About 70,000 Somalia refugees residing in Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camp are willing to return to their home country by the end of the year, the UN refugee agency revealed on Thursday.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Kenya Assistant Representative in Charge of Protection Catherine Hamon Sharpe said that this figure represents approximately 25 percent of Somalia refugees in Kenya.
“We therefore think that the deadline given by the Kenya government to close the Dabaab camp in Nov. is not realistic if the refugees are to be repatriated voluntarily in a dignified and humane manner,” Sharpe said during a panel discussion on refugee issues in Nairobi.
"They're threatening our phony-baloney jobs here! And I can't ship the Land Cruiser back home to Old Blighty!"
Sharpe said that the UNHCR has urged the Kenyan government to reconsider its decision to close the Dadaab camp.
“We are therefore engaging the Kenyan authorities so that they extend the voluntary repatriation agreement that expires in November,” she added.
The UN official said that currently 2,000 Somali refugees at the Dabaab transition camp have signed for voluntary repatriations.
“However, they can’t leave the camp because the Jubaland (in southern Somalia) officials have refused to receive them,” she said.
The Kenyan government decided to shut down the world’s largest refugee camp by the end of this year, citing national security interests.
Kenyans are tired of the Somali refugees, who have been acting like Palestinians...
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/10/2016 00:00 ||
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Nothing gets past Human Rights Watch
[Arabiya] Landmines used by forces loyal to the Houthi movement in Yemen's southwestern city of Taiz have caused civilian deaths and fatal injuries, a Human Rights Watch report said on Thursday, releasing new evidence of the militias’ use of the banned antipersonnel mines.
At least 11 civilians, including seven children, were killed by an antivehicle mine in al-Waziyah neighborhood - a western part of Taiz last month - a local activist told Human Rights Watch.
[DailyMail] o Mohammed Hussain Syeedy, 21, is accused of murdering Jalal Uddin
o Mr Uddin, a respected imam, was bludgeoned to death in February
o Former Manchester United steward Syeedy, of Rochdale, denies murder
A man accused of murdering an imam was in Syria when aid worker Alan Henning was kidnapped by Islamic State extremists but denied that he had a 'deep interest' in the terror group at the time.
Former Manchester United steward Mohammed Hussain Syeedy, 21, is on trial accused of bludgeoning Jalal Uddin to death after stalking him in his car.
Archived articles about this story can be read here.
Mr Uddin, 71, was battered to death in February this year in a children's park as he walked home after prayers at his mosque in Rochdale, Lancashire.
The prosecution claims Syeedy helped his friend, Mohammed Kadir, 24, kill Mr Uddin because they believed he was practising 'black magic'.
After Syeedy's arrest, police allegedly found a large volume of ISIS-related material on his phone and other devices. Among these were photographs of Syeedy and his associates raising index figure salutes, which are said to signify an allegiance to ISIS, it is claimed.
Manchester Crown Court heard how Syeedy travelled in a Human Aid convoy to Syria in December 2013, shortly after his elder brother left with Mr Henning, 47, on a similar mission. Syeedy said his convoy stayed near the border with Turkey for 'two or three days
Syeedy has previously told the court that he was 'disgusted' by the murder and said Mr Henning, a father of two, had been a 'really close' friend of his brother.
Syeedy and Kadir allegedly developed a hatred of Mr Uddin because he used a form of healing involving amulets, known as taweez, which are said to bring good fortune. The jury has heard ISIS disapproves of the practice and believes those who regularly engage in it should be killed.
The prosecution says Syeedy had been radicalised and 'perhaps' it happened when he travelled on the Syria convoy.
Kadir, of Oldham, boarded a flight three days later from Manchester to Copenhagen in Denmark followed by a connecting flight to Istanbul. His whereabouts are unknown although it is thought he could have travelled to Syria.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
09/10/2016 06:17 ||
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Posted to keep track of the progression of these particular links in the chain of persons leading from the Paris attacks last November to ISIS.
