Tashfeen Malik, Made by al Qaida

Posted on December 4, 2015December 4, 2015 by Denise Simon

Reuters: Tashfeen Malik’s path to accused mass killer in California began in a small city on the Indus River in Pakistan’s Punjab province.

It was from here, when she was a toddler, that she moved with her father Gulzar 25 years ago to Saudi Arabia, where he became more deeply religious, more conservative and more hardline, according to a family member.

A picture slowly emerged on Friday of the role and possible motivations of 27-year-old Malik in this week’s killing of 14 people in California, including her apparent pledge of allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State militant group, according to U.S. officials.

Malik, with her husband Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, is accused of storming a holiday party on Wednesday in San Bernardino, California, and opening fire in America’s worst mass shooting in three years.

The intensive search for clues, extending to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, could help U.S. investigators piece together what drove Malik and her husband to leave their infant daughter with his mother, don assault-style clothing and carry out the shooting.

Malik, who entered the United States on a fiancée visa, and Farook, the son of immigrant parents from Pakistan who had worked as a health inspector, were killed in a shootout with police just hours after the attack.

U.S. investigators were evaluating evidence that Malik, a Pakistani native who had been living in Saudi Arabia when she married Farook, had pledged allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, two U.S. government sources said. They said the finding, if confirmed, could be a “game changer” in the probe.

CNN reported that one U.S. official said Malik had made the pledge to al-Baghdadi in a posting on Facebook on Wednesday, the day of the attack, under an account that used a different name.

Though large information gaps remain, it appeared to be the strongest evidence so far that the attack may have been inspired by Islamic State. But U.S. government sources said there was no sign that it had been directed by the militant group, which has seized swathes of Syria and Iraq and claimed the deadly Nov. 13 attacks in Paris.

FATHER BECAME “CONSERVATIVE AND HARDLINE”

Two Pakistani officials said Malik was from Karor Lal Esan, a city on the west coast of the Indus River in southern Punjab province. She moved to Saudi Arabia with her father, an engineer, 25 years ago, they said.

She returned home five or six years ago to study at Bahauddin Zakariya University in Multan to become a pharmacist, they said.

The area in Punjab where she spent her early years and later went to university is a “recruitment ground” and stronghold of Islamist groups with ties to al Qaeda, said Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States. Among the militant groups with a presence there is Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has been blamed for the November 2008 killing spree in the Indian financial capital of Mumbai.

“Our brother changed a lot since he went to Saudi,” Malik’s uncle, Javed Rabbani, said of Malik’s father. “When relatives visited him, they would come back and tell us how conservative and hardline he had become,” he said in an interview with Reuters.

A source close to the Saudi government said that during Malik’s time in Saudi Arabia nothing came to authorities’ attention there that suggested she was involved with radical Islamic groups. Malik was not on any Saudi law enforcement or intelligence watchlist, the source said.

Malik’s father, Gulzar, had built a house in Multan, where he stays when he visits Pakistan, according to another uncle, Malik Anwaar.

He said Gulzar had a falling-out long ago with the rest of the family, citing a dispute over a house among other matters. “We are completely estranged,” Anwaar said.

Rabbani said he had been contacted by Pakistani intelligence as part of the investigation into the San Bernardino shooting.

Malik had two brothers and two sisters and was related to Ahmed Ali Aulak, a former provincial minister, the Pakistani officials said.

The exact circumstances of how Farook and Malik met remained unclear but they had apparently been married for two years. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Malik was in the United States on a visa under a Pakistani passport.

While Farook had an active presence online, Malik’s digital footprint is harder to trace. A Facebook profile established under an alias by Malik was removed by the company for violating its community standards, which prohibit praise or promotion of “acts of terror,” a spokesman said on Friday.

But her name was attached to a gift registry for their baby hosted by the website TheBump.com. According to the registry, Malik’s baby had been due on May 17.

