‘Breaking the Cross’, When not If…

Posted on August 1, 2016August 1, 2016 by Denise Simon

U.K. Police Chief Says Attack Is a Matter of ‘When, Not If’

In part from Newsweek: U.K. police are treating the prospect of an attempted extremist attack on home soil as an inevitability said the head of the Metropolitan police, The Guardian reports.

Over the last 12 months France, Germany, Belgium and Turkey have experienced deadly attacks claimed by militant group Islamic State (ISIS). Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said he wanted to offer reassurance to the British public that the trend would not endanger the U.K., and said police vigilance has not changed.

“I know that with each new outrage and especially those on our doorstep in Europe, there is a greater sense of fear that Britain will be the next victim in this wave of cruel and mindless mass murder,” he said.

“Our threat level has been at severe for two years—it remains there. It means an attack is highly likely. You could say it is a case of when, not if.”

Hogan-Howe spoke as Britain’s most senior counter-terrorism police officer, assistant commissioner Mark Rowley, said the greatest advantage U.K. police had in preventing attacks was public assistance. The BBC reported that relevant hotlines receive over 3,600 calls a day and Rowley said even more input was appreciated. More here.

Breaking the Cross: Latest ISIS Magazine Aimed At Christians

Clarion: In a break in tone from previous issues the Islamic State’s Dabiq focuses on tackling Christianity in particular and western ideologies in general.

DISCLAIMER: Clarion Project does not endorse the contents of the Islamic State’s propaganda magazine Dabiq. We are sharing this information because we believe that to defeat the pernicious ideology of Islamism

IslamismGlossary Item

The interpretation of Islam as a governmental system in which strict Sharia law must be enforced; synonymous with Political Islam.

we need to expose and discredit it, which means revealing what the group says it believes and wants in full.

The fifteenth issue of the Islamic State’s Dabiq magazine is called Breaking the Cross and is targeted at discrediting Christianity and Western secularism.

Unlike previous issues which were primarily directed at Muslim-majority societies, this issue is full of propaganda aimed at converting non-Muslims to the Islamic State’s puritanical and bloodthirsty interpretation of Islam.

The foreword includes direct attacks on the ideologies of Christianity, feminism, secular liberalism and atheism, naming them individually and offering rebuttals. It also references the recent attacks in France and Germany and threatens further violent attacks.

The magazine puts forward a dual approach. On the one hand ISIS calls on the population of Europe to “abandon their infidelity and accept Islam, the religion of sincerity and submission to the Lord of the heavens and the earth.”

On the other they threaten continual warfare against those who do not, saying “we call you to reflect on these questions as the bloodthirsty knights of the Caliphate

CaliphateGlossary Item

An Islamic State where Sharia is the basis of governance; usually used in reference to past Islamic empires in the Middle East.

continue to wage their war of just terror against you.”

Sections include “Why we hate you and fight you” along with a conversion story “Why I came to Islam” from a former Christian woman from Finland. The piece focuses on the supposed inconsistencies in Christianity as opposed to the alleged purity and simplicity of Islam.

The main feature “Breaking the Cross” is an extended rebuttal of Christian and Jewish theology which sets forth the arguments to believe in Islam. The bulk of the theological arguments are fairly standard lines of attack about the alleged absurdity of the Trinity and the alleged corruption of scripture by Jews and Christians such as many imams might argue.

The leap from mainstream Islamic monotheism to the violent slaughter of anyone who disagrees with ISIS is not explained clearly.

The shift in emphasis to appeal to a European and Western audience comes at the same time as a shift in instructions to fighters not to attempt to travel to Islamic-State-held lands in Iraq and Syria, but simply to carry out terrorist attacks in their home countries.

Read the latest issue of the Islamic State’s propaganda magazine Dabiq: Breaking the Cross.

Read all the issues of the Islamic State’s propaganda magazine Dabiq, hosted on Clarion Project.

UK Report: Charities Funding Terror

Posted on August 1, 2016August 1, 2016 by Denise Simon

At least the police in the UK noticed something and asked officials for an inquiry. An investigation was performed and you gotta hand it to the Brits, they are so proper and careful, but did the right thing. Question is, was it enough. Further, we must look inward and ask if our own State laws and the IRS are doing the same thing when it comes to charities and foundations? Two come to mind immediately, the Clinton Foundation(s) and those that are advocates of Islamic organizations when the Holy-land Foundation case left many un-indicted co-conspirators.

