[The Nation (Nairobi)] Investigations by the Daily Nation suggest that Kenyan law firms, security, aviation and shipping companies are doing business with pirates rampaging in the Indian Ocean. More than $80 million (Sh6.5 billion) is paid to Somali pirates as ransom annually, some of which is thought to pass through Kenya.
The piracy, which is being fuelled by lack of an effective central government in Mogadishu, is costing the world economy up to $18 billion (Sh1.45 trillion) each year, according to International Maritime Bureau estimates.
Kenyan companies are acting as the link between the pirates and representatives of hijacked ship owners, facilitating ransom negotiations and payment.
The programmes coordinator of the Seafarers Assistance Programme (SAP), Mr Andrew Mwangura, whose organisation protects the right of seamen on hijacked ships, confirms that millions of dollars exchange hands between pirates and ship owners, but declines to discuss details.
"It is true owners of hijacked ships are paying pirates to secure the release of their ships and crew members held hostage with most of the money passing through Kenya, but I cannot discuss details because we are not involved in this transactions as our role only concerns the welfare of seamen," he said.
A report by the World Peace Foundation, an international think-tank bringing together scholars, diplomats, lawyers, military officers and maritime partners working on an initiative to combat piracy, claims that Kenya is among countries whose firms play a key role in driving piracy along the Somali coast.
The report says that piracy in Somalia is controlled by about 1,500 pirates, organised in seven syndicates with a "few bosses" running separate but linked enterprises. They are all largely run from Kenya, Dubai, Lebanon, Somalia and some European countries, the report claims.
The report says the largest ransom amount the pirates had received so far was Sh574 million or $7 million paid for the release of a Greek-owned oil tanker early this year.
A maritime official, who talked to the Nation on condition that he is not named because of the sensitivity of the issue, said they were aware of the role a select few law, security, aviation and shipping companies in Mombasa and Nairobi played in facilitating the release of hijacked ships and payment of ransoms.
"The law and security firms facilitate negotiations and preparation of agreements, while aviation and shipping companies deliver ransom payments to the pirates in Somalia," he said. He said ransom money is obtained from agents of hijacked ships either in Nairobi or Mombasa before it is taken either by air or sea to the pirates.
"The money is either delivered to private airstrips around Nairobi from where it is flown and dropped to pirates on hijacked ships or is loaded on ships that go to Somalia from Mombasa port to deliver," he said.
He said at times, the ransom payments are transported in the middle of the night under tight security from Nairobi to Mombasa before it is delivered to a ship to take it to Somalia.
"Once such missions have been accomplished, the pirates pay the law, security, aviation and shipping firms involved through their agents in Nairobi and Mombasa through an unofficial money remittance system called Hawala," he said.
The Hawala system is based on trust and was initially widely used by a network of money brokers in the Middle East and Africa, but is now popular in Europe and even North America.
According to a US State Department report, Kenya is a money-laundering hub in Africa. The International Narcotics Control Strategy Report says Kenya's financial system may be laundering over Sh8 billion or $ 100 million annually.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/19/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
TOPIX > [Somalia]AL SHABAAB MILITANTS RECEIVING REGIONAL ASSISTANCE, covertly via shadow or hidden African Govts-States, other.
Posted by: American Delight ||
07/19/2010 5:49 Comments ||
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#3
Kenya is running trials and jailing pirates as a favour to the rest of the world, which they claim is clogging up their courts and their prisons. There has to be some sort of payback for that.
A 32-year-old perfume seller is ready for holy war, but he is waiting for orders from his leader, an Islamist believed killed in an uprising in northern Nigeria nearly a year ago. "What happens in the next few weeks depends on the directives our leaders send to us," Yerima Faltaye said as he sold his goods on the streets in the city of Maiduguri. "Once the directive comes, nothing can stop us."
Late July marks one year since an uprising by an Islamist sect in Nigeria's north that left more than 800 dead and spread across four states, and there are fears the so-called Nigerian Taliban is reforming to strike again. The uprising shocked the country, where roughly half of the 150-million population is Muslim and a dozen of the nation's 36 states have implemented Islamic sharia law, though it is selectively applied.
As a result, this city, the centre of the uprising, resembles a police state ahead of the July 26 anniversary. A dozen vans with gun-toting police escorted by a siren-blaring armoured car regularly rumble through the dusty streets.
