[Gulf News] President Omar Al Bashir on Thursday fired Sudan’s Foreign Minister Ebrahim Ghandour after he said that Sudanese diplomats abroad had been unpaid for months due to a government cash shortfall, state media reported.
In a speech to politicians on Wednesday, Ghandour, who negotiated the lifting of decades-old sanctions with Washington in October 2017, said his ministry had also been unable to pay rents for several Sudanese diplomatic missions.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/20/2018 00:00 ||
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[Libya Herald] Faiez Serraj, head of the Presidency Council, has not spoken to Khalifa Hafter since reports surfaced of his illness last week, his official spokesperson Mohammed El-Sallak said at the weekly presser yesterday. Sallak was responding to a direct question from a member of the media.
Asked for a comment about the reports regarding Hafter’s reported illness and his whereabouts, El-Sallak said that he could not comment on stories without reliable sources.
El-Sallak was referring to unconfirmed reports that started to circulate last Tuesday about Hafter’s ill-health and whereabouts.
These reports were initially denied by the Libyan National Army’s (LNA) official spokesperson Ahmed Mesmari. He had claimed on the LNA’s twitter account that ’’All the news about General commander’s health are false, Marshal Hiftar is in excellent health".
House of Representatives (HoR) head, Ageela Salah, was then reported to have said that he had been in contact with the LNA commander, Khalifa Hafter and had discussed with him the latest developments. The comments had come through the official HoR spokesperson Abdulla Belheeg.
Belheeg had reported that Saleh, who is also the Supreme Commander of the mainly eastern-based Armed Forces, had warned against the rumours and incitement that some were trying to spread. He did not specify which specific rumours were being referred to.
The official HoR spokesperson had also reported Saleh as saying that work was continuing normally in all armed forces units and in all (military and security) operating rooms. Saleh was also reported as saying that he and Hafter were following up with the Chiefs of Staff and the Commanders of the operations rooms on a continuous basis. Furthermore, Saleh had assured all the Libyan people that the military institutions will remain the safety valve for the nation.
This was followed by a tweet by UNSMIL five days a go saying that UNSMIL head Ghassan Salame and Field Marshall Khalifa Hafter ’’communicated today via phone and discussed the general situation in Libya and the latest political developments in the country’’.
Meanwhile, ...back at the the conspirators' cleverly concealed hideout the long-awaited message arrived. They quickly got to work with their decoder rings... LNA Chief of Staff Abdul Razak al-Nazhuri, speaking today to local Libyan media outlets after surviving an liquidation attempt in Benghazi, said that Hafter would be returning to Libya tomorrow.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/20/2018 00:00 ||
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[Libya Observer] Libya’s warlord is in an almost vegetative state and will never be normal again, the Middle East Eye reported on Wednesday, citing an informed EU diplomat.
The EU diplomat, who preferred not to be named, told the London-based online news portal that Haftar is "unable to talk or even fully comprehend."
"Haftar is suffering from lung cancer, which has spread to his brain," the diplomat further explained, adding that "the doctor treating him says that even if he responds partially to treatment, it will be temporarily and he will never be normal again."
On Friday evening, news surfaced online claiming Haftar was dead. The UN envoy to Libya Ghassan Salame telephoned a local news TV shortly and said he had conducted a 10-minute telephone call with Haftar and discussed with him the political process, in what appeared to be an attempt to refute Haftar’s death rumors.
The EU diplomat told the MEE that Salame was under pressure by Italia, La Belle France and the UAE to confirm that Haftar is alive.
Meanwhile, ...back at the abandoned silver mine, the water was up to Jack's neck and still rising. And then he smelled the smoke... Radio La Belle France Internationale quoted La Belle France's foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian as saying on Wednesday that "Khalifa Haftar ...Self-proclaimed Field Marshal, served in the Libyan army under Muammar Qadaffy, and took part in the coup that brought Qadaffy to power in 1969. He became a prisoner of war in Chad in 1987. While held prisoner, he and his fellow officers formed a group hoping to overthrow Qadaffy. He was released around 1990 in a deal with the United States government and spent nearly two decades in the United States, gaining US citizenship. In 1993, while living in the United States, he was convicted in absentia of crimes against the Jamahiriya and sentenced to death. Haftar held a senior position in the anti-Qadaffy forces in the 2011 Libyan Civil War. In 2014 he was commander of the Libyan Army when the General National Congress (GNC) refused to give up power in accordance with its term of office. Haftar launched a campaign against the GNC and its Islamic fundamentalist allies. His campaign allowed elections to take place to replace the GNC, but then developed into a civil war. Guess you can't win them all... is in a military hospital in Gay Paree and he is doing better now."
