety and efficacy.” 

What does that mean? Should they be restricted to >65s?

Islam - Current Day - Wife Beating in Abu Dhabi; Sri Lanka Youth Poet a Terrorist? Nigerian Military Shuffle, Will It Help? French Islamic Prison Programme

..

Abu Dhabi man ordered to pay Dh30,000 to wife for beating,

insulting her

..

Woman complained that husband abused her in front of others

Published:  January 25, 2021 17:23

Samihah Zaman, Senior Reporter, Gulf News

  

Abu Dhabi: A man has been ordered by an Abu Dhabi Court to pay his wife Dh30,000 for insulting and assaulting her.

The Abu Dhabi Civil Court announced the final verdict as compensation for the moral, material and physical damage inflicted upon the Arab woman by the abuse.

According to court records, the woman had complained to authorities that her husband beat her, inflicting bruises on her person. She alleged that he also insulted her in front of others in a manner that was demeaning and hurtful, and damaging to her reputation.

The Court of First Instance convicted the man of the insult and assault charges, and ordered him to pay Dh10,000.

Following this, the defendant’s wife filed a civil lawsuit demanding Dh400,000 for the moral, material and physical damage she had endured. The defendant argued that the complaint was baseless, but the Civil Court found in her favour and ordered the defendant to pay an additional Dh20,000. This increased the final compensation to Dh30,000.

That's about $8,000 USD. I wonder why he didn't argue that he had a right to beat her from the Quran. Perhaps things are changing in the UAE.

Sri Lanka youth poet in TID custody:

Defence counsel complain of lack of access

1 hour ago

By Ruwan Laknath Jayakody

Legal counsel appearing on behalf of Mannar-based poet Mannaramudhu Ahnaf Jazeem, who is presently detained by the Terrorism Investigation Division (TID), have complained of being denied access to their client, despite multiple written and verbal queries made from the TID including its Director, The Morning learnt.

The 25-year-old is being detained under the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act (PTA) for allegedly promoting Islamist extremism and terrorism.

This complaint was made when the case (B 13101/19) was taken up at the Colombo Fort Magistrate’s Court yesterday (27) in connection with the case of Attorney-at-Law (AAL) Hejaaz Hizbullah who is also detained at present in connection with the investigations into the Easter Sunday bombings on 21 April 2019.

A team of counsel including President’s Counsel A.A.M. Illiyas and AALs Swasthika Arulingam, Jayantha Dehiattage, Sanjaya Wilson Jayasekera, and Tharindu Rathnayake appeared on behalf of Ahnaf. Although Criminal Investigations Department (CID) and TID officers were present for the prosecution, there was no representation from the Attorney General’s Department yesterday.

The case was fixed for 24 February.

Razmin added that they will be filing a fundamental rights petition before the Supreme Court in this regard, and Wilson Jayasekera noted that at present, the petition is being drafted. Article 14 (1) (a) of the Constitution guarantees the freedom of speech and expression including publication. 

“This is completely anti-democratic and is a death-blow to the freedom of expression and art. This is a continuation of attacks on artists and writers who are critical of the society and the political system. Ahnaf is the latest victim in a series of such arbitrary arrests and prosecutions involving a short story writer, a film director, a commentator and social media activist, a lawyer, and journalists under this Government. The Police or the prosecutors cannot understand literature and arbitrarily arrest writers to impose fear and to subjugate critical thinking. These arrests and the whole campaign are directed at entrenching anti-Muslim racism to divide the working people and the masses along racial lines. All those who value democratic rights and the freedom of art should protest against this arrest and detention and demand the immediate and unconditional release of Ahnaf,” claimed Wilson Jayasekera, who is also the President of the Action Committee for the Defence of the Freedom of Art and Expression.

The complaint lodged with the mobile office of the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL) in Mannar by the family of Ahnaf, has been transferred for inquiries to the HRCSL head office in Colombo. Meanwhile, in opposition to the arbitrary arrest and detention of Ahnaf, the Sri Lanka Young Journalists’ Association has also lodged a complaint with the HRCSL seeking the latter’s intervention.

