An affordable price is probably the major benefit persuading people to buy drugs at www.americanbestpills.com. The cost of medications in Canadian drugstores is considerably lower than anywhere else simply because the medications here are oriented on international customers. In many cases, you will be able to cut your costs to a great extent and probably even save up a big fortune on your prescription drugs. What's more, pharmacies of Canada offer free-of-charge shipping, which is a convenient addition to all other benefits on offer. Cheap price is especially appealing to those users who are tight on a budget
Service Quality and Reputation
Although some believe that buying online is buying a pig in the poke, it is not. Canadian online pharmacies are excellent sources of information and are open for discussions. There one can read tons of users' feedback, where they share their experience of using a particular pharmacy, say what they like or do not like about the drugs and/or service. Reputable online pharmacy canadianrxon.com take this feedback into consideration and rely on it as a kind of expert advice, which helps them constantly improve they service and ensure that their clients buy safe and effective drugs. Last, but not least is their striving to attract professional doctors. As a result, users can directly contact a qualified doctor and ask whatever questions they have about a particular drug. Most likely, a doctor will ask several questions about the condition, for which the drug is going to be used. Based on this information, he or she will advise to use or not to use this medication.
Yazidis, Jews, Apostate Muslims and Christians have all been part of the genocide in the Middle East and terror has arrived in Europe.
The Director of the FBI, James Comey has already sounded the alarm speaking to a terror diaspora…anyone listening?
Churches take new security measures in face of terror threats
FNC: As Father Josiah Trenham prepared to read the Gospel, several parishioners discreetly scooped up their babies, retreated up the aisles of St. Andrew Orthodox Church and out into the spring air, so as not to allow the crying of little ones to disturb the divine liturgy.
The time-honored tradition was shattered when a car passed by the Riverside, Calif., church, slowing down as the front passenger leaned out of his window and bellowed menacingly through a bullhorn, according to witnesses.
“Allahu Akbar!” the unidentified man repeated several times as the unnerved parents drew their infants close and exchanged worried glances.
Members of the church were gathered under the main archway when the car passed slowly by, its occupant allegedly yelling “Allahu Akbar!” over a bullhorn. (FoxNews.com)
Witnesses were able to give Riverside police a description of the green Honda Civic, but not of the three occupants. Some told police they believed one or more of the men may have been taking photographs, according to Officer Ryan Railsback. Although Trenham insisted multiple congregants heard the Arabic phrase, Railsback noted no mention of it was in the police report.
Whatever the case, no law was broken – even if an unmistakable message was sent and received.
“Be calm and to keep a special vigilance over the property and our children while we are at church,” Trenham wrote in an email to parishioners in which he recounted the disturbing event. “Pray that these provocative young men might repent of their intimidation and be saved.”
Trenham told FoxNews.com last week the situation remains “tense and tenuous,” and said the church now has security officers on hand for all regular services.
“It is a deep sorrow to live this way in the ‘new America,’” he said.
The incident took place on April 12, some four months after a terror attack left 14 dead in nearby San Bernardino, and just over three months before a French priest was killed by ISIS-linked jihadists in his church. The events, whether far or near, underscore a grim new reality for pastors such as Trenham: Instead of offering sanctuary from evil, churches could in fact be attractive targets for terror.
“Many churches are now hiring self-defense instructors for classes or security guards that include off-duty police,” said Ryan Mauro, a professor of Homeland Security at Liberty University and national security analyst for the Clarion Project. “If you are an Islamist terrorist seeking self-glory, executing a priest will bring you more attention than executing an average civilian.”
While no lethal terror attacks have occurred inside a U.S. church to date, experts like Jeff King, president of International Christian Concern, notes the threat tally is growing.
The murder of French Priest Jacques Hamel on July 26 showed terrorists could target Christian churches.
“I’m pretty sure there will be attacks in the future,” King said. “Until [radical Islam is defeated], we can expect Christians, including in the West, to rationally tighten security measures and try to protect themselves from attack.”
In February, Khial Abu-Rayyan, 21, of Dearborn Heights, Mich., was arrested after he told an undercover FBI agent he was preparing to “shoot up” a major church near his home on behalf of ISIS. A month earlier, the Rev. Roger Spradlin of Valley Baptist Church – one of the biggest congregations in Bakersfield, Calif. – told attendees that they had received a threat written in Arabic.
Spradlin told his congregants the church had received a threat, and officials have since taken new precautions. (Valley Baptist Church)
“Undercover officers were then placed during worship services,” Valley Baptist spokesman Dave Kalahar said. “The FBI continues to investigate along with the local task force.”