UK charities that raised cash for ISIS and promoted Al-Qaeda struck off

TWO British charities that raised cash for ISIS and promoted Al-Qaeda respectively have been struck of the register after separate investigations by the regulator.
The Charity Commission has released reports on two separate organisations that claimed to be raising cash to help victims of the war in Syria, and Kurdish Muslims in Birmingham, but were in fact funding and promoting terrorists.

In one case, charities set up by Adeel Ul-Haq, 21, of Sutton-in-Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, raised money through social media that was used to buy a high-powered laser pointer, night-vision goggles and a secret waterproof money pouch.

Ul-Haq was jailed for 12 months in February after a separate police investigation found he funded terrorism by sending money to an ISIS fighter in Syria.
Ul-Haq used Twitter to appeal for cash “to help people in war-torn Syria crisis, but instead sent it to the ISIS fighter.

He was jailed for a further five years for helping another person travel to Syria.

The Charity Commission report said the regulator was unable to account for much of £12,500 raised by Ul-Haq, but at least some of it went into another unnamed person’s bank account.
Some of this cash was then used to buy the specialist items oneBay, that the watchdog suspected would be used for terrorism.
The report said: “While recognising that it is not illegal to purchase such items, the inquiry was extremely concerned by the use of charitable funds to purchase a night-vision scope and its potential usage given that it can be used for hunting or surveillance.”

Ul-Haq never registered any charities with the commission, but the regulator took action as he was effectively acting as an official trustee and he had taken the donations on trust that they would help people in Syria.

The regulator found Ul-Haq breached his fiduciary duty to protect and apply charitable funds for the purposes for which they were raised and that there was evidence the second trustee had committed misconduct and mismanagement by allowing the charitable funds to be mixed in the same account as her own personal funds.

The second, unnamed, female trustee was ordered to repay any other charitable money in her account to Ul-Haq’s account, which was frozen by the commission at the start of the investigation.

However, she faced no police charges.

This cash and remaining funds in Ul-Haq’s account, plus money seized in a police raid of his home, totalled about £4,500, and was donated to two genuine charities working in Syria, which the commission has not named.
Ul-Haq been disqualified from acting as a charity trustee in the future.

At least £2,000 of money had been sent to a genuine charity, it was found.

A second charity probed by the commission was the Birmingham-based Didi Nwe Organisation.

Its website featured articles by Mullah Krekar, viewed as an associate of Al-Qaeda by the United Nations.

Didi Nwe also paid £14,000 to its chair of trustees between May 2010 and February 2013 and could not explain why, according to a statutory inquiry report published by the commission.

The charity trustees were found to have committed misconduct and mismanagement, failed to keep financial records, and were unable to show how the charity was furthering its causes of providing education and relieving poverty among Kurdish Muslims in Birmingham, the report said.

The commission launched an inquiry after the charity’s chair, referred to only as Trustee A, was stopped by police returning to the UK from France with around £1,800 in cash, which he claimed were charitable donations. Read more here. The report is found here.

Conclusions

The commission concluded that the First Trustee had solicited charitable funds from the public via Twitter for a specific purpose but had breached his fiduciary duty to protect and apply those funds properly for the purposes for which they were raised. The commission concluded that the items the First Trustee purchased on eBay with the charitable funds, including a laser pen, a money wallet and night vision scope, could not be used for furthering the charitable purposes for which the funds were raised and raised serious concerns about what the intended purpose of their use was.

There was evidence of misconduct and mismanagement by the Second Trustee in mixing charitable funds with her own personal funds.

Charitable funds raised by or donated to the First Trustee were not accounted for; there was a serious risk of further misapplication, in breach of duty, to any remaining funds or any funds which could be recovered if the First Trustee was to remain a trustee of the funds. The commission took regulatory action to remove the First Trustee as a trustee, the effect of which was to disqualify him from beinga trustee.

