Islam - Current Day > Bangladesh Muslims Attack Hindus; 158 More Suspects Linked to Gulen; UK Anti-Terrorism Program is Off-Track

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Bangladesh police arrest 450 people linked to attacks on Hindu homes

and religious sites in worst unrest for over a decade

19 Oct, 2021 11:35

Security personnel block the road in Khilgaon, outskirt of Dhaka, Bangladesh, March 18, 2017.

© Reuters / Mohammad Ponir Hossain

Bangladeshi police have arrested 450 people following attacks against Hindus in the Muslim-majority country in some of the worst unrest in over a decade, which has seen Hindu religious sites vandalized and homes destroyed.

Authorities logged 71 cases linked to violence during the major Hindu festival of Durga Puja across different parts of Bangladesh, the police’s assistant inspector general said on Monday.

In the last five days 450 people have been arrested in connection with attacks on puja venues and temples, as well as Hindu homes and businesses, and for spreading rumors on social media during the religious holiday, local media reported.

The senior police official added that the number of arrests and incidents could increase as investigations are still ongoing.

Violence broke out on Friday when hundreds of Muslims protested in the southeastern Noakhali district over an allegedly blasphemous incident involving the Islamic holy scripture, the Koran. Two Hindu men died following that protest, the region’s police chief told Reuters, but it was not clear if their deaths were due to “unlawful assembly, or otherwise.”

On Monday, hundreds of people demonstrated in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka, calling for an end to days of religious violence that have seen at least six people dead and several injured.

The United Nations’ resident coordinator in Bangladesh, Mia Seppo, condemned the turbulence on the same day: "Recent attacks on Hindus of Bangladesh, fueled by hate speech on social media, are against the values of the Constitution and need to stop”. She also called for the government to ensure an impartial probe and the protection of minorities.

Communal tensions in Bangladesh, where Hindus account for 10% of the population, have long been a problem in the country. However, the recent religious violence ranks among the worst since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's Awami League party came to power in 2009.

In 2017, a thousands-strong mob torched a Hindu village 300km from the capital after accusations that a resident had insulted the Prophet Mohammed in a Facebook post. At least 30 Hindu homes were set ablaze in the assault.

Seems to me that the Muslims are insulting Mohammed with their actions. Surely, Mohammed can protect himself.

Turkey orders arrest of 158 suspects with links to Muslim cleric Gulen,

accused of being behind 2016 coup attempt

19 Oct, 2021 09:10

A police officer is seen at Taksim square during a protest against femicide and violence against women,

in Istanbul, Turkey, November 25, 2020. © Reuters / Murad Sezer

Turkish prosecutors have ordered the arrest of 158 suspects, including 33 active-duty soldiers, with alleged links to Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, accused by Ankara of being behind the unsuccessful 2016 coup attempt.

The investigations, carried out by the İzmir Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, spanned 41 provinces, state-owned Anadolu agency said on Tuesday. The latest operation saw 97 people detained, with the search said to be continuing.

Out of the 158 wanted suspects, 48 were serving and former military personnel, while 110 were expelled military students who were dismissed after the coup attempt.

The latest arrests are part of a chain of crackdowns over recent years on people accused of having connections to what has been dubbed by Turkey as the Fethullah Gulen Terrorist Organization.

In April, the arrest of 532 suspects, mainly serving military personnel, was ordered by Istanbul and Izmir prosecutors in a 62-province operation that also spanned Turkish-controlled northern Cyprus.

The group, allegedly led by the US-based Muslim preacher, has been accused by Ankara’s authorities of being behind the failed coup attempt in July 2016, which saw at least 250 people killed. Gulen, a former ally turned foe of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has lived in self-exile since 1999 overseas in the US. He denies any involvement in the coup.

Following the failed military takeover to overthrow Erdogan, 80,000 people were detained pending trial. Some 150,000 civil servants, military staff and others were either fired or suspended from their posts.

UK’s ‘Prevent’ anti-terror scheme ‘hamstrung’ by PC culture &

ignoring radical Islam threat while targeting far-right, report says

20 Oct, 2021 11:38

© Getty Images / Lorado

The UK’s flagship anti-terror scheme, ‘Prevent’, is reportedly “failing to deliver” after being stymied by political correctness – diverting resources from the “gravest threat” of Islamist terrorism to tackle far-right extremism.

