Category Archives: News

Turkish court rules to block web pages featuring Charlie Hebdo cover

Today’s Zaman: The Diyarbakır 2nd Criminal Court of Peace blocked access to the web pages of some online news portals for republishing the cover of the magazine’s new issue, which portrays the Prophet Muhammad.

A lawyer from the Diyarbakır Bar Association, Ercan Ezgin, filed a petition on Tuesday with the Diyarbakır 2nd Criminal Court of Peace, requesting a media ban to be issued against the websites that republished the new Charlie Hebdo cover. Considering the petition of the lawyer, the court decided to block access to the web pages.

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Russia warns media: You’ll be blacklisted for publishing Charlie Hebdo cartoons

Mashable: Russia’s notoriously rigid government media watchdog has warned newspapers and news sites around the country: Should you publish Charlie Hebdo cartoons, prepare to be blacklisted.

The warning was issued via letter to the offices of several media outlets, including editorial department of a local Kamchatka editor, who published the text of it on Facebook.

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‘Welcome to Stalingrad. Welcome to Kobane’: Inside the Syrian town under siege by ISIS

Vice News: “Welcome to Stalingrad. Welcome to Kobane,” said a Kurdish militant, starting his car. A mad dash across the closed Turkish border had just brought us into the majority Kurdish Syrian town, then nearing its 100th day of fighting off a brutal siege by the Islamic State. The jihadists have blitzed it since mid-September from the south, west, and east after taking over all the nearby towns, sending wave after wave of fighters for more than three months.

The Kurdish militia defending the city, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), have made progress in pushing back the Islamic State back in recent weeks, but it was still necessary for the YPG fighter driving to keep the headlights off so as not to draw attention to the vehicle. All across the city, hardened YPG fighters are still on guard, defending against new Islamic State attacks daily and pushing forward, block by block and house by house.

When VICE News arrived in late December, the YPG had effectively pushed the Islamic State outside the city center. One YPG commander said they controlled 75 percent of the city, but that appeared an over-estimation, and a sizeable portion is changing hands regularly. Fierce street battles have mostly given way to mortar and rocket attacks, as well as constant sniper fights.

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Afghan officials: ISIS operating in volatile southern Helmand province

Associated Press: Afghan officials confirmed for the first time Monday that the extremist Islamic State group is active in the south, recruiting fighters, flying black flags and, according to some sources, even battling Taliban militants.

The sources, including an Afghan general and a provincial governor, said a man identified as Mullah Abdul Rauf was actively recruiting fighters for the group, which controls large parts of Syria and Iraq.

Gen. Mahmood Khan, the deputy commander of the army’s 215 Corps, said that within the past week residents of a number of districts in the southern Helmand province have said Rauf’s representatives are fanning out to recruit people.

“A number of tribal leaders, jihadi commanders and some ulema (religious council members) and other people have contacted me to tell me that Mullah Rauf had contacted them and invited them to join him,” Khan said.

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NYT reporter prevails in three-year fight over CIA leak

Bloomberg: New York Times reporter James Risen prevailed over the U.S. government in its three-year effort to force him to testify at trial about a confidential source as part of a CIA leak prosecution.

The request by prosecutors that Risen be dropped as a witness capped a longer battle to avoid revealing his sources. The fight reached the U.S. Supreme Court, focusing attention on the Obama administration’s aggressive pursuit of leaks. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder reacted to the controversy by issuing guidelines last year restricting the use of subpoenas and search warrants for journalists.

Risen told a judge Jan. 5 he wouldn’t answer questions that could help identify the sources for his report on a bungled Central Intelligence Agency program to give Iran false nuclear weapon development data.

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Nigeria’s president says nothing about latest Boko Haram massacre

Foreign Policy: With the world’s gaze focused on Paris last week, militants from Boko Haram destroyed the town of Baga and several neighboring villages in northern Nigeria, killing up to 2,000 people and displacing thousands more. On Saturday, at least another 16 people were killed when extremists strapped a bomb to a girl who may have been as young as 10 and then detonated it in a crowded marketplace.

