Saudi Arabia beheads 43 and fusillades 4 in one day including Shia cleric

Saudi Arabia beheads 43 and fusillades 4 in one day including Shia cleric

    Saturday, January 02, 2016   No comments

Saudi Arabia beheads 43

Saudi Arabia executed a prominent Shi'ite Muslim cleric and dozens of al Qaeda members on Saturday, signalling it would not tolerate attacks by either sunni jihadists or minority shi'ites seeking equality, but stirring sectarian anger across the region.

Scores of Shi'ite Muslims marched through the Qatif district of Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province in protest at the execution of cleric Nimr al-Nimra, an eyewitness said. They chanted "down with the Al Saud", the name of the ruling Saudi royal family.

But most of the 47 executed in the kingdom's biggest mass execution for decades were Sunnis convicted of al Qaeda attacks in Saudi Arabia a decade ago. Four, including Nimr, were Shi'ites accused of shooting policemen.

Saudi rulers beheaded 43, shot 4 in one day

The executions took place in 12 cities in Saudi Arabia, four prisons using firing squads and the others beheading. In December, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula threatened to retaliate against Saudi Arabia for any execution of its members.

Riyadh's main regional rival Iran and its Shi'ite allies immediately reacted with vigorous condemnation of the execution of Nimr, and Saudi police raised security in a district where the sect is a majority in case of protests, residents said.

However, the executions seemed mostly aimed at discouraging Saudis from jihadism after bombings and shootings by Sunni militants in Saudi Arabia over the past year killed dozens and Islamic State called on followers there to stage attacks.

Saudi Arabia's ruling Al Saud family has grown increasingly nervous in recent years as turmoil across the Middle East, especially Syria and Iraq, has empowered Sunni jihadist groups that seek to bring it down and given opportunities to Shi'ite Iran to spread its influence.

The simultaneous execution of 47 people - 45 saudis, one Egytian and a man from Chad - was the biggest mass execution for security offences in Saudi Arabia since the 1980 killing of 63 jihadist rebels who seized Mecca's Grand Mosque in 1979. 

Source: http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-saudi-security-idUKKBN0UG03E20160102

Turkey's Erdogan says Hitler's Germany exemplifies effective presidential system

Turkey's Erdogan says Hitler's Germany exemplifies effective presidential system

    Friday, January 01, 2016   No comments

 Asked on his return from a visit to Saudi Arabia late on Thursday whether an executive presidency was possible in Turkey while maintaining the unitary structure of the state, Erdogan said: "There are already examples in the world. You can see it when you look at Hitler's Germany.

"There are later examples in various other countries," he told reporters, according to a recording broadcast by the Dogan news agency.

Erdogan wants to change the Turkish constitution to turn the ceremonial role of president into that of a chief executive, a Turkish version of the system in the United States, France or Russia.

...

The ruling AK Party, founded by Erdogan, has put a new constitution at the heart of its agenda after winning back a majority in a November parliamentary election. source

U.S. Should Stop Supporting Likely Saudi War Crimes

U.S. Should Stop Supporting Likely Saudi War Crimes

    Friday, January 01, 2016   No comments

Crime & punishment in Saudi Arabia

By Ivan Eland

The United Nations top official on human rights recently told the U.N. Security Council that the U.S.-supported, Saudi Arabian-led coalition of Sunni nations fighting Shi’ite Houthi rebels in Yemen bore a disproportionate responsibility for attacks on civilians. Since the civil war in Yemen began in March 2015, more than 2,700 civilians have been killed and dozens of hospitals and schools have been attacked, leading the United Nations to warn of violations of international law.

The problem is that the United States is supporting the Saudi-led coalition’s air strikes by providing intelligence for targeting and also by refueling coalition’s war planes, thus extending the range of their bombing. Domestically, Saudi Arabia has a horrendous record on human rights that it is exporting to Yemen via bombing civilians there. The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein exacerbated the Sunni-Shi’ite division throughout the Islamic world, and the war in Yemen is actually a joust for influence in the Persian Gulf between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shi’ite Iran, which are bitter regional rivals. Saudi Arabia does have substantial interests at stake in Yemen, which borders the autocratic kingdom, but the United States does not and should cease providing weapons and the aforementioned support, which is tainting the U.S. with support for a country that very well may be committing war crimes.