A new report, published in the wake of the fatal stabbing of MP David Amess last week, has criticised agencies with oversight authority on the program for being swayed by “false allegations of Islamophobia.” The analysis claimed there is a “fundamental mismatch” between the threat posed by radical Islam and the attention given to it by Prevent.

There has been renewed scrutiny on the program after media reports emerged that Ali Harbi Ali, the 25-year-old suspect in the Amess killing, had been referred to Prevent five years ago but was not deemed to be enough of a risk to become a “formal subject of interest.” Only 147 individuals from a list of 6,287 terror suspects flagged by British security services in 2019 were apparently still being monitored by the program.

According to the report by counter-terrorism think-tank Henry Jackson Society (HJS), Prevent is devoting increasing amounts of time and money to combating other forms of extremism, such as from the far-right, which constitutes a smaller threat to national security.

“The Prevent scheme has been hamstrung by political correctness following a well-organised campaign by Islamist groups and the political Left of false allegations of ‘Islamophobia’ so that its work is skewed away from the gravest threat – that of radical Islam,” HJS head Alan Mendoza told the Daily Mail.

Data from the Home Office reportedly shows that Islamist extremists account for 22% of all referrals to the program, while 24% relate to neo-Nazi and other far-right extremists. Of the most serious cases taken up last year by Prevent’s ‘Channel’ intervention phase – where a panel of senior council officials, health workers and anti-terror police decide on a course of action, about 30% (210) were related to Islamists compared with 43% (302) for far-right causes.

As recently as five years ago (2015/16), as much as 69% (262) of the most serious cases referred to Prevent were regarding suspected Muslim extremists, while 26% (98) related to far-right beliefs. In the years since, the number of cases tallied as serious far-right extremism has apparently increased yearly, while there has been an 80% drop in the number of initial referrals related to Islamist terrorism.

That shift in focus coincides with the 2016 murder of Labour MP Jo Cox by a white supremacist. Last year, Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu had warned that the far right was Britain’s fastest growing terror threat.

Basu? Any chance he's a Muslim?

However, an unidentified intelligence source told the Telegraph that right-wing extremists were “by and large... hoodlums” who do not “present the same risk as Islamists by any distance, by a factor of four or five to one.”

Noting that the process had become “unbalanced” due to an emphasis on being “politically correct and not Islamophobic,” the source called for an “honest appraisal about where the threat is actually coming from.”

Earlier this week, British security experts warned that the UK could face lone-wolf terrorist attacks by “bedroom radicals” drawn to extremist content online due to “isolation” during Covid-19 lockdowns. In July, Richard Smith, head of the Metropolitan Police counter-terrorism command, said there had been a “significant decline” during the pandemic in the number of referrals to Prevent.

Meanwhile, an unnamed security source told the Times that an upcoming review of Prevent is likely to recommend the addition of “more hawkish” MI5 and counter-terrorism police officers during the Channel phase and increase the current one-year deradicalisation programs for suspected terrorists to three years.

Let it be so! The extraordinary effort to appear as not-racist when dealing with Muslims is the same problem that allowed 1500 British girls to be groomed, raped, drugged, and trafficked by Pakistanis in Rotherham. Thousands of others in a dozen or more cities in the UK suffered the same fate. It's time for the UK to start dealing with the truth, for a change.

Islam - Current Day - Terrorism Plots - Some Thwarted; Some Not

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French counter-terrorism chief says TWO Islamist plots were thwarted in 2020,

though FIVE attacks weren’t prevented

4 Jan 2021 11:23

A makeshift memorial to Samuel Paty in Nice, France, October 21, 2020. © Eric Gaillard / Reuters

Authorities foiled two Islamist plots last year, France's top counter-terrorism official has said. The country suffered five high-profile terrorist attacks in 2020, including the murder of Samuel Paty and the stabbing in Nice.

“Two Sunni Islamist terrorist attacks were thwarted in 2020,” National Coordinator for Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism Laurent Nunez told Europe 1 radio station, adding that 33 Islamist terrorist plots had been foiled in France since 2017.

This suggests the number of prevented attacks in 2020 was smaller than the number of terrorist attacks that had occurred.