Posted by: Fred ||
04/20/2018 00:00 ||
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[Egypt Independent] Egypt’s Court of Cassation rejected on Thursday appeals submitted by 46 defendants over listing on the terror list for their alleged involvement in the liquidation of former Prosecutor-General Hesham Barakat in June 2015.
Vice-Chief of the Court of Cassation Abdel Rahman Hiekel had considered the defendants’ lawyers appeals who requested the cancellation of the court verdict and its effects ‐ including seizure over the defendants’ funds, a travel ban and their names on an airport terror-watchlist.
Cairo Criminal Court listed 56 people on the terror list upon the request of the public prosecution in August 2017.
The list included several leaders of the banned Moslem Brüderbund group, including runaway leader Gamal Heshmat.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/20/2018 00:00 ||
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[IsraelTimes] Resolution still slams IDF's use of live fire against Gazoo marches on border and calls for lifting of Gazoo blockade, but Israel says 'unprecedented anti-Israeli clauses were cut'.
[Ynet] PEGASE, the Paleostinian Authority's main source of funding, will halt the transfer of aid money if it is used for education to hatred; 'The Paleostinian children receive intentional and systematic encouragement to sacrifice themselves and their lives,' says Israeli researcher who helped formulate law.
[AlAhram] The Ottoman Turkish parliament on Thursday stripped two more MPs from the main pro-Kurdish opposition party, including a former front man, of their status as politicians, their party said.
Osman Baydemir and Selma Irmak of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) were removed from office over recent criminal convictions, a party official said, a day after President Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan the First ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey... said The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the decaying remnant of the Ottoman Empire.... would hold snap parliamentary and presidential elections in June.
Former HDP front man Baydemir was convicted of insulting police while Irmak was convicted of terror propaganda, the official told AFP.
Nine HDP politicians and former co-chiefs Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag are currently in jail.
Meanwhile, ...back at the chili cook-off, Chuck and Manuel's rivalry was entering a new and more dangerous phase... 11 HDP MPs have lost their politician status including Yuksekdag.
The party elected Pervin Buldan and former MP Sezai Temelli to replace Yuksekdag and Demirtas.
The HDP is facing an uphill struggle in the June 24 snap elections since making history by becoming the first pro-Kurdish party to pass the 10 percent threshold and enter the Ottoman Turkish parliament in June 2015.
Demirtas campaigned at the time on a promise to stop Erdogan becoming president under an executive presidency. However, today is that tomorrow you were thinking about yesterday... Turks narrowly approved constitutional changes to create such a system in an April 2017 referendum.
The HDP has come under intense pressure since the July 2016 failed coup and the crackdown against coup plotters and Kurdish turbans.
Its members still face dozens of court cases, with many involving accusations of links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has waged an insurgency in Turkey since 1984.
The party, which is the country's second-largest opposition group, denies any links to the PKK.
Reacting to the stripping of the MPs' status, the party said on Twitter: "Those who usurp the people's will should be consigned to the dustbin of history, Baydemir and Irmak will continue to represent the peoples!"null
Posted by: trailing wife ||
04/20/2018 00:00 ||
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[AnNahar] A Washington judge on Thursday blocked US officials in Iraq from handing over to Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... a dual American-Saudi citizen accused of working with 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.... jihadist group.
In a test case of the Trump administration's policy on Americans who join and fight for jihadist groups, Judge Tanya Chutkan issued a preliminary injunction blocking Defense Secretary Jim Mattis from transferring the unnamed detainee "from US custody," a court document said.
Dubbed "John Doe" in court documents, the man was detained in Syria last September and was turned over to the US military, who moved him to Iraq where he was interrogated by military and FBI officials.
