Saturday, January 31, 2015

CIA and Mossad killed senior Hezbollah figure in car bombing

    Saturday, January 31, 2015   No comments
On Feb. 12, 2008, Imad Mughniyah, Hezbollah’s international operations chief, walked on a quiet nighttime street in Damascus after dinner at a nearby restaurant. Not far away, a team of CIA spotters in the Syrian capital was tracking his movements.

As Mughniyah approached a parked SUV, a bomb planted in a spare tire on the back of the vehicle exploded, sending a burst of shrapnel across a tight radius. He was killed instantly.

The device was triggered remotely from Tel Aviv by agents with Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence service, who were in communication with the operatives on the ground in Damascus. “The way it was set up, the U.S. could object and call it off, but it could not execute,” said a former U.S. intelligence official.

The United States helped build the bomb, the former official said, and tested it repeatedly at a CIA facility in North Carolina to ensure the potential blast area was contained and would not result in collateral damage.
“We probably blew up 25 bombs to make sure we got it right,” the former official said.

The extraordinarily close cooperation between the U.S. and Israeli intelligence services suggested the importance of the target — a man who over the years had been implicated in some of Hezbollah’s most spectacular terrorist attacks, including those against the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and the Israeli Embassy in Argentina.

The United States has never acknowledged participation in the killing of Mughniyah, which Hezbollah blamed on Israel. Until now, there has been little detail about the joint operation by the CIA and Mossad to kill him, how the car bombing was planned or the exact U.S. role. With the exception of the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden, the mission marked one of the most high-risk covert actions by the United States in recent years.

U.S. involvement in the killing, which was confirmed by five former U.S. intelligence officials, also pushed American legal boundaries.

Friday, January 30, 2015

New Saudi king announces major government shake-up

    Friday, January 30, 2015   No comments
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia's new King Salman on Thursday (Jan 29) further cemented his hold on power, with a sweeping shakeup that saw two sons of the late King Abdullah fired, and the heads of intelligence and other key agencies replaced alongside a cabinet shuffle.

Top officials from the Ports Authority, the National Anti-Corruption Commission and the conservative Islamic kingdom's religious police were among those let go.

The new appointments came a week after Salman acceded to the throne following the death of Abdullah, aged about 90.

Salman also reached out directly to his subjects on Thursday. One of his more than 30 decrees ordered "two months' basic salary to all Saudi government civil and military employees," the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said. Students and pensioners got similar bonuses.

"Dear people: You deserve more and whatever I do will not be able to give you what you deserve," the king said later on his official Twitter account. He asked his citizens to "not forget me in your prayers".

SPA said Salman "issued a royal order today, relieving Prince Khalid bin Bandar bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, Chief of General Intelligence, of his post."

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Ancient Sea Rise Tale Told Accurately for 10,000 Years

    Wednesday, January 28, 2015   No comments
Aboriginal stories of lost islands match up with underwater finds in Australia

Melbourne, the southernmost state capital of the Australian mainland, was established by Europeans a couple hundred years ago at the juncture of a great river and a wind-whipped bay. Port Phillip Bay sprawls over 750 square miles, providing feeding grounds for whales and sheltering coastlines for brine-scented beach towns. But it’s an exceptionally shallow waterway, less than 30 feet in most places. It’s so shallow that 10,000 years ago, when ice sheets and glaciers held far more of the planet’s water than is the case today, most of the bay floor was high and dry and grazed upon by kangaroos.

To most of us, the rush of the oceans that followed the last ice age seems like a prehistoric epoch. But the historic occasion was dutifully recorded—coast to coast—by the original inhabitants of the land Down Under.

Without using written languages, Australian tribes passed memories of life before, and during, post-glacial shoreline inundations through hundreds of generations as high-fidelity oral history. Some tribes can still point to islands that no longer exist—and provide their original names.

That’s the conclusion of linguists and a geographer, who have together identified 18 Aboriginal stories—many of which were transcribed by early settlers before the tribes that told them succumbed to murderous and disease-spreading immigrants from afar—that they say accurately described geographical features that predated the last post-ice age rising of the seas.

