Terrorism, Islam in the Western World > Calgary Man guilty of Terrorism; Terrorist Cell in Brest, France; Harassment of Hindus in UK

 

Calgary man pleads guilty to terrorism charge after posts on TikTok, Snapchat

By Colette Derworiz  Global News

Posted December 1, 2023 10:20 am

 Updated December 1, 2023 12:25 pm

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A 20-year old Calgary man has pleaded guilty to one count of facilitating terrorist activity. The sign at the Calgary Courts Centre in Calgary is shown on Friday, Jan. 5, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Bill Graveland. Bill Graveland

A man has pleaded guilty to a terrorism charge after admitting he shared recruitment videos for the Islamic State group on TikTok and posted on Snapchat that his mission would begin during Pride month.

Zakarya Rida Hussein, 20, was charged in June with two counts of facilitating terrorist activity and two counts of participating in or contributing to an activity of a terrorist group.

Hussein appeared Friday via video in the Alberta Court of Justice in Calgary. Some of his family members attended.

His lawyer, Alain Hepner, entered Hussein’s plea to one count of facilitating terrorist activity.

“The plea is guilty,” Hepner told Justice Harry Van Harten.

An agreed statement of facts, which was read into court by Crown prosecutor Kent Brown, said Hussein was arrested at his home by the RCMP Integrated National Security Enforcement Team with assistance from the Calgary Police Service on June 15.

It says a search warrant on his home and vehicle found a notebook with step-by-step instructions for making a bomb, an Islamic State group flag, several electronics, a black collapsible baton, knives and imitation brass knuckles.

During a post-arrest interview, the statement says Hussein admitted ownership of his social media accounts, including on TikTok and Snapchat. He also admitted to writing homemade explosive instructions found in his bedroom, the statement says.

The document adds that Hussein knowingly facilitated terrorist activity on May 14 by posting an Islamic State group recruitment video on TikTok, which received comments from other users that included “I$I$ and proud,” and “the video itself is very motivational.”

It says he then shared a longer version of the same video in a text message chat.

The statement says Hussein then posted a Snapchat message on June 1 that his mission would begin the next day.

“It’s Pride month,” he said. “I’ve been waiting.”

Hussein then referred to two different types of explosive devices and one of those devices matched what was described in the handwritten instructions seized from his bedroom, says the statement.

It says he shared a video to a group chat containing “extremist ideological interpretations that encouraged the killing of gay men.”

The document says Hussein also replied to an automated text message from Alberta’s United Conservative Party asking for his support.

“No,” he wrote back. “I’m gonna do a terrorist attack on you guys.”

The statement says he received additional automated messages from the UCP, including one that asked if they could put a sign up at his house, and he replied: “I’ll blow you guys up with an explosive.”

Hepner ordered a risk assessment report for Hussein before he’s to be sentenced next year.

RCMP have charged two other young Calgarians for terrorism-related offences in an ongoing national security investigation.

The two teens, who cannot be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, have been released with conditions, pending the outcome of Terrorism Peace Bond applications.

Accused of having prepared attacks in a

Brest butcher’s shop, six men in court

Translated from “Accusés d’avoir préparé dans une boucherie de Brest des attentats, six hommes renvoyés aux assises,” France Bleu, November 30, 2023 (thanks to Medforth):

Six men accused of having prepared violent actions inspired by those of the Islamic State group in a butcher’s shop in Brest (Finistère) are being referred to the special juvenile court at the end of 2024.

Six men are being referred to the special juvenile court, Agence France Presse (AFP) learned this Thursday. They are accused of having prepared violent actions inspired by those of the Islamic State group in a Brest butcher’s shop. The investigation began in September 2019 around the situation of Mohamad D., a Palestinian born in 1985 in Syria.

Arriving in France at the end of 2015 as a refugee – he has since lost this status – he regularly visited the “Chez Wahid” butcher’s shop on the outskirts of Brest in 2019. Behind the stall, Wahid B., convicted that year for advocating terrorism for having mimed shooting with an automatic weapon as a police patrol passed after the attacks of November 13, 2015.

His business was suspected of hosting meetings of the local “radical Islamist movement”, according to the indictment order of which AFP became aware this Thursday, with the advantage of “not attracting attention“. The establishment was sounded in November 2019, which allowed investigators to trigger a wave of arrests in January 2020 targeting seven men, ultimately indicted, including Mohamad D. and Wahid B.

