Islamization of Canada > Canadian ISIS cell convicted of 1st deg. murder and attempted murder

 

So far, The Canadian Justice System, which I criticize frequently here, has performed very well in this case. But we will have to wait and see what the sentences will be. 

Canada: Muslims plotted to murder entire family

that discovered they were an ISIS cell

JUN 27, 2024 12:00 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER

Celebrate diversity! Just think of how much more interesting Canada is now, compared to the days when it was all ice hockey and curling and Tim Horton’s, eh?

GUILTY; Home Grown ISIS Cell Convicted Of First Degree Murder

by John Goddard, National Telegraph, June 25, 2024 (thanks to BJ Dichter):

It was a murder trial like no other. During the trial, a suspected Islamic terrorist who according to testimony pledged loyalty to ISIS, sat next to me. The crime-scene photos were X-rated, the text messages between suspects obscene, and the police work so superb that nearly every move of the defendants was accounted for.

In the end, the jury found all three men guilty in a shooting spree meant to eliminate an entire family at their takeout restaurant, Chicken Land, in Mississauga just outside Toronto. One young man died on the spot. The others survived, including one man shot through the neck and another in the chest.

It was an unprecedented crime in Canada, an entire family targeted for execution at their workplace, but the trial was also extraordinary for something else. On the opening day, Crown prosecutor David D’Iorio rose to say that the three men — with others — had established a home-grown terrorist cell affiliated with ISIS, the Islamic State. One of the Chicken Land family members had learned about it and had mused that he might tell the police. In ISIS logic, that meant he and his family had to go.

“An extreme crime with an extremist motive,” co-prosecutor Brian McGuire called it. Of the other terrorist cell members, said to number between 10 and 12, all that was mentioned was that the RCMP is pursuing an ongoing investigation, another astonishing detail presumably meaning they still walk among us.

Well, not presumably. At one point in the trial, text messages from one of the defendants showed that he sent money to his brother in Pakistan for jihad — Islamic terrorism. The brother, now back in Canada, sometimes sat next to me in court.

The three convicted killers are: Naqash Abbasi, 34, the organizer; Suliman Raza, 28, the getaway driver; and Anand Nath, 23, the shooter. All were found equally guilty of first-degree murder and five counts of attempted murder.

They were running a business near Toronto’s Pearson International Airport that involved a warehouse that doubled as a mosque and dawa centre, a place for inviting non-Muslims to Islam. The shooter was a convert. The young family member killed at Chicken Land, Naim Akl, had gone to work for the men and had also converted. When Akl discovered the ISIS connection, he left Islam and returned to the family restaurant….

Corruption is Everywhere > FTX Crypto Exchange; Guatemalan judge shuts down government; Brazil calls in Military to fight crime

..

When brilliant minds lack a moral compass...

Sam Bankman-Fried found guilty of defrauding customers

of FTX crypto exchange

Former crypto tycoon Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty Thursday by a New York jury on all seven counts of fraud, embezzlement and criminal conspiracy.

Issued on: 03/11/2023 - 01:55

France24, 1 min

Indicted FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried leaves the United States Courthouse in New York City, July 26, 2023.

© Amr Alfiky, Reuters

By:NEWS WIRES

The panel reached its decision after five weeks of trial, and Bankman-Fried now faces up to 110 years behind bars. Sentencing will take place at a later date.

The month-long federal trial had been an ordeal for Bankman-Fried after some of his closest associates testified that he was key to all the decisions that saw $8 billion vanish from his FTX trading platform.

Bankman-Fried, 31, was until late last year a poster-boy for the crypto industry and estimated to be worth $26 billion by Fortune magazine, before his empire collapsed spectacularly.

In closing arguments, prosecutors portrayed the defendant as an extremely smart man consumed by greed who knew what he was doing when FTX funds were secretly funneled to his personal hedge fund.

"Find him guilty," US prosecutor Danielle Sassoon told the jury earlier on Thursday. "He was ambitious" and had "the arrogance to think that he could get away with a fraud," she added.

The defence said their client had acted in "good faith" and was overtaken by circumstances and the financial ineptitude of close associates who testified against him to gain leniency from prosecutors.

The star witness in the trial was Bankman-Fried's former associate and on-and-off-again girlfriend Caroline Ellison who told the jury that they had stolen "around $14 billion" from clients of the FTX cryptocurrency trading platform before it collapsed into bankruptcy late last year.