Nigerian military reshuffle belies serious security concerns

As Nigeria battles a domestic insurgency and wilting trust in its armed forces, President Buhari's overhaul has exposed exasperation with the military's ineffectiveness to guarantee security for the country.

Soldiers from 21 Brigade and Army Engineers clearing Islamic militant group Boko Haram camps at Chuogori and Shantumari in Borno State, Nigeria

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has replaced four of the country's top military heads following months of pressure over the nation's worsening security crisis. 

Buhari, who took office in 2015 with a pledge to stamp out the Boko Haram Islamist insurgency, had long ignored advice to dismiss the commanders of Nigeria's army, navy and air force, as well as the chief of defense staff. He announced their resignation and replacements on Twitter on Tuesday.

A recent spate of skirmishes in south-eastern Nigeria between the army and the separatist Indigenous People of Biafra group (IPOB) has further deepened Nigeria's security woes. 

Coupled with Boko Haram's continued presence in the north and a spike in armed banditry, swathes of Nigeria remain near-ungovernable.

Let's not forget the Fulani Herdsmen in the northwest.

"Nigeria is probably more insecure than it's been in recent history," Ryan Cummings, the director of analysis for the Africa-focused risk management consultancy Signal Risk, told DW.

New chiefs face 'high expectations'

The reshuffle saw Major General Lucky Eluonye Onyenuchea Irabor become Chief of Defense Staff and Ibrahim Attahiru become Chief of the Army. The air force and navy now have new leaders in Air Vice-Marshal Isiaka Oladayo Amao and Rear Admiral A.Z. Gambo, respectively.

Presidential spokesman Malam Garba Shehu said the reshuffle was "routine" and endorsed the new leaders.

"None have them have served less than 30 years in the armed forces," he told DW. "I think they are well-equipped to carry out the task at hand as long as the government gives them support."

General Ibrahim Attahiru has been appointed chief of the Nigerian Army

Kole Shettima from the Center for Democracy and Development told DW the new chiefs will be facing "high expectations, especially given that three of the four were at one point deployed to the north-east."

Shettima believes coordination and personal understanding between the new leaders would be a big factor in their potential success.

"I think everyone probably knew the previous service chiefs were not even on talking terms and that undermined their ability to prosecute the war against the insurgency," he says. 

Good grief!

For Cummings, the reshuffle is a sign of Buhari's "exasperation and toughness." "The buck has been passed on to the four figures that have been removed from their respective offices rather than the president himself," he says.

Cummings adds that many of Nigeria's security threats are "rooted in systemic issues," such as resource challenges. "This is not an issue where a simple change in military leadership all of a sudden addresses both symptoms and causes of insecurity in the country," he explains.

Perhaps the most significant systemic issue is corruption, which runs rampant in the government and military. I think it is safe to say that a very small portion of the military budget makes it down the soldiers on the ground.

President Buhari reshuffled his defense chiefs, but securing lasting stability across Nigeria is proving elusive

Fighting ongoing in southern Nigeria

Developments in south-eastern Nigeria have taken a violent turn this week, with clashes between members of IPOB's newly formed armed wing, the Eastern Security Network, and the Nigerian military.

There are reports of deaths on both sides. The origin of the flare-up is disputed, but correspondents say the Nigerian army retaliated after IPOB members allegedly killed soldiers.

In the town of Orlu near the Imo state capital Owerri, eyewitnesses said there was sporadic shooting, with residents taking cover to avoid stray bullets. The Imo state government has since imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew in affected areas.

Resident Nawwal Yusuf placed the blame on IPOB "agitators." "They attacked the northerners and killed four of them," he told DW. "We discovered four dead bodies. They have already been buried."

Peter Uche, a member of IPOB, told DW the separatist group had been repeatedly harassed by the government since starting a security outfit in their region.

"The soldiers and this government have been kicking against the IPOB members," he said. "I am not happy about it. Other regions in this country have their own security outfit. But we have been fighting, they have been fighting us, trying to eliminate us."

The Nigerian Civil War between 1967 and 1970 came after the secession of Biafra

Separatist movement remains active

Historically, south-eastern Nigeria has been a hotbed for Biafran separatist agitation.

The Nigerian Civil War, which lasted from 1967 to 1970, pitted southern separatists — who wanted to form the independent nation of Biafra — against the Nigerian government.