On April 4, a knifeman killed two people and wounded five in Romans-sur-Isere in the southeastern part of the country. A few weeks later, a terrorist rammed his vehicle into police officers outside Paris, injuring three. Both incidents took place in the middle of a nationwide lockdown against Covid-19.

In September, a man stabbed two people outside the former Paris office of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which had published cartoons of Prophet Mohammed. On October 16, a terrorist of Chechen origin beheaded teacher Samuel Paty for having shown his class a cartoon of Mohammed during a lesson on freedom of speech. Several weeks later, three people were killed in a stabbing attack inside a Catholic church in Nice.

These attacks prompted the government to crack down on mosques and Muslim NGOs suspected of promoting radical views. Nunez said Islamist terrorism remains a “priority threat” that is growing “increasingly difficult to detect.” He explained that the attacks coming from abroad are “less likely” because Islamic State has become “very weak” in the Middle East.

“But we stay extremely vigilant. Islamic State is reorganizing itself to act in a clandestine manner.”

Nunez said five attacks by far-right groups were thwarted since 2017, and he is concerned about the “rise of [white] supremacists and survivalists.”

Last month, France’s Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin thanked police for busting a cell of “violent ultra-left activists” who were suspected of planning terrorist actions. 

Anti-Muslim Polish duo plotted to ‘BOMB MOSQUE’ and ‘POISON’ people after writing Breivik-like manifesto against Islam

4 Jan 2021 17:03

FILE PHOTO © Reuters / Kacper Pempel

State prosecutors in Poland charged two men with conspiring to attack a mosque with explosives. The suspects are also accused of planning poisonings, while one wrote a manifesto on the need to “exterminate religious groups.”

The two men were arrested in November 2019, the day before a large nationalist march in Warsaw. Police seized guns, drugs, explosives and chemicals, and an investigation began. At the time of their arrest, the men were already under investigation for alleged involvement in a 2012 plot by a Polish academic – dubbed “Poland’s Breivik” after Norwegian far-right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik – to blow up parliament buildings.

State prosecutors charged the men on Monday with preparing explosives that they say “threatened the life and health of many people.” A government spokesman told Onet that the men targeted “a specific religious object of the Islamic community,” believed to be a mosque.

The spokesman added that the conspirators also planned to “spread poisonous substances to certain people,” in a campaign aimed at preventing the “Islamization” of Poland. A third man is also charged with possessing chemical precursors to explosives.

Like Breivik in Norway and mosque shooter Brenton Tarrant in New Zealand, one of the would-be attackers prepared a manifesto that prosecutors say “incited hatred on the basis of ethnic and religious differences.”

The two bomb plotters face up to 10 years in prison if convicted, while the third man faces two years behind bars for possessing illegal chemicals.

Poland is a staunchly Catholic country, where Muslims make up around 0.1 percent of the population. Warsaw’s two mosques have both been targeted by vandals in recent years, with windows smashed in one mosque and cultural center in 2017. 

A Pew Research poll last year found that two-thirds of Poles have an unfavorable view of Muslims in their country, and the country’s ruling Law and Justice party has refused to take in significant numbers of Muslim migrants, with then-interior minister Mariusz Blaszcak comparing his party’s position in 2017 to that of “Charles the Hammer who stopped the Muslim invasion of Europe in the 8th century.”

UAE nabs Iranian terror squad plotting to attack Israelis

 January 4, 2021

 

Dubai International Airport (Shutterstock)

 

Israelis have been warned about visiting Dubai. The discovery of Iranian terror squad underscores the danger.

By David Isaac, World Israel News

An Iranian terror squad was broken up by UAE intelligence in the capital of Abu Dhabi and its most populous city, Dubai, media reports.

Israelis have visited the UAE in the thousands since the signing of the Abraham Accords on the White House Lawn on Sept. 15, 2020. From Iran’s point-of-view, they make a soft target and one easily reached.

 

Tensions have been particularly high in recent weeks as Israel went on high alert due to the approaching anniversary of the killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Commander, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated by a U.S. drone strike on Jan. 3, 2020. Iran has repeatedly vowed revenge against both the U.S. and Israel, although the latter has not taken credit for being involved in the attack.

Israel’s National Security Council had also warned in late November of security threats to Israeli tourists in Dubai. But Israelis have largely ignored the warnings.

Dubai has been a prime location for carrying out kidnappings.