Brest naval base considered as target

At the end of three and a half years of investigation, two anti-terrorism judges ordered on July 28 the dismissal of six of them for criminal terrorist association and a dismissal of the case for the seventh. The trial, confirmed by a decision of the Paris Court of Appeal on Monday, could be held at the end of 2024 before the specially composed juvenile court, because one of the accused was 16 years old at the time of the facts.

The six accused, five of whom are still detained, were born between 1983 and 2003 and suspected of having considered several targets for violent actions: the Brest naval base, Chinese New Year celebrations in France, a synagogue, football matches …

“You kill the whole village in one night, it’s easy”

In a sound recording from December 9, 2019, Mohamad D. said to Wahid B.: “We need a little training, we need weapons, and we need to learn certain things (…) We can’t go there. too far away, for example, we go to see the countryside. There are four or five of us, armed, you kill the whole village in a single night, it’s easy (…) You have to have the audacity, and you have everything planned,” adds this man, now 38 years old.

“Out of context” sound recordings, denounces his lawyer, Me Sami Khankan, who tells AFP that he “will plead innocent” as he “contests the procedure in form and substance.” Among the other projects attributed to the six men by investigators, the infiltration of the French army, “you light them all,” suggests the one who was then a minor, or the rallying of fighters in Syria or Mali.

Mohamad D.’s journey seemed to interest his co-defendants. “He fought there and everything,” says one of them. “How did he come back?” asks another. But Mohamad D. contested the numerous elements put forward by the investigators to assert that he had fought in the ranks of the Islamic State group in Syria in 2014. His defense presents him as distanced from the rest of the cell and believes that the investigators used its geographical origin, a Syrian area under the yoke of the Islamic State group, to consolidate a file that it considers artificial.

Collective fascination with the abuses perpetrated by jihadists

For the judges, on the contrary, the plans for violent actions are very real. They mention paintball sessions related to shooting training, plans to purchase weapons by certain protagonists, in Brest and in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and above all a form of collective fascination with the abuses perpetrated by jihadists.

The other five accused defended themselves from “blah-bla,” “empty words” or the group effect. Contacted by AFP, their lawyers did not respond or did not wish to comment this Thursday morning.

 

UK: Hindu families living in perpetual fear of 

persecution by Islamists, netizens reveal

chilling details of harassment and police inaction

OpIndia, November 28, 2023:

Reports are doing rounds about attacks on a Hindu family in the UK’s West Midlands county by Islamists. The incident was first reported early in November. The family has been attacked several times by Islamists since July this year but the local police refused to take action demanded by the complainants.

The incident was again reported this time by GB News and shared by British journalist Martin Daubney on X, formerly Twitter. Daubney’s post was reshared by another X user prompting several UK citizens to share the horrifying experiences of several Hindu families they knew living in the UK.

One such user named Bo shared an experience of their Hindu friend. The user wrote that their Hindu friend stopped wearing bindi (a Hindu symbol worn by Hindu women on the forehead between the eyebrows) owing to the hatred that she had been subjected to.

“She’d had dog poo put through her letter box, she and her husband’s cars had been keyed, they’d been spat at, and a whole host of other things,” Bo wrote on X.

Bo added, “Thinking it was locals, I was just pushing up my proverbial sleeves to start having words with people before she told me who it was and begged me not to do anything as the police didn’t seem to care. In the end, they just moved away. Beautiful family, with great kids. I think this is more common than we realise.”

Replying to this post, another user named Boudicca and Viriato wrote that their son had a Hindu friend in school and they all got on well with each other. However, the school had a majority Pakistani students and the Hindu girl “experienced abuse from some of the mums”.

“It was stuff like telling her to ‘go home’ and this was ‘their’ school. They moved away also,” Boudicca and Viriato wrote.

A user named klownShowz wrote that their friends don’t wear bindi and have been advised by the police not to draw attention by putting rangoli or flowers on the doorway in Hindu festival style.

When a user replied to Bo’s post pointing at a possible lack of support from non-Muslims, Bo replied by saying that the aggrieved couple was a quiet couple and “it was only after they left and people asked where they went, and I said, that people were furious and wished they’d known.”… 

=================================================================================

 

 

The Media is the Message > NYTs Chills; TikTok Fined in Russia - Restricted in Italy After Child Death; Zelensky Shuts Down Opposition News Channels

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‘Please, don’t cancel New York Times subscription,’ says former editor sacked after her ‘chills’ for Biden infuriated some readers

24 Jan 2021 11:26

FILE PHOTO. The New York Times office in the Manhattan. ©REUTERS / Carlo Allegri

The Gray Lady has sacked its editor, who was criticized for expressing excitement with the landing of Joe Biden’s plane before inauguration. The journalist asked supporters not to cancel their subscriptions.