Tensions have been stoked by the release of video clips of one of the Islamist leaders believed killed, Abubakar Shekau, in which he threatens to "avenge the killings of our brethren." A message attributed to him was also posted on a website this week, according to a US-based monitoring group, in which he threatens the United States and pays tribute to al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq.
The sect, called Boko Haram ('Western education is sin' in local dialect),
Not the folks who did 'A Whiter Shade of Pale", I don't suppose.
launched the insurrection last year from an enclave in Maiduguri in a doomed bid to establish an Islamic state. Nigerian police and troops crushed the uprising after four days of street battles that left more than 800 dead, mostly sect members, including the group's leader Mohammed Yusuf. Shekau, the man now appearing on video, was his deputy and had been thought killed, as well. Police still maintain that Shekau is dead and dismiss the video clips as digital mock-ups.
In one video clip being circulated on mobile phones, Shekau is clad in military camouflage and wears a white turban. He sits between two AK-47 rifles and claims to be the new sect leader. The 30-minute long clip shows scores of masked young men conducting military exercises at an undisclosed desert location.
"We will definitely avenge the killings of our brethren, including Mohammed Yusuf. Jihad has just begun in Nigeria," he says in local Hausa dialect in a clip seen by an AFP reporter. "What happened was only the prelude, the actual show has not started yet."
In another clip, Shekau is flanked by two masked men in military camouflage brandishing Kalashnikov rifles. His speech is interrupted by a ringing cell phone and a wailing baby. "Most of our fighters escaped the fighting and are still around and are ready to fight as ever," Shekau says.
Borno state police chief Ibrahim Abdu said rumours the sect was readying to mark the rebellion anniversary have pushed security forces "to be on the watch-out for the members of the group". Hundreds of anti-riot police reinforcements have been deployed in the city, Abdu said, while more intelligence personnel have been called in.
But that has only heightened tension among Maiduguri residents. "The deployment of more policemen in the city and the daily patrols have only increased residents' apprehension of the possible re-emergence of Boko Haram," Maiduguri resident Mohammed Goni said outside his provision store as the patrol motorcade zoomed past.
Ibrahim Mala, a repentant sect member-turned-grocer at Maiduguri's main market, claims to know where Shekau is hiding. "He escaped the fighting ... and is now hiding in the desert between Chad and Sudan," Mala said.
Police guard the sect's former headquarters reduced to rubble by Nigerian troops during last year's clashes. "Two weeks ago a member of the sect came here to pray for the soul of Mohammed Yusuf, who he said was his spiritual leader and a divine fighter," a police officer at the site told AFP, pointing to a heap of rubble that had been the mosque.
But a university lecturer who had contact with the sect's leadership while doing research on the group dismissed Shekau's threats. "Shekau lacks the power of persuasion, the oratory and maturity which fetched Mohammed Yusuf followers," Ahmad Baba Tela, a linguistics professor at University of Maiduguri, said.
[The Nation (Nairobi)] Burundi authorities have arrested a journalist over an article questioning security forces' ability to respond to attacks by Somalia's al Shabaab insurgents, his relatives said today.
Burundian police arrested Jean Claude Kavumbagu -- who runs the online news agency Net Press -- on Saturday, relatives said.
He wrote in a July 12 article: "If Somali Islamists had to try something in Burundi, it would be easy since our defence and security forces are much better in looting and killing innocent people than defending the nation."
"A judge who questioned him told me that he was being prosecuted for a story he wrote linked to the al Shabaab's threats," his brother, Jean Marie-Vianey Kavumbagu, told Reuters.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/19/2010 00:00 ||
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Yemen is reportedly preparing for another round of armed offensives against the Shia Houthi fighters, despite the ongoing truce.
That is what hudnas were invented for, after all. Muhammed himself defined the terms under which temporary truces are to be conducted, including the lies to be told to the other side. I suspect the Houthis were not deceived.
The Army is digging trenches, stretched from the capital of Sana'a to the Houthi stronghold of Sa'ada, the fighters said on their website on Saturday.
The fighters warned that government forces stationed in the Amshia Bsfian region had created a new stronghold in Mount Guide.