Last September, an Islamic man clad in combat gear was charged with making a terrorist threat after entering Corinth Missionary Baptist Church, in Bullard, Tex., and claiming that God had instructed him to kill Christians and “other infidels.” A year earlier, police were called to Saint Bartholomew’s Catholic Church in Columbus, Ind., after the house of worship was vandalized with the word “Infidels!” along with a Koranic verse sanctioning death for nonbelievers. Similar graffiti was found that same night at nearby Lakeview Church of Christ and East Columbus Christian Church.
St. Bartholomew Pastor Clem Davis said he doesn’t know if the threat was legitimate, but said little can be done to harden a target whose mission is to welcome all.
“I don’t know that there is any real protection against the ‘lone wolf’ mentality, not without infringing on everybody’s freedoms,” Davis said. “We don’t have metal detectors, people go in and out. Churches are family-orientated, public, tax-supported spaces; so they may appeal to some as a target.”
Synagogues have faced increasing threats in recent years, too. Earlier this year, the FBI disrupted a plot by a Muslim convert to blow up the Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center, in Aventura, Fla. A 2014 audit by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) found that anti-Semitic incidents rose 21 percent across the country that year.
Eastern Orthodox Christians, who in many cases suffered persecution at the hands of radical Muslims in their Middle Eastern homelands, believe they may be singled out because of their heritage. Mass at St. Andrew typically attracts up to 400 worshippers with roots in Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Russia and Greece.
“We have guards now; we never used to have guards,” said St. Andrew attendee Solomon Saddi, a Syrian-American Christian. “They keep an eye on everyone and talk to the faces that aren’t familiar,” he continued, referring to the aftermath of the April incident. “It is a very dangerous time for us even in America.”
In San Diego’s Iraqi-Christian community, known as Chaldeans, many local churches have had to dip into their collection baskets to hire security.
“There is a concern over attacks,” said a parishioner at St. Peter Chaldean Catholic Church. “Everyone knows that a church, especially like St. Peter, is a risk. But everyone tries not to let their fear get in the way of their faith.”
The July 26 murder of the Rev. Jacques Hamel, in the Normandy town of St.-Étienne-du-Rouvray sent shock waves around the world, and signaled to U.S. law enforcement that it could happen here, said Horace Frank, assistant commanding officer of the Counter-Terrorism and Special Operations Bureau of the Los Angeles Police Department.
“We see things happen in other countries and worry about them happening here,” Frank said. “You always have to be worried about copycats. That’s why we focus on prevention, trying to look ahead.”
Frank’s division works with Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh groups to discuss such topics as terrorist reporting, suspicious activity and active shooter training.
“We reach out to churches and they reach out to us. You have to be aware, you have to be vigilant,” Frank said. “It’s a concern not just in Christian communities, but all faith communities.”
The United States has been taking in refugees, migrants and asylees from Latin America and several dozen countries for decades. This is supposed to be a temporary condition but the truth is it has never been temporary.
Now with 45 million people from just 2015 displaced from their home countries around the world, there is a crisis that is hard to define much less solve. The United Nations is the lead organization that is under pressure to find solutions and world leaders are not in any kind of collective agreement. Meanwhile, there are people, mostly innocent that are suffering. This is a historical time, one that was in fact not only predictable but solvable if civil war, conflicts and terrorism was addressed long before it manifested.
At issue is the total cost of war where there is no end in sight but more, the cost of creating a viable and living long term solution for migrants to include education, healthcare, law enforcement, jobs, entitlements to list a few. No country is monetarily prepared for the future costs many yet to be known, studied or funded.
The United States had every opportunity in 2011 to launch humanitarian action missions to offset refugee conditions especially as Islamic State was born, and predicted to become a global terror operation directly after Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed. He is the original father of Islamic State…al Qaeda in Iraq.
As a result of the long war in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, the complete damage to cities and towns where normal infrastructure has been destroyed, there is no viable location to go back to. There are no schools, hospitals, roads, buildings and commerce has stopped except for black markets and smuggling. Further, no countries are stepping up with funds to help rebuild or as many call it, nation building.
In summary, refugees are in fact a new permanent status for wherever they are located, including the United States.
Consequently, the United Nations is chartered with drafting a global solution with world leaders.
In part from the NewYorkTimes: Refugees and migrants will be the biggest issue at the gathering of world leaders at the United Nations next month. President Obama plans to lead a meeting at the General Assembly in an effort to nudge countries to take in more refugees and contribute to countries that have taken them in for years.
The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, also plans to hold a meeting on the plight of refugees and migrants. The document under negotiation will be the centerpiece of his meeting.