The money was used to prop up Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried's personal hedge fund for which he picked Ellison as CEO.

In November 2022, the FTX empire imploded, unable to cope with massive withdrawal requests from customers panicked to learn that some of FTX's funds had been committed to risky operations by Alameda. That money was used to finance venture capital deals, political contributions as well as swanky real estate in the Bahamas.

It also went toward paying tens of millions of dollars to celebrities, including Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen, to gain their endorsement of FTX, as well as buying the naming rights for the Miami Heat's home arena.

(AFP)

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Are all Central American countries Narco States?

Guatemalan electoral authority suspends party of President-elect Arevalo

The electoral body in charge of regulating Guatemala’s political groups, known as the Citizen Registry, announced the suspension Thursday of President-elect Bernardo Arevalo’s Seed Movement party.

Issued on: 03/11/2023 - 03:17, 1 min

Guatemalan President-elect Bernardo Arevalo attends a meeting with magistrates of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal at the headquarters of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal in Guatemala City on October 2, 2023. © Johan Ordoñez, AFP

By: NEWS WIRES

A judge had granted the party’s suspension at the request of the Attorney General’s Office back in July, shortly before Arevalo was declared the second-place finisher in the initial round of voting. But a higher court ruled that the party could not be suspended during the election cycle, which only ended Oct. 31.

Arevalo went on to win a runoff in August and is scheduled to take office in January.

However, since the original judge’s order for the party’s suspension remained pending, the Citizen Registry said Thursday it executed the order.

The Attorney General’s Office has alleged wrongdoing in the way the party collected the necessary signatures to register years earlier. Observers say Attorney General Consuelo Porras is trying to meddle in the election to thwart Arevalo and subvert the will of the people.

Luis Gerardo Ramirez, the registry’s spokesperson, said the party cannot hold assemblies or carry out administrative procedures.

Ramírez also said the party could appeal the registry’s decision to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, but since the order came from a judge the appeal would need to go through a court.

"The suspension is unprecedented, no criminal judge could suspend a party because it’s illegal," said Samuel Perez, leader of the Seed Movement’s lawmakers in the congress. "The problem is that the judge’s suspension isn’t legal, it’s political."

The U.S. State Department’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs Eric Jacobstein told journalists during a visit to Guatemala Thursday that the party’s suspension was worrisome as an apparent way to interfere to with Arevalo’s transition to office.

It remained to be seen how the order would affect other institutions such as Congress, where Seed Movement lawmakers were supposed to eventually take their seats.

Opponents of the Seed Movement in Congress already had declared those incoming lawmakers independent, meaning they could not chair committees or hold other leadership positions. A court at the time had ruled that the Congress couldn't deny Seed Movement lawmakers leadership positions on grounds that the party couldn't be suspended during the election cycle.

(AP)

Can Latin America's biggest state avoid being completely taken over by drug lords?

Brazil's army deployed to transport hubs in crackdown

on organised crime

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Wednesday he is sending the armed forces to boost security at some of the country's most important airports, ports and international borders as part of a renewed effort to tackle organised crime in Latin America's largest nation. 

Issued on: 02/11/2023 - 01:17; 3 min

Planes sit on the tarmac at Galeao International Airport in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on November 1, 2022.

© Pablo Porciuncula, AFP

By: NEWS WIRES

The decision comes days after members of a criminal gang set fire to dozens of buses in Rio de Janeiro, apparently in retaliation for the police slaying their leader's nephew.

"We have reached a very serious situation," Lula said at a press conference in Brasilia after signing the decree. "So we have made the decision to have the federal government participate actively, with all its potential, to help state governments, and Brazil itself, to get rid of organised crime."

Brazil will mobilise 3,600 members of the army, navy and air force to increase patrols and monitor the international airports in Rio and Sao Paulo, as well as two maritime ports in Rio and Sao Paulo's Santos port, the busiest in Latin America – and a major export hub for cocaine.

The deployment is part of a government's broader plan that includes increasing the number of federal police forces in Rio, improving cooperation between law enforcement entities and boosting investment in state-of-the-art technology for intelligence gathering.

That is, after they pay for the new busses, I presume.

Attempt to 'suffocate' militias

State and federal authorities have said in recent weeks they want to "suffocate" militias by going after their financial resources.

