An Osama bin Laden henchman convicted in two deadly 1998 bombings is free in the U.K. after getting released three weeks early from a New Jersey prison — thanks to a judge who feared the terrorist was way too obese to survive the coronavirus behind bars.
Adel Abdel Bary, 60, was freed on Oct. 9 after spending 21 years in prison for his role in the 1998 al Qaeda bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa that left 224 people dead, including 12 Americans.
Germany will not renew the ban on deportations to war-ravaged Syria, the German Interior Ministry announced on Friday.
The decision was made at a virtual meeting of the country’s 16 state interior ministers, who rejected calls from the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) to extend the measure.
Announcing the change, Deputy Interior Minister Hans-Georg Engelk said Germany should not be a shelter for criminals and threats.
When I meet Ahmed, he is shackled in a room all alone. There are marks on his body from the beatings he has been given. He doesn’t know how old he is, but he’s probably about 10.
The school I find him in is one of 23 Islamic educational institutions in Sudan, known as khalwas, that I filmed in undercover over a two-year period, starting in early 2018.
I witnessed and filmed many children, some just five years old, being severely beaten, routinely shackled, and imprisoned without food and water by the sheikhs, or religious men, in charge of the schools. Some of the children who did not appear in our documentary told me they had been raped or experienced other forms of sexual abuse.
More than four months have passed since the huge explosion at the port of the Lebanese capital of Beirut, and many Lebanese are demanding answers to role of the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist organization in the port “massacre.” They are also demanding an end to Iran’s occupation of Lebanon.
On August 4, a large amount of ammonium nitrate stored at the Beirut port exploded, causing at least 204 deaths, 6,500 injuries, and $15 billion in property damage. An estimated 300,000 people were left homeless.
Last month the trial began in Belgium of Assadolah Assadi and three other Iranians accused of planning a bomb attack in Paris in 2018. Since 2015 Assadi had been the most senior officer of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security in Europe, at the time operating under diplomatic cover at the Iranian embassy in Vienna. He is the first Iranian government official to be tried by an EU country for terrorist offences, despite numerous attack attempts on EU soil ordered by Tehran.
State supported terrorism is not just an act in itself but also an instrument of national power and coercion. Together, these plots were a malevolent message and clear threat to Europe that unfortunately have been received and acted upon as intended in London, Berlin, Paris and Brussels.
French General Pierre de Villiers, the former chief of staff of the French armed forces, has warned that France could be heading for civil conflict, due to Islamist radicals and growing urban violence.
General de Villiers, who made headlines by quitting as armed forces chief of staff in 2017 over clashes on army budget cuts with President Emmanuel Macron, warned of a variety of factors that could see France heading to potential civil conflict.
I maintain my prediction: We will see France cede territory to the Islamists in our lifetime.
To hit back, or not to hit back?
This is the question that has heated up debate within Tehran’s ruling Khomeinist circles for almost a week. The debate was triggered by the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a shadowy figure in the top echelons of Tehran’s murky establishment.
Despite an avalanche of obituaries and reports on the event, it is not yet quite clear who Fakhrizadeh was and what he was doing.
October 29. Nice, the main city on the French Riviera. A man in the Basilica of Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption decapitates a woman and murders two other people while shouting “Allahu Akbar!” [“Allah is the greatest!”]
This is the second beheading in France by an extremist Muslim in less than a month. Two weeks earlier, on October 16, a middle school teacher, Samuel Paty, was beheaded in the suburbs of Paris after showing his students some Mohammad cartoons during a discussion on freedom of speech.
After 1,400 years of jihad violence against Jews everywhere that Muslims and Jews have lived in proximity, the Orthodox Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, who serves as Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth, says that he finds it “alarming” that so many Muslims in the United Kingdom are anti-Semitic. But given Islam’s texts, teachings and history, what else did he expect?
What’s “Alarming” is that 56% lied.
One of three Americans hailed as heroes for overcoming a gunman on a train travelling to Paris has told a French court his main aim was to survive.
Spencer Stone, a 28-year-old ex-serviceman, described via video from the US how he and his friends saw Ayoub El Khazzani pick up a Kalashnikov rifle and prepare to open fire.
He counted three separate attempts the gunman made to try to kill him.
Mr Stone was one of two people wounded in the August 2015 Thalys train attack.
French security services failed to appreciate the gravity of the defamatory campaign on social media against the teacher Samuel Paty before his murder, an inspectors’ report has found.
Despite the school’s headteacher reporting concerns about increasingly incendiary posts targeting the history and geography teacher on Facebook and Twitter, intelligence officials underestimated the risk.
School inspectors said Paty, 47, who was killed in an Islamist attack in a Paris suburb in October, was given the full support of the school director and the national education authorities, but officials were “unable to assess the danger”.
The Belgian government has refused permission for the Grand Mosque in the EU quarter of Brussels to be recognised as a local faith community, claiming that the place of worship has been infiltrated by Moroccan spies.
The decision to deny the application was made by the justice minister, Vincent Van Quickenborne, following advice from the security services, according to media reports. Recognition as a faith community secures financial support and assistance from the government.
“We stand by our brothers from Azerbaijan and we will not allow unbelieving dogs of Armenia to live in peace in Germany”, and further: “We know you, we know where your children are, Day and night.”
Full English translation here.
Jihadists in northern Mozambique have intensified their military operations this year in an apparent attempt to establish an Islamic Emirate in the province of Cabo Delgado. The Islamist insurgency, which began in October 2017, remained below the radar until recently. The escalating violence, however, has become a security concern for Mozambique’s regional neighbors, including South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and Somalia. Radical Muslims from Kenya and Tanzania are transforming what was initially a low-intensity ethnic rebellion, into a full-fledged Islamic jihad against Mozambique’s central government.
French authorities are set to inspect 76 mosques across the country, in an unprecedented action against “separatism,” French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin announced on Thursday.
“76 mosques are now suspected of separatism,” Darmanin tweeted. “In the coming days, checks will be carried out on these places of worship. If ever these doubts are confirmed, I will ask for their closure.”
Too little, too late.