You’d expect Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan to condemn the carnage inside his country, particularly after he called last week’s massacre at a French satirical newspaper a “dastardly terrorist attack.” But you’d be wrong: Jonathan has yet to acknowledge that any of the Boko Haram attacks even took place.

On Monday, a spokesman for the Nigerian defense ministry said the death toll from the Baga massacre had been “exaggerated” and said the government’s own count put the tally at 150. Other groups are working toward a solid tally, but the Nigerian government has a long history of underestimating and downplaying the prevalence of Boko Haram.

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Both brothers behind Paris attack said to have had weapons training in Yemen

Reuters reports: Both brothers who carried out the attack against satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo traveled to Yemen via Oman in 2011 and had weapons training in the deserts of Marib, where al Qaeda has a presence, two senior Yemeni sources said on Sunday.

This is the first confirmation by Yemeni officials that both Cherif and Said Kouachi, who carried out one of the bloodiest Islamist attacks on the West in years, had visited Yemen where al Qaeda’s deadliest franchise, AQAP, is based. U.S., European and Yemeni sources had previously confirmed a visit by Said Kouachi.

The Paris attack puts a fresh spotlight on the AQAP branch which has recently focused on fighting enemies at home such as government forces and Shi’ite rebels but still aims to carry out attacks abroad.

A concerted government campaign last year and repeated U.S. drone strikes on AQAP figures had also created a belief that it lacked the capability to launch any major attacks abroad. Al Qaeda-linked militants have managed however, to target Westerners, including a Frenchman, in Yemen in the past year.

“These two brothers arrived in Oman on July 25, 2011, and from Oman they were smuggled into Yemen where they stayed for two weeks,” a senior Yemeni security official, who declined to be named, said.

“They met (al Qaeda preacher) Anwar al-Awlaki and then they were trained for three days in the deserts of Marib on how to fire a gun. They returned to Oman and they left Oman on Aug. 15, 2011 to go back to France.”

A senior Yemeni intelligence source confirmed the brothers had entered Yemen via Oman in 2011, citing the ease with which they entered while the security forces were focused on the Arab Spring protests that were convulsing the country at the time.

The source also confirmed the brothers had met Awlaki “and trained in Wadi Abida” – which is between Marib and Shabwa provinces where Awlaki was known to move freely. [Continue reading…]

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Netanyahu greeted by French Jews who seem to have no intention of fleeing to Israel

French President Francois Hollande requested Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to attend yesterday’s march in Paris:

Hollande wanted the event to focus on demonstrating solidarity with France, and to avoid anything liable to divert attention to other controversial issues, like Jewish-Muslim relations or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Audibert said that Hollande hoped that Netanyahu would understand the difficulties his arrival might pose and would announce that he would not be attending.

The source noted that one of the French concerns – not conveyed to representatives of the Israeli government – was that Netanyahu would take advantage of the event for campaign purposes and make speeches, especially about the Jews of France. Such statements, the Elysee Palace feared, would hurt the demonstration of solidarity the French government was trying to promote as part of dealing with the terror attacks.

Netanyahu came anyway and one of his first challenges was to elbow his way to the front:

As Lisa Goldman writes:

The day of bad behavior was just getting started. That evening, after a meeting with Jewish community leaders (who later said they wished Netanyahu would stop telling the Jews of France that they should all move to Israel), Netanyahu gave a speech at Paris’s main synagogue. The crowd greeted him with enthusiastic cheers and listened warmly as he told them that their true home was in Israel, which was waiting with open arms to embrace them.

But in a photograph of the capacity crowd in the synagogue sanctuary tweeted by foreign ministry spokesperson Ofir Gindelman, one can see only French flags, with not a single Israeli flag visible. This is a remarkable contrast with U.S. synagogues, where the pulpit is usually decorated with American and Israeli flags. But the piece de resistance came immediately after Netanyahu had finished delivering his speech, and had already turned his back on the crowd to leave. Before he could step down from the bimah, one of the Jewish leaders grabbed a microphone and launched into a spontaneous rendition of the French national anthem. Not Hatikvah, but the Marseillaise. Within seconds the entire audience had joined in, singing loudly and emotionally.