Rio’s public security problems go back decades, and any federal crackdown on organised crime needs to be supported by a far-reaching plan, the fruits of which might only be seen years from now, according to Rafael Alcadipani, a public security analyst and professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a university in Sao Paulo.

"The federal government is being rushed into this due to previous lack of action," said Alcadipani. "The government is trying, but the chance of this not working is huge ... This is an emergency plan, something being done last minute as though it were a problem that arose just now, but it isn't."

Brazil's Justice Minister Flávio Dino said the measures announced Wednesday are part of a plan being developed since Lula took office on Jan. 1, and the result of months of consultations with police forces, local officials and public security experts.

Recent wave of unrest

The latest wave of unrest in Rio began Oct. 5, when assassins killed three doctors in a beachside bar, mistaking one of them for a member of a militia. The city's powerful militias emerged in the 1990s and were originally made up mainly of former police officers, firefighters and military men who wanted to combat lawlessness in their neighbourhoods. They charged residents for protection and other services, but more recently moved into drug trafficking themselves.

There has since been increased pressure for the state and federal governments in Brazil to come up with a plan and demonstrate they have a handle on public security in the postcard city.

On Oct. 9, days after the doctors were killed, Rio state government deployed hundreds of police officers to three of the city’s sprawling, low-income neighbourhoods.

And on Oct. 23, Rio's police killed Matheus da Silva Rezende, known as Faustao, nephew of a militia's leader and a member himself. In a clear show of defiance, criminals went about setting fire to at least 35 buses.

On Wednesday, federal police in Rio said it had arrested another militia leader and key militia members in Rio das Pedras and Barra da Tijuca, both in Rio state. They also seized several luxurious, bullet-resistant cars, a property and cash.

(AP)

Corruption is Everywhere > Would you believe Nurses? Liberal darling Avenatti - guilty again; Mercedes-Benz fined in So. Korea

..

New York nurses arrested after making staggering amount

from fake vaccine cards

The scheme allegedly brought in more than $1.5 million

©  Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Two New York nurses have been arrested for allegedly selling fake Covid-19 vaccination cards, and making more than $1.5 million in the process.

The Suffolk County district attorney’s office announced the two nurses working in Long Island, 49-year-old Julie Devuono and 44-year-old Marissa Urraro, had forged vaccine cards from last November into January of 2022. The pair reportedly charged $220 to $440 for vaccine cards for adults, but offered a discount for children, only charging $85. 

After faking the actual physical vaccine cards, the two would then allegedly add false information to the New York State Immunization Information System (NYSIIS) to list people as vaccinated when they were not. 

Prosecutors also alleged that the nurses forged vaccine cards for undercover detectives. The two worked at Wild Child Pediatric Healthcare in Amityville, an establishment that DeVuono, who is a nurse practitioner, owned. 

Businesses around the pediatric clinic had noticed increased foot traffic recently, according to local media reports. “It’s frightening beyond words,” one neighbor told the New York CBS affiliate. 

In a search of DeVuono’s home, police discovered more than $900,000 in US currency, plus a ledger documenting more than $1.5 million in payments for the alleged vaccine card scheme. 

DeVuono and Urraro have both been charged with forgery. 

Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney added in a statement he hopes the arrests will “send a message” to anyone else “considering gaming the system.”

“We will enforce the law to the fullest extent,” Tierney said.

‘Donald Trump’s worst nightmare’ is his own worst nightmare

Before he was found guilty of defrauding porn star Stormy Daniels,

Michael Avenatti was lauded by liberal media

Michael Avenatti speaks to members of the media after leaving federal court in New York City,

February 4, 2022. ©  AP / John Minchillo

Disgraced lawyer Michael Avenatti has been convicted of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft for stealing $300,000 from porn star Stormy Daniels. It’s the second criminal conviction in two years for a man liberal pundits once believed would bring down the presidency of Donald Trump.

Avenatti was found guilty by a jury in Manhattan on Friday and will be sentenced in May. Representing himself, he had argued that Daniels owed him the money in exchange for legal representation in a case against Trump, but the jury sided with federal prosecutors who said Avenatti diverted the cash into his own account and then convinced Daniels that the money hadn’t arrived.

Avenatti took the cash sum from a larger advance for Daniels’ memoir, ‘Full Disclosure,’ which details her alleged affair with Trump.