They branded him an "enemy combatant," but after seven months, have not charged him with any crime.
Chutkan's ruling protected the detainee from being moved to another country without being charged or tried.
A transfer could have taken place within hours.
Justice Department lawyers earlier Thursday indicated they would appeal a court order blocking the transfer.
The case is the first of a US citizen detained and accused of joining IS.
Scores of Americans traveled to Iraq and Syria after 2011 to enlist in the group and could pose legal challenges if caught as US and allied forces near elimination of the group on the battlefield.
President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... has pledged to be tough on Americans who fight for jihadist groups.
- Foreign fighter dilemma -
But bringing them to trial in US courts could raise difficult issues, including the unresolved question of whether the US military had the legal authority to detain IS fighters.
US, European and other countries are wrestling with how to deal with hundreds of "imported muscle" now held in Iraq and Syria after the self-proclaimed IS caliphate collapsed.
On Monday the Justice Department gave a required 72 hour notice saying they planned to send "John Doe" to a third country, which has agreed to accept him.
Though the country has not been officially identified, multiple court document references point to Saudi Arabia, and lawyers have not disputed media reports naming the country.
The Justice Department lawyers said that sending him to the third country was an issue of maintaining strong relations with a US ally. But they could not discuss, at least publicly, what would happen to him once he was transferred.
The man has not been charged with a crime in Saudi Arabia, and the United States does not have an extradition treaty with the country, which has imprisoned numerous people with alleged ties to radical jihadists.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents the man, asked the court Wednesday to block the transfer, and demanded that he be charged under US law or freed.
"Forcibly rendering him to another country would be an unconscionable violation of his constitutional rights," said ACLU attorney Jonathan Hafetz.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
04/20/2018 00:00 ||
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#2
WTH! This Judge was born in Jamaica..mon. Why are we allowing naturalized citizens to be appointed as Federal Judges. There should be some things restricted to natural born citizens.
#4
According to the Geneva Conventions, illegal combatants (people captured out of uniform), can be given a drumhead courtmartial, and then executed. They can be interrogated and asked more than the name, rank serial number, like legitimate POWs.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
04/20/2018 20:49 Comments ||
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BLUF:
[Free Beacon] In the case of the Boston attack, intelligence reports found the FBI missed several chances to prevent Tamerlan Tsarvnaev and his bother, Dzhokhar, from detonating two pressure-cooker bombs at the Boston Marathon finish line. The reports cited failures by the FBI to share information across federal, state, and local agencies about Tamerlan's suspected terrorism ties in the years leading up to the attack.
The reports revealed that the Russian Federal Security Service alerted the FBI in March 2011, two years prior to the bombing, that Tamerlan subscribed to "radical Islam" and was preparing to travel to Russia to join "unspecified groups." The FBI-JTTF in Boston questioned Tamerlan, but ultimately closed the case after determining he had no links to terrorism. US citizen travels to RU to join "unspecified group" in Chechnya, but there is "no link to terrorism." Yea ok, we've got it.
Tamerlan traveled from New York to Russia later that year, triggering an alert, but he was not considered a high priority among the 100 other names deemed a national security threat traveling that day. When Tamerlan reentered the United States six months later, authorities never detained him because his name was spelled wrong in the federal alert system.
The FBI never shared this information with state and local law enforcement prior to the bombings.
Meanwhile, local authorities were investigating a Sept. 11, 2011, triple murder in Waltham, Mass., in which Tamerlan was a suspect. All three men had their throats slit from ear to ear, their corpses precisely positioned with marijuana sprinkled on top, leading authorities to believe it was connected to a large-scale drug operation. Neighbors told police that Tamerlan might have information on the incident given that he was a close friend of one of the murdered men, Brendan Mess, but authorities never questioned him.
Likewise, none of this information was shared with the FBI prior to the Boston attack. Maltz, who was the special agent in charge of the DEA's Special Operations Division at the time, said if the FBI and Boston JTTF had shared the Russian intelligence on Tamerlan in 2011, his department would have looked more closely into him as a murder suspect, potentially leading to an arrest two years before the bombing took place. Not sharing sources and source information (either witting or non-witting sources) appears to be a common theme with the bureau.
