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The Taliban is in the building, including U.S. federal buildings, meaning Seddique Mir Mateen was granted access to the Obama administration.
Seddique Mir Mateen is a life insurance salesman who started a group in 2010 called Durand Jirga, Inc., according to Qasim Tarin, a businessman from California who was a Durand Jirga board member. The name refers to the Durand line, the long disputed border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Seddique uses the Dari language, and not Pashto, the language of Pushtuns. More here.
Tarin said Seddique Mir Mateen had a television show on which they discussed issues facing Afghanistan.
THE DURAND JIRGA, INC. has been set up 11/28/2010 in state FL. The current status of the business is Active. The THE DURAND JIRGA, INC. principal adress is 519 SW BAYSHORE BOULEVARD, PORT ST. LUCIE, FL, 34983.
Details: = jirga (Pashto: لويه جرګه, “grand assembly”) is a special type of jirga that is mainly organized for choosing a new head of state in case of sudden death, adopting a new constitution, or to settle national or regional issue such as war.
Durand: “Our brothers in Waziristan, our warrior brothers in [the] Taliban movement and national Afghan Taliban are rising up. Inshallah the Durand Line issue will be solved soon.”
A connection is made when two people are officers, directors, or otherwise associated with the same company. Sabrina has eight known connections and has the most companies in common with Mustafa Aurakzai.
In part from Associated Press: Some of Seddique Mir Mateen’s shows were taped and later posted on YouTube. During one episode, a sign in the background read: “Long live the U.S.A! Long live Afghanistan. … Afghans are the best friends to the U.S.A.”
But a former Afghan official said the “Durand Jirga Show” appears on Payam-e-Afghan, a California-based channel that supports ethnic solidarity with the Afghan Taliban, which are mostly Pashtun. Viewers from Pashtun communities in the United States regularly call in to the channel to espouse support for Pashtun domination of Afghanistan over the nation’s minorities, including Hazaras, Tajiks and Uzbeks, the official said.
The “Durand Jirga Show” expresses support for the Taliban, has an anti-Pakistan slant, complains about foreigners in Afghanistan and criticizes U.S. actions there, the official said. Seddique Mir Mateen lavished praise on current Afghan President Ashraf Ghani when he appeared on the show in January 2014, but he has since denounced the Ghani government, according to the official, who said that on Saturday, Seddique Mateen appeared on the show dressed in military fatigues and used his program to criticize the current Afghan government.
He also announced on that show that he would run in the next Afghan presidential election, said the official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because he did not want to be linked to coverage of the shooting.
Father of Orlando shooter hosted political show on Afghan-Pakistan issues
Reuters: The Afghan-born father of Omar Mateen, the man police identified as the gunman who killed 50 people at a packed gay nightclub in Florida on Sunday, hosted a political show on an U.S.-based Afghan satellite channel that took a hard anti-Pakistan line.
ijreview
In an interview with NBC News on Sunday, Seddique Mateen, also known as Mir Siddique, said his son’s rampage had “nothing to do with religion.”
He described an incident in downtown Miami in which his son saw two men kissing in front of his wife and child and he became very angry.
“We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident,” NBC News quoted him as saying. “We weren’t aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country.”
Seddique Mateen lives in Florida, according to public records, but it was not immediately known when came to the United States. He did not immediately return messages left on his phone, which appeared to be turned off, or respond to an email.
Omar Khatab, the owner of the California-based satellite channel Payam-e-Afghan, said in an interview that Seddique Mateen occasionally bought time on his channel to broadcast a show called “Durand Jirga,” which focused in part on the disputed Durand Line, the frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan demarcated by the Indian subcontinent’s former British rulers.
“Three or four times a year, he would show up in Southern California,” Khatab said in a phone interview on Sunday. “He’d talk for about two to three hours. He’d buy his own time and come here and broadcast and leave within a day.”
Khatab said Seddique Mateen’s political views were largely anti-Pakistan.
One of Seddique Mateen’s videos refers to the “killer ISI” – the acronym for Pakistan’s main military-run intelligence service – and says the agency is the “creator and father of the world’s terrorism.”
U.S. officials have accused Pakistani intelligence of backing violence against U.S. targets in Afghanistan, although Pakistan denies the allegations.