On 10 February 2016 the First Trustee was convicted under section 5 of the Terrorism Act 2006 (preparation of terrorist acts) and section 17 of the Terrorism Act 2000 (entering into or becoming concerned in a terrorist funding arrangement) and received 5 years imprisonment. The commission issued a public statement following this conviction.

Documents Recovered in Manbij in Northern Syria, FBI Warning

Posted on July 29, 2016July 29, 2016 by Denise Simon

FBI director: The terrorism threat out of Syria is ‘an order of magnitude greater than anything we’ve seen before’

BusinessInsider:As a number of ISIS attacks have rocked Europe, it can be difficult to remember that the group is largely on the back foot.

“They are on the run,”US Secretary of State John Kerry said in an interview on CNN last week while addressing the spate of terror attacks by the group. “And I believe what we are seeing are the desperate actions of an entity that sees the noose closing around them.”

Through satellite photos and other data, it’s clear that the terror group has been steadily losing territory in its heartlands of Iraq and Syria.

Even now, major efforts are underway to reclaim Mosul, the largest city under ISIS control.

However, as ISIS does steadily lose ground through conventional warfare in the Middle East, the group’s attacks against civilians around the world will only likely increase — at least for the time being.

“At some point there is going to be a terrorist diaspora out of Syria like we’ve never seen before,” explained FBI Director James B. Comey at a cybersecurity conference at Fordham University on Wednesday, The New York Times reports. “Not all of the Islamic State killers are going to die on the battlefield.”

As the terror group’s territory shrinks, dedicated fighters within the group will travel to find new locations to conduct their operations — most likely in hiding. Comey continued by saying that many of these core fighters would migrate to Western Europe as ISIS loses ground. And there is always the risk that some of them would eventually reach the US. More here.

The intelligence community gathers evidence everyday from countless sources, but when actual documents from Islamic State have been retrieved, the threat level and investigations mount even higher.

US seize haul of 10,000 documents and 4.5 terabytes of information from ISIS fighters in Syria – including clues on ‘foreign fighters’ entering Europe

US intelligence agents are studying files captured from ISIS in a bid to identify potential terrorists returning to the west.

The cache includes some 10,000 documents and 4.5 terabytes of information containing the identities and countries of origin of the terror group’s fighters.

Also contained in the intelligence files are details of the routes used to smuggle terrorists in and out of the warzone.

The information was captured in Manbij in Northern Syria after the terror group was pushed back from the city.

Brett McGurk, President Obama’s special envoy confirmed the details of foreign fighters was being shared among coalition allies.

McGurk told the New York Times: ‘We want to make sure that all that information is disseminated in a coherent way among our coalition partners so that we can track the networks from the core and all the way to wherever the dots might connect, whether that is in Europe or in North Africa or Southeast Asia.’

Intelligence agents hope the information will help them identify ISIS terrorist cells while also providing details of the group’s finances and might even lead to military strikes against senior terror leaders.

It is estimated that almost 43,000 terrorists from 12 countries have at least attempted to go to Iraq and Syria.

McGurk added: ‘The operation in Manbij is about shutting down the main corridor from Raqqa and then out, in which some of the attackers that launched the Paris attacks we know traveled through that route. By shutting that down, you make it harder for them to kind of plan the larger-scale, kind of more coordinated attacks.’

However, despite the successful operation against ISIS in the city, the coalition has been criticized over an airstrike which killed innocent civilians on July 19.

Colonel Chris Garver said there was credible evidence to support the complaint.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 56 civilians, including 11 children, died as they fled from a village near Manbij, a strategic waypoint between Turkey and the jihadist stronghold of Raqa.

A death toll of that magnitude would appear to be the worst in nearly two years of coalition air strikes against ISIS targets.

Garver said Wednesday that death estimates from residents near Manbij ranged from a low of ’10 to 15′ to a high of 73.

Garver had earlier accused ISIS of using civilians as ‘human shields’.

Coalition officials often say theirs is the most precise air campaign in history.

Nearly all coalition air strikes use guided munitions, involving laser or GPS systems, or else missiles. Targets are often viewed at length using surveillance drones before the order to attack is issued.

After the Manbij bombardment, Amnesty International urged the coalition to redouble its efforts to prevent civilian deaths and to investigate possible violations of international humanitarian law.