Just hours before the couple opened fire on Farook’s co-workers in a government building in San Bernardino, they had dropped off their daughter at his mother’s house, telling her they had a doctor’s appointment.

*** How to get that H1 fiancée visa:

Death Benefits Still Not Paid for Benghazi

Posted on December 4, 2015December 4, 2015 by Denise Simon

Family of American Killed in Benghazi Awaits Promised Funds

NYT > WASHINGTON — Family members of Glen Doherty, a C.I.A. contractor and a former Navy SEAL who was among four Americans killed in the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, said they felt a sense of closure when they were told last December that the agency had finally agreed to pay Mr. Doherty’s death benefits.

“It was such a great Christmas gift that all this hard work and time and energy that we put in was finally done,” said Kate Quigley, Mr. Doherty’s sister, of the family’s effort in fighting for the funds. “We felt like it was honoring his name and his legacy.”

But a year later, the Doherty family has yet to see any federal money. Bureaucratic delays continue, even as the C.I.A. and Congress are now in agreement that paying the death benefit is the right thing to do.

The family’s fight has been overshadowed by the politics and recriminations surrounding the House Select Committee on Benghazi, whose Republican members have sharply criticized Hillary Clinton for what they say was her failure as secretary of state to secure the diplomatic compound in which Mr. Doherty and the other Americans died.

Mr. Doherty’s family members say he did not realize that the life insurance package he was legally required to buy from a private provider as a C.I.A. contractor would not pay death benefits — beyond funeral costs — if the deceased had no spouse or offspring. Mr. Doherty was single and did not have any children.

“An injustice has been done in his name,” Mrs. Quigley said in a recent telephone interview. “Seventeen years, he devoted his life to protecting this country.”

In response to the Doherty family’s efforts, the C.I.A. has proposed changing one of its administrative policies to allow it to pay up to $400,000 in death benefits to Mr. Doherty’s family and to families of terrorist attack victims in similar situations. The change would be retroactive to April 18, 1983, when suicide bombers killed dozens of people at the American Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon.

The proposed policy, which is modeled after one adopted by the State Department for the 2014 fiscal year, would use C.I.A. funds rather than insurance money to pay the families, providing a stopgap for those otherwise unable to collect benefits.

After months of debating the particulars of the proposal, four congressional committees responsible for approving it have done so, but the House defense appropriations subcommittee has told the C.I.A. it must find money for the death benefits in a different part of its budget than the agency initially proposed. The committees are now awaiting the C.I.A.’s response, which they must all approve.

“We are involved in a little game of Ping-Pong here,” said Representative Stephen F. Lynch, Democrat of Massachusetts, who has pushed for the rule change on Capitol Hill. “And I feel like we’re getting close, but I don’t want to take an eye off the ball.”

Mr. Lynch said that the rule change would most likely affect several dozen families. The C.I.A. declined to comment.

Mr. Lynch, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight national security subcommittee, introduced legislation in January to go further than the internal C.I.A. change and update what he and others called an outmoded law. His measure would amend the 1941 Defense Base Act, which requires overseas contractors — including those working for the C.I.A. — to carry disability and life insurance. But it allows death benefits only to surviving spouses or children.

Despite gaining the support of Senators John McCain of Arizona, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, both Republicans, the legislation has found little traction on Capitol Hill, which Mr. Lynch said in an interview might be because of its relatively narrow focus.

Jerry Komisar, the president of the C.I.A. Officers Memorial Foundation, which offers financial support to the families of officers killed in the line of duty, said that the death benefit of up to $400,000, while modest, would provide a much-needed lift to families.

“The demands on C.I.A. officers to serve on some of these hazardous assignments is going up,” said Mr. Komisar, a former member of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service. “The more we do to help incentivize them the better.”

Over the past three years, Mrs. Quigley, 42, said she has made dozens of phone calls and news media appearances, as well as trips from her home in Boston to lobby lawmakers in Washington. She has also met with members of the Benghazi committee, who she said pledged support. (Jamal Ware, a spokesman for the committee, said its chairman, Representative Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina, has worked behind the scenes to help the family.)