Saturday, January 24, 2015

Debating Howard Dean's statement that Paris Terrorists "About as Muslim as I Am"

    Saturday, January 24, 2015   No comments

Debating Howard Dean's statement that Paris Terrorists "About as Muslim as I Am":

HOWARD DEAN: You know, this is a chronic problem. I stopped calling these people Muslim terrorists. They’re about as Muslim as I am. I mean, they have no respect for anybody else’s life, that’s not what the Koran says. Europe has an enormous radical problem. I think ISIS is a cult. Not an Islamic cult. I think it’s a cult.

    BRZEZINSKI: Interesting, yeah. Hmm.

    DEAN: And I think you got to deal with these people. The interesting thing here, is we talked about guns the last time in regarding the United States, regarding how guns get in the hands of the kind of people that kill the two police officers here two weeks ago.


    France has tremendous gun control laws, and yet these people are able to get Kalashnikovs. So, this is really complicated stuff, and I think you have to treat these people as basically mass murderers. But I do not think we should accord them any particular religious respect, because I don’t think, whatever they’re claiming their motivation is, is clearly a twisted, cultish mind.

Watch it:




Howard Dean defended his position even when challenged by Bill Maher, who believes that Islam, not just a specific interpretation of it by a specific cult or sect and unlike other religions, is a inherently violent religion:






Friday, January 23, 2015

Text of the "To the Youth in Europe and North America" issued by ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei Jan. 21, 2015

    Friday, January 23, 2015   No comments
In the name of God, the Beneficent the Merciful

To the Youth in Europe and North America,

The recent events in France and similar ones in some other Western countries have convinced me to directly talk to you about them. I am addressing you, [the youth], not because I overlook your parents, rather it is because the future of your nations and countries will be in your hands; and also I find that the sense of quest for truth is more vigorous and attentive in your hearts.

I don’t address your politicians and statesmen either in this writing because I believe that they have consciously separated the route of politics from the path of righteousness and truth.

I would like to talk to you about Islam, particularly the image that is presented to you as Islam. Many attempts have been made over the past two decades, almost since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, to place this great religion in the seat of a horrifying enemy. The provocation of a feeling of horror and hatred and its utilization has unfortunately a long record in the political history of the West.

Here, I don’t want to deal with the different phobias with which the Western nations have thus far been indoctrinated. A cursory review of recent critical studies of history would bring home to you the fact that the Western governments’ insincere and hypocritical treatment of other nations and cultures has been censured in new historiographies.


The histories of the United States and Europe are ashamed of slavery, embarrassed by the colonial period and chagrined at the oppression of people of color and non-Christians. Your researchers and historians are deeply ashamed of the bloodsheds wrought in the name of religion between the Catholics and Protestants or in the name of nationality and ethnicity during the First and Second World Wars. This approach is admirable.

By mentioning a fraction of this long list, I don’t want to reproach history; rather I would like you to ask your intellectuals as to why the public conscience in the West awakens and comes to its senses after a delay of several decades or centuries. Why should the revision of collective conscience apply to the distant past and not to the current problems? Why is it that attempts are made to prevent public awareness regarding an important issue such as the treatment of Islamic culture and thought?

You know well that humiliation and spreading hatred and illusionary fear of the “other” have been the common base of all those oppressive profiteers. Now, I would like you to ask yourself why the old policy of spreading “phobia” and hatred has targeted Islam and Muslims with an unprecedented intensity. Why does the power structure in the world want Islamic thought to be marginalized and remain latent? What concepts and values in Islam disturb the programs of the super powers and what interests are safeguarded in the shadow of distorting the image of Islam? Hence, my first request is: Study and research the incentives behind this widespread tarnishing of the image of Islam.

My second request is that in reaction to the flood of prejudgments and disinformation campaigns, try to gain a direct and firsthand knowledge of this religion. The right logic requires that you understand the nature and essence of what they are frightening you about and want you to keep away from.