[AnNahar] Austria's state prosecutor said Thursday it had charged a Moroccan and an Algerian with intent to take part in the November 13 Gay Paree attacks which left 130 people dead.
The prosecutor's office in the western city of Salzburg said the unnamed pair, aged 26 and 40, were presumed accomplices of the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (IS) cell behind the coordinated killings.
He added the men were placed in durance vile Drop the heater, Studs, or you're hist'try! at a refugee center in Salzburg near the German border on December 18 over suspected membership of IS and have been charged with "participation in a terrorist organization, IS."
The pair are thought to have provided logistical assistance and "information on establishing contacts" to two other suspected members of the Gay Paree cell, 29-year-old Algerian Adel Haddadi and Mohamad Usman, a 35-year-old Pak.
The latter pair were arrested at the same refugee center on December 10 and extradited to La Belle France in July.
Investigators believe Haddadi and Usman traveled to the Greek island of Leros on October 3 on the same boat full of refugees with two men who took part in the November 13 attacks.
Those two, thought to be Iraqis, blew themselves up outside the Stade de La Belle France, one of a series of assaults by around 10 people in the French capital.
Haddadi and Usman were held up, detained by Greek authorities for 25 days because they had falsified Syrian passports.
Once let go, they followed the main migrant trail and eventually made it to Austria some days after the Gay Paree attacks.
Another man, Moroccan Abid Tabaouni, arrested in Belgium in July and believed linked to Haddadi and Usman -- allegedly refugee center roommates -- was extradited to Austria last month.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
09/10/2016 13:09 ||
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[AnNahar] Berlin said Thursday that Ankara will allow German politicians to visit a NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis.... airbase near Syria after refusing access amid a months-long row over Germany recognizing the World War I-era massacre of Armenians as "genocide."
Islamo-fascist governments do like their hostages.
"I welcome the fact the Turkish government has now approved the plans for a visit by the defense committee of the German parliament" to the Incirlik base in The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... , said German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
"With this decision by the Turkish government, we have taken a step forward," he said after months of discord since the German parliament in June angered Turkey by labeling the Ottomans' World War I-era killing of Armenians a "genocide."
The politicians will be able to visit Incirlik from October 4-6, the Bundestag said in a statement.
Germany has some 200 troops stationed at the base in southern Turkey, from where it flies Tornado surveillance missions over Syria and refueling flights as part of multinational efforts to fight the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... group.
Germany hopes to invest 58 million euros ($65 million) in mobile barracks and other facilities in Incirlik, German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said Tuesday.
Other sources of discord remain, including German criticism of the Erdogan government's treatment of journalists, its Kurdish minority and of many of the alleged plotters detained in sweeping arrests after the failed coup in July.
In the latest issue to trouble relations, German broadcaster Deutsche Welle on Tuesday condemned the confiscation of the recording of an interview it had conducted with a Turkish minister as a "blatant violation" of press freedom.
Merkel's top front man Steffen Seibert insisted Wednesday that "press freedom, for us, is a high, I would even say non-negotiable" right.
As the EU's top destination for refugees last year, Germany has relied on an EU-Turkey agreement designed to stop the massive influx of people fleeing war and poverty.
[AnNahar] The EU announced plans Thursday to distribute debit cards to refugees in Turkey to help them meet basic needs as part of a multi-billion euro aid deal with Ankara to curb migrant flows to Europe.
Working with Turkish and UN officials, the European Union said it will launch next month the programme to distribute EU-funded debit cards that will help up to one million of Turkey's nearly three million refugees, most of them Syrian.
EU Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Christos Stylianides told a press conference in Brussels, "They will get monthly cash transfers to the card. And of course they will be able to buy what they need to put bread on the table for their families, to provide a roof for their families, to send their children to school instead of being forced to send them to work."