Lauren Wolfe stirred online anger on Tuesday by sharing her feelings about Joe Biden’s arrival at the Joint Base Andrews in Maryland for his upcoming inauguration ceremony. She called the Trump administration “petty” and “childish” over a widely reported (and later revealed to be false) claim that it denied Biden a military plane to arrive in DC. Wolfe said she had “chills” seeing Biden’s private jet land.

The awkwardly-worded tweet apparently not only caused Wolfe humiliation due to online mockery, but also cost her her job as an editor at the New York Times. The Gray Lady has canceled her contract, she confirmed on Twitter. HuffPost contributor Yashar Ali was the first to report the news.

Wolfe is hardly the only journalist in the US, whose public statements about Biden taking over from Trump would be more suitable for a celebrity fan club. But her sacking seemed a gross and unfair overreaction by the Times even for some of her critics, especially since her remark was made on a private account.

People angry with the decision recalled how many times people in the profession got to keep their jobs after far worse transgressions. This was the case, for example, with the infamous podcast ‘Caliphate’ (3rd story on link), which won the newspaper praise and awards, but turned out to be based on the words of a fabulist posing as a source.

Some of Wolfe’s supporters said they will be canceling their Times subscription in retaliation. She asked them not to do that, saying her former place of employment was an “incredible paper filled with talented journalists.”

Wolfe apparently blames conservatives mad about her tweet for her termination. But one doesn’t have to go far back in time to see that the Times is not exactly known for standing up to left-wing outrage to protect its people either.

Just last June James Bennet had to resign from the newspaper over the publication of an opinion piece penned by Senator Tom Cotton, in which he advocated deployment of military troops to rein in mass protests in Washington, DC. Bennet was in charge of the opinion section at the time. One can only wonder how Cotton’s line of argument would fly today, in the aftermath of the January 6 Capitol riot and unprecedented deployment to Washington, DC of over 25,000 National Guardsmen for Biden’s inauguration.

NY Times Gay Article Attacks Christianity

Why You Can't Expect the Truth from Main Stream Media

Russia to fine TikTok & other social networks for failing to remove posts allegedly promoting unauthorized protests to kids

28 Jan 2021 13:03

©  AFP / LOIC VENANCE

The Russian state regulator, Roskomnadzor, has announced that seven social networks will be fined for failing to comply with demands to delete calls to protest, after supporters of Alexey Navalny advertised demonstrations online.

American tech giants Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, along with Chinese video-sharing app TikTok and Russian sites VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, will each be forced to pay between 800,000 and four million rubles ($10,500 and $52,000).

Last week, prior to Saturday’s demonstrations in support of the jailed opposition figure, Roskomnadzor revealed its concern that social media was being used to encourage minors to participate in unsanctioned protests. In particular, the regulator pointed the finger at the video-sharing app TikTok. In a press release, Roskomnadzor announced that a total of 170 illegal calls for protest were not removed from the internet “in a timely manner.”

“Social networks Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, and video-host YouTube will be fined for failure to comply with the requirements to prevent the spread of calls to minors to participate in unsanctioned rallies on January 23,” the statement said.

Earlier this week, it was revealed that around 300 children were arrested at protests throughout the country, the youngest being just nine years old.

“In Moscow, about 70 [were arrested and], in St. Petersburg, about 30,” Children’s Ombudsman Anna Kuznetsova wrote on Facebook on Saturday evening. “The children were detained until their parents arrived. The police tried to get the little ones out of the crowd as quickly as possible to save them from tragedy, which fortunately did not happen.”

On Tuesday, the Speaker of Russia’s parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, told Radio Komsomolskaya Pravda that “children cannot be used [by politicians] in a civilized society.”

“Why attract children to such events by agitating them on social media, showing them videos?” he asked. “[We] are against that. Leave the children alone. Let children have their childhood.”

On January 23, more than 100 cities in Russia saw supporters of jailed opposition figure Navalny take to the streets, with thousands protesting against his detainment. Navalny was remanded in custody on January 18 after arriving back in Russia from Germany. He is accused of violating the terms of a three-and-a-half-year suspended sentence he received in 2014, when he was found guilty of embezzling 30 million rubles ($400,000) from two companies, including the French cosmetics brand Yves Rocher.