Authorities have been trying to "militarize" civilian life and amass servicemen in villages, homes and farms, the Houthis said.
Sana'a officials have been trying to pin the blame for a recent ethnic dispute, in which 11 people including two government soldiers died, on the Houthis, Reuters quoted Friday comments, posted on Arabic news website almenpar.com.
The Houthis also rejected as "false and incorrect," the Interior Ministry's accusations that their men had kidnapped two people in a market, before transferring them to an unknown location. The fighters claimed that the kidnappings were the work of the government.
Or of yet another group not mentioned here. It's the national sport, after all, remarked upon by outsiders over the centuries.
The fighters defend Yemen's Shias against, what they call, efforts by the Yemeni leadership and neighboring Saudi Arabia to socially, economically, and religiously marginalize the minority group.
Nearly 350,000 people have been displaced and hundreds others killed since 2004, when Sana'a launched the crackdown on Shias.
The government intensified the attacks in August 2009. It was joined by Saudi Arabia in November, with Riyadh claiming that the fighters had been involved in cross-border attacks on the Kingdom.
In February, the Shia fighters offered a unilateral ceasefire with the government to protect civilian lives. The initiative led to a truce.
The alleged plans to reignite the conflict come while Yemen has been experiencing relative calm since the agreement.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/19/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
ION YEMEN, WORLD NEWS > YEMEN TO BE OBAMA'S AFGHANISTAN: AL QAIDA CLERIC [Al-AwLaki].
[Al Arabiya Latest] Britain was "very unlikely" to introduce a ban on Muslim women wearing face-covering veils despite widespread public support for such a move, Immigration Minister Damian Green said.
He told the Sunday Telegraph newspaper that a ban similar to that approved in France, and which a poll on Friday showed was backed by 67 percent of Britons, was a "rather un-British thing to do".
A fellow Conservative lawmaker had earlier said he refused to meet female constituents who wore the face veil and had proposed a law to ban the practice.
However, Green said: "Telling people what they can and can't wear, if they're just walking down the street, is a rather un-British thing to do. We're a tolerant and mutually respectful society."
The immigration minister acknowledged there were occasions when it was important to be able to see someone's face.
"But I think it's very unlikely and it would be undesirable for the British parliament to try and pass a law dictating what people wore," he said.
This week French lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to ban face-covering veils in public, in a bill which will go to the Senate for approval.
Of France's 5 million Muslims, it is thought only about 2,000 women wear the full-length veil.
Green added that unlike France, Britain was not "aggressively secular".
Posted by: Fred ||
07/19/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Never mind the People's wishes, do it MY WAY.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
07/19/2010 1:00 Comments ||
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#2
Maybe the Minister wants to be promoted to CofE Bishop.
A young North Carolina man who has moved to Yemen appears to be the editor-in-chief of a flashy new Al Qaeda magazine that features bomb-making instructions and an article by Usama bin Laden, U.S. officials said Monday.
Samir Khan, a 24-year-old American citizen who left the country last October, is believed to be the top editor of Inspire, a newly launched online magazine that seeks to recruit members of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula the notorious terror group's Yemeni branch that is linked to the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound U.S. flight last Christmas.
The 67-page online publication, written in colloquial English and launched last month, features flashy graphics and punchy headlines like "Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom, as well an article on global warming said to be written by Bin Laden.
Anwar Al-Awlaki, an America-born cleric linked to several attacks on the U.S., including the Foot Hood massacre and the failed Times Square car bomb plot, has held a prominent role with the site and was thought to be its key proponent. Al-Awlaki, designated by the U.S. Treasury Department on Friday as a key leader in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, recently posted an article on the site titled May Our Souls be Sacrificed for You, in which he called for the Seattle cartoonist who launched "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day" to be executed.
But intelligence sources told Fox News on Monday that they believe Khan, a web-savvy Charlotte, N.C., man who reportedly moved to Yemen to study Arabic, may be the mastermind behind the site which some in the intelligence community are calling Al Qaeda's most ambitious terrorist recruitment tool to date.
Intelligence analysts say Khan represents a new generation of computer-savvy radical whose online tactics have become increasingly influential in recruiting violent jihadists abroad and promoting acts of terrorism within the U.S.