In 2000, a reserve colonel in the IDF, Elhanan Tannenbaum, was kidnapped in Dubai and held for more than three years by Hezbollah in Lebanon. Although Tannenbaum was a shady character who had gone to Dubai to complete a drug deal, the IDF decided to do what it could to get him back given that he was privy to IDF information as part of his reserve service. He was returned as part of a prisoner swap in Jan. 2004.

 

In July 2020, Iran kidnapped a California man for being part of an Iranian dissident group. Jamshid Sharmahd was staying in Dubai.

“We’re seeking support from any democratic country, any free country,” his son Shayan Sharmahd told the AP. “It is a violation of human rights. You can’t just pick someone up in a third country and drag them into your country.”

Even the man portrayed in the 2004 film “Hotel Rwanda,” Paul Rusesabagina, was seized in Dubai in Sept. 2020. It appears he was nabbed on an arrest warrant by the Rwandan government. His daughter described it as a kidnapping.

Swedish Anti-Terror Cop to Lead Specialized Team Targeting Gangs After 15yo Shot Dead in Malmo

© TT News Agency / Johan Nilsson via REUTERS

Swedish police have set up a specialist task force to tackle the recent surge in violent crime including shootings and bombings. Cops currently have 100 ongoing investigations into explosions believed linked to gangs.

Mats Löfving, head of the force’s National Operations Department (Noa), has declared the ongoing spate of gang violence a “special national incident.”

The new crack team will be led by Stefan Hector, who headed up the anti-terrorism task force following the Drottninggatan truck attack in Stockholm in 2017.

The move follows the shooting dead of a 15-year-old boy in Malmo's Mollevangtorget square on Saturday evening. The temporary unit will have increased powers and resources, and will handle only “serious organized crime that culminates in homicides with shootings and the use of explosives.”

Malmo’s police force has pleaded with the government for more officers, investigators, interrogators and forensic technicians. The new task force will operate in tandem with the existing local police force, which is struggling under the weight of their increased caseload, including scores of ongoing investigations into bombings.

The national bomb squad has been called out to approximately 100 blasts this year alone, a massive uptick from 2018, though no deaths resulted from the blasts, with police describing it as "pure luck" that no one has been more seriously injured.

Despite the uptick in gang violence, Sweden's crime rate still remains among the lowest in the world.

France Approves Restrictive Anti-Terrorism Law to Replace 2-Year State of Emergency

The New Normal - France

New laws equal 'State of Emergency light'. This is absolutely necessary and when it is determined that it doesn't really work, it will probably get worse. Even so, there will be many detractors who want the old freedoms and aren't wise enough to know that they cannot exist in a world where Islam is ascendant.

The French parliament has approved a new controversial anti-terrorism law, replacing the soon-to-expire two-year state of emergency. The new legislation has prompted fears it will severely limit civil liberties.

The French senate approved the new anti-terrorism law on its second reading on Wednesday. The new law, set to increase law enforcement powers in the fight against terrorism, was supported by 244 senators, with only 22 voting against it. The bill was overwhelmingly approved by the lower chamber of parliament earlier in October.

The state of emergency was imposed in France to combat terrorism in the wake of the deadly 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, and has been extended six times since. It is set to finally expire on November 1.

Its key points include allowing the authorities to search homes of those suspected of terrorist links, while holding them for up to four hours and seizing data, items and documents. It also allows the authorities to confine suspects to their town or city for up to a year and have them report to police every day. Any movement beyond that requires them to wear a tracking bracelet.

Top regional officials will be allowed to shut down places of worship for up to six months, if they deem preachers have incited attacks or glorified terrorism. This can be done without any hard proof obtained by police, but simply on the basis of "ideas and theories" shared by the preachers’ devotees.

Police are also granted the authority to stop and search people at vulnerable areas such as borders, train stations and airports.

Ahead of the parliamentary vote, French President Emmanuel Macron hosted 500 law enforcement officers including police, gendarmes, prefects, and other officials at the Elysees Palace. Macron defended the new law and mulled a new nationwide anti-radicalization plan.

“The first mission of the state is to protect our fellow citizens and ensure the security of the territory... We have to adapt our organization, our action,” he said.

video 5:13  © Gonzalo Fuentes / Reuters

The plan includes hiring 10,000 more police officers and gendarmes, as well as supplying them with technology suitable for the “smartphone era.” He also promised to implement stricter measures to more efficiently deport migrants with “no legal right” to stay in France.