There are also religious divisions between predominantly Muslim northerners and southerners, who are largely Christian.

Currently, numerous splinter groups in south-eastern Nigeria are loosely united, demanding the right to form their own state. IPOB's leader, Nnamdi Kanu, is in exile. 

The region is one of Nigeria's richest in terms of mineral resources, specifically oil. But with oil prices currently low, the Nigerian government is struggling to finance its budget.

"You have a population and Igbo population that feels somewhat disconnected from Nigeria's federal government structures," says Cummings. "They feel that President Buhari does not specifically represent their interests."

But despite the increasingly loud calls from the IPOB for the formation of the state of Biafra, Cummings adds that, despite dissatisfaction with the Nigerian government, wider polls show there is "not much resonance" for separatism in the region.

Inside France’s pioneering deradicalisation programme

Other governments fear that imprisoning extremists gives them the opportunity to

convert other inmates. The French claim to have devised the best system of prevention,

largely because of their greater experience of terrorist attacks

France has been on high alert since October, when a teacher was beheaded in an Islamist attack

KIRAN RIDLEY/GETTY IMAGES

Adam Sage, Paris

Wednesday January 27 2021, 5.00pm GMT, The Times

Three years after leaving France for Syria to become the second wife of a polygamist Islamic State terrorist, Leila had had enough of the bloodshed and the brutality.

She fled across the border into Turkey from Syria with her two young children, now eight and six, along with her “husband” and his existing wife. She spent four months in a Turkish jail and was flown to Paris, where she was met by an elite police unit at the airport. She was charged with belonging to a terrorist group and remanded in custody.

During the 16 months Leila, which is not her real name, was detained in Fleury-Mérogis prison outside the capital before being granted bail, she met a Muslim chaplain who invited her to reflect on her hitherto fundamentalist approach to religion.

‘You have a brain. You can think for yourself,’

France has been forced to address the issue because of its long experience of terrorism,

including the Bataclan attacks in 2015

PHILIPPE WOJAZER/REUTERS

“He simply said to me, ‘You have a brain. You can think for yourself,’” she said.

She said she started to question what she had been told about women being inferior to men, about them “thinking with their hearts rather than their heads” and about them being “cursed all night if they refuse intercourse when their husbands want”.

“Prison was very hard because I was separated from my children,” she said in a telephone interview with The Times. “But I think I had to go there to be liberated from all that. With hindsight, I think it did me good.”

Leila, 26, who is now living with her two sons in her native northern France while awaiting trial, is among several hundred inmates to have endured what the French authorities claim is a pioneering scheme to wean Islamists off their violent radicalism.

Leila was detained in Fleury-Mérogis prison outside the capital

ERIC FEFERBERG/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

It is a question with which many countries are struggling.

Other governments fear that imprisoning religious extremists gives them the opportunity to convert other inmates. However, locking them in special units — jails within the jail — often leads to them becoming even more extremist.

Both Britain and France employ a range of professionals, including religious mentors, to try to limit the risk that terrorists reoffend.

But the French argue that they are succeeding where others are failing, largely because their greater experience of terrorist attacks has enabled them to develop a more sophisticated procedure to identify risks and to turn inmates away from jihadist gurus.

Jules Boyadjian, justice department director for Groupe SOS Solidarités, an association involved in the programme, said that the specificity of the French approach involved the “deconstruction of the references of jihad”.

In Britain Jonathan Hall, QC, the government’s reviewer of terrorism legislation, said the prison service was failing with convicted terrorists preaching radicalism and inciting violence inside jail. He has announced an inquiry. In November 2019 and last February convicted Islamist terrorists freed on licence carried out attacks in London and were shot dead by the police.

The French are familiar with such difficulties. François Toutain, the head of the Mission for the Fight Against Violent Radicalisation at the Direction of the Penitentiary Administration in Paris, said: “Even in jail, the Salafist jihadist continues to be impregnated with his ideology and continues to try to contaminate other inmates. No matter who he has in front of him, he will try to promote his ideology. Even if he is faced with a white supremacist, he will try to do it.”