Prior to his fall from grace, liberal pundits touted Avenatti as “Donald Trump’s worst nightmare,” and a “folk hero” whose legal action against Trump would “save the country.” After attempting to scupper the Supreme Court confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh with unfounded allegations of sexual assault, Avenatti explored a run for the presidency himself in 2018, immediately before his life began to unravel.

Avenatti was arrested on suspicion of domestic violence in late 2018, and less than a year later was found guilty of attempting to extort sportswear company Nike. He has yet to begin serving his 30-month prison sentence for that conviction, and is also facing retrial in California for allegedly stealing almost $10 million from various clients.

Carmaker fined for gas emissions cover-up

Mercedes-Benz to pay millions and fix rigged pollution-mitigation devices

to comply with law in South Korea

© Getty Images / picture alliance

The Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) on Sunday demanded that major luxury car maker Mercedes-Benz pay $16.87 million in fines for providing falsified information on gas emissions from its diesel cars, Yonhap news agency reported.

The South Korean antitrust regulator discovered that the vehicle producer had installed illegal software on pollution-mitigation devices in some of its cars. The software allowed the devices to perform at lower levels in driving conditions than during certification tests. The vehicles therefore failed to meet the legally allowed emission levels, but the automaker was found to have covered up related facts in signs attached to its cars between April 2012 and November 2018, according to the KFTC.

The automaker also advertised that the cars’ nitrogen oxide emissions were at a minimum level and they fully met the Euro 6 emission standards. The inadequate ads were on 15 Mercedes-Benz models.

“Though Mercedes-Benz claimed that it only used typical phrases about well-known performances of the emission mitigation devices, concealing the intentional implementation of illegal software and claiming its vehicles perform the best are beyond simple exaggeration and deception,” the regulator stated, adding that “such practices will or are feared to hurt fair market order by preventing consumers from making a reasonable decision” when purchasing a car.

Apart from the fine, the KFTC also ordered the carmaker to fix the devices and install qualified software.

In 2021, the South Korean regulator slapped a number of other carmakers with fines or correction orders, including Audi-Volkswagen Korea, Nissan Motor, Stellantis Korea, and Porsche AG for similar emissions-tampering practices.

US states join Mexico in lawsuit against American gun manufacturers

Gunmakers hit back against allegations of facilitating trafficking

Weapons confiscated or turned in to Mexican authorities © AFP / Bernardo Montoya

Attorneys general for 13 states and Washington DC have backed a Mexican federal lawsuit accusing American gun manufacturers of aiding and abetting the trafficking of weapons to Mexican criminals. The prosecutors – all Democrats – filed a brief last week in Massachusetts federal court seeking to deny the gunmakers the protection of a federal law shielding them from liability.

The targeted companies, including Smith & Wesson, Colt and Glock, have cited the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act in an effort to have the case dismissed. The law protects gunmakers from liability if their products are used in a crime.

However, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey accused the companies of “knowingly market[ing] their products in a way that facilitates the illegal trafficking of weapons into the hands of dangerous individuals.”

Mexican legal adviser Alejandro Celorio clarified to CNN that the lawsuit is not attempting to blame the gunmakers or distributors for the killings or injuries committed with their weapons, but instead to hold them accountable for “negligence in their commercial practices” and a “lack of caution” violating US state and federal laws.

Nevertheless, the suit claims US gun makers’ practices “aid and abet the killing and maiming of children, judges, journalists, police, and ordinary citizens,” reducing Mexican life expectancy and costing the government billions of dollars annually.

Trade industry group the National Shooting Sports Foundation slammed the coalition of prosecutors for what it described as misplaced efforts, arguing the Mexican government should “focus on bringing the Mexican drug cartels to justice in Mexican courtrooms” rather than “filing a baseless lawsuit in an American court to deflect attention from its disgraceful and corrupt failure to protect its citizens.”

While most of the defendants declined to speak to media pending litigation, Glock told CNN on Sunday that it would “vigorously” defend itself against the charges.