Washington joins crusade against free speech, backs Ukrainian crackdown on opposition media as EU & Zelensky’s dad voice concerns

3 Feb, 2021 17:46

US Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden holds a megaphone during an event on Election Day in Scranton, Pennsylvania, US November 3, 2020. © REUTERS / Kevin Lamarque; (inset) Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky © REUTERS / Kevin Lamarque

The US has waded into a row over media censorship in Ukraine, backing a ban on opposition TV channels as both the EU and President Volodymyr Zelensky’s own father expressed grave concerns over the impact on free speech.

In a statement issued on Twitter Wednesday, the American embassy in Kiev wrote that it “supports efforts yesterday to counter Russia’s malign influence.” It described the shuttering of broadcasters as “in line with [Ukrainian law], in defense of its sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

“We must all work together to prevent disinformation from being deployed as a weapon in an info war against sovereign states,” the missive concluded.

Earlier that day, Zelensky signed into law a decree that took a total of eight news outlets off the airwaves in a move backed by the country’s National Security and Defense Council. However, the claim of nefarious Russian influence was met with skepticism, given that the outlets are based in Ukraine, where they are operated by and watched by Ukrainians.

In addition, the group is owned by one of the country’s elected MPs, Taras Kozak. Authorities also say they have ties to political leader Viktor Medvedchuk, who heads up the country’s largest opposition party, which is called “Opposition Platform – for Life.”

In a furious statement published on Wednesday morning, Medvedchuk wrote that the move to suppress opposition-leaning media was “absolutely illegal” and amounted to the use of “violence, bullying and coercion against dissent.” He noted that the decision came amid tumbling approval ratings for Zelensky and fierce criticism from the opposition over a lack of access to Covid-19 vaccines. 

Later on Wednesday, one of the bloc’s MPs announced it would begin the process of trying to impeach the President following the crackdown.

Mikhail Podolyak, an adviser to Zelensky, explained the move, saying that “it’s clear that sanctions on Mr. Medvedchuk’s TV channels are not about the media and not about freedom of speech… it’s just about effectively counterfeiting fakes and foreign propaganda.” Without action, he argued, the opposition media would “kill our values.”

However, the EU broke ranks with Washington on Wednesday, sounding the alarm over the potential consequences for basic human rights in the country. Foreign Diplomatic Service spokesman Peter Stano told Interfax-Ukraine that attempts to regulate against disinformation “should not happen at the expense of freedom of the media and should be carried out with full respect for fundamental rights and freedoms and in accordance with international standards.”

More commentary around the decision came from an unexpected quarter. Aleksandr Zelensky, the president’s father, told the Strana news outlet that he had tuned into the channels that his son had just banned, adding that he was “worried” about his son. Asked whether he was concerned about constraints on free speech though, he said that “there are limits to everything.”

One Twitter user sought to contextualize the row for an international audience, saying that “for US folks, this would be more or less the equivalent of Biden sanctioning Fox News, OAN, and Newsmax.”

There had been hopes among Washington’s traditional allies that Biden would play a more active role in the promotion of human rights overseas than his predecessor, Donald Trump.

In November, American media reported that an official in Biden’s transition team, Richard Stengel, backed new restrictions on free speech. “All speech is not equal. And where truth cannot drive out lies, we must add new guardrails,” he wrote in a cryptic Washington Post op-ed, giving Russia as an example. As team leader of the US Agency for Global Media, Stengel was responsible for developing policy for Washington’s state-run media machine overseas, including outlets like Voice of America and RFE/RL.

TikTok agrees to Italy’s request to block underage users,

after 10yo girl dies in social media challenge

3 Feb, 2021 16:43

FILE PHOTO: A person holds a smartphone with Tik Tok logo displayed in this picture illustration taken November 7, 2019. Picture taken November 7, 2019. ©  REUTERS / Dado Ruvic

TikTok has reached an agreement with Italian data protection regulators to block underage users there from using its app, after a 10-year-old girl died in Palermo in a failed attempt at a dangerous social media challenge.

In January, the Italian authorities launched an investigation into children using social media platforms, after a young girl who had attempted the so-called ‘choking’ challenge died. The trend, which had been circulating on TikTok, saw participants restrict their oxygen in an attempt to secure a high.

The people who promote this madness should be tracked down and charged with murder!

The state filed a legal notice against TikTok back in December, prior to the young girl’s death, accusing the company of a “lack of attention to the protection of minors.” Similar criticism has been leveled by Italy’s data watchdog at Facebook and Instagram.

As part of its response to the tragic event, Italy temporarily blocked access to the app for users who couldn’t categorically prove they were above 13, as required by TikTok’s terms and conditions. The data protection watchdog then ordered the social media company to take the same step. 