He said the 348-million-euro-backed ($384 million) plan is aimed at "the most vulnerable" and was more dignified than offering food hand-outs and will also boost the economy of Turkish communities where the refugees live. The humanitarian scheme, the Cypriot commissioner said, was developed with the UN World Food Programme (WFP) as well as Turkish ministers and the Turkish Red Crescent.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
09/10/2016 13:09 ||
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#1
this EBT card shizzizzle is gonna end well for sure like it does here
Posted by: Bov Flimbers ||
09/10/2016 20:37 Comments ||
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[IsraelTimes] $40 million of the annual total goes to terror group’s tunnel digging work, which employs 1,500 Paleostinians
As the residents of the Gazoo Strip endure daily hardships due to the dire economic situation in the enclave, their Hamas, the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood, leaders spend over $100 million a year on the group’s military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, according to estimates by both Israeli and Paleostinian sources. Spending on digging tunnels accounts for some $40 million of that annual sum.
By way of comparison, the budget of the last Hamas government, which dissolved in April 2014, was $530 million. In other words, some 20 percent of the budget was funneled toward arming the group with advanced weapons, digging tunnels, training, and salaries for Hamas fighters.
Some 1,500 Hamas members from various brigades are currently employed in tunnel digging. The average salary for an excavator is $250-$400 a month -- relatively high for the Strip, where unemployment is rampant. The diggers also receive bonuses and incentives for meeting deadlines set by the Hamas military leadership. Veteran diggers receive higher salaries than others.
The military wing of Hamas continues to be helmed by the Muhammed Deif, who serves as a chief of staff, while Yahya Sinwar serves as a defense minister and liaison with the political wing. Under them, Marwan Issa, Deif’s aide de camp, deals with building up the group’s military capabilities. Reporting to Issa are various commanders of different brigades and areas, such as defense industries and others.
The military wing has continued to develop its capabilities over the past two years in anticipation of another possible war with Israel. Among other things, Hamas has been investing in weapons that could bypass the Iron Dome anti-missile system and in more precise rockets than those it possessed in the summer of 2014, when it fought a 50-day war with Israel.
As part of this effort, Hamas, an Islamist terror group avowedly committed to destroying Israel, has allocated tremendous resources to smuggling materials into the Strip that can be used for building weapons, mostly from Israel, but also by sea or through smuggling tunnels from the Sinai Peninsula.
Last week, the Egyptian military exposed one such 2.5-kilometer-long tunnel. At the Gazoo border with Egypt, Hamas uses a large workforce along with bulldozers and tractors to dig tunnels, with work occasionally taking place right under the noses of Egyptian soldiers.
In the smuggling efforts from Sinai to Gazoo, bigwigs from the Sinai affiliate of the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... also play a role, working closely with Hamas military leaders in the southern Strip. The man in charge of coordination between IS and Hamas is Abd al-Rahman Barhame, who is in Gazoo as a guest of Hamas’s military wing.
Other Islamic State officials responsible for coordination with Hamas also reside in the coastal enclave, preserving the ties between the two terror groups despite Egypt’s objections, largely without informing the Hamas politicianship of these activities.
[IsraelTimes] Charity says it can no longer pay salaries; director in Strip is charged with siphoning millions to terror group
The charity has headquarters in Washington State and the United Kingdom, and works in nearly 100 countries. With a budget of approximately $2.6 billion and nearly 50,000 employees, it is one of the largest US-based relief organizations and has operated in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza since the 1970s.
The governments of Britain, Germany and Australia suspended their donations to the charity over the allegations by Israel.
[Ynet] A Google tech incubator that aims to counter violent extremism worldwide has developed technology that could redirect users who type pro-Islamic State phrases into search engines to anti-extremist messages.
The internet is one of the primary recruiting tools of the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (IS/ISIS/ISIL). The global terrorist organization uses the world wide web to spread turban Islamic propaganda, and to encourage young people to join its fight for control of various regions of the Middle East ‐ mostly in Iraq and Syria. However, a hangover is the wrath of grapes... the world’s most prominent internet search engine is now stepping up to fight back.