The lawsuit, initially filed in August, alleges over 597,000 guns are trafficked from the US into Mexico and claims the companies designed, marketed and distributed “military-style assault weapons” with an eye toward arming drug cartels, thus promoting violent crime of all kinds. A 2020 report by the US Government Accountability Office revealed 70% of guns recovered in Mexico between 2014 and 2018 came from the US, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

Thousands of American-bought guns have found their way south of the border in recent years. The infamous Operation Fast and Furious saw the ATF deliberately allow gun dealers to sell over 2,000 weapons to known criminal entities, which would then ‘walk’ them across the border to Mexico. There, ATF agents were supposed to apprehend the criminals and convince them to turn in their bosses, but as often as not the agency ended up losing track of the guns. The scheme, which ran from 2009 to 2011, was wound up only after the firearms had been used in the commission of hundreds of murders and other crimes, including the 2010 killing of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. Some were later used in the 2015 Bataclan massacre in France.

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Big Pharma > Pharmacies Guilty in OxyContin Disaster; New Opioids Spark Overdoses in DC; Americans Agree Big Pharma is Greedy

..

Top pharma chains held responsible for opioid crisis

23 Nov, 2021 23:05 

FILE PHOTO: Bottles of the prescription painkiller OxyContin, made by Purdue Pharma, are seen at a pharmacy in Provo, Utah. ©  Reuters / George Frey

Three major pharmacy chains are being charged for their alleged role in Ohio’s opioid crisis, a federal jury has declared, setting the stage for further verdicts as more states seek to prosecute drugmakers and distributors.

CVS, Walmart, and Walgreens have been found guilty of “recklessly” distributing massive amounts of pain pills across a pair of Ohio counties, a federal jury declared on Tuesday in a first-of-its-kind verdict. The ruling represents the first time pharmacy companies had been held legally responsible for the crisis that has wreaked havoc across the US over the last two decades, killing over half a million Americans.

The verdict opens the door to further charges, as states and municipalities elsewhere in the US seek to hold someone – drugmakers, sellers, distributors – responsible for the massive suffering the opioid epidemic has inflicted on their populations. Around 80 million prescription painkillers were doled out between 2012 and 2016 in Trumbull County alone, the equivalent of 400 pills for every resident; Lake County experienced a similar influx, with 61 million pills flowing into the small community.

Lake and Trumbull counties blamed the three pharmacy mega-chains for failing to halt the flow of pills into the hands of addicts and dealers, leading to hundreds of overdose deaths and costing the two counties around $1 billion, according to the counties’ attorney. The amount of damages to be paid will be decided by a federal judge in the spring.

Previous legal efforts have focused on the manufacturers and distributors, but the lawyer in the Ohio suit was able to convince the jury that the pharmacies played an “outsize role” in creating a public hazard in the manner in which they dispensed the pills. Attorney Mark Lanier pointed out that “the law requires pharmacies to be diligent in dealing drugs,” arguing the case should “be a wake-up call that failure will not be accepted.”

CVS and Walgreens have announced that they will appeal the verdicts, and lawyers for all three chains claimed they had policies in place to halt the influx of pills whenever their pharmacists were “concerned” about “suspicious” orders from doctors, though they ultimately argued it was up to doctors to decide how many pills could legitimately be prescribed for one condition or another. Two other pharmaceutical chains, Rite Aid and Giant Eagle, already settled with the counties.

While a Walgreens lawyer insisted at the start of the trial that pharmaceutical manufacturers had “tricked” doctors into “writing way too many pills,” he claimed the trend toward writing prescriptions for what used to be end-of-life drugs like opioid painkillers had come up organically due to the recognition of medical groups that “patients have the right to be treated for pain.”

Lake Co., Ohio

New opioids spark deadly wave of overdoses in DC

30 Nov, 2021 13:52

A full syringe, empty syringe and spoon sit on the roof of the car in the US. © Reuters / Brian Snyder

The use of synthetic opioids which are stronger than fentanyl has soared in Washington, DC, sparking a wave of tragic drug overdoses that appears to be growing, federal and local forensic analysts have discovered.

Examining used syringes throughout the US capital, analysts found that the use of two drugs, known as protonitazene and isotonitazene, has increased in Washington, DC. They fear that combined with the existing presence of fentanyl, opioids are fueling an increase in fatal overdoses during the past 12 months.

While it is not known how widespread the use of the two new opioids is, their addition to the ongoing drug crisis in American cities reflects the growing wave of overdoses that is not showing any signs of slowing down.