My family have been trying to persuade me to look at a lawyer specialising in wrongful deaths and survival actions. But at times I just found it too much, particularly as there are so many law firms out there. I realise now that I probably shouldn’t have been so worried about getting the right lawyer involved, as it is so easy to do. A lot of law firms simply ask something like can you contact our wrongful death lawyers and you’ll hopefully get your lawsuit sorted. At one point, the family had been considering bringing a $1 million wrongful death suit against the C.I.A. and the State Department. But it decided not to press the suit after the C.I.A. agreed to the policy change. The family settled a separate suit against Rutherfoord, the insurance firm that sold Mr. Doherty his policy.

Mr. Doherty, who was 42 when he died, had served in Iraq and Afghanistan and had been hired by the C.I.A. to help with security and surveillance in Libya. According to Mrs. Quigley, her brother had designated a friend, Sean Lake, as the executor of his estate and did not know he would be unable to collect and distribute insurance benefits to the family as they had planned.

“The basic impetus of this is that this young man, a former Navy SEAL, agreed to serve us in a very meaningful way, in several very dangerous theaters,” said Mr. Lynch, who does not represent the family’s home district, but became involved in its efforts early on.

New America, Through the Lives of Farook’s Jihad

Posted on December 4, 2015December 4, 2015 by Denise Simon

Coed: Tashfeen Malik is confirmed to be one of the suspects of Wednesday’s shooting at the Inland Regional Center, along with her husband Syed Farook.

Tashfeen —>>> Embedded image permalink

Malik is believed to have pledged allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a recent Facebook post, however the page is under a different name. Officials did not explain how they knew Malik wrote the post.

UPDATE:

Photos of inside Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik’s house have been released. Two photos show an unidentified female’s passport. The FBI is also officially investigating the shooting as an act of terrorism. According to the FBI director, there is no indication that the couple was part of an organized terrorism group or network.

According to the Daily Mail, Farook clashed with Jewish co-worker Nicholas Thalasinos shortly before the shooting began, and was allegedly the target of disparaging comments concerning “his traditional Muslim appearance.” Thalasinos was one of the numerous victims.

Co-workers also divulged that the two men would frequently discuss religion and politics.

Advertisement: Replay Ad

Ads by ZINC

From the Daily Mail,

Colleague Kuuleme Stephen said that when she had called Thalasinos at work he told her he was having a heated discussion with Farook about Islam who had told him Islam was a peaceful religion and that Americans do not understand Islam.

Thalasinos was known to be passionate about pro-Israel causes and regularly ranted about Islam on Facebook.

On September 11th, 2013, alongside a photo of a shirtless victim plummeting to his death from the burning World Trade Center, Mr Thalasinos posted: ‘On behalf of this guy… You can stick your Million Muslim March up your asses.’

Inland Regional Center Survivors: Stories, Photos & Facts

Malik and Farook met on a dating site and had apparently been married for two years. They had a six month old baby who was dropped off at Farook’s mother’s house during the shooting.

Few details are known about Malik other than her age – 27 – and that she was Muslim. According to several sources, she was also a pharmacist and believed to be Pakistani. Her background is currently under investigation.

The 27-year-old was killed during a shootout with police yesterday, which consisted of 21 officers.

According to neighbors, a multitude of Middle Eastern individuals were frequently visiting their house at all hours of the day, along with several unknown packages. One neighbor went on the record to say that they didn’t report the suspicious activity for fear of being labeled a racist and Islamophobic.

The above photo is an overhead view of the couple’s house. Police were led to the home from a tip and found the suspects in a dark SUV shortly after arriving. The couple quickly fled and a shootout ensued.

During a Wednesday night investigation of the home, police allegedly found 12 pipe bomb-type devices.

A third person also fled from the shooting scene and was detained after an extensive search. It is not immediately clear if they played a role in the massacre.