"I'm not saying this would have prevented the bombing, we'll never know that, only God would know that, but what I do know is that we never had a chance," Maltz said.
#1
When Tamerlan reentered the United States six months later, authorities never detained him because his name was spelled wrong in the federal alert system.
#5
Need a FISC warrant for a USCIT. It's much easier this way, and we can use it as leverage.
It had been previously reported that Mr. Tsarnaev’s application might have been held up because of a domestic abuse episode. But the officials said that it was the record of the F.B.I. interview that threw up red flags and halted, at least temporarily, Mr. Tsarnaev’s citizenship application. Federal law enforcement officials reported on Friday that the F.B.I. interviewed Mr. Tsarnaev in January 2011 at the request of the Russian government, which suspected that he had ties to Chechen terrorists.
#7
It seems I recall reports that Russia alerted the FBI to the possible threat of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarvnaev prior to the Boston bombing and the FBI didn't act upon the info?
[IsraelTimes] Thousands of Arab Israelis take part in a "March of Return" commemorating the Nakba ‐ the "catastrophe" of Israel’s founding.
The march, which commemorates Paleostinians who fled their homes in Israel during the War of Independence, is held in the northern town of Atlit, where there used to be an Arab village.
"What happened then was a catastrophe ‐ a humanitarian and national disaster by any measure," says Joint (Arab List) MK Ahmad Tibi, according to the Ynet news site.
"Hundreds of thousands of Paleostinian citizens until today live near the communities from which they were uprooted. What is more natural, humanitarian, and just than returning them to their homes in their abandoned communities, and returning their stolen property to them," he adds.
"The March of Return" has been held annually since 1998 at different Arab villages destroyed in the war, with participants calling for the return of Paleostinian refugees to their former homes.
For Samantha Sally, a vacation was all it took to flip her quiet middle-American world of muscle cars, cotton candy and an Indiana packing company, into the horror of the ritual beatings, serial rape, torture and propaganda videos of ISIS's so-called Caliphate.
A holiday is what her husband, Moussa Elhassani, promised her when she went to Hong Kong in 2014, she says. The couple was planning to move to Morocco to start a new, cheaper life, she says, and needed to go through Hong Kong to transfer money.
Days later, Sally says, she stood on the Ottoman Turkish border with Syria, on the edge of ISIS territory, her husband holding her daughter, Sarah, while she held her son, Matthew, then 7, confronted with an impossible choice: Abandon her daughter to ISIS and save her son, or follow her husband into ISIS's so-called Caliphate. Following him was the only way to protect her daughter, she says.
"To stay there with my son or watch my daughter leave with my husband -- I had to make a decision," Sally, 32, tells CNN in northern Syria.
"Maybe I would never have seen my daughter again ever, and how can I live the rest of my life like that."
Posted by: Skidmark ||
04/20/2018 00:00 ||
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#1
Kardashian starter set. Rantburg Snark of The Day
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/20/2018 11:22 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Ref #1. Do I have a second for Snark of The Day ?
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.
...Self-proclaimed Field Marshal, served in the Libyan army under Muammar Qadaffy, and took part in the coup that brought Qadaffy to power in 1969. He became a prisoner of war in Chad in 1987. While held prisoner, he and his fellow officers formed a group hoping to overthrow Qadaffy. He was released around 1990 in a deal with the United States government and spent nearly two decades in the United States, gaining US citizenship. In 1993, while living in the United States, he was convicted in absentia of crimes against the Jamahiriya and sentenced to death. Haftar held a senior position in the anti-Qadaffy forces in the 2011 Libyan Civil War. In 2014 he was commander of the Libyan Army when the General National Congress (GNC) refused to give up power in accordance with its term of office. Haftar launched a campaign against the GNC and its Islamic fundamentalist allies. His campaign allowed elections to take place to replace the GNC, but then developed into a civil war. Guess you can't win them all...
... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey...
For Samantha Sally, a vacation was all it took to flip her quiet middle-American world of muscle cars, cotton candy and an Indiana packing company, into the horror of the ritual beatings, serial rape, torture and propaganda videos of ISIS's so-called Caliphate.