“Starting from February 9 ... Tik Tok will block all Italian users and will ask to indicate the date of birth again before continuing to use the app,” Italy’s data protection regulator said in a statement on Wednesday. “Once a user under 13 is identified, their account will be removed.”

The agency said the tech firm had also “undertaken to further evaluate the use of artificial intelligence systems” in order to “identify users under 13 with reasonable certainty”.

TikTok’s head of child safety in Europe, Alexandra Evans, also announced a slew of updates that the app would be making in an effort to expand its safety measures. As well as requiring users to prove their date of birth, a button will be added to the app to allow other users to report underage accounts. 

Under the EU’s rules, as TikTok is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland is responsible for enforcing existing data protection and privacy laws with the company. However, Italy bypassed this step and took direct action by using a 2018 data protection rule to allow it to seek a swifter change in TikTok’s approach to underage users there.

This Scientist Proved Climate Change Isn’t Causing Extreme Weather — So Politicians Attacked

And so, many scientists who have the facts and know the truth remain silent

Hurricanes have not been proven to be more frequent or more dangerous than in the past.

NOAA / AFP / Getty Images

Special to Financial Post
By Ross McKitrick

This week in Vancouver, Prime Minister Trudeau said the federal carbon tax, a key pillar in his government’s climate policy, will help protect Canadians from extreme weather. “Extreme weather events are extraordinarily expensive for Canadians, our communities and our economy,” he said, citing the recent tornadoes in Ottawa and wildfires in Western Canada. “That’s why we need to act.”

Of course, even if it were true, and even if we shut down the oil sands and every Canadian stopped driving their cars and trucks - it would make absolutely no difference in the weather in Canada. Anthropogenic CO2 accounts for between 3-4% of all CO2 created. Canada accounts for less than 2% of that. Nothing we can do will affect the climate of Canada! It is all tokenism and extremely expensive tokenism.

While members of the media may nod along to such claims, the evidence paints a different story. Roger Pielke Jr. is a scientist at University of Colorado in Boulder who, up until a few years ago, did world-leading research on climate change and extreme weather. He found convincing evidence that climate change was not leading to higher rates of weather-related damages worldwide, once you correct for increasing population and wealth. 

He also helped convene major academic panels to survey the evidence and communicate the near-unanimous scientific consensus on this topic to policymakers. For his efforts, Pielke was subjected to a vicious, well-funded smear campaign backed by, among others, the Obama White House and leading Democratic congressmen, culminating in his decision in 2015 to quit the field.

This is how you get a majority of scientists to agree with anthropogenic induced climate change - you drive those who speak the truth out of the field, and that shuts up everyone else with any real scientific integrity.

A year ago, Pielke told the story to an audience at the University of Minnesota. His presentation was recently circulated on Twitter. With so much misinformation nowadays about supposed climate emergencies, it’s worth reviewing carefully.

Pielke’s public presentation begins with a recounting of his rise and fall in the field. As a young researcher in tropical storms and climate-related damages, he reached the pinnacle of the academic community and helped organize the so-called Hohenkammer Consensus Statement, named after the German town where 32 of the leading scientists in the field gathered in 2006 to sort out the evidence. They concluded that trends toward rising climate damages were mainly due to increased population and economic activity in the path of storms, that it was not currently possible to determine the portion of damages attributable to greenhouse gases, and that they didn’t expect that situation to change in the near future.

Hohenkammer Consensus Statement

Trends toward rising climate damages were mainly due to increased population and economic activity in the path of storms

It was not currently possible to determine the portion of damages attributable to greenhouse gases

They didn’t expect that situation to change in the near future

Shortly thereafter, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its 2007 report, largely agreeing with the Hohenkammer Consensus, while cherry-picking one unpublished study (and highlighting it in the Summary for Policymakers) that suggested a link between greenhouse gases and storm-related damages. But the author of that study — who just happened to be the same IPCC lead author who injected it into the report — later admitted his claim was incorrect, and when the study was finally published, denied the connection.

In 2012, the IPCC Special Report on Extreme Weather came out and echoed the Hohenkammer Consensus, concluding that once you adjust for population growth and economic changes, there is no statistical connection between climate change and measures of weather-related damages. 

In 2013 Pielke testified to the United States Congress and relayed the IPCC findings. Shortly thereafter, Obama’s science advisor John Holdren accused him of misleading Congress and launched a lengthy but ill-informed attack on Pielke, which prompted congressional Democrats to open an investigation into Pielke’s sources of funding (which quickly fizzled amid benign conclusions). Meanwhile heavily funded left-wing groups succeeded in getting him fired from a popular internet news platform. In 2015 Pielke quit the climate field.