While the draft text has no force of international law, every sentence has been argued and negotiated. The resulting language is sometimes so vague that it is likely to bring little comfort to the millions of men, women and children who are seeking safety and opportunity abroad.
Eritrea, for instance, recently complained that the many references to human rights in the document were “redundant.” (A United Nations committee earlier this year accused Eritrea of atrocities against its own citizens.)
Russia resisted a sentence that called for countries to share in the “burden” of taking in refugees. (Russia takes in very few, except lately, from parts of Ukraine.)
The United States suggested a phrase asserting that detention is “seldom” good for children. Activists for immigrants and refugees found that suggestion so appalling that they fired off a letter on Friday to President Obama. They argued that any international agreement should make clear that detention is “never in the best interests of children” and should commit to ending the practice. (The United States detains children who arrive from Mexico without legal papers.)
Amnesty International said in a statement over the weekend that “with some states trying to dilute the agreement to suit their own political agendas, we may end up with tentative half-measures that merely reinforce the status quo or even weaken existing protection.”
According to the United Nations, 24 million people worldwide left their home countries because of war or persecution in 2015. More than ten times that number — 244 million — were considered migrants, living somewhere other than the country of their birth.
This draft agreement sets out a long list of principles, most already enshrined in existing laws. It says refugees deserve protection and should not be sent back to places where they could face war or persecution. It urges countries to allow refugees to work and to let their children attend school, though it stops short of saying refugees have a right to either jobs or schools.
It asserts that migration can be good for the world, which is wording that migrant-sending countries wanted. It also calls for countries to take back their citizens if they travel illegally and fail to get asylum, which is what migrant-receiving countries, especially in Europe, wanted.
An early draft had proposed a global compact to allocate where refugees could be permanently resettled, but that proposal failed. African and Latin American countries wanted to know why the compact was on refugees alone, according to diplomats involved in the negotiations. Why not also have a compact on the rights of migrants, they asked.
The latest draft sets a 2018 deadline for two compacts — one for refugees, a second for migrants.
The draft text also says nothing about the rights of the 40 million people who are displaced in their own countries, or about those who are leaving their homes because of climate change.
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
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
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.
Making a Killing: The 1.2 Billion Euro Arms Pipeline to Middle East
An unprecedented flow of weapons from Central and Eastern Europe is flooding the battlefields of the Middle East.
Lawrence Marzouk, Ivan Angelovski and Miranda PatrucicBIRNBelgrade, London, Sarajevo
BalkanInsight: As Belgrade slept on the night of November 28, 2015, the giant turbofan engines of a Belarusian Ruby Star Ilyushin II-76 cargo plane roared into life, its hull laden with arms destined for faraway conflicts.
Rising from the tarmac of Nikola Tesla airport, the hulking aircraft pierced the Serbian mist to head towards Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
It was one of at least 68 flights that in just 13 months transported weapons and ammunition to Middle Eastern states and Turkey which, in turn, funnelled arms into brutal civil wars in Syria and Yemen, the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, OCCRP, has found. The flights form just a small part of €1.2 billion in arms deals between the countries since 2012, when parts of the Arab Spring turned into an armed conflict.
Belgrade Airport | BIRN
Meanwhile, over the past two years, as thousands of tonnes of weapons fly south, hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled north from the conflicts that have killed more than 400,000 people. But while Balkan and European countries have shut down the refugee route, the billion-euro pipeline sending arms by plane and ship to the Middle East remains open – and very lucrative.
It is a trade that is almost certainly illegal, according to arms and human rights experts.
“The evidence points towards systematic diversion of weapons to armed groups accused of committing serious human rights violations. If this is the case, the transfers are illegal under the ATT (United Nations’ Arms Trade Treaty) and other international law and should cease immediately,” said Patrick Wilcken, an arms-control researcher at Amnesty International who reviewed the evidence collected by reporters.
But with hundreds of millions of euros at stake and weapons factories working overtime, countries have a strong incentive to let the business flourish. Arms export licences, which are supposed to guarantee the final destination of the goods, have been granted despite ample evidence that weapons are being diverted to Syrian and other armed groups accused of widespread human rights abuses and atrocities.
Robert Stephen Ford, US ambassador to Syria between 2011 and 2014, told BIRN and the OCCRP that the trade is coordinated by the US Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, Turkey and Gulf states through centres in Jordan and Turkey, although in practice weapon supplies often bypass this process.
BIRN and the OCCRP examined arms export data, UN reports, flight records, and weapons contracts during a year-long investigation that reveals how thousands of assault rifles, mortar shells, rocket launchers, anti-tank weapons, and heavy machine guns are pouring into the troubled region, originating from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia.