"Khans capabilities of publishing things fairly quickly and his web savviness elevates him in Al Qaedas PR media arm, said David Draper, director of strategic operations for NEFA, a U.S. terror-watch group. The launch of this English magazine is extraordinarily important.
Khan first gained attention in 2007 when intelligence officials began monitoring his militant Islamic blog, "Inshallahshaheed ("A martyr soon if God wills") from his parents home in Charlotte, N.C. Citing free speech laws, U.S. officials never charged him with a crime, arguing that Khans website never crossed the line from inflammatory rhetoric to violence.
Khan was born in Saudi Arabia and moved to Queens, N.Y., when he was 7. FoxNews.com profiled Khan in 2008, traveling to Charlotte to interview him about his website, which called for the death of U.S. soldiers in Iraq and featured blood-drenched videos of U.S. troops injured in combat. Khan declined to comment, saying only that the messages on his blog represent Muslims.
In a later e-mail sent to FoxNews.com, Khan lashed out at the "arrogance" of the media, saying it should focus instead on converting to Islam. "When you go down in to the earth six feet deep, nothing will matter except what Religion you died upon," he wrote.
Draper and other terrorism analysts say Khans new role with the Al Qaeda website gives U.S. officials ample evidence to charge him with aiding a terrorist organization.
Under the Patriot Act, he said, U.S. authorities have enough to charge him with providing material support."
"You do not have the right to aid and abet a terrorist organization in the United States, added Neil Livingstone, chairman and CEO of ExecutiveAction LLC, a security consultancy based in Washington. You can agree with Al Qaedas ends and means, but the moment that you start recruiting or sending messages, youve run afoul of the law."
FBI Warning of Al Qaeda Hit Lists, Bomb-Making Tips Led to Shutdown of Blogging Site
A popular website that hosted more than 70,000 bloggers was shut down suddenly last week after the FBI informed its chief technology officer that the site contained hit lists, bomb-making documents and links to Al Qaeda materials, it was reported on Monday.
When the WordPress platform Blogetery.com went dead, the initial explanation from the site's host, Burst.net, was that a law-enforcement agency had ordered it to shut down, citing a history of abuse. The explanation caused a wave of conspiracy theories in the blogosphere.
But according to a report on CNET Monday, Burst.net shut down Blogetery.com when it became spooked by a letter from the FBI, in which the bureau detailed the presence of terrorist materials among the blog posts.
Burst.net CTO Joe Marr explained that the FBI contacted them with a request for voluntary emergency disclosure of information, bringing to their attention that terrorist material presenting a threat to the lives of Americans was found on a server Burst.net hosted. FBI agents said they wanted specific, immediate information about the people who posted the material.
Paul Bresson, unit chief for the FBI's national press office, wrote in an email to FoxNews.com Monday that Burst.net shut down the website on its own. "We did not make a request to shut down a website," Bresson wrote.
Burst.net executives and public relations staffers were not available for comment; answering machines at the office appeared to be disconnected.
Bloggers had been theorizing for days about the shutdown, mostly speculating about conspiracies and anti-piracy movements.
File-sharing news site TorrentFreak claimed it was most likely the work of anti-piracy authorities. The site speculated that it could be part of a new initiative called "Operation: In Our Sites," designed to crack down on Internet piracy and counterfeiting under the authority of Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel.
"Operation: In Our Sites" has already targeted numerous sites including TVShack.net, Movies-Links.TV, FilesPump.com, Now-Movies.com, PlanetMoviez.com, ThePirateCity.org, ZML.com, NinjaVideo.net and NinjaThis.net.
Others wondered whether this was a step by the government to assert control over the Web. Just weeks ago, a plan giving the President emergency power to turn off the Internet was approved by the Senate.
The reality turns out to be much more serious. A representative for Burst.net said the company had offered Blogetery's operator his money back, but that "should be the least of his concerns."
Simply put: We cannot give him his data nor can we provide any other details," the representative said. "By stating this, most would recognize that something serious is afoot.
A slick new Al Qaeda magazine written in English to lure U.S. jihadists may be the work of a former New Yorker with an eye for graphics - and a lust for American blood. Intelligence officials see chilling similarities between a militant blog Samir Khan produced and the Internet-based magazine Inspire.