Evidence suggests that the incident was not spur of the moment. Two handguns were recovered and traced back to her husband, both of which were purchases legally three or four years ago. Two additional rifles were purchased illegally around the same time, however the purchaser is unknown. Authorities suspect a former roommate bought them.

Evidence also shows that the couple was looking to continue on with their rampage. A bag full of “three rudimentary explosive devices packed with black powder and rigged to a remote controlled car “was found inside of the conference room and believed to belong to the couple. Law enforcement stated that the remote for the car was found inside the SUV where Farook and Malik were later killed.”

Her husband was described as a devout Muslim who began growing out his beard over the past year. Both shooters wore a GoPro camera during the shooting, yet there has yet to be mention of actual footage.

Trump and the Russian Mafia, Splain’n to do

Posted on December 4, 2015December 4, 2015 by Denise Simon

Trump cant claim ignorance on this one.

Trump SoHo

At 45 stories, the Trump SoHo stands as the tallest building in SoHo, and one of the tallest in Manhattan. A five-star luxury condominium and hotel project between The Trump Organization and The Bayrock Group, the Trump SoHo exudes luxury at every turn.

Trump picked stock fraud felon as senior adviser

WASHINGTON (AP)— Donald Trump tapped a man to be a senior business adviser to his real-estate empire even after the man’s past involvement in a major Mafia-linked stock fraud scheme had become publicly known, according to Associated Press interviews and a review of court records.

Portions of Trump’s relationship with Felix Sater, a convicted felon and government informant, have been previously known. Trump worked with the company where Sater was an executive, Bayrock Group LLC, after it rented office space from the Trump Organization as early as 2003. Sater’s criminal history was effectively unknown to the public at the time, because a judge kept the relevant court records secret and Sater altered his name. When Sater’s criminal past and Mafia links came to light in 2007, Trump distanced himself from Sater.

But less than three years later, Trump renewed his ties with Sater. Sater presented business cards describing himself as a senior adviser to Donald Trump, and he had an office on the same floor as Trump’s own office in New York’s Trump Tower, The Associated Press learned through interviews and court records.

Deeper dive from the Courthouse News:

MANHATTAN (CN) – The Bayrock Group and Nixon Peabody are among 35 defendants sued for $1 billion, whom 13 plaintiffs, including estates of Holocaust survivors, accuse of “the illegal concealment of Felix Sater’s 1998 $40 million federal racketeering conviction, and subsequent 2009 sentencing.”
The summons and notice in New York County Supreme Court contains few details. Three of the six pages of the document are taken up with names of the parties, their attorneys, and the charges.
The Miami Herald reported last year that the CIA helped Sater conceal his conviction for securities fraud while using him to track down Stinger missiles for sale in his native Russia. This was “a decade before he launched the celebrated Fort Lauderdale Trump Tower,” the Herald reported in a Sept. 8, 2012 article.
But the Trump Tower failed, and “a legal battle has ensued between burned investors trying to reveal Sater’s background and federal agents who say national security is at stake,” the Herald reported.
Prosecutors in that case asked to keep Sater’s record sealed, in the national interest.
Sater was fined $25,000 for his original $40 million stock swindle, did no jail time and was not ordered to pay anything in restitution, according to the Herald.
In the new summons and notice in New York, a string of investors want to hold Sater and his attorneys and businesses responsible. The document does not mention the alleged CIA connection.
It states: “Plaintiffs seek relief against those directly and vicariously responsible for the perpetration of perhaps a billion dollars or more of fraud based on the illegal concealment of Felix Sater’s 1998 $40 million federal racketeering conviction, and subsequent 2009 sentencing, as well as related and other unrelated relief, and declaratory relief against those persons, primarily financial institution, insofar as to affix by liquidating judgment thereof such liability is owed to them.
“‘Bayrock,’ as used herein, refers to that certain association of juridical entities including, for example and without limitation, Bayrock Group LLC, Bayrock Camelback LLC, Bayrock Whitestone LLC, Bayrock Spring Street LLC, and Bayrock Merrimac LLC, in the last ten years variously engaged in the businesses of financial institution fraud, tax fraud, partnership fraud, insurance fraud, litigation fraud, bankruptcy fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, human trafficking, child prostitution, statutory rape, and, on occasion, real estate.
“One of the overarching, dominant themes of those Bayrock lines of business has been the fraudulent concealment of the substantial degree to which it was owned directly or equitably by Felix Sater, who was represented at various times at least during the period 2002 to 2008 to be its Chief Operating Officer and at times as its Managing Director.
“Another overarching, dominant theme of Bayrock’s lines has been the fraudulent concealment of Felix Sater’s conviction for racketeering, to which he secretly pled guilty in 1998, admitting to participating in the operation of a pump-and-dump stock fraud, along with members of Russian and Mafia organized crime, which defrauded investors, many of them senior citizens, including Holocaust survivors, of at a minimum $40,000,000, now in today’s dollars some $150,000,000 of stolen wealth as measured by the ‘well managed account’ theory.
“The Estates of Ernest and Judit Gottdiener; Ervin Tausky, a natural person, and Suan Investments, a Gottdiener family holding company, are some of those victims, survivors of the Nazi extermination of the Jews of Hungary and federally protected crime victims of Mr. Sater’s racketeering, as such his creditors. They were defrauded of their rights to restitution and, because the government illegally concealed Sater’s entire case, their rights to sue him. The Gottdieners claim damages for the fraud on them against everyone responsible for the 15-year delay and deprivation of their civil rights.
“Insofar as Sater used Bayrock as a personal piggybank to skim millions upon millions of its assets and hide them out of the reach (for now) of these and all the other hundreds if not thousands of victims to whom he now is liable over $500,000,000 in RICO damages, and would not have been able to do so without the facilitation of his concealment frauds by others, the Gottdieners sue all those for the damage they caused.
“Among those are corrupt attorneys who used fraudulent and sham court processes to hide Sater and his frauds for their own gain, as many of them did so with the specific intent, inter alia, of raking in fees from him, essentially taking the Gottdiener’s and all the others’ money for themselves by keeping it out of the hands of the victims, where it should have gone; they are sued, inter alia, for vicarious liability of all damages caused and for forfeiture of all such fees. …
“Finally, as Sater admitted at his sentencing he knew no banks would lend to Bayrock if they knew about his concealed conviction, a judicial estoppel and admission against penal interest, lenders and investors who were fraudulently induced to provide $1,000,000,000 or so to Bayrock by this concealment ought to get their money back, so they are sued in declaratory judgment to fix the liability of Bayrock and all those liable to them through Bayrock to them.
“All defendants except as noted are sued for all liability, that is, for example only, Kelly Moore, who stood in Sater’s sentencing as his attorney knowing it was illegally hidden, hearing him admit that he had been using that illegal concealment to perpetrate bank fraud, and without privilege to do so committed fraud and other actionable wrongs in maintaining sham litigation to stop those who learned of this from revealing it for years, thus knowingly facilitating the cover-ups, shall expect to have plenary liability asserted against her by every Plaintiff in every theory for every cause in the scope of the overarching conspiracy. It is the express intent of Plaintiffs to assert all liability to the fullest scope of the state law vicarious liability equivalent of civil federal Pinkerton liability against everyone participating in any identifiable and well-pled conspiracy. Those who thought nothing of helping Sater and his co-conspirators defraud, the littlest senior citizens and Holocaust survivors or the biggest banks and lenders, who thought nothing of helping him and others steal those victims’ money, must be made to pay with their own.”
Here are the defendants: Bayrock Group LLC; Tevrik Arif; Julius Schwarz; Felix Satter; Brian Halberg; Salvatore Lauria; Alex Salomon; Jerry Weinrich; Salomon & Co. PC; Akerman Senterfitt LLP; Martin Domb; Craig Brown; Duval & Stachenfeld LLP; Bruce Stachenfeld; David Granin; Nixon Peabody LLP; Adam Gilbert; Roberts & Holland LLP; Elliot Pisem; Michael Samuel; Mel Dogan; Bayrock Spring Street LLC; Does; Bayrock Whitestone LLC; Bayrock Camelback LLC; Bayrock Merrimac LLC; Bayrock Group Inc.; Tamir Sapir; Alex Sapir; Does; Walter Saurack; Satterlee Stephens Burke & Burke LLP; Kelly Moore; Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP; Nader Mobargha; Michael Beys; Beys Stein & Mobargha LLP; and Todd Kaminsky.Here are the plaintiffs: J Kriss; Michael Ejekam; Bayrock Merrimac LLC; Bayrock Group LLC; Bayrock Spring Street LLC; Bayrock Whitestone LLC; Bayrock Spring Street LLC; Bayrock Whitestone LLC; Bayrock Camelback LLC; E/O Ernest; E/Ojudit Gottdiener; Ervin Tausky; Suan Investments.