Warning of the threat posed by the influx of new opioids, Alexandra Evans, a DC analyst at the city’s public health lab, flagged how there are concerns the drugs could be resistant to existing life-saving antidotes used to combat the effects of fentanyl.

“We’ve been able to detect some really unique trends to D.C., like things that other cities aren’t really seeing,” Morgan Levitas, from the DC Department of Forensic Sciences, said, raising the alarm about the drug situation in the city.

The Center for Forensic Science Research and Education confirmed the potency of the new opioids. Addressing the situation, the center’s Alex Krotulski stated that they are three or four times the strength of the highly prolific fentanyl, which has been blamed as the key driver behind America’s record number of drug overdose deaths.

“The majority of them that we see are more potent than fentanyl – sometimes way more potent than fentanyl – which is really scary,” Krotulski said.

Data released by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the scale of the opioid drug crisis, finding an estimated 498 overdoses in the past 12 months in Washington, DC alone. The DC drug death total is larger than the number of fatal overdoses in 13 states and significantly higher than the city’s homicide rate.

Big Pharma unites Americans in disdain

1 Dec, 2021 23:41

Illustration photo shows various medicine pills in their original packaging, August 9, 2019.

©  REUTERS/Yves Herman/Illustration

Most Americans of all political persuasions distrust large pharmaceutical companies, think their priority is profit and not helping people, and believe they have too much influence on the government, according to a new poll.

Only 6% of American voters trust big pharmaceutical companies “a lot,” while 19% don’t trust them at all, and 53% distrust them to some degree, said a Rasmussen Reports poll published on Wednesday.

Of course, the 6% all work for big pharma!

Three out of four respondents think Big Pharma is motivated by profit. There was remarkably little divergence on this issue along party lines, with 78% of Republicans, 71% of Democrats and 75% of unaffiliated voters in agreement. Only 14% think the drug companies are concerned with making their customers’ lives better. 

And 6% of them work for Big Pharma, so who are the other 8%?

Meanwhile, 70% of voters say the drug-makers have too much influence on government and public policy.

The national online and phone survey was conducted by Rasmussen earlier this week, on a sample of 1,000 likely voters with a 95% level of confidence and a 3 percentage point margin of sampling error.

The poll results come after the Biden administration updated recommendations for Covid-19 booster jabs and expanded vaccination, citing the new Omicron strain of the virus. 

“Everyone ages 18 and older should get a booster shot either when they are six months after their initial Pfizer or Moderna series or two months after their initial J&J vaccine,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said on Monday.

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Islam - Current Day > Taliban Capture Panjshir; Criminals Among Migrants; Another NZ Terrorist Attack; ISIS Beatle Pleads Guilty in US Court

..

Taliban celebrates in Kabul after claiming it has captured

Panjshir province, resulting in full control of Afghanistan

3 Sep, 2021 16:54 / Updated 1 hour ago

Taliban forces patrol in front of Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, September 2, 2021.

© REUTERS/Stringer

Celebratory gunfire has erupted over Kabul amid reports that the Taliban has defeated the Panjshir Valley ‘resistance’. The latter’s commander earlier rejected the claims.

Tracers streaked across the night sky on Friday evening local time, reminiscent of celebrations on Tuesday following the departure of the last US airplane from Kabul. There were different reports as to the occasion, however, with RT’s senior correspondent Murad Gazdiev hearing both talk of victory in Panjshir and the arrival of the Taliban’s leader.

Panjshir Valley, located north of Kabul and made into a separate province by the US-backed Afghan government after the Taliban was ousted in 2001, controls a key strategic road to eastern Afghanistan. As of Thursday, it was held by fighters loyal to Ahmad Massoud, son of an anti-Taliban leader assassinated in 2001, who declared themselves the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRFA).

Among the ‘resistance’ is Amrullah Saleh, who served as vice president in the US-backed government and now styles himself the rightful president of Afghanistan.

On Thursday, the Taliban claimed to have captured key positions along the main road inside the valley, including a dozen checkpoints. The NRFA said this wasn’t true, and claimed to have inflicted heavy losses on the Taliban.

Saleh sent out a statement on Friday that he was still in the valley and that the resistance was still fighting, denying rumors from Kabul that Panjshir had fallen – but said the situation was difficult and that they were under attack from the Taliban, Pakistani troops and Al-Qaeda.