A U.S. congressman said Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old Florida resident and U.S. citizen, may have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State militant group.
U.S. officials cautioned that they had no immediate evidence of any direct connection with Islamic State or other foreign extremist group, nor had they uncovered any contacts between the gunman and any such group.
Fifty-three people were wounded in the rampage. It was the deadliest single U.S. mass shooting incident, eclipsing the 2007 massacre of 32 people at Virginia Tech university.
Seddique Mateen interviewed Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in January 2014, according to a video posted on his YouTube channel. The interview touched on economic development and youth unemployment in Afghanistan. Khatab said Mateen conducted the interview in Kabul and brought it to California for broadcast.
*****
The connections are deeper, they include an American suicide bomber that the Orlando shooter Omar met with face to face. Then there is al Nusra and the Khorasan Group. The suicide bomber was Abusalha and his father is a Palestinian. Read the whole story here.
Omar Mateen had been investigated by the FBI twice before, in 2013 and then in 2014. The first investigation took place in 2013 when he made inflammatory comments to co-workers that indicated sympathy for terrorists. He was investigated and interviewed twice but the FBI was “unable to verify the substance of his comments,” FBI Assistant Special Agent In charge Ronald Hopper said.
Then in 2014, Hopper said,Mateen was investigated and interviewed again, this time for suspected connections to Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha, an American citizen who became a suicide bomber in Syria in 2014. Hooper said Mateen’s contact with Abu-Sallah was minimal and it was deemed that “he did not constitute a substantive threat at that time.
*****
FNC: The gunman who murdered at least 50 people in a Florida nightclub early Sunday morning was a follower of a controversial gang leader-turned-bank robber who was released from prison last year despite warnings from prosecutors that he would recruit people to carry out violent acts, sources told FoxNews.com.
Omar Mateen, whose bloody siege inside a packed Orlando gay nightclub ended when SWAT teams stormed the building and killed him, was a radical Muslim who followed Marcus Dwayne Robertson, a law enforcement source said.
Marcus Dwayne Robertson, a former U.S. Marine known to his supporters at his Orlando-based Fundamental Islamic Knowledge Seminary as “Abu Taubah.”
“It is no coincidence that this happened in Orlando,” said a law enforcement source familiar with Robertson’s history of recruiting terrorists and inciting violence. “Mateen was enrolled in [Robertson’s online] Fundamental Islamic Knowledge Seminary.”
Robertson and several associates were rounded up for questioning early Sunday, according to law enforcement sources, a development his attorney refused to confirm or deny.
“No comment,” Corey Cohen said in an email reply when asked if his longtime client was in custody. Police also did not confirm or deny picking up Robertson.
This undated image provided by the Orlando Police Department shows Omar Mateen, the shooting suspect at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., Sunday, June 12, 2016. The gunman opened fire inside the crowded gay nightclub early Sunday before dying in a gunfight with SWAT officers, police said. (Orlando Police Department via AP) (The Associated Press)
FoxNews.com has reported extensively on Robertson, a former U.S. Marine who served as a bodyguard to the Blind Sheik involved in the 1993 World Trade Center Attack and led a gang of New York bank robbers called “Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves” before resurfacing in Orlando, where he started an Islamic seminary.
The school, recently renamed the Timbuktu Seminary, is operated by Robertson, a 47-year-old firebrand known to his thousands of followers as Abu Taubah.
Robertson, who recently spent four years in prison in Florida on illegal weapons and tax fraud charges before being released by a Florida judge one year ago, has openly and enthusiastically preached against homosexuality. The targets of Mateen’s bloody rampage were members of the gay community of Orlando, an hour’s drive from the 29-year-old’s home in Fort Pierce.
Prosecutors said wiretaps from 2011 proved Robertson instructed one of his students, Jonathan Paul Jimenez, to file false tax returns to obtain a tax refund to pay for travel to Mauritania for terror training.
Jimenez studied with Robertson for a year in preparation for his travel to Mauritania, where he would study and further his training in killing, suicide bombing, and identifying and murdering U.S. military personnel. He pleaded guilty in 2012 to lying to authorities and conspiring to defraud the IRS and was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison.