“We don’t welcome people well, our procedures are too long, we don’t integrate people properly and neither do we send enough people back,” Macron told the law enforcement officers.

The new anti-terrorism law has repeatedly drawn concern over human rights issues. UN human rights experts urged France to comply with "its international human rights obligations," worrying the bill would "incorporate into ordinary law several restrictions on civil liberties currently in place under France’s state of emergency."

'Institutional racism against the Arab-Muslim community'

Even if granting the police sweeping powers helps foil some attacks, it may estrange minorities, in particular, Arab Muslims, making them more susceptible to terrorist propaganda, political analyst Dan Glazebrook told RT.

“If you are going to give police this power, they are going to discriminate communities that are already alienated, putting potentially more recruits into the hands of these death squads,” Glazebrook said, arguing that the French police have “a serious problem with institutional racism and brutality against the Arab-Muslim community” going back to the Paris massacre of 1961, when dozens of Algerians were killed in a police crackdown on the protest against the Algerian War on the River Seine.

The key to reducing the threat posed by international terrorism is to deal with the underlying causes of the Islamist violence and not with its consequences, Glazebrook said.

“If you don’t deal with the root causes, which is the brutal foreign policy on the one hand and the alienation of entire communities due to system institutional discrimination and racism… even the most vicious police state will not be able to stop there being some people who decide to lash out.”

“You can’t be a near-colonial war-mongering power like France and expect to be permanently immune to the blowback and to the consequences of that,” Glazebrook said, referring to France’s involvement in Libya and Syria.

The provision of the law enabling police to shut down suspected terrorist hotbeds without any proof may result in crackdowns on any dissent, thus eroding civil freedoms, former British intelligence officer Annie Machon told RT.

“What is radicalization? At the moment, of course, everyone in France is focused on the concept of Islamic radicalization, but what if that term spreads, what if there is mission creep, so someone who protests against the government is deemed to be radical and therefore be closed down?” she said, noting that French ecological activists used to be targeted by the state under similar pretexts.

Calling the concerns that human rights groups voiced about the law infringing on democracy “absolutely right,” Machon said that bulk data collection and mass surveillance envisioned in the law have proven to be ineffective means in combating terrorism.

She went on to note that while many of the terrorists that mounted attacks in Europe “have already been known to the authorities” it did not help security services to stop them.

“They are drowning in the tsunami of information rather than doing targeted specific investigations into people who might be particularly focused on committing terrorist atrocities… they are falling through the gaps of intelligence agencies.”

Radicalized French Prisoners Suspected of Plotting Attacks Days Before Release

The New Normal - French style

Apparently, both men were radicalized in prison. It makes a good case for segregating radicalized Muslims from the rest of the prison population.

The entrance of the prison of Fresnes, near Paris. © Patrick Kovarik / AFP

French police have charged two radicalized prison inmates with plotting terrorist attacks – within days of their scheduled release.

In the first such case in the history of French anti-terrorism the men, who were radicalized behind bars while serving time for non-terrorist crimes, are due to be released from Fresnes prison, just south of Paris, next week.

French TV news station LCI report that the men had plotted attacks against numerous targets including prison guards while they were in prison and police officers at a police station after they were released.

French intelligence services had been watching the two men for several months.

Cameroonian Charles-Henri M. was reportedly the mastermind behind the potential attacks. The 28 year old was an Islamic State sympathizer. His accomplice was 22-year-old Frenchman Maxime O, who is also a radical Islamist.

France 24 reports that the pair were also planning to use methods including hostage-taking and gun attacks.

The investigation began last December after a phone containing details of a plot to murder “disbelievers” was found in Charles-Henri’s cell.  

Charles-Henri M. was incarcerated for robbery in 2013 and was due to be released on Tuesday. Maxime O. was jailed for attempted murder in 2014, he was due to get out next week.

While being questioned by police LCI report that Charles-Henri praised his “brothers” who carried out the terrorist attack in the Bataclan theatre in November 2015. He also admitted to plotting attacks.

France has been in a state of emergency since 130 people were killed in terrorist attacks, one of which targeted the Bataclan, in Paris in November 2015. The country has suffered several smaller attacks since then.

Fresnes, FR