Yemen is a small, poor, and insignificant (from the perspective of U.S. vital interests) country just South of Saudi Arabia. It doesn’t even produce much oil; but of course Saudi Arabia does—and that’s why the Saudis are getting so much U.S. support, despite Saudi Arabia’s despicable foreign and domestic policies. The U.S. government ousts dictators in Iraq and Libya and loudly criticizes Iran’s bad human rights policies; in contrast, the United States mutes its criticism of Saudi Arabia’s atrocious human rights record, sweeps under the under the rug that the 9/11 attackers were mostly Saudi nationals, and ignores that Saudi Arabia is the biggest exporter of militant Sunni Islamism by its support for radical schools around the Islamic world. Why does the world’s only superpower tolerate a major ally supporting potential U.S. enemies (the U.S. has the same toleration for Pakistan doing a similar thing)?

read more >>

State Department: US Has Concerns About Jaish al-Islam, but...

State Department: US Has Concerns About Jaish al-Islam, but...

    Thursday, December 31, 2015   No comments

ISR: comment: U.S. administration is willing to work with a rebel group that is determined to "purge Syria from Alawites, Shia, Asians..." and impose the Ummayyad system, a genocidal regime from the 8th century, but not Assad's government that is fighting such a group. No comment!
__________
 
The U.S. has “significant concerns” about a Syrian rebel group whose leader was killed in a Christmas Day airstrike but was troubled by the decision to target someone who had committed himself to efforts to negotiate an end to the civil war, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Tuesday.

 The U.S. has “significant concerns” about a Syrian rebel group whose leader was killed in a Christmas Day airstrike but was troubled by the decision to target someone who had committed himself to efforts to negotiate an end to the civil war, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Tuesday.

Toner told a daily press briefing the death of Zahran Alloush, the leader of the Islamist rebel group Jaish al-Islam, complicates efforts to bring rebel and regime representatives to the negotiating table. Under an initiative of the so-called International Syria Support Group (ISSG), talks are scheduled to begin in Geneva on January 25.


It remains unclear whether the Assad regime or its Russian ally was responsible for the airstrike that killed Alloush in the eastern suburbs of Damascus, but Toner said Secretary of State John Kerry had brought up the matter with his Russian counterpart.

He said Kerry in a phone conversation with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov “highlighted our concern that the killing of Jaish al-Islam leader Zahran Alloush – who, as I said, was a leader of a group that supported a political process to end the conflict – complicates our efforts to bring about a meaningful political negotiated settlement as well as a nationwide ceasefire.”

Jaish al-Islam took part in a recent meeting of opposition groups hosted by the Saudi government in Riyadh – an initiative backed by the Obama administration in preparation for the talks in Geneva.



sources: CNSnews & Reuters

Seymour Hersh report on Syria: White House knew US was arming Islamic State

Seymour Hersh report on Syria: White House knew US was arming Islamic State

    Monday, December 28, 2015   No comments

 Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh reports that the administration of President Barack Obama, in particular the CIA, has knowingly armed militant Islamists in Syria, including the Islamic State.

"Barack Obama's repeated insistence that Bashar al-Assad must leave office -- and that there are 'moderate' rebel groups in Syria capable of defeating him -- has in recent years provoked quiet dissent, and even overt opposition, among some of the most senior officers on the Pentagon's Joint Staff," Hersh writes in the London Review of Books. "Their criticism has focused on what they see as the administration's fixation on Assad's primary ally, Vladimir Putin. In their view, Obama is captive to Cold War thinking about Russia and China, and hasn't adjusted his stance on Syria to the fact both countries share Washington's anxiety about the spread of terrorism in and beyond Syria; like Washington, they believe that Islamic State must be stopped."

Hersh writes that a highly classified 2013 Defense Intelligence Agency/Joint Chiefs of Staff report on Syria forecast that the fall of the Assad regime would lead to "chaos" and possibly to Islamist extremists taking over Syria.

Hersh reports that Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the DIA between 2012 and 2014, told him that his agency sent a "constant stream" of warnings to the "civilian leadership" about the dire consequences of ousting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

source

Bizarre news: Erdoğan talks man out of suicide on Bosporus bridge

Bizarre news: Erdoğan talks man out of suicide on Bosporus bridge

    Friday, December 25, 2015   No comments

[This is just a must see to believe, and the thing is: It was all coincidences: the president on his iPhone being driven to work, knew that the man is going to jump, and with the media and camera people present to take shots from every angle... This guy can do it all!]

 President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's convoy coincidentally bumped into a man who was about to attempt suicide on the Bosporus bridge in İstanbul on Friday, and after talking to the man, who wanted to jump off the bridge, the president persuaded him not to kill himself.

Footage from the private Doğan news agency shows the man, whom presidential sources said was from the southeastern province of Siirt and was having problems with his wife, talking to Erdoğan, who remained seated in the back seat of his car.

The man kissed Erdoğan's hand and left the area after talking to himfor a while. The president was seen holding his mobile phone to his ear during the conversation with him.

source

Rights group: Nigerian soldiers kill hundreds of Shiites

Rights group: Nigerian soldiers kill hundreds of Shiites

    Thursday, December 24, 2015   No comments

Hundreds of Shiite Muslims were killed by Nigerian soldiers and buried in mass graves in an "unjustified" attack earlier this month, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.

Nigerian soldiers killed "at least 300" members of the radical Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) earlier in December when they fired "without any provocation," said the New York-based rights watchdog in a statement.

Witnesses said that the soldiers of Africa's biggest economy disposed of hundreds of bodies by throwing them in mass graves, making it difficult to establish an accurate death toll, according to HRW.

The violence erupted on December 12 when members of the minority Shiite group erected a makeshift road block during a religious procession, blocking the path of a Nigerian army chief.

"It is almost impossible to see how a roadblock by angry young men could justify the killings of hundreds of people," said Daniel Bekele, Africa director at HRW.

"At best it was a brutal overreaction and at worst it was a planned attack on the minority Shiite group."

The Nigerian army, which has not released an official death toll, denied HRW's charges.

"The allegations are not true," said Nigerian army spokesman Sani Usman to AFP.

"It is therefore presumptuous and clearly out of context for anyone to make such unsubstantiated allegations or comments," said Usman.

"The incident between the Nigerian army and the Islamic Movement of Nigeria has been reported to the appropriate agencies who are investigating the issue."

Last week, the Nigerian government set up a judicial commission to investigate the deaths.

The Nigerian army had accused the Iran-backed sect of "a deliberate attempt to assassinate" army chief of staff Tukur Buratai, releasing footage of the crowd hurling stones at his military convoy.

- Fears of new threat -

The allegations come amid fears that the violent clashes between the Shiite group and Nigeria's army will unleash a new Islamic threat in a country still battling Boko Haram militants.

IMN leader Ibrahim Zakzaky, the charismatic founder of the group, was seriously wounded and remains in police custody, while his deputy was killed in the army crack down.

source

UN: Saudi-led coalition behind most attacks on civilians in Yemen

UN: Saudi-led coalition behind most attacks on civilians in Yemen

    Tuesday, December 22, 2015   No comments

A disproportionate number of attacks on civilians in Yemen's conflict appear to be carried out by the Saudi-led and U.S.-supported coalition, the United Nations human rights chief told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday. The gathering was meant to press all sides to end a war that has shattered the Arab world's poorest country.

Zeid Raad al-Hussein spoke as U.N.-sponsored peace talks on Yemen are scheduled to reconvene Jan. 14 after collapsing Sunday in Switzerland. Fighting continues despite a cease-fire agreement in place until at least Dec. 28.

The U.N. says the conflict has killed at least 5,884 people since March, when airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition began.


Yemen's internationally recognized government and the Saudi-led coalition are fighting Iran-supported Houthi rebels and supporters of the country's longtime former president. The conflict is seen as a deadly reflection of the struggle between enemies Saudi Arabia and Iran for influence in the region.

source

Returnee Says IS Recruiting for Terror Attacks in Germany

Returnee Says IS Recruiting for Terror Attacks in Germany

    Tuesday, December 22, 2015   No comments

By Hubert Gude and Wolf Wiedmann-Schmidt

Islamist extremist Harry S. wasn't in Syria for long. But during his stay there, he claims, Islamic State leaders repeatedly tried to recruit him to commit terror attacks in Germany. Security officials believe he could be telling the truth.

It was an early summer morning in the Syrian desert, with not a cloud in the sky, when Mohamed Mahmoud asked those gathered around him: "Here are some prisoners. Which of you wants to waste them?"

Not long before, Islamic State (IS) had taken the city of Palmyra, and now jihadists from Germany and Austria were to participate in the executions of some of the prisoners taken in the operation. They drove to the site of the executions in Toyota pick-ups, bringing along an IS camera team in order to document the atrocity in the city of antique ruins. Even then, Mohamed Mahmoud was known to German security officials for his repeated propaganda-video calls to join the jihad. On that early summer day in Palmyra, though, he didn't just incite others. He grabbed a Kalashnikov himself and began firing. That day, Mahmoud and his group of executioners are thought to have killed six or seven prisoners.

The story comes from someone who was in Palmyra on that day: Harry S., a 27-year-old from Bremen. "I saw it all," he says.

Harry S. returned to Germany from Syria and is now in investigative custody. He has told security officials everything about the brief time he spent with Islamic State and has also demonstrated his readiness to deliver extensive testimony to German public prosecutors. He stands accused of membership in a terrorist group. His lawyer Udo Würtz declined to offer a detailed response when contacted, but said of his client: "He wants to come clean."

German investigators are extremely interested in the testimony of the apparently repentant returnee, even as they are likely unsettled by what he has to say.

A Vital Witness

Harry S., after all, is more than just a witness to firing squads and decapitations. He also says that on several occasions, IS members tried to recruit volunteers for terrorist attacks in Germany. In the spring, just after he first arrived in Syria, he says that he and another Islamist from Bremen were asked if they could imagine perpetrating attacks in Germany. Later, when he was staying not far from Raqqa, the self-proclaimed Islamic State capital city, masked men drove up in a jeep. They too asked him if he was interested in bringing the jihad to his homeland. Harry S. says he told them that he wasn't prepared to do so.

Harry S. was only in IS controlled territory for three months. Yet he might nevertheless become a vital witness for German security officials. Since the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, fear of terrorism has risen across Europe, including in Germany, and security has been stepped up in train stations and airports. And the testimony from the Bremen returnee would seem to indicate that the fear is justified. Harry S. says that, during his time in the Syrian warzone, he frequently heard people talking about attacks in the West and says that pretty much every European jihadist was approached with the same questions he had been asked. "They want something that happens everywhere at the same time," Harry S. says.

Harry S.'s path from the Bremen quarter of Osterholz-Tenever to the jihadists of Islamic State was not particularly remarkable. His radicalization was similar to many other young, directionless men from European suburbs, from the Molenbeek district of Brussels to Lohberg in Dinslaken. In Tenever, some of the residential towers are up to 20 stories tall.

The son of parents from Ghana, Harry S. grew up in "difficult conditions," according to a court file. His father left the family just as he was entering puberty. Even though Harry S. initially only managed to graduate from a lower tier high school in Germany, he dreamed of returning to his parents' homeland and working as a construction engineer.

There was even a brief moment when it looked as though he was going to get control over his life. But then, in early 2010, he and some friends robbed a supermarket, getting away with €23,500, and flew to the island of Gran Canaria for a vacation. It wasn't long before the authorities were on to them and Harry S. was sentenced to two years behind bars for aggravated theft.

source

About 60% of fighters in rebel factions in Syria identified with a religious and political ideology similar to that of ISIS

About 60% of fighters in rebel factions in Syria identified with a religious and political ideology similar to that of ISIS

    Monday, December 21, 2015   No comments

About 60% of fighters in rebel factions in Syria identified with a religious and political ideology similar to that of the terror group, it added.

The thinktank, run by the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, said: “The west risks making a strategic failure by focusing only on IS. Defeating it militarily will not end global jihadism. We cannot bomb an ideology, but our war is ideological.”

The report comes after the United Nations agreed a resolution endorsing the start of “urgent” formal negotiations between Assad’s regime and moderate opposition groups early next month.

The Observer view on possible British military intervention in Libya

David Cameron’s proposed bombing of Isis is panic, not policy

Read more

But the centre warned the radical groups, including al-Qaida affiliate al-Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham, could benefit if they went “unchallenged”.

It added: “If Isis is defeated, there are at least 65,000 fighters belonging to other Salafi-jihadi groups ready to take its place.

“The greatest danger to the international community are the groups that share the ideology of Isis, but are being ignored in the battle to defeat the group.

“While military efforts against Isis are necessary, policy makers must recognise that its defeat will not end the threat of Salafi-jihadism unless it is accompanied by an intellectual and theological defeat of the pernicious ideology that drives it.”

The Centre on Religion and Geopolitic is a think tank that is part of the “Tony Blair Faith Foundation"

source