Robertson was arrested on a firearms charge in 2011 and pleaded guilty in January 2012. On March 14, 2012, federal authorities charged him with conspiring to defraud the IRS, which he was convicted of in December 2013.
While in the John E. Polk Correctional Facility in Seminole County, Robertson was considered so dangerous, he was kept in shackles and assigned his own guards. Whenever he was transported to court, a seven-car caravan of armed federal marshals escorted him. He was initially moved into solitary confinement after prison authorities believed he was radicalizing up to 36 of his fellow prisoners.
In seeking enhanced terrorism charges during sentencing for the two crimes, prosecutors said Robertson has been involved with terrorism activities, “…focused on training others to commit violent acts as opposed to committing them himself” … “overseas instead of inside the United States.”
Yet efforts by federal prosecutors to tack on another 10 years to his sentence, based on enhanced terrorism charges under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, were not persuasive enough for U.S. District Judge Gregory Presnell, who freed Robertson in June 2015 with time served.
Robertson had denied being involved with terrorist activities, in court and in postings on social media and in statements from his attorney to Fox News.
Federal law enforcement has been familiar with Robertson since 1991.
As a former U.S. Marine who became the leader known as “Ali Baba” of a notorious New York gang “Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves”, Robertson and his crew robbed more than 10 banks, private homes and post offices at gunpoint, shot three police officers, and attacked one cop after he was injured by a homemade pipe bomb.
During the same period, federal authorities claimed Robertson served as a bodyguard to Omar Abdel Rahman, nicknamed the “Blind Sheik,” who led the terrorist group that carried out the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and donated more than $300,000 in stolen funds to mosques he attended, both claims Robertson denied. Robertson has adamantly denied the claims.
After he was arrested in 1991 along with most of the other members of the gang, prosecutors cut a deal with Robertson, and let him serve four years in prison before going to work undercover for the FBI between 2004 and 2007 to document terrorists’ plans and networks in Africa, Egypt and the United States.
Many of the court’s filings, including Robertson’s own testimony from his most recent criminal case, remain under federal seal, which means only prosecutors, the judge and the defense can review the records.
Cohen told FoxNews.com in a statement that his client “never taught or condoned violence in any way.”
“In fact for his federal case the judge did not find terrorist acts, which led to his sentence of time served,” Cohen sai
Play this short video. Ever wonder about the dreams of Americans who would like to attend schools of higher education that cant because the class size limits are met by foreigners? If these ‘dreamers’ need aid and assistance then how about their home countries paying for it? Rhetorical for sure.
Another rhetorical question….How about home countries provide internal dreamer conditions?
The President met with six young “DREAMers” in the Oval Office, all of whom were brought to America by their parents, and — until recently — faced a difficult situation because of their immigration status. The President’s executive action on immigration is changing that.
President Barack Obama shows the Resolute Desk to a group of DREAMers, following their Oval Office meeting in which they talked about how they have benefited from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, Feb. 4, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
“I don’t think there’s anybody in America who’s had a chance to talk to these six young people … who wouldn’t find it in their heart to say these kids are Americans just like us, and they belong here, and we want to do right by them.”
President Barack Obama, 2/4/2015
Each of the young people who stood in the Oval Office yesterday had one thing in common: They were all brought here by parents dreaming of a better life for their children in America.
Some of them arrived when they were simply months old. They were raised in American communities, often not realizing their status was any different from that of their classmates or neighbors. Many of them, as the President noted in remarks at the end of the meeting, didn’t discover that there was something different about them — something that might prevent them from giving back to their community and their country — until they were about to go to college.
Over three million students graduate from U.S. high schools every year. Most get the opportunity to test their dreams and live their American story. However, a group of approximately 65,000 youth do not get this opportunity; they are smeared with an inherited title, an illegal immigrant. These youth have lived in the United States for most of their lives and want nothing more than to be recognized for what they are, Americans.
The DREAM Act is a bipartisan legislation ‒ pioneered by Sen. Orin Hatch [R-UT] and Sen. Richard Durbin [D-IL] ‒ that can solve this hemorrhaging injustice in our society. Under the rigorous provisions of the DREAM Act, qualifying undocumented youth would be eligible for a 6 year long conditional path to citizenship that requires completion of a college degree or two years of military service.