The London-based nongovernmental organization Airwars has estimated that the roughly 14,000 coalition bombing attacks since August 2014 have claimed at least 1,513 civilian lives.

The coalition has officially acknowledged only a few dozen civilian victims.

After the air strikes of July 19, the main Syrian opposition group, the Istanbul-based National Coalition, called on the US-led forces to suspend bombardments.

The group’s president, Anas al-Abdeh, said civilian casualties could heighten a sense of desperation among Syrians and provide a recruiting tool for extremist groups like ISIS.

Garver said last week that the jihadists had been mounting exceptionally fierce resistance in Manbij.

He added: ‘It’s a fight like we haven’t seen before. More detail, photos and videos here from DailyMail.

Video: Ansbach, Germany Terrorist Details, Other Pledges

Posted on July 28, 2016July 28, 2016 by Denise Simon

Minister: Bavaria bomber in online chat before attack

BERLIN (AP) — A 27-year-old Syrian asylum seeker who blew himself up at a bar in the southern German town of Ansbach was chatting online with a still-unidentified person immediately before the explosion, Bavaria’s interior minister said Wednesday.

Attacker Mohammed Daleel died and 15 people were wounded when his bomb exploded in a wine bar Sunday night after he was denied entry to a nearby open-air concert because he didn’t have a ticket.

“There was apparently an immediate contact with someone who had a significant influence on this attack,” state Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said on the sidelines of a party meeting in southern Bavaria, news agency dpa reported.

It wasn’t clear whether Daleel was in contact with the Islamic State group or where the other person in the chat was, Herrmann said. He said investigators checking the assailant’s cellphone came across the “intensive chat” and that “the chat appears to end immediately before the attack.”

“Because of witness testimony on what happened and also the course of the chat, there are indeed questions about whether he intended to set off the bomb at that moment,” Herrmann said.

On Tuesday night, the online magazine of the Islamic State group said the attacker spent months planning the attack, once even hiding his home-made bomb in his room in a state-supported asylum shelter moments before a police raid.

The weekly Al-Nabaa magazine’s report added that Daleel had fought in Iraq and Syria with a branch of al-Qaida and the IS group before arriving in Germany as an asylum seeker two years ago.

The Ansbach explosion was the last of four attacks in the country in the span of a week, two of which have been claimed by IS. Islamic extremism wasn’t the motive in the other two — including the deadliest of the series, Friday’s shooting in Munich in which nine people were killed.

The attacks have brought Chancellor Angela Merkel’s policy of welcoming refugees under renewed criticism.

Conservative lawmakers have called for an increased police presence, better surveillance and background checks of migrants — and new strategies to deport criminal asylum seekers more easily.

Al Nabaa’s Arabic-language report on the attacker said he initially fought against government forces with al-Qaida’s branch in Syria before pledging alliance to IS in 2013. He also helped the group with its propaganda efforts, setting up pro-IS accounts online.

In Germany, he started making the bomb, a process that took three months, al Nabaa wrote.

It added that German police once raided his asylum shelter in an unrelated case and searched Daleel’s room without noticing the bomb that he had hidden moments earlier.

IS earlier claimed the Ansbach attack, publishing a video it said was of Daleel pledging allegiance to the group and vowing that Germany’s people “won’t be able to sleep peacefully anymore.” It appears to be the same video as the one found by German investigators on the suicide bomber’s phone.

Daleel unsuccessfully sought asylum in Germany and was awaiting deportation to Bulgaria.

The recent attacks have heightened concerns about the government’s migration policy that saw more than 1 million people enter Germany last year.

A senior figure in the nationalist Alternative for Germany party, which has no seats in the national parliament but saw its popularity surge after last year’s migrant influx, suggested Wednesday that there should be “a halt to immigration for Muslims to Germany” until all asylum seekers now in the country have been registered, checked and had their applications processed.

“For security reasons, we can no longer afford to allow yet more Muslims to immigrate to Germany without control,” Alexander Gauland, a deputy party leader, said in a statement. “There are terrorists among the Muslims who immigrated illegally and their number is rising constantly.”

The Interior Ministry says Germany is not still seeing uncontrolled migration. Spokesman Johannes Dimroth said that “for some time” all new arrivals have been registered and checked against security databases.