Khan landed on intelligence radar in 2007, when he was 21, after posting an Osama Bin Laden screed to the blog he maintained from his parents' basement. The blog boasted crisp graphics, an easy familiarity with American culture and attitudes, and a pipeline to hard-core rhetoric.
Fast forward to last month, when Al Qaeda put out Inspire, with the message that U.S. military action in the Arab world must be avenged. The packaging spooked experts with its potential for recruiting Western youth. It also seemed familiar to those who track militants, like the Jawa Report blog. "There were choices in content and how it was created that echoed what Samir Khan had done with his blog several years back," said a federal source.
There were other clues that point to Khan. The magazine mentioned the NYPD's director of intelligence analysis, Mitchell Silber, and Brooklyn's Yousef al-Khattab, a secular Jew who converted to Islam and joined a group Khan belonged to.
Khan has been in Yemen since October - and the mag was posted by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a Yemen branch with ties to American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Awlaki uses English to get his message out in the West.
Khan was born in Saudi Arabia but his family moved to Queens when he was 7 years old. In 2007, he told the New York Times that he was a typical American kid until he turned 15 and went to a weeklong summer camp sponsored by the Islamic Organization of North America.
He stopped dressing like his pals at John Adams High School in Queens, grew tired of IONA's moderate tenets, and joined the more militant Islamic Thinkers Society, sources said. His family moved to Jersey in 2000 and North Carolina in 2004, sources said. That's when he started his blog, "Inshallahshaheed," or "A martyr soon if God wills."
Khan's family in North Carolina refused to talk about him, and neighbors in his middle-class Charlotte neighborhood said they hadn't seen him for months.
#1
By all means, let us martyr this lad as soon as possible.
I prefer the Pershing method. Shoot the little bastard and bury him in pig blood and guts. So much for his 72 virgins, huh.
Posted by: B Dubya ||
07/19/2010 12:11 Comments ||
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BAGHDAD / Aswat al-Iraq: Al-Iraqiya bloc leader Iyad Allawi is scheduled to meet Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr in Damascus as the two were officially invited by President Bashar al-Assad for a visit to Syria, according to the bloc spokesman on Sunday. "Allawi and Sadr will exchange views regarding means to push forward the political process and consider ways to find a way out in the direction of forming a new government in Iraq," Haider al-Mulla told Aswat al-Iraq news agency. Allawi's there to kiss the ring, is he?
"Syrian President Assad had extended an official invitation to Iyad Allawi," Mulla added, not giving further details. Maybe he'll be there the same time as Hariri. They could get together to play cards or something.
Sadr, the leader of the Sadrist Movement, had arrived in Syria on Saturday morning upon an official invitation from President Assad. "Hello? Is this the Boy President? Lissen, dis is the Ayatollah. Youse should invite young Tater to come for a visit... Yeah. We're thinkin' of makin' him a satrap, so youse should show him around. Let him meet Allawi, put the fear of Allah into him, y'know?"
Assad had said on Saturday that his country fully backs the formation of a strong Iraqi government as soon as possible, according to the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA). The Syrian leader expressed hope a unified stand would be reached soon among the Iraqi political powers to form a national government to bring about security and stability to the war-torn nation.
The meeting between Assad and Sadr also deal with fraternal ties binding the two countries' peoples. Sadr expressed the Iraqis' appreciation of the stances adopted by Syria that has kept an open door for Iraqi citizens since the beginning of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/19/2010 00:00 ||
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Iraqi rivals are reportedly close to agree on reinstating the country's incumbent premier Nouri al-Maliki, making significant progress towards resolving the current political stalemate.
Al-Maliki's State of Law coalition has reportedly joined talks with archrival and predecessor, Iyad Allawi's al-Iraqiya Alliance on the deadlock that followed the parliamentary polls earlier in the year.
Candidates from each side vied for seats in the March 7 elections, which saw al-Iraqiya coming narrowly first but lacking an absolute majority.
Amid the indecision threatening to incite further violence, the parties reportedly agreed on a ruling structure, where Maliki and Allawi's teams share half of the posts and the remaining seats go to other sides proportionate to their election results.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/19/2010 00:00 ||
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[Al Arabiya Latest] Arab League chief Amr Mussa said on Sunday that Palestinians could not move to from indirect to direct talks with Israel without written guarantees.