Dabiq, Syria: Cubs and Pearls

Posted on December 3, 2015December 3, 2015 by Denise Simon

Cubs and Pearls: A generational war, there is no end.

Dabiq is the sophisticated online magazine for Islamic State. What is Dabiq?

Dabiq

TheGuardian: Dabiq is a small, rather nondescript town in northern Syria, close by the border with Turkey. It’s more of a large village really, with just a few thousand inhabitants.

And it is of limited strategic interest. Not far south, in the sprawling city of Aleppo, where battle rages, Bashar al-Assad continues to drop his untargeted barrel bombs on its Sunni population, thus rallying more and more jihadis to the black flag. Yet it is Dabiq after which Islamic State (Isis) names its glossy recruiting magazine. For this is the place where the world will come to an end.

Like Judaism and Christianity – and strongly influenced by them – Islam has a powerful eschatological strain. It anticipates the end of the world and a final historical confrontation between good and evil, after which human life is set to be miraculously transformed. And according to one reading of Islamic tradition (hadith), the place where this final malahim (apocalypse) will happen is – of all places – Dabiq. This is where the Muslim and Christian armies will finally face each other and the Crusaders will be destroyed. And this is why Dabiq is the name on the lips of Isis recruiting sergeants.

It is worth noting that Isis is extremely selective in its use of hadith. For instance, other parts of the tradition have it that Jesus, dressed in yellow robes, will return east of Damascus and will join forces with the Islamic messiah, the Mahdi, in a battle against the false messiah, the Dajjal. After the death of the Mahdi, it is the Muslim Jesus who will rule the Earth. This hadith is less useful to Isis, though its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, looks to many observers to be trying to style himself as the Mahdi.

The Battle of Marj Dābiq (Arabic: مرج دابق‎, meaning “the meadow of Dābiq”; Turkish: Mercidabık Muharebesi) was a decisive military clash in Middle Eastern history, fought on 24 August 1516, near the town of Dabiq, 44 km north of Aleppo, Syria.[1] The battle was part of the Ottoman–Mamluk War (1516–17) between the Ottoman Empire and the Mamluk Sultanate, which ended ultimately in an Ottoman victory, the conquest of most of the Middle East by the Ottoman Empire, and the end of the Mamluk Sultanate. The Ottoman Empire’s victory in this battle gave it control of the entire region of Syria.

The Ottoman–Mamluk War of 1516–1517 was the second major conflict between the Egypt-based Mamluk Sultanate and the Ottoman Empire, which led to the fall of the Mamluk Sultanate and the incorporation of the Levant, Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula as provinces of the Ottoman Empire.^[1] The war transformed the Ottoman Empire from a realm at the margins of the Islamic world, mainly located in Anatolia and the Balkans, to a huge empire encompassing the traditional lands of Islam, including the cities of Mecca, Cairo, Damascus and Aleppo. It continued to be ruled however from Constantinople