A Google-run technology incubator named Jigsaw, which aims to combat security threats globally and fight against extremism, has developed technology that would allow the redirection of users to anti-extremist messages if they search for pro-ISIS terms.
A trial run of the new Jigsaw innovation, which took place over eight weeks in the January-March 2016 period, reached over 320,000 people who searched for one or more word - out of a list of about 1,000 ‐ which is considered to be ISIS-connected. These include, but are not limited to, names of structures in ISIS-controlled territory and slogans related to the Islamic state. Users who were flagged by the system were shown search results, as well as ads that included anti-terrorism links and videos. The project didn’t include the uploading of new anti-ISIS messages to the web, but instead used existing content. So far, the Jigsaw project has included several dozen ads in English and Arabic.
Jigsaw’s initiative isn’t the first of its kind. The US State Department promoted a series of anti Islamic-extremism web videos on popular video site YouTube in 2013 called Think Again Turn Away; social network Twitter has suspended 235,000 accounts suspected of promoting turban content in the past six months. These steps have been encouraged by the White House, which came out in January and called for large internet companies such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube to do more in order to fight the spreading of turban terrorist organization content on social media.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
09/10/2016 00:00 ||
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#1
Google: Shining a light on the DarkWeb.
Kinda makes the data gathering work of those in 'activation threshold research' just that much harder.
Turkey’s efforts to create a safe zone in Syria will continue until the Turkish border is safe and all threats to the country have been removed, Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım said on Sept. 9, Reuters reported.
Turkey launched a full-scale offensive into northern Syria last month in an effort to sweep Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants from its borders. The Turkish military is backing Syrian rebel groups against the ISIL, while also targeting the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), the armed winged of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD).
“Our efforts to set up a safe zone in Syria will continue until the Turkish border’s safety is maintained and threats against Turkey are eliminated,” Yıldırım told journalists in Ankara.
He also added that there was “unconfirmed information” that a Turkish tank had been struck in Syria.
Turkey is within its rights in defending itself by staging an incursion in Syria, according to NATO’s secretary-general, who is staging a visit to Ankara.
“Turkey is the NATO ally most affected by the turmoil and violence in Syria and in Iraq. Turkey has suffered many terrorist attacks. Turkey has the right to defend itself, as all nations have,” Jens Stoltenberg told the Hürriyet Daily News in an interview on Sept. 9.
“I welcome Turkish efforts to fight ISIL. This is important for Turkey but this is important also for all NATO allies,” he said.
Stoltenberg met President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım and Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, as well as opposition parties, in his first trip to the Turkish capital since July 15.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/10/2016 00:00 ||
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[AlAhram] al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri ... Formerly second in command of al-Qaeda, now the head cheese, occasionally described as the real brains of the outfit. Formerly the Mister Big of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Bumped off Abdullah Azzam with a car boom in the course of one of their little disputes. Is thought to have composed bin Laden's fatwa entitled World Islamic Front Against Jews and Crusaders. Currently residing in the North Wazoo area assuming he's not dead like Mullah Omar. He lost major face when he ordered the nascent Islamic State to cease and desist and merge with the orthodx al-Qaeda spring, al-Nusra... threatened the US that the September 11, 2001 attacks will be repeated "thousands of times", in a video marking the 15th anniversary of the deadly assault.
Addressing the United States in a video message posted Thursday on YouTube, Zawahiri blamed 9/11 on "your crimes against us".
He said that if these continue, 9/11 "will be repeated thousands of times".
In the video, Zawahiri cited Washington's policies towards Arab and Moslem countries, its "occupation" of lands in their countries, and support for their "criminal and corrupt" governments.
His threats come as American officials say the United States has become hardened against such well-developed plots as 9/11 but remains vulnerable to small and home-grown attacks.
Zawahiri also urged jihadists to unite and urged African Americans to convert to Islam to "save" them from US laws which he said are controlled by "the white majority".
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.
[AnNahar] Berlin said Thursday that Ankara will allow German 
Zawahiri