For reference on your tax dollars and foreign aid:
In part by Devex: A number of U.S. agencies specifically target private sector partnerships and reforms to drive economic growth, and each of them received a budget increase — some quite significant — under the president’s proposed plan.
The U.S. Trade and Development Agency would see its budget increase by 22 percent if Obama’s request finds traction, a “plus-up” that comes after USTDA’s budget already jumped 19 percent last year. The relatively small agency, which seeks to connect U.S. companies with infrastructure investments in emerging markets, has been lauded from both sides of the political aisle.
The accompanying budget justification describes a robust role for using the additional funding provided under the president’s request in support of Power Africa’s goals, although some observers have wondered where the $7 billion will come from, and whether it really represents concrete administration commitments or merely aspirational targets.
Each agency’s specific contribution to the initiative cannot be parsed out of the 2015 numbers. However, the budget — together with the recent congressional vote in favor of the bipartisan “Electrify Africa Act,” which directs the president to create a strategy for alleviating energy poverty in Africa –—suggests Power Africa transactions are poised to represent a substantially larger percentage of the U.S. development portfolio next year.
Climate change
The issue of global climate change has risen in profile since Secretary of State John Kerry took office last year, but funding for the Global Climate Change Initiative remained at a flat $840 million in the 2015 request.
Just as the President’s budget request does not specify how much it will spend directly on Power Africa, it also sheds little light on what portion of Power Africa’s transactions will focus on non-carbon energy sources.
That could leave climate change advocates wondering what’s in it for them — and whether the funding will ever match the rhetoric — when it comes to foreign affairs spending in 2015 and beyond.
Operating expenses, Middle East democracy
USAID receives a more than 20 percent increase to its operating budget in the president’s request, after a 10 percent reduction to that same account in 2014. While agency officials were confident they could sustain current operations using carry over funding this year, they also maintained that surplus funding will be gone by 2015 and that staffing and programs would suffer if the OE budget was not restored.
The agency will have to wait and see if Congress agrees with Obama’s show of support for investing in the agency’s ability to hire new staff and continue funding the USAID Forward agenda, which seeks procurement system reforms and increased agency capacity.
Such pro-democracy language and overt funding for “locally-led change and emerging reformists” could be read as a response to criticism some have leveled at the administration that it has not done enough to support opposition groups and popular movements against entrenched autocrats.
Next steps
The president’s budget request marks the first step in an appropriations process that will play out for months and ultimately determine how the U.S. government prioritizes spending next year.
The proposal is strong on its message about a “new model of development,” which sees opportunities for partnerships with the private sector in spurring development gains, as well as an obligation for U.S. action to respond effectively when global hot spots ignite.
Some signals — the Electrify Africa Act and USTDA’s continued budget plus-ups, for example — suggest bipartisan support exists for the partnerships model of development, at least in some sectors. But it will be important to watch closely to see if the administration is nearly as successful in defending those priorities within the foreign affairs budget — like new emphases on maternal health and child stunting, and global climate change — that do not appear to lend themselves so easily to the mutual economic benefit argument.
California Dream Act AB-130 and AB-131
Allows students eligible for state financial aid to apply for and
receive;
* Institutional scholarships such as the UC
Grant, State University Grant & Educational
Opportunity Program funds;
* California Community College Board of
Governor (BOG) Fee Waivers;
* State financial aid, including Cal Grants and
Chafee Foster Youth for use at qualifying
public and private institutions
Emails in Clinton probe dealt with planned drone strikes: WSJ
Reuters/WSJ: Emails between U.S. diplomats in Islamabad and State Department officials in Washington about whether to challenge specific U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan are at the center of a criminal probe involving Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
The 2011 and 2012 emails were sent via the “low side” -government slang for a computer system for unclassified matters – as part of a secret arrangement that gave the State Department more of a voice in whether a CIA drone strike went ahead, according to congressional and law enforcement officials briefed on the FBI probe, the Journal said.
Some of the emails were then forwarded by Clinton’s aides to her personal email account, which routed them to a server she kept at her home in suburban New York when she was secretary of state, the officials said, according to the newspaper.
Investigators have raised concerns that Clinton’s personal server was less secure than State Department systems, and a recent report by the State Department inspector general found that Clinton had broken government rules by using a private email server without approval, undermining Clinton’s earlier defenses of her emails.