He said such inmates were also dangerous because they continued to heed Islamic State calls to “strike wherever you are”, including within jails, where Islamist radicals have conducted six attacks, notably on officers, since 2016.

Yet French officials claim they have developed a scheme that reduces the radicalisation risk. It involves assessing Islamist inmates before placing the most fanatical in solitary confinement, those who are marginally less extreme in “radicalisation prevention” units where they are kept apart from other prisoners, and the least dangerous in ordinary cells.

The assessment is followed by a deradicalisation programme during which religious extremists are overseen by a dedicated team of probation officers, psychologists, counsellors and Islamic studies experts — often Muslim chaplains — who seek to lead them towards moderation and re-integration in society.

Sceptics worry that this represents an unrealistic attempt to re-educate terrorists before letting them loose again.

But officials in Paris claim that the approach appears to be working. Three years after the launch of the deradicalisation programme, none of the inmates put through it has been charged with or convicted of another terrorism offence, they told The Times.

People gather and lay tributes on the Promenade des Anglais after the Nice attack in 2016

PATRICK AVENTURIER/GETTY IMAGES

“We are containing the risk,” said Naoufel Gaied, the deputy head of the Mission for the Fight Against Violent Radicalisation, adding that France had been forced to address the issue because of its long and painful experience of terrorism, with more than 260 people killed in Islamist attacks since 2015.

“Its France’s misfortune that has produced our expertise,” he said.

French jails contain about 1,100 Islamist radical inmates, just under half of whom have been incarcerated in connection with terrorism offences. The most dangerous include Salah Abdeslam, the only surviving member of the group which carried out the Bataclan attacks that killed 131 people in Paris in November 2015, who is due to go on trial with 17 others this autumn.

In addition, at least 700 Islamists are being followed by the probation service after being released on bail or probation.

Of these, about 90 have been ordered to go on a programme organised by Groupe SOS Solidarités, which has been chosen by the government to continue working on the deradicalisation of inmates after they leave prison.

“We get a lot of different types of people, from trained fighters to adolescents keen on radical religiousness to girls dreaming of bearded princes,” Mr Boyadjian said.

He said that a central aim was to tackle the Islamist doctrine that Muslims can “only live their faith in a country that practises Sharia law and that where there is Sharia law there is corporal punishment”.

Those on the programme are taken to the Islamic Arts Department at the Louvre to “show them that there is room for Islam in France”, for instance. They are also seen by Islamic studies experts who offer another interpretation of the Quran to show how the radicals “truncate its verses and take them out of context”, Mr Boyadjian said.

A Republican Guard lowers the French flag at half-mast at the Élysée Palace on the day after the Nice attack

CHRISTOPHE PETIT TESSON/REUTERS

“The aim is not to make them less Muslim, it is to accompany them towards intellectual autonomy and away from their habit of repeating slavishly what they have been told,” one person involved in the project said.

The source rejected suggestions that Islamists could exploit the system by pretending to have abandoned extremism whilst secretly maintaining a commitment to violence. He said the radicals on the Groupe SOS Solidarités programme were seen by a range of team members for between three and 20 hours a week for many months, adding: “You have to be particularly talented to fool everyone all the time.”

Leila, for her part, insists that she has changed since the days in 2013 when she went on to a Facebook group for disabused French Muslims and started chatting to a woman who had left France for Syria. The woman explained that she could now practise Islam without hindrance and was living a peaceful life unaffected by the war. She asked Leila if she wanted to join her to become her husband’s second wife. Leila accepted because “I was very naive at the time and I saw men like him as heroes” and within a month she had left France with her 14-month-old son to join the man and his wife in Syria.

It did not progress as expected. Not only did she find herself in the midst of bombings but she was surprised that the Islamic State was a violent, brutal network given to using slaves “which particularly shocked me because I am partly of African origin”. She says she was relieved when her husband announced that they should leave Syria, telling his two wives: “We’ve made a big mistake. Islamic State is evil.”

“We’ve made a big mistake. Islamic State is evil.”

During her time in Syria, she bore a second child to her husband.

Leila, who faces up to ten years in jail for belonging to a terrorist group, said: “I used to think that France didn’t want me. But it held out its hand to me when I needed it [on her return from Syria]. I dread to think what would have happened to me in many other countries.”