As for whether people could be treated differently depending on their religion, “as I understand it that simply would be incompatible with our understanding of freedom of religion,” he said.

The bloodshed in Germany began July 18, when a 17-year-old from Afghanistan wielding an ax attacked passengers on a train near Wuerzburg, wounding five people before he was shot to death by police. The IS group claimed responsibility.

German train operator Deutsche Bahn said Wednesday it would invest heavily in increased security and hire hundreds of security staff to control trains and train stations across the country.

The city of Munich said it is re-evaluating its security concept for the annual Oktoberfest and is considering banning all backpacks from the popular beer fest.

Ex-Gitmo Detainee From Uruguay, to Brazil to Venezuela

Posted on July 28, 2016July 28, 2016 by Denise Simon

Ex-Guantánamo detainee who vanished from Uruguay turns up in Venezuela

Abu Wa’el Dhiab, who had disappeared last month in Uruguay where he and six others were resettled in 2014, showed up at the Syrian consulate in Caracas

Guardian: A resettled former Guantánamo prisoner who disappeared last month in Uruguay, setting off alarm bells in neighboring countries and recriminations in Washington, has reappeared in Venezuela.

The Uruguayan foreign minister, Rodolfo Nin Novoa, told the Associated Press that Syrian native Abu Wa’el Dhiab showed up at his country’s consulate in Caracas. Consulate officials refused to provide information or entry to AP journalists gathered outside.

Dhiab reportedly had last been seen in mid-July in Chuy, a small city on the Uruguay-Brazil border that is home to a small Arab community.

He is one of six former Guantánamo prisoners who were resettled in Uruguay after being released by US authorities in 2014, invited by then president José Mujica as a humanitarian gesture.

The men had been detained in 2002 for suspected ties to al-Qaida. They were held without charge like hundreds of others at Guantánamo Bay before the US government cleared them for release. There are no charges against Dhiab or order for his arrest, and Uruguayan officials had said that as a refugee he has the right to leave the South American country.

But Dhiab’s disappearance raised concerns, as well as questions about how closely countries that resettle former Guantánamo inmates should watch them and for how long, as the US prepares to release more prisoners.

US lawmakers trying to block Barack Obama from closing the detention center recently scolded his administration for losing track of Dhiab. The US envoy in Montevideo also expressed concerns about the lack of information on his whereabouts. Ambassador Kelly Keiderling said it’s up to Uruguay to say whether Dhiab can travel, though she added that she would prefer he stay in Uruguay. When questioned at a news conference, she said Dhiab “could be, yes, theoretically” a threat.

Colombia-based Avianca Airlines recently issued an internal alert saying Dhiab could be using a fake passport trying to enter Brazil, the site of the Summer Olympics. The airline said the alert was issued based on information provided by Brazil’s federal police, which had been looking for Dhiab.

The Uruguayan government has provided social services and financial support to Dhiab and the five other former detainees – three others from Syria, a Tunisian and a Palestinian. But the men have struggled to adjust and have complained about not getting enough help from Uruguayan officials.

Dhiab has been the most vocal about his unhappiness. Last year, he visited neighboring Argentina. In an orange jumpsuit like those Guantánamo prisoners have worn, he told news media in Buenos Aires that he planned to seek asylum for himself and the other detainees still held at the US naval base in eastern Cuba.

In an interview with the Uruguayan magazine Búsqueda, Dhiab said he was never a terrorist, but sympathizes with al-Qaida because of the torture that he endured in Guantánamo. He also has accused Uruguay of breaking its commitment to bring his family.

Jon Eisenberg, a US lawyer who represented Dhiab while he was detained at Guantánamo, said he has not been in contact with the former prisoner since a phone call in June but has heard from a contact in Uruguay that the report of his being in Venezuela is accurate.

Eisenberg said Dhiab was very concerned about his wife and three children, who fled the Syrian civil war for Turkey but then had to return to their homeland for financial reasons. They were in a Syrian village that was bombed by government forces in November 2015.

The lawyer said that when he last spoke with the former prisoner, Dhiab was hopeful that his family might be brought to Uruguay.

“That’s why I thought he wouldn’t leave Uruguay,” Eisenberg said.