"We cannot automatically move from one negotiation to another without written guarantees," said Mussa, whose 22-member pan-Arab organization backed indirect talks between Israel and Palestinians in May.
He made his comments after meeting US Middle East envoy George Mitchell and after Mitchell, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held separate talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Mussa, who met with Abbas on Saturday, said he thought the Palestinian leader was committed to Arab League conditions for resuming direct talks, which include an end to settlement building in occupied Palestinian lands.
"I felt the Palestinian president was committed to the decisions of the ministerial council that the automatic transition from indirect to direct negotiations is not feasible," he said.
The Arab League first backed the talks in March but then endorsed the Palestinians' refusal to go ahead with them after Israel announced plans to build more Jewish homes in mainly Arab east Jerusalem.
It supported them again a month later after the Palestinians said they had received unspecified assurances from the United States.
The Palestinians want east Jerusalem, annexed by Israel in 1967, for the capital of their promised state.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/19/2010 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Palestinian Authority
#1
ION PAKISTANI DEFENE FORUM > PALESTINIANS MAY SOON HAVE TO SWEAR LOYALTY TO JEWISH/ISRAELI STATE.
* SAME > US TELLS JORDAN: COORDINATE WID ISRAEL ON NULCEAR POWER [or no USD $$$].
#7
"translation: We need want money. Now. And forever."
FTFY, lg - no charge.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
07/19/2010 13:49 Comments ||
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#8
WORLD NEWS/TOPIX > GOVT. TOLD 2.5MILYUHN AFRICANS WAITING TO ENTER ISRAEL, from Egypt.
* SAME > TURKEY CLAIMING A FOOTHOLD IN OLD CITY [Old Quarter= Jersusalem]. Turkish flags flying oer Jerusalem, PALESTINE???
* SAME > HIZBULLAH DEPLOYS 5000 FIGHTERS TO SOUTH LEBANON.
ARTIC = HIZBUL LIONS OF ISLAM repor digging in + getting ready for new Struggle, War agz ISRAEL inside LEBANESE HOMES + HOSPITALS + SCHOOLS, ETC.
* WAFF > HEZBOLLAH PREPARES FOR NEW WAR AGZ ISRAEL | [Strategypage]I'LL RAISE YOU NASTY SURPRISE. Milyuhns + Zilyuhns + Dilyuhns of NEW IMPROVED IEDS + "KORNET" ATGMS waiting for new Israeli invasion in South Lebanon.
[Al Arabiya Latest] Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Sunday Iran will file a complaint to international bodies over the deadly mosque bombing by an insurgent group he says the U.S. supports.
The twin suicide bombings of a mosque in southeast Iran killed 28 people Thursday night, in an attack claimed by the Jundallah insurgent group as revenge for the execution of its leader by Iranian authorities in June.
Ahmadinejad did not specify if the complaint would be specifically against the U.S., but he did tell state TV that America supported the bombings.
"If (President Barack) Obama is not aware of actions by American forces, we tell him that American troops based in Afghanistan and Pakistan support these actions," he said referring to the bombings. "Yet, the American president sends a condolence message."
Obama and other U.S. officials condemned the bombings.
Ahmadinejad also held Pakistan responsible for allegedly harboring terrorists, saying Islamabad "must be answerable."
Iran accuses the United States and Britain of supporting Jundallah in effort to weaken the clerical leadership, a claim both countries deny.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/19/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Talking out of all three sides of their mouths.
[Al Arabiya Latest] Al-Qaeda leader's fourth-born son Omar bin Laden in an interview with Al Arabiya TV said Iran offered to turn over about 20 members of his family it has held for eight years to a third country other than Saudi Arabia.
"I think the time has come for my family members to leave Iran but their lack of identification papers and passports made us in need of another third-party country willing to receive them after Iran refused to hand them over to Saudi Arabia, " Omar said.
"Othman (his brother held in Tehran) called me by phone four days ago and asked me to find a country to mediate their release and accept to receive them," he added.
Omar said that neither the United States nor any other country has accused any of his brothers of terrorism, adding that "the Americans offered to help my brothers out of Iran and even hinted to the possibility of receiving them in the United States."