I don’t insist that you accept my reading or any other reading of Islam. What I want to say is: Don’t allow this dynamic and effective reality in today’s world to be introduced to you through resentments and prejudices. Don’t allow them to hypocritically introduce their own recruited terrorists as representatives of Islam.

Receive knowledge of Islam from its primary and original sources. Gain information about Islam through the Qur’an and the life of its great Prophet. I would like to ask you whether you have directly read the Qur’an of the Muslims. Have you studied the teachings of the Prophet of Islam and his humane, ethical doctrines? Have you ever received the message of Islam from any sources other than the media?

Have you ever asked yourself how and on the basis of which values has Islam established the greatest scientific and intellectual civilization of the world and raised the most distinguished scientists and intellectuals throughout several centuries?

I would like you not to allow the derogatory and offensive image-buildings to create an emotional gulf between you and the reality, taking away the possibility of an impartial judgment from you. Today, the communication media have removed the geographical borders. Hence, don’t allow them to besiege you within fabricated and mental borders.

Although no one can individually fill the created gaps, each one of you can construct a bridge of thought and fairness over the gaps to illuminate yourself and your surrounding environment. While this preplanned challenge between Islam and you, the youth, is undesirable, it can raise new questions in your curious and inquiring minds. Attempts to find answers to these questions will provide you with an appropriate opportunity to discover new truths.

Therefore, don’t miss the opportunity to gain proper, correct and unbiased understanding of Islam so that hopefully, due to your sense of responsibility toward the truth, future generations would write the history of this current interaction between Islam and the West with a clearer conscience and lesser resentment.

Seyyed Ali Khamenei
21st Jan. 2015

France has seen almost as many anti-Muslim acts since the Paris attacks earlier this month as in all of 2014

    Friday, January 23, 2015   No comments
France has seen almost as many anti-Muslim acts since the Paris attacks earlier this month as in all of 2014, a French Muslim body says. The figures could be higher as they do not include incidents recorded in Paris.

 There were 128 anti-Muslim actions or threats between 7-20 January in France - not including the densely populated Paris region - compared to 133 in all of last year, including Paris, according to an internal study released on Friday by the French Council of the Muslim Religion.

Police in Paris are yet to release their own figures.

The 128 anti-Muslim incidents are made up of 33 acts against mosques, and 95 threats reported to authorities, the Council said. According to its own figures, the incidents in 2014 represented a drop of 41 percent from 2013.


January 7 was the day brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, who have been linked to al Qaeda, burst into the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine, killing 12. They were themselves killed days later by French security forces following a siege. A third gunman, Amedy Coulibaly, killed a policewoman and four hostages in a Jewish kocher supermarket in Paris, himself also killed later on in a police raid.

In total, the days of attacks left 20 people dead, including the three gunman.


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Thursday, January 22, 2015

Terrorism funding in Saudi Arabia, Gulf states

    Thursday, January 22, 2015   No comments
"Terrorist funding emanating from Saudi Arabia remains a serious concern." So states a cable prepared for the visit of U.S. Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke to the kingdom earlier this year.




It is one of several that have appeared on the WikiLeaks site to indicate that despite some progress, the flow of cash to extremist groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan from individuals and charities in the Gulf has certainly not been halted.


The cable, written by U.S. Ambassador James B Smith, says that the Saudis are "cooperating more actively than at any previous point to respond to terrorist financing concerns raised by the United States, and to investigate and detain financial facilitators of concern."

...

But it says donors in Saudi Arabia "continue to constitute a source of funding to Sunni extremist groups worldwide, especially during the Hajj and Ramadan." And it adds the kingdom remains "almost completely dependent on the CIA to provide analytic support and direction for its counterterrorism operations."

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Israeli source: We meant to target low-ranking guerrillas in Syria, not Iranian general

    Tuesday, January 20, 2015   No comments
An Iranian general killed in an Israeli air strike in Syria was not its intended target and Israel believed it was attacking only low-ranking guerrillas, a senior security source said on Tuesday.

The remarks by the Israeli source, who declined to be identified because Israel has not officially confirmed it carried out the strike, appeared aimed at containing any escalation with Iran or the Lebanese Hezbollah guerrilla group.