He also called on the UN and the international community to condemn “war crimes” of the Taliban, saying the group had blocked humanitarian access to Panjshir and shut off power and phone lines, according to TOLO News.

A Twitter account claiming to represent the NRFA has also declared that the resistance is “strong like our mountains here,” and urged Afghans and the world media to not “fall for the Taliban propaganda that they're spreading in Kabul.” 

As late as July, the US estimated that the Taliban had no more than 80,000 fighters and that the US-equipped Afghan National Army (ANA) could hold them off for months. Instead, the Taliban swept through most of Afghanistan and took Kabul without much of a fight on August 14, with the ANA surrendering or fleeing. An enormous amount of US-made ANA equipment, weapons and ammunition fell into the Taliban's hands. 

Panjshir Valley, AFG

7 Afghan evacuees to Germany failed security checks,

4 were previously deported as criminals – interior minister

3 Sep, 2021 13:50 / Updated 5 hours ago

People evacuated by the German Air Force from Afghanistan land in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, August 2021.

© Marc Tessensohn/Bundeswehr

Four Afghans rescued from Kabul and airlifted to Germany had been previously deported for committing crimes, the country’s Interior Minister Horst Seehofer revealed, pledging to prevent an unchecked influx of migrants to Europe.

“Three of them had forged documents, and four had already been deported from Germany to Afghanistan once as criminals. These were serious crimes,” Seehofer told RND news agency, adding that the four previously deported Afghans are now in custody. 

We will do everything we can to prevent an uncontrolled influx of migrants into Europe. That is why we are closely monitoring the movement of refugees from Afghanistan and other countries in the regions, such as Syria and Iraq.

Seehofer, who previously argued that the dramatic situation in Afghanistan is not an excuse to relax EU’s migration policies, said Germany will tighten security measures and checks on the border if necessary. “Not everyone who wants to enter our country will be allowed in. As for people who will be allowed in, we must know who they are.” 

Like many other Western countries, Germany scrambled to evacuate its nationals and local helpers from Kabul after the Afghan capital was seized by the Taliban on August 15. Overall, the German Air Force brought nearly 5,400 people from Afghanistan, including citizens of at least 45 states, according to the Defense Ministry. 

The Taliban rapidly seized control of most of Afghanistan last month amid the withdrawal of US troops, which was completed on August 30. The last German soldiers, who were part of NATO’s nearly two-decade-long occupation of Afghanistan, left the country in late June.  

The UN Refugee Agency (UNCHR) spokesperson Andrej Mahecic urged Afghanistan's neighbors this week to “keep their borders open and allow those who may be at risk to seek safety.”

UNCHR Deputy High Commissioner Kelly Clements warned that the region could see up to 500,000 new refugees from Afghanistan by the end of this year. 

Stabbing in New Zealand supermarket was

ISIS-inspired terrorist attack – prime minister

3 Sep, 2021 05:34 / Updated 12 hours ago

© Social media

A stabbing attack in an Auckland supermarket in which multiple people were injured was an act of terrorism, New Zealand’s prime minister says. The suspect was shot dead by police.

“This afternoon, at approximately 2:40pm, a violent extremist undertook a terrorist attack on innocent New Zealanders in the New Lynn Countdown [supermarket] in Auckland,” Ardern said at a press conference. 

The suspect was a known threat to authorities and under constant monitoring, she added.

Ardern said the terrorist was a Sri Lankan national who arrived in the country in 2011 and became a person of national security interest from 2016. She described the attacker as an ISIS-inspired “lone wolf.”

The PM confirmed that the terrorist injured six people, three of them seriously, on a stabbing rampage inside a supermarket in New Lynn, a suburb of Auckland. The terrorist was shot and killed roughly 60 seconds later by the same police unit that was tasked with monitoring him, Ardern said.

Police Commissioner Andrew Coster said the terrorist had traveled to the supermarket from Glen Eden, another Auckland suburb, as he had done in the past – all while being “closely watched” by a surveillance team and a tactical team. He entered the store and obtained a knife there.

“When the commotion started, two police tactical operators moved to his location and engaged him. When he approached them with a knife, he was shot and killed,” Coster explained. He said police intervened as quickly as they could, preventing further injuries to shoppers.

The reality is that when you are surveilling someone on a 24/7 basis, it is not possible to be immediately next to them at all times.