Omar said the names of the al-Qaeda leader's children held in Tehran were: Othman bin Laden (27) who supports two wives, two sons and a daughter, Saad bin Laden (30) who has two daughters and a son, Mohammed bin Laden (25) who married a daughter of Qaeda's military commander Abu Hafs al-Masri, better known as Mohammed Atef, and has two daughters and a baby, Hamza (19) who has a wife and two children (Osama and Khairya) and also supports his mother Ms. Khairya Saber. Also among Bin Laden's children held in Iran his Fatima bin Laden (24) with her husband and daughter Najwa.
Bin Laden's children and his wife Umm Hamza (mother of Hamza, Khairya Saber) arrived in Iran after a "two-week-long, difficult and miserable trip" and stayed in several apartments in the capital Tehran without drawing attention for several months.
But Iranian authorities, who carefully monitored dozens of Arab Afghans who crossed into Iranian borders in search for a safe place after the fall of the Taliban, eventually held the bin Laden family and other Arabs in a detention center in Tehran.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/19/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Well, OSAMA = OMAR, There are UIGHURS in PALAU, + Norway, + JAPAN, + whom desire to emigrate to Australia from PALAU [Belau] + JAPAN...
[Al Arabiya Latest] The Swiss and Iranian governments denied reports on Saturday that Bern's ambassador to Tehran was detained by the Islamic republic's security forces earlier this week.
Iranian state media said police had briefly detained ambassador Livia Leu Agosti, whose embassy represents U.S. interests in Iran, on Wednesday while she was on a trip to North Khorasan province.
Citing "informed sources," the website of Press TV, the Iranian channel in English, said Agosti was detained "because her identity was not established at the time" but freed a few hours later.
This was despite Agosti's trip to a provincial village having been planned in "coordination and full permission of the foreign ministry," state television said on its website, also quoting an informed source.
"But the local security forces temporarily arrested on July 14 the Swiss ambassador because her identity was not established. However after coordination with relevant authorities she was immediately released," the website said.
Switzerland's foreign ministry said on Saturday that Agosti had only been "checked by local police during a trip," adding "she was not detained" and that the matter would not affect Bern's relations with Tehran.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said later that the reports about Agosti's detention had "been covered inaccurately and wrongly."
"Such an incident as reported by some websites is not true," he was quoted on the same website without elaborating.
The Swiss embassy in Tehran has handled the interests of the United States in Iran since the two arch foes broke off ties in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/19/2010 00:00 ||
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Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have signed a string of agreements to bolster ties between the two countries.
Hariri, during his third visit to Damascus as premier on Sunday, called for closer ties with Syria.
Hariri has said Beirut wants sincere relations with Damascus that would serve the interests of the two nations.
The deals signed by the two leaders, were the first since the 2005 assassination in Beirut of Saad's father Rafik al-Hariri.
The accords, included investment protection, pharmaceutical products, shipping, tourism and taxation.
Hariri, talking at a joint press conference with Syrian Prime Minister Naji al-Otri said that Beirut is seeking sincere and strong relations with Damascus that would serve the interests of the two nations, which face a common enemy."
"We want the ties to form a model for an Arab common market," he said.
Hariri said that during the meeting, they agreed to continue to control the borders "so as to combat trafficking and all illegal acts."
He said a committee will be set up by the two countries to demarcate the border. "It has to begin its work and finish it as soon as possible," he said.
Hariri, who earlier met President Bashar al-Assad said: "During the course of our meetings, a friendly relationship has been built up between the Syrian president and myself, something which strengthens the interest of Lebanese and Syrian citizens."
Posted by: Fred ||
07/19/2010 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A 32-year-old perfume seller is ready for holy war, but he is waiting for orders from his leader, an Islamist believed killed in an uprising in northern Nigeria nearly a year ago. "What happens in the next few weeks depends on the directives our leaders send to us," Yerima Faltaye said as he sold his goods on the streets in the city of Maiduguri. "Once the directive comes, nothing can stop us."
A slick new Al Qaeda magazine written in English to lure U.S. jihadists may be the work of a former New Yorker with an eye for graphics - and a lust for American blood. Intelligence officials see chilling similarities between a militant blog Samir Khan produced and the Internet-based magazine Inspire.
Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have signed a string of agreements to bolster ties between the two countries. 