...

"We did not expect the outcome in terms of the stature of those killed - certainly not the Iranian general," the source said. "We thought we were hitting an enemy field unit that was on its way to carry out an attack on us at the frontier fence."

"We got the alert, we spotted the vehicle, identified it was an enemy vehicle and took the shot. We saw this as a limited tactical operation."

Monday, January 19, 2015

Escape to Syria of Charlie Hebdo suspect shows Turkey’s role as jihadi highway

    Monday, January 19, 2015   No comments
For the wife of the gunman accused of killing four people at a kosher super market in Paris 10 days ago, the escape from questioning about complicity in the Charlie Hebdo terror attacks was relatively easy.

Once Hayat Boumeddiene, 26, got to Turkey, she followed the path of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other European jihadi volunteers before her – into the self-declared Islamic State.

Aided by smugglers in the Turkish border town of Akcakale, and several companions, she walked through a disused border crossing on Jan. 8 and into the Syrian town of Tal Abyad, which has been an Islamic State stronghold for months.


She would have passed a guard shack on the old road between Alcakale and Tal Abyad, but if Turkish border guards took any notice, they made no effort to stop her, according to a Turkish security official, who spoke anonymously because speaking on the record was not allowed.

By the time French police identified Boumeddiene as one of the suspects in a terrorism onslaught that cost 17 people their lives and that France is calling its equivalent of 9/11, she was beyond their reach. The other three suspects, her husband, Amedy Coulibaly, who is believed to have killed a policewoman in addition to the four at the supermarket, and Said and Cherif Kouachi, blamed for the deaths of 12 at the Charlie Hebdo offices, would die in shootouts with police.

The Algerian-born Boumeddiene is not the first foreigner to cross into Islamic State territory from Akcakale and the surrounding region. But her escape focuses fresh attention on what is a sore point between Turkey and its European neighbors – the ease with which disaffected European youth are able to cross into Islamic State territory from Turkey and join the jihad.

Turkey insists it is taking steps to stop the flow of recruits to the Islamic State. But visits by a McClatchy reporter to Akcakale and three nearby villages found that a foreigner can easily cross into Syria. Smugglers’ fees are a pittance, as little as $30, and daylight crossings are common. Official efforts to discourage crossings to Syria appeared non-existent.

In each village, locals said foreigners cross the border regularly into Syria and offered to assist in crossing or to find a smuggler who would. They also named other villages where illegal crossings are a major business.

“It’s so easy to escape into Syria,” a farmer in a village about 25 miles east of Akcakale said. “You don’t need a smuggler, you can just walk.”


Read the letter the FBI sent MLK to try to convince him to kill himself

    Monday, January 19, 2015   No comments
When the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech before huge crowds on the National Mall in August 1963, the FBI took notice.

"We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro and national security," FBI domestic intelligence chief William Sullivan wrote in a memo two days later. A massive surveillance operation on King was quickly approved, and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover became increasingly fixated on proving that King had Communist ties, and discrediting him generally.

The surveillance failed to show that King was a Communist, but it did result in many tapes of extramarital sexual liaisons by King. So, the next year, Sullivan sent the following unsigned letter to King's home.  An unredacted version of it was only recently unearthed by Yale historian Beverly Gage, and published in the New York Times
in
November:

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Saudi Arabia's history of hypocrisy we choose to ignore

    Thursday, January 15, 2015   No comments
Sir William Hunter was a senior British civil servant and in 1871 published a book which warned of “fanatic swarms” of Sunni Muslims who had “murdered our subjects”, financed by “men of ample fortune”, while a majority of Muslims were being forced to decide “once and for all, whether [they] should play the part of a devoted follower of Islam” or a “peaceable subject”.

Hunter identified a “hate preacher” as the cause of this “terror”, a man inspired on a visit to Arabia by an ascetic Muslim called Abdul Wahab whose violent “Wahabi” followers had formed an alliance with – you guessed it – the House of Saud. Hunter’s 140-year-old volume The Indian Musalmans – given a dusting of internet race hatred, murderous attacks by individual Sunni Muslims, cruel Wahabi-style punishments and all-too familiar proof of second-class citizenship for Muslims in a European-run state – might have been written today.