The still-secret emails are a key part of the FBI investigation that has long dogged Clinton’s presidential campaign, the officials told the Journal. Clinton this week clinched the Democratic presidential nomination for the Nov. 8 election.
The vaguely worded messages did not mention the “CIA,” “drones” or details about the militant targets, officials said, according to the Journal.
The emails were written within the often-narrow time frame in which State Department officials had to decide whether or not to object to drone strikes before the CIA pulled the trigger, the officials said, according to the newspaper.
Law enforcement and intelligence officials said State Department deliberations about the covert CIA drone program should have been conducted over a more secure government computer system designed to handle classified information, the Journal reported.
Context at the time:
Pakistan UAV attacks have become one of the Obama administration’s signature efforts in the terror war. Although the CIA does not divulge how many drones it operates, press reports suggest the agency has as many as 16 such systems. But in the early days of his presidency, Barack Obama was advised by at least two former high-ranking CIA officers not to over-rely on the use of drones.
Former CIA analyst Bruce Riedel, commissioned by the president to review US policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, concluded that robot airplanes could only function successfully when allied to high-quality “on the ground” intelligence.
That view was shared by General Michael Hayden, CIA director at the start of the Obama presidency. In his book Obama’s Wars, Bob Woodward recounts how Hayden believed that “The great lesson of World War II and Vietnam was that attack from the air, even massive bombings, can’t win a war.”
Noah Shachtman, contributing editor of Wired.com, warns that the lesson of not having troops on the ground could be over-learned: “The idea that any terrorist problem could be solved by drones alone just isn’t realistic. Drones are only as effective as the human informants who tell them where to strike.” For him, a drones-only policy could become “a way of maintaining political cover and a veil of secrecy over operations that might ordinarily be wide open”. More here.
**** Additionally for later context:
NPR: In 2013, President Obama tightened rules for drone strikes in order to reduce civilian casualties. NPR’s Audie Cornish talks to Wall Street Journal correspondent Adam Entous who learned that the president secretly waived the new rules for CIA operations in Pakistan.
In 2015: The killings revealed last week of two hostages – an American and an Italian – have raised new questions about how the CIA operates in Pakistan. Warren Weinstein and Giovanni La Porto were aid workers. They were killed in January by a U.S. drone strike aimed at al-Qaida militants. The Wall Street Journal reports the CIA conducted that strike under a secret waiver approved by President Obama in 2013. Obama laid it out in a speech at National Defense University in 2013. And he didn’t reveal all the rules. The actual guidance that he issued is – remains classified. But he did talk about three of them. He said that operations targeting individuals needed to have near certainty that there would be no civilians killed or injured in those strikes. He also said that the CIA and the Pentagon, when conducting strikes like this, need to know that there is an imminent threat to the United States posed by the militants that they intend on targeting. And another guideline that he laid out was the idea that the United States is not going to kill people in order to punish them for acts that they did in the past. This is about preventing them from attacking the United States or U.S. persons or assets overseas in the future.
Pakistan is important because this is the staging area for al-Qaida and other militant groups that are looking to cross the border into Afghanistan and attack American forces there. Attacking al-Qaida in Pakistan is a way to prevent them from later attacking U.S. forces across the border. So the White House and the president said that there would be a thorough review of this incident in order to ensure that mistakes like this do not happen again. And within this debate within the administration, several members of the president’s inner circle are making the case that now is the time to rein in the program.
But it’s really hard to tell what direction this is going to go in the end because of strong support, not only within the administration for the drone program and wanting to have the flexibility to use it, but also within the Congress. You have very powerful committees, members of the president’s own party, who very much support this program and don’t want to see it go away. Additional information here.
Reps. Cohen, Kinzinger, Cárdenas and Wagner Introduce Bipartisan Human Trafficking Bill
June 9, 2016
Press Release
[WASHINGTON, DC] – Congressman Steve Cohen (D-TN), Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), Congressman Tony Cárdenas (D-CA) and Congresswoman Ann Wagner (R-MO) yesterday introduced H.R. 5405, the Stop, Observe, Ask and Respond (SOAR) to Health and Wellness Act. This bipartisan legislation would provide health care professionals at all levels training on how to identify and appropriately treat human trafficking victims. It is a companion bill to S. 1446, which was introduced by Senators Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) and Susan Collins (R-ME).
