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Forces kill 11 Islamic State-K fighters during anti-terror raid in Pakistan
By Clyde Hughes
Officials said Tuesday's raid was designed to keep IS-K from using the hideout as a planning center for future terrorist attacks. File Photo by Shahzaib Akber/EPA
Aug. 31 (UPI) -- Authorities in Pakistan said Tuesday that security forces killed nearly a dozen militants of the Islamic State-Khorasan terror group during a raid on their hideout.
Officials said the raid occurred in Baluchistan province and killed 11 IS-K fighters.
Pakistan's Counter Terrorism Department said it acted on an intelligence report detailing the hideout's location.
Authorities said officers came under attack during the raid, as militants opened fire and tossed hand grenades during the fight.
Officials said Tuesday's raid was designed to keep IS-K from using the hideout as a planning center for future terrorist attacks. Police found a large stash of arms and explosives.
IS-K, an Afghanistan offshoot of the Islamic State terror group, claimed responsibility for the suicide bombings in Kabul last week during the U.S. military evacuation. The attacks killed 13 Marines and nearly 200 Afghan civilians.
The group has often launched bomb attacks in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province.
Baluchistan, which shared borders with Afghanistan and Iran, is Pakistan's largest province and has been the focal point of separatists demanding independence from the country.
Balochistan, PK
Most people on Germany’s Islamist watchlist hold German
or dual citizenship
1 Sep, 2021 08:00
More than half of the hundreds of individuals on Germany’s Islamic extremist watchlist are the country’s own citizens, a report says, citing government data.
The data came from the government’s response to an inquiry by the right-wing anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Out of 330 individuals listed as threats on the basis of “religious ideology” as of July 1, 186 were either exclusively German nationals or held a second citizenship in addition to the German one.
Among 144 foreigners on the Islamist watchlist, 61 were citizens of Syria. The group also included 17 Iraqis, 13 Russians, 11 Turkish nationals, one Afghan, eight people whose nationality was unclear, and two stateless individuals.
According to the media, police keep tabs on the so-called “dangerous individuals,” who are considered capable of committing politically motivated violence, such as terrorist acts.
This year, authorities banned several Islamist organizations accused of funding terrorism with their donations this year. One such group was said to have glorified Islamic State and spread anti-Semitic propaganda.
Gunman who killed four outside French Embassy in Tanzania
was 'terrorist radicalized online' – police
2 Sep, 2021 19:07
FILE PHOTO: Tanzanian security forces guard an entrance to the French embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania,
on August 25, 2021. © Reuters / Emmanuel Herman
A gunman who killed three police officers and a security guard in the diplomatic quarter of Tanzania's Dar es Salaam last week was a terrorist radicalized through the internet, police investigating the shootings have said.
The attacker, identified by officials as Hamza Mohamed, went on a rampage on August 25. He killed three police officers and a private security guard before being shot by police. Six other people were also injured in the incident, which unfolded just outside the entrance to the French Embassy.
"Our investigations have revealed that Hamza Mohamed was a person who had a secret life with all indicators of terrorism," the director of criminal investigations, Camillus Wambura, told journalists on Thursday.
Wambura said Mohamed was one of the "type of terrorists who are ready to die for their religion," but did not identify any religion associated with the attacker. The gunman also communicated with "other people who live in countries with terrorism-related acts but mainly he was learning through radical social media pages," he added.
He was also ready to kill for his religion. That narrows down the field considerably.
The director of criminal investigations also said that the assailant "spent much of his time" browsing the internet to "learn" about the terrorist attacks launched by Islamic State and Al-Shabaab, another terrorist group, active in East Africa and Yemen. A local group, which also bears the name Al-Shabaab, is active in Mozambique, which borders Tanzania.
Tanzania's Police Inspector-General Simon Sirro earlier suggested that the attack might be linked to the government's decision to send troops to neighboring Mozambique, where Islamist insurgents are fighting the army.
Denmark’s former hardline immigration minister on trial
in rarely used court over separating asylum-seeker couples
2 Sep, 2021 18:01
© Reuters /Scanpix / Mathias Loevgreen Bojesen
Denmark’s former immigration minister Inger Stojberg has gone on trial in the nation’s rarely used Impeachment Court. The “hardline” ex-minister is accused of illegally separating asylum-seeker couples where wives were underage.
Stojberg appeared before the court on Thursday as the special judicial body convened for the first time in 26 years. The court, which only tries former or current government members, is expected to decide the former minister’s fate and rule on whether she violated the European Convention on Human Rights.
At issue in the historic trial is Stojberg’s decision to initiate separation of “cohabiting couples” of asylum seekers back in 2016. She also stands accused of “lying-to or misleading” the relevant parliamentary committees while informing them about her decision.
Stojberg, an immigration and integration minister between 2015 and 2019, said the move was motivated by a goal to stop forced child marriages – and the measure only applied to couples where one of the partners was underage.
A total of 32 couples were to be separated under the minister’s order and 23 of them were indeed split up before the policy was stopped several months later.
Addressing the Danish MPs back in February when the lawmakers voted to put her on trial, Stojberg argued it was “the only political and humane thing” to do in such cases.
“Imagine arriving in a country like Denmark, a country of equality, as a young girl victim of a forced marriage, and you discover that, instead of giving you the possibility to break free of your forced marriage, the state forces you to stay together in an asylum reception center,” she said.
Most of the young women in the separated couples were aged between 15 and 17 and they consented to their marriages. The men were aged between 15 and 32. In some cases, the young women were pregnant, or had already had children. The legal age of marriage in Denmark is 18.
The MPs were apparently not convinced by Stojberg’s arguments in February, since 139 lawmakers out of 179 voted in support of the trial, while 30 opposed and 10 were absent.
Considered an immigration “hardliner,” Stojberg, who was a minister under the previous Liberal-led government, spearheaded many controversial initiatives aimed at tightening the nation’s asylum and immigration policy.
She pushed for a law that allowed the Danish authorities to confiscate valuables from new arrivals to finance their stay in Denmark. She also spearheaded the tightening of the Danish asylum law that limited the number of social services provided to asylum seekers – and was behind an ad campaign published in Lebanese newspapers that discouraged people from applying for asylum in Denmark.
In 2018, Stojberg, who has insisted the country should make itself as unattractive as possible to asylum seekers, advocated sending them to live on a remote island to send a clear message that they were “unwanted.”
The measure was not implemented back in 2018 but the nation’s current Social Democratic government, led by Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, returned to the idea in May 2021, though a different island has been proposed.
Since its creation in 1849, the Impeachment Court has ruled on just five cases and only two ministers were found guilty in its history. Stojberg’s case would also be the third one the court has heard since 1910.
Last time the court convened was in 1995. At that time, the former justice minister Erik Ninn-Hansen was found guilty of three charges of abuse of power. Ninn-Hansen was convicted over illegally suspending family reunification for Sri-Lankan refugees in 1987 and 1988.
He was handed a suspended four-month prison sentence. Now, Stojberg could face a fine or up to two years in prison if found guilty.
This would appear to be a political trial more than a human rights trial.
Tajikistan sounds alarm over impending Afghan refugee crisis,
warns of stream of desperate people after fall of Kabul to Taliban
2 Sep, 2021 17:29
Refugees fleeing the Afghan Civil War in 1993 stand at the border with Tajikistan.
© Roger JOB/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
By Rachel Lloyd
The government of Tajikistan has called on the international community for help managing a sharp spike in the number of people seeking asylum from neighboring Afghanistan, after US forces pulled out of the Central Asian nation.
Speaking on Thursday, Tajikistan’s minister of internal affairs, Ramazon Rahimov, explained that the country was running out of resources to help displaced people crossing the border. “Tajikistan does not have the capacity to accommodate a large number of refugees and asylum seekers,” he said.
In July, the deputy head of the Tajikistan Emergency Situations Committee, Emomali Ibrokhimzoda, pledged that the nation was ready to take in 100,000 asylum seekers and would be working with international organizations to help prepare. Since then, the government has put aside approximately 70 hectares of land along the Afghan border for displaced people.
However, the country now says it does not have the ability to support the large number of people on its own, and Rahimov has called out to the international community. “Not a single international organization in 20 years has provided us with practical help in creating infrastructure to take in refugees and asylum seekers,” he said. The nation, which is the poorest in Central Asia, is now trying to appeal for assistance from the world to alleviate the problem.
Regional leaders have remained cautious of the situation, over fears of potential security threats from Afghanistan in the form of Islamist militants and terrorists disguised as refugees. Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have already closed their borders to citizens of the Taliban-controlled country.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has emphasized that the security of his country and surrounding ones comes first. When the West proposed placing those fleeing from the Taliban in Central Asian countries before they obtained visas, he slammed the idea, asking how safety could be guaranteed.
Tajikistan and Afghanistan share a 1,344 km border. According to the State Committee for National Security of Tajikistan, the situation is currently calm and controlled since the Taliban came to power.
Around 15,000 men, women, and children have been granted asylum by Tajikistan over the past two decades. There are currently 80 families on neutral territory seeking entry into the country.
Poland’s president declares state of emergency in regions
bordering Belarus over migration surge
2 Sep, 2021 14:07
Polish President Andrzej Duda has imposed a state of emergency in two regions bordering Belarus for the first time in the nation’s post-Communist history. The move was prompted by a sharp increase in migrant arrivals.
“The president decided to… introduce a state of emergency in the areas designated by the Council of Ministers,” Duda’s spokesman, Blazej Spychalski, told a press conference on Thursday. The state of emergency would stay in force for at least 30 days.
“The situation on the border with Belarus is difficult and dangerous,” Spychalski said. “Today, we as Poland, being responsible for our own borders, but also for the borders of the European Union, must take measures to ensure the security of Poland and the European Union.”
On Tuesday, the government formally asked Duda to impose the state of emergency in some areas of Poland’s eastern Podlaskie and Lubelskie regions that border Belarus. The order would apply to a total of 183 municipalities directly adjacent to the border and would form a three-kilometer-deep zone along the border with Belarus, the Polish media reported.
It is otherwise not exactly clear what measures the state of emergency would entail. Poland has never introduced such measures in its post-Communist history, and avoided imposing one even during the most difficult periods of the Covid-19 pandemic, despite some calls on the government to do so.
The measure is yet to be approved by the lower house of the Polish parliament – the Sejm. It is scheduled to convene on the matter on Friday or Monday, according to Polish media reports.
The MPs can potentially repeal the decision. Poland’s Law and Justice party, which supports the government and holds most seats in parliament, would need just 11 additional votes to block any such attempts, but most opposition parties have not yet taken a public stance on the issue. The Left Party was the only one so far to say it would oppose the move and seek to repeal it.
The move comes amid a surge in illegal migration that Poland and some Baltic states have been facing over recent months. Thousands of migrants believed to be traveling from the Middle East have crossed or attempted to cross into Latvia, Lithuania and Poland from neighboring Belarus over that period.
The Polish border guards said on Wednesday that August alone saw a total of 3,500 attempts by migrants to enter Poland from Belarus. The guards thwarted 2,500 of such attempts.
The EU previously accused Belarus of engaging in a “direct attack” on the bloc and trying to “instrumentalize human beings for political purposes” by pushing migrants toward the borders of member states. Vilnius also accused Minsk of flying in migrants from abroad and shuttling them to the border as a form of warfare.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko refuted the accusations and said instead that his administration would no longer try to stop migrants from crossing into the EU after its members imposed sanctions against Belarus over the disputed 2020 presidential election.
The developments already prompted Warsaw to send troops to build a 2.5 meters tall razor-wire barrier designed to stretch for most of the 150-kilometer (93-mile) border with Belarus.
Poland and Latvia, meanwhile, faced a reprimand from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which demanded the two nations assist migrants who cross over their borders with Belarus. The court took such a decision in late August following appeals from 32 Afghan and 41 Iraqi nationals stuck at the frontiers.
‘War zone’: Sweden rocked by two overnight explosions,
and politician points to gang-crime
2 Sep, 2021 12:45
A Swedish MP has said his country is starting to look like a war zone after a city and town saw explosions during the night, with one death reported, amid a gang-crime epidemic in the once-peaceful nation.
In the early hours of Thursday morning, police in Sweden were called to a residential estate in the town of Varnamo where a man was found severely injured after a reported explosion. He was taken to hospital where he died from his injuries. The explosive charge was so powerful that it was heard in large parts of the town, police told reporters.
The Swedish daily newspaper Aftonbladet, citing police sources, said the deceased man had accidentally blown himself up. It is believed he was carrying a bomb and intended to threaten or scare “witnesses.”
The individual in question had connections to a motorbike gang, Johan Borg, operational coordinator for the Varnamo police, told reporters at a press conference on Thursday. Other emergency service personnel were also called to the scene of the explosion.
Meanwhile, the city of Helsingborg was also shaken by an explosion in the early hours on Thursday morning, although the events are not thought to be linked. A property had its windows and doors blown out and considerable damage was caused to a house opposite.
Bomb experts were called to the scene, but it is understood that there aren’t any suspects so far. Residents told local media that there was a strong smell of gunpowder following the explosion. The explosions come amid escalating gang-violence and an epidemic of crime.
Swedish MP Johan Forssell said on Twitter that Sweden was resembling a “war zone,” adding that the country needs to get rid of criminal gangs and restore security.
The overnight events come after Stockholm politician Irene Svenonius wrote to the government on Monday demanding crisis talks about Sweden’s dire gang-crime issues. She said that more than 70 shootings have taken place in the Stockholm region during the first seven months of the year, adding that 16 people have been killed and innocent children have been injured by stray bullets.
She claimed that the Swedish capital is no longer recognizable. Svenonius also made a number of demands of the government, including ensuring that migrants in Sweden are taught the language and have a chance to succeed.
Her reference to migrants can be taken as confirming that the gangs involved are migrant gangs. There is a statistical connection between the increased numbers of Muslim migrants and criminal gangs in Sweden.
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