Gal Beckerman says:

Whether you think Israel has brought this upon itself or that it is being judged by a grossly unfair double standard, when the Israeli prime minister is asked not to attend a march celebrating solidarity with Western values because his presence would be an irritant, there’s a problem.

As far as double standards go, which other state is there that can send its prime minister to visit a close ally where he then encourages some of its citizens to flee from their own country? To view that kind of behavior as an irritation seems like quite an understatement.

By the time Netanyahu got back to Israel he was probably wishing he’d stayed home. Haaretz reported:

Netanyahu’s biggest humiliation was a video that has since gone viral, in which he is seen waiting for a bus to take him to the rally, after missing the bus that ferried other world leaders to the march.

The footage, captured by a French TV station, is remarkable: The prime minister of Israel looks nervous, dejected, beaten down, surrounded by his security detail yet still standing in the middle of the street, looking exposed to danger in a way world leaders should never be. Netanyahu appears furious, annoyed, confused, trying to busy himself with talking on his phone or fixing his hair, constantly looking over his shoulder to check whether his bodyguards are still there. Even the French news anchors had to sympathize with his distress.

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Obama gives speech on cybersecurity… @CENTCOM gets hacked

The Guardian reports: Barack Obama on Monday unveiled a slew of initiatives to improve Americans’ data security.

In a speech at the Federal Trade Commission, the president outlined proposals aimed at improving student data protection and protecting Americans’ financial health. They will, however, require approval from the Republican-majority Congress, which has already received three veto threats from the White House in less than a week in session.

“As we’ve all been reminded over the past year, including the hack of Sony, this extraordinary interconnection creates enormous opportunities but also creates enormous vulnerabilities for us as a nation,” Obama said.

Wired reports: Twitter and YouTube accounts belonging to the military’s US Central Command were hacked on Monday. Hackers supportive of the terrorist group Islamic State, also known as ISIS, took credit and issued a warning to the US military.

“AMERICAN SOLDIERS, WE ARE COMING, WATCH YOUR BACK. ISIS,” the hackers tweeted through the account for the US Central Command, which is the military command for the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia. The tweet included a link to a statement that read in part:

“While the US and its satellites kill our brothers in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan we broke into your networks and personal devices and know everything about you,” it read. “You’ll see no mercy infidels. ISIS is already here, we are in your PCs, in each military base. With Allah’s permission we are in CENTCOM now. We won’t stop! We know everything about you, your wives and children. U.S. soldiers! We’re watching you!”

The group also replaced the Twitter profile image with an image of a person wearing a black and white keffiyeh, and the text CyberCaliphate and “i love you isis.”

Forty minutes after the first hacked tweet, Twitter suspended the account.

According to news reports, the hackers also posted images of spreadsheets that purported to contain the home addresses and other contact information for retired US Army generals and other images purporting to be US military maps and plans. The Pentagon appeared to confirm the authenticity of the information, telling reporters that the exposed information was not classified and that the images came not from the government but from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [Continue reading…]

The Washington Post adds: It is not clear whether the hackers are actually with the Islamic State, sympathizers with the militants, or simply pulling a prank on the Pentagon. But J.M. Berger, an analyst and non-resident fellow with the Brookings Institution, said there is reason to believe it could be someone affiliated directly with the Islamic State.

“ISIS has a team of hackers who are very deeply involved in ISIS the organization,” said Berger, author of the forthcoming book “ISIS: The State of Terror.”

“They have been practicing and recruiting for a while, and this has been going on for months and months,” Berger said.

But analysts added that just because the Islamic State hacked two social media accounts, it does not mean they threatened classified computer networks. Other hacker organizations, like the Syrian Electronic Army, have seized control of websites, and a group using the same “CyberCaliphate” name and photo seen in the hack against Centcom on Monday hacked the Twitter accounts of the Albuquerque Journal in New Mexico and the WBOC TV station in Salisbury, Md., last week.

“Let’s remember this is a social media account,” said Peter Singer, a strategist and analyst with the New American Foundation in Washington, of the attacks on Monday. “This is not a military command and control network. This is not a network that moves classified or even non-classified internal information back and forth. Essentially what they did is for several minutes take control of the megaphone.”

But Singer said the incident does amount to a public relations victory for the Islamic State, even if they were not directly involved. Embarrassing the U.S. government “is a feather in their cap in terms of pulling off something that other groups have not been able to do, no matter how silly it is at the end of the day.”

Whoever hacked the @CENTCOM account, there’s reason to doubt they are closely tied to ISIS — even though ISIS and its supporters will view this as a propaganda victory and make hyperbolic claims like “the landscape of jihad has changed.”

It turns out that the hackers posted pornographic photos:

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PEGIDA marchers in Dresden defy Germany politicians

BBC News reports: Thousands of protesters have gathered in Dresden for an anti-Islamisation rally called in the wake of the Paris terror attacks.

It came despite calls from senior German politicians for marchers to stay at home.

Justice Minister Heiko Maas had appealed for people not to attend the Pegida organisation’s rally.

And Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she will attend a protest in Berlin by Muslim organisations on Tuesday.

Mr Maas was one of several leading politicians to urge the Pegida march organisers not to “misuse” the deadly attacks on Charlie Hebdo magazine and a Jewish supermarket.

However the rally went ahead despite the calls for it to be cancelled.

Der Spiegel reports on the origin of the the anti-Islam movement: The proprietors of the Zentralgasthof, a concert and variety show venue in the town of Weinböhla in the Elbe River valley near Dresden, know what people of the region like. “Folk hits,” are part of their program as is a Dresden-based cabaret artist known for his imitations of Erich Honecker, the former leader of communist East Germany.

On a Friday evening last November, the stage was turned over to Thilo Sarrazin, the bestselling anti-Muslim author. Outside the entrance, some 50, mostly young demonstrators were gathered. They called Sarrazin a “misanthrope and a blusterer”; one poster read: “Those who believe what Sarrazin says also believe the world is flat.” But inside, there were 10 times as many people, cheering the author on as an iconoclastic thinker who has the courage to say what everyone feels. The audience was full of office workers, small businessmen and tradespeople. Normal folks.

Also in the audience were Siegfried Däbritz and Thomas Tallacker. They had both read Sarrazin’s wildly popular book “Deutschland Schafft Sich Ab” — or “Germany Is Doing Away With Itself” — about the supposed dangers of immigration. But they were no longer satisfied with simply reading about the issues addressed in the book. Late last autumn, Däbritz, a security guard, and Tallacker, an interior designer, began marching at the front of regular demonstrations held by the still largely unknown group calling itself Pegida, an acronym for “Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West.”

The two men are among Pegida’s foremost organizers: With eight others, they form the anti-Islam movement’s core and they regularly meet to talk about the group’s agenda and prepare the weekly marches, held every Monday evening. They also maintain contact with other protest groups across the country. Shortly before Christmas, they registered Pegida as an association. [Continue reading…]

BBC News reported on last month’s record turnout PEGIDA rally in Dresden:

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Charlie Hebdo: Why not mock Al Qaeda and ISIS?

IBT reports: The next issue of Charlie Hebdo will feature cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammed in the first copy of the satirical magazine to be published after the massacre of its cartoonists and other staff by terrorists enraged by previous cartoons of Islam’s most sacred figure.

Lawyers announced the typically combative move as they prepared a bumper issue of one million copies which will hit the news stands on Wednesday (14 January), exactly one week after gunmen claiming to be members of al-Qaeda stormed Charlie Hebdo’s Paris offices, killing 12 people.

“We will not give in to anything,” Charlie Hebdo’s lawyer, Richard Malka, told Le Figaro. “The spirit of ‘Je suis Charlie [I am Charlie] also means the right to blasphemy”.

I understand that the magazine refuses to cower in the face of the most extreme form of intimidation, but satire is a precision weapon. It won’t have the right effect if it’s aimed at the wrong target.

Last week, no one in Paris got killed by the Prophet Mohammed. France is not under attack from Islam.

The killers were nihilistic, egotistical, young hotheads who by their own declarations acted in the name of Al Qaeda and ISIS and whose actions were applauded by the supporters of these two groups.

Satirists short on ideas for skewering those who deserve to be mocked, only need to turn to social media where an endless supply of often funny and often tasteless parody can be found from the likes of @CaliphIbrahimAR and @ISIS_Med.

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America snubs historic Paris rally

The Daily Mail reports: President Obama was missing in action today when world leaders linked arms to lead an anti-terrorism march of more than a million people in Paris.

While the president’s a busy man, his absence at the show of international solidarity was strange considering his schedule was wide open today.

Vice President Joe Biden often fills in for the president at events like this, but he was no where to be seen either, despite his similarly empty schedule.

In fact, the only recognizable Obama official in the city was Attorney General Eric Holder, who attended a terrorism summit with world leaders on Sunday – but skipped the rally.

CNN’s Jake Tapper said on air: “I’m a little disappointed personally, this is me speaking personally, not as a representative of CNN, as an American that there isn’t more of a display of unity here. Because this is one of the most incredible events I have ever attended and the positivity that these people of France are embracing. This is not a rally — even though there was an ugly racist element in this society, as there is in every society — this is not a rally that is embracing jingoism, or anger, or any sort of hatred. This is a rally that is expressing brotherhood and sisterhood and it is a beautiful thing to behold.”

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Muslim worker saved kosher store hostages

RFI reports: A Muslim employee saved the lives of hostages at the Paris kosher supermarket taken over by armed Islamist Amedy Coulibaly on Friday. His mother joined the family of slain police officer Ahmed Merabet in an appeal against Islamophobia and anti-Semitism in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks.

Between 15 and 20 hostages held in the Hyper Cacher supermarket on Friday owe their lives to one man: Lassana Bathily.

The 24-year-old Malian born grocery store employee was working when the assailant Amedy Coulibaly stormed in and he quickly took everyone downstairs to the cold store. [Continue reading…]

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Charlie Hebdo shooting: Hamyd Mourad ‘in shock’ after wrongly linked to attack on newspaper

AFP reports: Hamyd Mourad describes himself as a normal 18-year-old who lives with his parents, but on the day France was gripped by the Charlie Hebdo massacre, he became known as “the third suspect” – even though he was in class at the time of the shooting.

The brother-in-law of one of the two gunmen turned himself in to police on Wednesday, horrified and baffled to hear his name circulating in the news and on social media, and he was released without charge on Friday evening, relieved but badly shaken.

“I was stunned, completely overwhelmed by the events but the police officers were very correct with me,” the visibly tired high school student told AFP in the presence of his lawyer Marie Calleghaer and several family members.

Numerous witnesses verified he was in school when brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi gunned down 12 people at the Paris office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, kicking off three days of violence that left a total of 17 people dead and traumatised a nation.

“I’m in shock, people said horrible and false things about me on social media even though I am a normal student who lives quietly with his parents,” said the bespectacled teenager who one day hopes to study medicine.

“The attack was horrific and my thoughts are with the victims,” he added. [Continue reading…]

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Paris attacks: Video shows grocery gunman pledging allegiance to ISIS

The Associated Press reports: Posthumous video emerged Sunday of the gunman who killed a policewoman and four hostages at a kosher grocery, pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group and defending the attacks on the satirical newspaper and the Jewish store.

Speaking fluent French and broken Arabic in the video, apparently filmed over several days, Amedy Coulibaly can be seen with a gun, exercising and giving speeches in front of an Islamic State emblem. He defends the attacks carried out on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, police and the Jewish store.

“What we are doing is completely legitimate, given what they are doing,” Coulibaly tells the camera. “You cannot attack and not expect retribution so you are playing the victim as if you don’t understand what’s happening.” [Continue reading…]

A statement alleged to be from Coulibaly has been posted on JustPaste.it

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Turkish spy agency planning false-flag terror acts in crowded areas, whistleblower claims


Before getting to today’s report in the Turkish daily, Today’s Zaman, why should a prediction of a false-flag terror attack be viewed as credible if this is coming from a Twitter user whose real identity remains unknown? Here’s why:

Foreign Policy reported on December 16: Fuat Avni — who has 670,000 followers on his Turkish-language account and nearly 23,000 on a related English-language account — is believed by some observers to be an insider in the administration of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He has captivated the country with his mostly reliable predictions of events, including two rounds of mass arrests of police officers involved in an anti-government wiretapping probe.

Today’s Zaman now reports: A Turkish whistleblower, who has a credible record of predicting police operations and government policies, has made a shocking claim, arguing that the Turkish spy agency is planning false-flag operations to blow up crowded areas to frame the Gülen movement as a terrorist organization.

Fuat Avni said early on Saturday that the President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan initially planned to use Dec. 14 raids against the media to announce the Gülen movement as a terrorist organization, but he had to resort to other ways as the previous plan failed. The whistleblower said Erdoğan approved of the false-flag operations.

“After the fiasco,” Avni tweeted, “Erdoğan tasked the spy agency [National Intelligence Organization] MİT with labeling the Gülen movement as a terrorist organization.” He claimed that Erdoğan has difficult time after France shootings for his support for the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) and al-Qaeda. “To get out of this difficult period and turn the tide in his favor, Erdoğan is making new evil plans,” Avni tweeted.

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Nigeria: 2,000 feared killed in Boko Haram’s ‘deadliest massacre’

The Guardian reports: Hundreds of bodies – too many to count – remain strewn in the bush in Nigeria from an Islamic extremist attack that Amnesty International described as the “deadliest massacre” in the history of Boko Haram.

Fighting continued on Friday around Baga, a town on the border with Chad where insurgents seized a key military base on 3 January and attacked again on Wednesday.

“Security forces have responded rapidly, and have deployed significant military assets and conducted air strikes against militant targets,” said a government spokesman.

District head Baba Abba Hassan said most victims are children, women and elderly people who could not run fast enough when insurgents drove into Baga, firing rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles on town residents.

“The human carnage perpetrated by Boko Haram terrorists in Baga was enormous,” Muhammad Abba Gava, a spokesman for poorly armed civilians in a defence group that fights Boko Haram, told the Associated Press.

He said the civilian fighters gave up on trying to count all the bodies. “No one could attend to the corpses and even the seriously injured ones who may have died by now,” Gava said.

An Amnesty International statement said there are reports the town was razed and as many as 2,000 people killed.

If true, “this marks a disturbing and bloody escalation of Boko Haram’s ongoing onslaught,” said Daniel Eyre, Nigeria researcher for Amnesty International. [Continue reading…]

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Neighbour of Paris shooting suspects found ‘cache of arms’ two months ago

Mark MacKinnon reports: When Said and Chérif Kouachi came to pray at their local mosque here in the suburbs north of Paris, they did so quietly and discreetly, saying very little. Except for the time the imam used his Friday sermon to urge worshippers to vote in a coming election.

“The older brother [Said] challenged the imam and walked out. He said it was not the imam’s job to call on Muslims to vote,” recalled Ben Ali, the head of the Ennour Association, which manages the Grand Mosque of Gennevilliers. “We respected his opinion and they left quietly.”

Said Kouachi’s refusal to take part in something as central to being French as voting in an election – and his apparent conviction that other Muslims should also boycott the democratic process – is just one of many tales that suggested the 34-year-old was heading in a direction radically at odds with the French state and society.

There are other, darker stories told here about the two brothers who are the subject of a nationwide manhunt after they allegedly burst into the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper carrying Kalashnikov rifles Wednesday and began a shooting rampage that has left at least 12 people dead.

A neighbour in Gennevilliers told The Globe and Mail that she and her husband became so concerned about the behaviour of the Kouachi brothers – whom they could hear loudly reciting the Koran inside their apartment at all hours – that her husband and a friend decided to break in to the Kouachi residence when the brothers left to buy groceries. She said they found a “cache of arms” inside.

She said they were caught when the brothers returned home, and that they shoved her husband around and threatened him into silence. That was two months ago. [Continue reading…]

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