“Human trafficking is a hidden crime that impacts hundreds of thousands of people across the U.S., and many of these victims end up in a health care setting while being exploited,” said Congressman Cohen. “Our bill aims to ensure health care professionals are trained to identify victims of human trafficking and provide them with critical, victim-centered health care. Our bill also enables health care providers to implement protocols and procedures to work with victims, service organizations, and law enforcement so that victims can get proper support and perpetrators of human trafficking are brought to justice. I would like to thank Reps. Kinzinger, Cárdenas and Wagner for joining me in introducing this bill.”
“It is critical that our health care providers are trained to recognize cases of human trafficking and have the proper procedures to best help those most vulnerable,” said Rep. Kinzinger. “I’m proud to be an original cosponsor of the SOAR Act and I believe this pilot program will have a significant impact towards identifying cases of human trafficking and helping more victims across the country from this disgusting crime.”
“Human trafficking has grown into a large scale industry that is disproportionately geared towards women,” said Rep. Cárdenas. “This is just one of the many reasons why I did not hesitate to become an original cosponsor of the SOAR bill. Victims of trafficking suffer long-term effects, and with the introduction of new research, it is evident that the people who seek help can be identified and properly cared for by trained professionals. It is time to use this information in order to help stop the growth of the trafficking industry and facilitate the well-being of both survivors and victims.”
“Education and awareness are critical in the fight to end human trafficking. This legislation will provide health care providers on all levels with the appropriate training and tools necessary to identify and report potential cases of human trafficking,” said Congresswoman Wagner. “With tens of thousands of victims being trafficked in the United States each year, I am happy to work with my colleagues across the aisle to introduce and quickly pass this legislation.”
“Victims of human trafficking are hidden in plain sight – making those in captivity unrecognizable even to our most trusted professionals like doctors and nurses,”said Senator Heitkamp.“By implementing across the country the successes of health worker pilot training programs in North Dakota, my bipartisan bill with Sen. Collins would help provide the critical tools medical professionals need to recognize and protect victims of human trafficking. Today’s introduction of our bill in the U.S. House of Representatives is a critical step toward putting an end to human trafficking by identifying victims and getting them the support they need.”
“Sex trafficking is a heinous crime that tragically affects every corner of America. Human traffickers prey upon the most vulnerable, often homeless or runaway children,” said Senator Collins. “Identification is a crucial, and frequently missed, step in helping victims and stopping these atrocities. This bipartisan legislation would expand a successful pilot program at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to ensure that more health care providers have the training to identify, report, and treat these cases, which will help us shine a light on some of the darkest stories imaginable and protect victims of these detestable crimes.”
The Stop, Observe, Ask and Respond (SOAR) to Health and Wellness Act supports efforts underway at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to combat human trafficking by directing the Secretary to establish a pilot program to be known as ‘Stop, Observe, Ask and Respond to Health and Wellness Training.’ While human trafficking victims are often difficult to identify, a reported 68 percent of trafficking victims end up in a health care setting at some point while being exploited, including in clinics, emergency rooms and doctor’s offices. Despite this, out of more than 5,680 hospitals in the country, only 60 have been identified as having a plan for treating patients who are victims of trafficking and 95 percent of emergency room personnel are not trained to treat trafficking victims. The SOAR Act will help close the gap in health care settings without plans for treating human trafficking victims.
**** How bad is it?
BBC: Dubbed “the General”, Mered Medhanie is alleged to have led a multi-billion dollar empire which specialised in people-smuggling.
Mered Medhanie styled himself on the late Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi
A 35-year-old Eritrean, he came to public attention after being linked to the worst migrant disaster at sea – the deaths of 359 migrants in October 2013 after their boat sank near the Italian island of Lampedusa.
Canada-based barrister Christine Duhaime, who specialises in money-laundering legislation, said Mr Mered was suspected to be a ringleader of the people-smuggling network which stretched across Africa and Europe.
“He is notorious just for the fact that he controlled a lot of money and a lot of people,” she told the BBC’s Newsday programme.
“As kingpin, the amount of money that went through him is apparently in the billions.” More to the story here.
Mered Medhanie styled himself on the late Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi