Saudi Arabia's 'outdated' brutality 'sparked by fear of online dissent,'

Saudi Arabia's 'outdated' brutality 'sparked by fear of online dissent,'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Saudi Arabia's "outdated" government is cracking down on online dissent because it fears its power, a Saudi activist has said in the wake of the public flogging of blogger and activist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Hala Al-Dosari, a US-based Saudi writer and activist, said the "outdated" government is trying to "deter crimes by inciting terror in people".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".

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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

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.

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

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."

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Hezbollah chief says terrorists damage Islam more than cartoons

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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Swedish rallies in support of Muslims draw thousands after mosques attacks

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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Gunmen attack on French magazine, Charlie Hebdo

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.

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

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.

Transcript: President Obama's Full NPR Interview

Transcript: President Obama's Full NPR Interview

    Tuesday, December 30, 2014   No comments

NPR's wide-ranging interview with President Obama covers recent executive actions on Cuba and immigration, race relations in the U.S., health care, the midterm elections and extending democracy in the Middle East.

STEVE INSKEEP: Since your party's defeat in the election, you have made two major executive actions — one on immigration, one on Cuba. One of those might have been difficult to do before the election; the other surely would've been difficult to do before the election, which makes me wonder: Is there some way in which that election just passed has liberated you?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I don't think it's been liberating. Keep in mind that all these issues are ones that we've been working on for some time.

It took about a year to arrive at the Cuba policy that was announced yesterday, including extensive negotiations with the Cuban government, meetings with the Vatican, making sure that we had looked at all the policy ramifications. And I was persuaded that ultimately this would be good for the Cuban people and more likely to lead to a loosening up of the restrictions or oppression that exists there.

With respect to immigration reform, obviously I'd been working on that for six years. And the truth ...

But this was the moment when you could do those things?

Yeah. Well, I do — here's what I do think is true: that I have spent six years now in this office. We have dealt with the worst economic and financial crisis since the Great Depression. We have dealt with international turmoil that we haven't seen in a lot of years.

And I said at the beginning of this year that 2014 would be a breakthrough year, and it was a bumpy path.

But at the end of 2014, I could look back and say we are as well-positioned today as we have been in quite some time economically, that American leadership is more needed around the world than ever before — and that is liberating in the sense that a lot of the work that we've done is now beginning to bear fruit. And it gives me an opportunity then to start focusing on some of the other hard challenges that I didn't always have the time or the capacity to get to earlier in my presidency.

Can I think of you as shifting from things you had to do to things you more want to do?

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Over 60% of Tunisians able to vote voted; 56% of them voted for Beji Caid Essebsi, 44% voted for Mohamed Moncef Marzouki

Over 60% of Tunisians able to vote voted; 56% of them voted for Beji Caid Essebsi, 44% voted for Mohamed Moncef Marzouki

    Monday, December 22, 2014   No comments

Over 60% of Tunisians able to vote voted; 56% of them voted for Beji Caid Essebsi, 44% voted for Mohammed Mouncef Marzouki. 

Essebsi, 88, appeared before 2,000 supporters who gathered outside his campaign headquarters in the capital Tunis shouting “Long live Tunisia!” and thanked the voters.

“Tunisia needs all its children. We must work hand in hand,” he said as supporters cheered.

Marzouki dismissed the declaration as unfounded and refused to concede defeat. His camp said the result was too close to call and accused the Essebsi of election “violations”.

It is the first time Tunisians have freely elected their president since independence from France in 1956.

Authorities had urged a big turnout to consolidate democracy following a chaotic four-year transition. Election organisers said turnout was at 59.04%.

Just hours before polling began on Sunday morning, troops guarding ballot papers in the central region of Kairouan came under attack and shot dead one assailant and captured three, the defence ministry said.

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The bodies of more than 230 people believed to have been killed by Islamic State (IS) have been found in a mass grave in eastern Syria

The bodies of more than 230 people believed to have been killed by Islamic State (IS) have been found in a mass grave in eastern Syria

    Wednesday, December 17, 2014   No comments

From archives: ISIL committed similar crimes in Iraq in 2014

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said they were thought to be members of a tribe that fought the jihadist group in Deir al-Zour province in the summer.

The mass grave was discovered after the Sheitat were allowed to return to their homes by IS leaders, it added.

Last month, the UN said it had received reports of a massacre there in August.

Investigators said it appeared to have been perpetrated by IS in a struggle for control of oil resources near the town of Mohassan.

One survivor described seeing "many heads hanging on walls while I and my family escaped", while locals saw several freshly-dug mass graves.

Video published online also indicated that IS fighters had conducted a mass execution of fighting-age Sheitat tribesmen.

In early November, IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi reportedly issued a statement granting members of the tribe permission to return to their homes upon the condition that they did not assemble. They were also told to surrender all weapons and inform on all "apostates" to the group.

All "traitors" would be killed, Baghdadi's statement warned.

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