So where did the science end up?

In the second half of his talk, Pielke reviews the science as found in the most recent (2013) IPCC Assessment Report, the 2018 U.S. National Climate Assessment, and the most up-to-date scientific data and literature. Nothing substantial has changed.

Globally there’s no clear evidence of trends and patterns in extreme events such as droughts, hurricanes and floods. Some regions experience more, some less and some no trend. Limitations of data and inconsistencies in patterns prevent confident claims about global trends one way or another. There’s no trend in U.S. hurricane landfall frequency or intensity. If anything, the past 50 years has been relatively quiet. There’s no trend in hurricane-related flooding in the U.S. Nor is there evidence of an increase in floods globally. Since 1965, more parts of the U.S. have seen a decrease in flooding than have seen an increase. And from 1940 to today, flood damage as a percentage of GDP has fallen to less than 0.05 per cent per year from about 0.2 per cent.

And on it goes. There’s no trend in U.S. tornado damage (in fact, 2012 to 2017 was below average). There’s no trend in global droughts. Cold snaps in the U.S. are down but, unexpectedly, so are heatwaves.

Trends and patterns:

No trend in U.S. hurricane landfall frequency or intensity

No trend in hurricane-related flooding in the U.S.

Nor is there evidence of an increase in floods globally

More parts of the U.S. have seen a decrease in flooding than have seen an increase since 1965

Flood damage as a percentage of GDP has fallen

There’s no trend in U.S. tornado damage (in fact, 2012 to 2017 was below average)

There’s no trend in global droughts

Cold snaps in the U.S. are down but, unexpectedly, so are heatwaves.

The bottom line is there’s no solid connection between climate change and the major indicators of extreme weather, despite Trudeau’s claims to the contrary. The continual claim of such a link is misinformation employed for political and rhetorical purposes. Powerful people get away with it because so few people know what the numbers show. Many scientists who know better remain silent. And the few who push back against the propaganda, such as Roger Pielke Jr., find themselves on the receiving end of abuse and career-threatening attacks, even though they have all the science in their corner. Something has gotten scary and extreme, but it isn’t the weather.

Climate alarmism is a diversion from other issues that are far more urgent and dangerous.

New charges: French Courts Won’t Leave Marine Le Pen Alone

Corruption is Everywhere - The Politicization of French Courts is Disgraceful

Marine Le Pen seems to be under attack from all fronts as fresh charges of embezzling public funds are reportedly

levied against her. She's also being investigated for posting an order for her psychiatric examination online.

EU funds misuse case

The president of France's National Rally (formerly Front National) has long been under investigation for breach of trust over her alleged misuse of EU funds.

However, on Friday AFP sources revealed that the charges have been upgraded to “embezzling public funds”, an offense that can land the politician in prison for 10 years and result in €1 million fine. 

Le Pen is accused of fictitiously employing her bodyguard and chief of staff as her assistants at the European Parliament while they actually did no EU work. Since the accusations emerged months before the May presidential election, the politician slammed the probe as a “political plot” against her.

Chief of staff Catherine Griset was charged with breach of trust, while bodyguard Thierry Legier was detained and interrogated. He was later released without any charges pressed against him.

Separate charges against le Pen stem from her releasing an order from magistrates in Nanterre near Paris in September to “undergo a psychiatric examination.” She denounced the order as “mind-blowing,” saying: “This regime is really starting to scare [us].” 

According to French laws, it is forbidden to publish indictments and other criminal or penal proceedings before they have been read out in court. 

The 2017 presidential candidate took to Twitter, this time without attaching any legal documents, to confirm the procedures against her. “Now they are going after me for having made public the order submitting me to a psychiatric expertise,” she wrote, adding that this “judicial harassment” is becoming “terrifying.”

The psychiatric assessment was ordered for a series of tweets dating back to December 2015. She posted three pictures of killings carried out by Islamic State terrorists accompanied by the text “Daesh [Arabic term for IS] is THIS!”

The tweets were in response to journalist Jean-Jacques Bourdin, who compared Le Pen’s nationalist rhetoric to that of the Islamic terrorist group.

I seriously doubt that any other French politician has to endure such absurd hyper-vigilance. So much for political neutrality in French courts.

China demolishes hundreds of churches and confiscates Bibles during a crackdown on Christianity

War On Christianity - Communist Chinese Style

By ASSOCIATED PRESS and KELSEY CHENG FOR MAILONLINE

Concerns have been raised over China's apparent crackdown on Christianity as the ruling Community party continues to intensify its control over religious freedom in the country.

Churches were raided and demolished, Bibles and holy books were confiscated and new laws were established to monitor religious activities in the country's province of Henan, which has one of the largest Christian populations in China.

Under President Xi Jinping, China's most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, believers are seeing their freedoms shrink dramatically even as the country undergoes a religious revival. 

Experts and activists say that as Xi consolidates his power, he is waging the most severe systematic suppression of Christianity in the country since religious freedom was written into the Chinese constitution in 1982.

A demolished house church is seen in the city of Zhengzhou in central China's Henan province. Under President

Xi Jinping, China's most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, believers are seeing their freedoms shrink dramatically

A painting of the Last Supper is seen next to posters quoting China's constitution on religious freedom in a house church shut down by authorities near the city of Nanyang in central China's Henan province, the country's Christian heartland

A Chinese national flag flies over a church near the city of Pingdingshan in Henan province. Experts say that

President Xi Jinping is waging the most severe systematic suppression of Christianity in the country since 1982

Guo, a 62-year-old Chinese shopkeeper had waited nearly his entire adult life to see his dream of building a church come true - a brick house with a sunny courtyard and spacious hall with room for 200 believers.

But in March, about a dozen police officers and local officials suddenly showed up at the church on his property and made the frightened congregants disperse. 

They ordered that the cross, a painting of the Last Supper and Bible verse calligraphy be taken down. And they demanded that all services stop until each person along with the church itself was registered with the government, said Guo, who gave his last name only from fear of retribution.

Without warning, Guo and his neighbors in central Henan had found themselves on the front lines of an ambitious new effort by the officially atheist ruling Communist Party to dictate - and in some cases displace - the practice of faith in the country.

The crackdown on Christianity is part of a broader push by Xi to 'Sinicise' all the nation's religions by infusing them with 'Chinese characteristics' such as loyalty to the Communist Party. Over the last several months, local governments across the country have shut down hundreds of private Christian 'house churches'. A statement last week from 47 in Beijing alone said they had faced 'unprecedented' harassment since February. A

A pastor, Jin Minri, leads a class on Christian beliefs at the Zion Church in Beijing. After Jin refused authorities' request to install surveillance cameras in his house church, police questioned hundreds of members of the 1,500-person congregation

A slogan outside a church reads 'Educate the believers with excellent Chinese traditional culture' near Pingdingshan, Henan

Chinese calligraphy reads 'All nations belong to the Lord arising to shine' at left and 'Jesus's salvation spreads to the whole world' at right are displayed below a crucifix in a house church shut down by authorities near the city of Nanyang, Henan

A dozen Chinese Protestants interviewed by the Associated Press described gatherings that were raided, interrogations and surveillance, and one pastor said hundreds of his congregants were questioned individually about their faith. Like Guo, the majority requested that their names be partly or fully withheld because they feared punishment from authorities.

'Chinese leaders have always been suspicious of the political challenge or threat that Christianity poses to the Communist regime,' said Xi Lian, a scholar of Christianity in China at Duke University. 'Under Xi, this fear of Western infiltration has intensified and gained a prominence that we haven't seen for a long time.'

Suspicion is a very mild way of putting it. Communism has always had an inherent paranoia.

Officials once largely tolerated the unregistered Protestant house churches that sprang up independent of the official Christian Council, clamping down on some while allowing others to grow. But this year they have taken a tougher approach that relies partly on 'thought reform' - a phrase for political indoctrination. 

Last November, Christian residents of a rural township in south-east Jiangxi province were persuaded to replace posters of the cross and Jesus Christ inside their homes with portraits of Xi, a local official said. 

'Through our thought reform, they've voluntarily done it,' Qi Yan, a member of the township party committee, told the AP by phone. 'The move is aimed at Christian families in poverty, and we educated them to believe in science and not in superstition, making them believe in the party.' 

Voluntarily! Right!

Children play near the entrance of a church with a sign reading 'Notice: Minors prohibited from entry' near Lushan, Henan

A slogan reading 'Religious activities should not interfere with social order and order of life' is displayed in Pingdingshan city

Pastor Jin Minri  said police previously individually questioned hundreds of members of the 1,500-person congregation

The poster campaign appears to symbolise what analysts see as the underlying force driving the change in the party's approach to religion: the ascendance of Xi.

'Xi is a closet Maoist - he is very anxious about thought control,' said Willy Lam, a Chinese politics expert at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. 'He definitely does not want people to be faithful members of the church, because then people would profess their allegiance to the church rather than to the party, or more exactly, to Xi himself.'

Various state and local officials declined repeated requests to comment. But in 2016, Xi explicitly warned against the perceived foreign threats tied to faith, telling a religion conference: 'We must resolutely guard against overseas infiltrations via religious means.'

This is the manifestation of Chinese communist paranoia - they see religion as a threat from western countries. The Soviet Union also saw religion as a threat. They saw everything as a threat. The KGB and its predecessor made sure of that stoking the fears of Stalin and others as they were spectacular at empire building - the KGB empire.

I recommend reading 'The Persecutor' by Sergei Khordakov. Amazing expose of the KGB which resulted in Khordakov's murder after his amazing defection. Great read.

Those who resist pay the price. 

After Jin Mingri, a prominent pastor who leads Zion Church in Beijing, refused local authorities' request to install surveillance cameras inside his house church, police individually questioned hundreds of members of the 1,500-person congregation, he said. 

The congregants faced veiled threats, Jin said, and many were asked to sign a pledge promising to leave Zion, which the government agents called illegal, politically incorrect and a cult. Some people lost their jobs or were evicted from rented apartments because police intimidated their bosses and landlords. 

A poster of Chinese President Xi Jinping and part of the slogan which reads 'Actively play the leading role of party building and comprehensively implement the plan for poverty alleviation' near Pingdingshan city in central China's Henan province

A woman hangs laundry near a church in the city of Pingdingshan in central China's Henan province

Xu Shijuan, a 63-year-old Seventh-Day Adventist sings gospel songs at her home in Zhengzhou in Henan province

'A lot of our flock are terrified by the pressure that the government is putting on them,' he said. 'It's painful to think that in our own country's capital, we must pay so dearly just to practice our faith.'

In Zhengzhou, Henan's capital, all that is left of one house church is shattered glass, tangled wires and torn hymnbooks, strewn among the rubble of a knocked-down wall. Pegged to another wall is a single wooden cross, still intact.

The church inside a commercial building had served about 100 believers for years. But in late January, nearly 60 officials from the local religion department and police station appeared without warning. Armed with electric saws, they demolished the church, confiscated Bibles and computers and held a handful of young worshippers - including a 14-year-old girl - at a police station for more than 10 hours, according to a church leader.

Even Protestant churches already registered with the state have not been spared greater restrictions. 

When reporters visited five such churches in Henan this June, all bore notices at their entrances stating that minors and party members were not allowed inside. A banner above one church door exhorted members to 'implement the basic direction of the party's religious work.' Another church erected a Chinese flag at the foot of its steps. 

A child stands near a slogan that reads 'Communist party members cannot take part in religious activities'

A photo of President Xi Jinping is seen near the Christian poster with the word 'Grace' outside a house church near Nanyang

Locals in Henan province stated concerns of a move by the atheist ruling Community Party to control Christianity  

Guo's brick house was largely deserted this summer. Around the door frame, tattered red outlines remained of a scroll that once read 'God's love is as deep as the sea.'

Inside, Guo has refused to remove the cross and other decorations, telling authorities they are within his private property.

Among them, pinned to a wall in the nave, is a bright blue poster that quotes China's constitutional promise of religious freedom.

Elsewhere in China, religious practices and activities remain strictly controlled. 

In Xinjiang, a Muslim-majority region in the country's far west, millions of ethnic Uighurs face repression and torture as authorities claimed to rule out potential separatist movements. 

Former inmates have told of the horror after being detained in what the Chinese government calls 'political re-education camps', where they were physically and mentally tortured and as punishment, were forced to eat pork and drink alcohol. 

A resident walks past a government billboard citing core values of the Communist Party near a church in Pingdingshan

The character for 'love' is displayed at the gated entrance of a church near Pingdingshan city in Henan province

A man drives past the slogans for 'Patriotism and Love for the church, Glorifying God and serving human beings' in Henan

In late July, children in traditionally Buddhist Tibet were required to sign an agreement to 'not take part in any form of religious activity' during the summer holidays, according to the Global Times.

The policy appears to reflect increasingly harsh restrictions on the Himalayan region's traditional Buddhist culture, largely aimed at reducing the influence of the region's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in India.

On Tuesday, state media announced that all religious institutions across the country are now required to fly the national flag, in a move to assimilate religions into the socialist society.

The rule is necessary to strengthen awareness of respect for the flag - a symbol of the country's embrace of communism in 1949 - and preserve the flag's dignity, Xinhua claimed, adding that the practice can enhance the public's national consciousness and civic awareness.