Addressing potential questions about the monitoring of the terrorist, the prime minister said the government “utilized every legal and surveillance power available to us to try and keep people safe from this individual.”

The attacker’s name has not been released to the public yet, though Ardern said additional information on his identity would be shared as soon as possible.

A video circulating on social media shows frightened shoppers at the supermarket and a body lying on the floor next to a checkout counter.

The New Zealand Herald reported that the alleged attacker was a 32-year-old man who was considered a public threat for twice buying large hunting knives and possessing an Islamic State propaganda video. The paper reported last month that the man was accused of planning a lone-wolf stabbing attack, but was ultimately sentenced to one year of supervision, a punishment designed to rehabilitate low-level offenders.

Apparently, it didn't work. Radicalized Muslims need to be segregated from society, completely.

In May, a 42-year-old knifeman was detained after injuring four people inside a Countdown store in the city of Dunedin, on New Zealand’s South Island. The prime minister and police said at the time that the incident was not a terrorist attack.

One of the ISIS ‘Beatles’ pleads guilty in US court over

torture & execution of 4 American hostages

3 Sep, 2021 01:10 / Updated 14 hours ago

(L) Alexanda Kotey, member of an English-speaking terrorist cell dubbed The Beatles (R) Another member of the cell, known as ‘Jihadi John’, stands next to captive American-Israeli journalist Steven Sotloff ©  SDF via Reuters / SITE Intel Group via Reuters

A member of the notorious Islamic State terrorist cell nicknamed ‘the Beatles’ has pleaded guilty to charges of killing four American captives. He faces life in prison without parole but will be spared the death penalty.

Alexanda Kotey, 37, changed his plea at a hearing in a federal court in Virginia on Thursday, admitting to a role in the abduction and execution of two US journalists and two relief workers. He will not face the death penalty, under the terms of his extradition by the UK, which had stripped Kotey of citizenship due to his membership in the terrorist group.

Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh, 33, were captured in Syria by the US-backed Kurdish militia (5th story on link) in 2018. They were identified as members of ‘the Beatles’, a cell made up of English-speaking jihadists that pledged allegiance to the self-proclaimed ‘caliphate’ set up in parts of Syria and Iraq.

The duo was charged in the deaths of journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, as well as aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller. Prosecutors said Kotey and Elsheikh supervised the facility where the captives were held and engaged in “a prolonged pattern of physical and psychological violence against hostages.”

In their initial appearance before Judge T.S. Ellis last October, Kotey pleaded not guilty. He changed that plea this week, Ellis said at a video hearing. The judge also said that Kotey had “agreed to cooperate fully and truthfully with the United States and provide the government with all the information you know about any criminal activity,” including beyond what was in the indictment against him.

“Kotey has been afforded due process and, in the face of overwhelming evidence, he made the independent decision to plead guilty to his crimes. The justice, fairness, and humanity that this defendant received in the United States stand in stark contrast to the cruelty, inhumanity, and indiscriminate violence touted by the terrorist organization he espoused,” said acting US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Raj Parekh.

Contrary to the propaganda perpetuated by ISIS, we have given Alexanda Kotey the opportunity to face justice.

Of the remaining two ‘Beatles’, Aine Davis is in a Turkish prison after being convicted on charges of terrorism, while Mohamed Emwazi, also known as ‘Jihadi John’, was killed in a US airstrike in November 2015.

The terrorists beheaded Foley in August 2014, after US special forces attempted a rescue operation. He was the first American to be executed by the terrorist group. The video of Sotloff’s beheading was released three weeks later, on September 2. Kassig was beheaded in November that year, even though he converted to Islam in captivity. 

Mueller, who was captured in Aleppo in 2013, was reportedly given as a sex slave to IS ‘caliph’ Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. The militants claimed she was killed in a February 2015 air raid on their ‘capital’, Raqqa, conducted by Jordan in retaliation for their execution of a captive Jordanian pilot. The US claimed that she was bludgeoned to death by Al-Baghdadi. The 2019 US raid that resulted in the death of al-Baghdadi was carried out by ‘Task Force 8-14’, named after Mueller’s birthday.

“Today is also a painful anniversary. Seven years ago, the world was devastated by images depicting the death of Steven Sotloff,” Parekh added. “Today, through the voices and lives of the victims, Justice spoke, and it is those words that will resonate through history.”

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