Even before Hunter’s day, the Wahabis captured the holy cities of Arabia and – Isis-style – massacred their inhabitants. Like Isis, they even overran Syria. Their punishments, and those of their Saudi military supporters, make the public lashing of today’s Saudi blogger Raif Badawi appear a minor misdemeanour. Hypocrisy was a theme of Arabian as well as European history.

In those days, of course, oil had no meaning. The Saudi ruler was dispatched to Constantinople in 1818 to have his head chopped off by the local superpower – the Ottoman Empire – and the European states made no complaint. A young British army captain later surveyed the destroyed Saudi capital of Diriya – close to modern-day Riyadh – with satisfaction. But successive campaigns of Saudi-Wahabi conquest, and then the swift transition of oil from the vile black naphtha, in which Arabian sheep regularly drowned, into the blood vessels of the Western world, meant that the purist Wahabi violence – which included the desecration of mosques, the destruction of ancient Muslim tombs and the murder of “infidels” – was conveniently separated from the House of Saud and ignored by Europeans and Americans alike.

Erased, too, is history; including the fact that Mohamed Ibn Saud, the leader of the Nejd, even married Abdul Wahab’s daughter.

Our disregard of present-day Saudi-Wahabi cruelties and venality might astonish Sir William Hunter; the Wahabi Indian Muslims in his British Empire were led by an insurrectionist prelate called Sayyid Ahmed whose followers regarded him as the next Prophet and whose own pilgrimage to Arabia turned him into a life-long purger of promiscuity. His believers came from Afghanistan as well as India where his power lay in what is now Pakistan. In fact, he was proclaimed “Commander of the Faithful” in Peshawar. His men might have been the Taliban.

French President Francois Hollande: "Muslims are the first victims of fanaticism, fundamentalism and intolerance"

    Thursday, January 15, 2015   No comments
French President Francois Hollande has vowed that his country will protect all religions, saying that Muslims are the main victims of fanaticism.

Speaking at the Arab World Institute, he said Islam was compatible with democracy and thanked Arabs for their solidarity over terrorism in Paris.

There are also funerals taking place for Charlie Hebdo columnist Elsa Cayat and Franck Brinsolaro, a policeman assigned to guard Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier.

Speaking on Thursday morning, Mr Hollande said the French were united in the face of terror.

"French Muslims have the same rights as all other French," he said. "We have the obligation to protect them. "Anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic acts have to be condemned and punished."


Mr Hollande said that radical Islam had fed off contradictions, poverty, inequality and conflict, and that "it is Muslims who are the first victims of fanaticism, fundamentalism and intolerance".


France has deployed thousands of troops and police to boost security in the wake of last week's attacks. There have been retaliatory attacks against Muslim sites around France.

Charlie Hebdo published a new edition on Wednesday, with an image on the cover showing the Prophet Muhammad weeping while holding a sign saying "I am Charlie", and below the headline "All is forgiven".

Mr Hollande declared Charlie Hebdo magazine "reborn" after the magazine sold out in hours.

'Big hug'

But some Muslims were angered by the edition and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu condemned it on Thursday as an "open provocation".

"Freedom of the press does not mean freedom to insult," said Mr Davutoglu, who on Sunday attended a Paris march in memory of the victims of last week's attacks.
 

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Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Illegal arms shipments by the Turkish spy agency to opposition groups in Syria

    Wednesday, January 14, 2015   No comments
Twitter and Facebook as well as many other websites face closure after anonymous accounts published new revelations in a case involving what appear to be illegal arms shipments by Turkish spy agency to opposition groups in Syria, a news report said.

A Twitter account with handle “@LazepeM” published written proceedings related to search and seizure of National Intelligence Organization (MÄ°T) trucks in January of last year based on suspicions they were carrying weapons to Syria. The documents which revealed the trucks were carrying weapons were also published in many other websites including some Facebook accounts.


The Hürriyet Daily claimed on Wednesday that a Turkish court ordered the closure of all websites which published the proceedings, including social media networks Facebook and Twitter. However, the report said, since Twitter has already suspended the account which published the proceedings, the ban may not be applied on Twitter.

Monday, January 12, 2015

Saudi Arabia's 'outdated' brutality 'sparked by fear of online dissent,'

    Monday, January 12, 2015   No comments
Saudi Arabia's "outdated" government is cracking down on online dissent because it fears its power, a Saudi activist has said in the wake of the public flogging of blogger and activist Raif Badawi.

Mr Badawi, 30, a father of three, was convicted of cybercrime and insulting Islam after co-founding the now banned website Free Saudi Liberals. He was arrested in 2012 and sentenced to 1,000 lashes, 10 years' imprisonment and a fine of one million riyals (£175,000). On Friday he received the first 50 lashes in what will be a weekly ritual for the next 20 weeks.


Mr Badawi's wife, Ensaf Haider, currently in Canada, told The Independent on Sunday yesterday: "I never imagined Saudi Arabia would reach this level of cruelty. The kingdom and its rules forced these people to go to the internet and voice their dissent and their objections and then they were prosecuted."

The flogging of Mr Badawi is the latest incident of Saudi Arabia cracking down on high-profile cyber activists, many of whom are now too afraid to speak out in public.

Hala Al-Dosari, a US-based Saudi writer and activist, said the "outdated" government is trying to "deter crimes by inciting terror in people". Saudi Arabia, she added, was afraid of online dissent because it had worked to change the positions of some governments in the region.

"They don't want people to pick up momentum. They don't want people to start questioning religion, the legitimacy of the Saudi ruling family or the distribution of wealth.

"Online activism has raised the awareness of human rights of people." She said it had also "put so many activists and people who are expressing their opinions at risk".

Turkish officials add credence to accusations that Turkey is enabling passage of foreign fighters into Syria: suspect in Paris attacks was in Turkey and crossed into Syria

    Monday, January 12, 2015   No comments
(Reuters) - The suspected female accomplice of Islamist militants behind attacks in Paris was in Turkey five days before the killings and crossed into Syria on Jan. 8, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu was cited as saying on Monday by state-run Anatolian news agency.

French authorities launched a search for 26-year-old Hayat Boumeddiene after French anti-terrorist police killed her partner Amedy Coulibaly in storming a Jewish supermarket where he had taken hostages. They described her as armed and dangerous.

Anatolian, on its website, cited Cavusoglu as saying in an interview she had arrived in Istanbul from Madrid on Jan. 2. Turkey had received no request from Paris to deny her access.

"There is footage (of her) at the airport. Later on, she stayed at a hotel with another person and crossed into Syria on January 8. We can tell that based on telephone records," he said.

Those dates would put Boumeddiene in Turkey before the violence in Paris began, and leaving for Syria while the attackers were still hiding from police.

Coulibaly said he was carrying out the attack in the name of Islamic State, a militant Islamist group that has seized swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria.

Saturday, January 10, 2015

From where does ISIL get its inspiration for cruel treatment of others? Look here: Saudi blogger Badawi 'flogged for Islam insult'

    Saturday, January 10, 2015   No comments
From where does ISIL get its inspiration for cruel treatment of others? Look here: Saudi blogger Badawi 'flogged for Islam insult'

 A Saudi Arabian blogger has been publicly flogged after being convicted of cybercrime and insulting Islam, reports say.
Public beheading and flogging in Saudi Arabia
Raif Badawi, who was sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in jail, was flogged 50 times. The flogging will be carried out weekly, campaigners say.

Mr Badawi, the co-founder of a now banned website called the Liberal Saudi Network, was arrested in 2012.

Rights groups condemned his conviction and the US appealed for clemency.

On Thursday state department spokeswoman Jen Psaki urged the Saudi authorities to "cancel this brutal punishment" and to review his case.

In addition to his sentence, Mr Badawi was ordered to pay a fine of 1 million riyals ($266,000; £175,000).

In 2013 he was cleared of apostasy, which could have carried a death sentence.

Last year Mr Badawi's lawyer was sentenced to 15 years in prison after being found guilty of a range of offences in an anti-terrorism court, the Associated Press news agency reported.
'Act of cruelty'

The flogging took place outside a mosque in the Red Sea city of Jeddah after Friday prayers, witnesses said.

AFP news agency, quoting people at the scene, said Mr Badawi arrived at the mosque in a police car and had the charges read out to him in front of a crowd.

He was then made to stand with his back to onlookers and whipped, though he remained silent, the witnesses said.

The sentence was widely condemned by human rights groups.

"The flogging of Raif Badawi is a vicious act of cruelty which is prohibited under international law," said Said Boumedouha of Amnesty International.

"By ignoring international calls to cancel the flogging Saudi Arabia's authorities have demonstrated an abhorrent disregard for the most basic human rights principles."

Friday, January 09, 2015

Hezbollah chief says terrorists damage Islam more than cartoons

    Friday, January 09, 2015   No comments
Jan 9 (Reuters) - The leader of the Shi'ite Muslim group Hezbollah said on Friday that Islamist terrorists had done more harm to Islam than any cartoon or book, a reference to the attack by suspected Islamist militants on French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said what he called "takfiri terrorist groups" had insulted Islam more than "even those who have attacked the messenger of God through books depicting the Prophet or making films depicting the Prophet or drawing cartoons of the Prophet."


Takfiri is a term for a Muslim who accuses others, including another Muslim, of apostasy. Hezbollah considers members of ultra-hardline Sunni-dominated groups like al Qaeda and Islamic State to be takfiris.

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Thursday, January 08, 2015

Swedish rallies in support of Muslims draw thousands after mosques attacks

    Thursday, January 08, 2015   No comments

Thousands of people have rallied across Sweden expressing solidarity and support for Muslims after three attacks on mosques in just one week, which left five people injured. The participants had the slogan “Do not touch my mosque.”



Journalist estimates put the number of people taking part in the nationwide protest at around 3,000.

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Wednesday, January 07, 2015

Gunmen attack on French magazine, Charlie Hebdo

    Wednesday, January 07, 2015   No comments
Gunmen have shot dead 12 people at the Paris office of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in an apparent militant Islamist attack.

Four of the magazine's well-known cartoonists, including its editor, were among those killed, as well as two police officers.

A major police operation is under way to find three gunmen who fled by car.

President Francois Hollande said there was no doubt it had been a terrorist attack "of exceptional barbarity".


The masked attackers opened fire with assault rifles in the office and exchanged shots with police in the street outside before escaping by car. They later abandoned the car in Rue de Meaux, northern Paris, where they hijacked a second car.

Monday, January 05, 2015

ISIL fighters take aim at the Kingdom that produced them--killing and wounding three Saudi security agents along the Iraqi-Saudi border

    Monday, January 05, 2015   No comments
A suicide bomber killed two Saudi guards Monday on the border with Iraq, where ISIS terrorists have seized a swathe of territory, the interior ministry said, and AFP reports.

The blast in the Arar region was followed by a firefight between the border patrol and the assailants, one of whom was shot dead, a ministry spokesman said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency.

It is reported that one of Saudi border guard patrols was exposed to an armed attack, followed by a suicide belt of explosives attack on the border with Iraq.

“At 4.30 a.m. on Monday one of the border guards in Suef Centre of the new patrols affiliated to Arar's northern border region was under fire from terrorist elements,” The security ministry spokesman said in a statement.

The spokesman added, "it was dealt with the situation as required and the aggressors were trapped and killing while one of the terrorist elements initiated to detonate an explosives belt that he was carrying, which resulted in his death and the death of two security men and wounding a third."

No party has announced so far the responsibility for the incident, but it seems that ISIS terrorist organization carry out similar attacks against the security forces of the police and the military in Iraq and Syria.

Yesterday Iraq border guards repel an ISIS attack on a border station between Iraq and Saudi Arabia and killed two members of the terrorist organization and wounding four others in consecutive clashes.

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