Since the escalation of the Syrian conflict in 2012, these eight countries have approved the shipment of weapons and ammunition worth at least 1.2 billion euros to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, and Turkey.
The figure is likely much higher. Data on arms export licences for four out of eight countries were not available for 2015 and seven out of eight countries for 2016. The four recipient countries are key arms suppliers to Syria and Yemen with little or no history of buying from Central and Eastern Europe prior to 2012. And the pace of the transfers is not slowing, with some of the biggest deals approved in 2015.
Eastern and Central European weapons and ammunition, identified in more than 50 videos and photos posted on social media, are now in use by Western-backed Free Syrian Army units, but also in the hands of fighters of Islamist groups such as Ansar al-Sham, Al Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, ISIS, in Syria, factions fighting for Syrian President Bashar-al Assad and Sunni forces in Yemen.
On April 7, 2016, twitter User @bm27_uragan, who monitors the spread of weapons in the Syrian conflict, posted a video apparently of Free Syrian Army rebel using Serbian made Coyote M02 heavy machine gun in Southern Aleppo in Syria. The Coyote M02 has been independently identified as a Coyote M02.
Markings on some of the weapons identifying the origin and date of production reveal significant quantities have come off production lines as recently as 2015.
Out of the 1.2 billion euros in weapons and ammunition approved for export, about 500 million euros have been delivered, according to UN trade information and national arms export reports.
The frequency and number of cargo flights – BIRN and the OCCRP identified at least 68 in just over one year – reveal a steady flow of weapons from Central and Eastern Europe airports to military bases in Middle East.
The most commonly used aircraft – the Ilyushin II-76 – can carry up to 50 tonnes of cargo or approximately 16,000 AK-47 Kalashnikov rifles or three million bullets. Others, including the Boeing 747, are capable of hauling at least twice that amount.
But arms and ammunitions are not only coming by air. Reporters also have identified at least three shipments made by the US military from Black Sea ports carrying an estimated 4,700 tonnes of weapons and ammunition to the Red Sea and Turkey since December 2015.
One Swedish member of the EU parliament calls the trade shameful.
“Maybe they –[Bulgaria, Slovakia and Croatia] – do not feel ashamed at all but I think they should,” said Bodil Valero, who also served as the rapporteur for the EU’s last arms report.“Countries selling arms to Saudi Arabia or the Middle East-North Africa region are not carrying out good risk assessments and, as a result, are in breach of EU and national law.”.
OCCRP and BIRN talked to government representatives in Croatia, Czech Republic, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovakia who all responded similarly saying that they are meeting their international obligations. Some cited that Saudi Arabia is not on any international weapons black lists and other said their countries are not responsible if weapons have been diverted.
A question of legality
The global arms trade is regulated by three layers of interconnected legislation — national, European Union, EU, and international – but there are no formal mechanisms to punish those who break the law.
Beyond the blanket ban on exports to embargoed countries, each licence request is dealt with individually.
In the case of Syria, there are currently no sanctions on supplying weapons to the opposition.
As a result, the lawfulness of the export approval hinges on whether countries have carried out due diligence on a range of issues, including the likelihood of the arms being diverted and the impact the export will have on peace and stability.
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia are signatories of the UN’s Arms Trade Treaty, which entered into force in December 2014, and lists measures to prevent the illicit trade and diversion of arms.
Member states of the EU are also governed by the legally-binding 2008 Common Position on arms exports, requiring each country to take into account eight criteria when accessing arms exports licence applications, including whether the country respects international human rights, the preservation of “regional peace, security and stability” and the risk of diversion.
As part of their efforts to join the EU, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro have already accepted the measures and have amended their national law. Serbia is in the process of doing so.
Weapons exports are initially assessed based on an end-user certificate, a key document issued by the government of the importing country which guarantees who will use the weapons and that the arms are not intended for re-export.
Authorities in Central and Eastern Europe told BIRN and the OCCRP that they also inserted a clause which requires the buyer to seek approval if they later want to export the goods.
Beyond these initial checks, countries are required to carry out a range of other risk assessments based on national and EU law and the ATT, although conversations with, and statements from, authorities revealed little evidence of that.
OCCRP and BIRN talked to government representatives in Croatia, Czech Republic, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovakia who all responded similarly saying that they are meeting their international obligations. Some cited that Saudi Arabia is not on any international weapons black lists and other said their countries are not responsible if weapons have been diverted. The three other countries did not respond to requests for comment.
The Czech Foreign Ministry was the only public body to directly address concerns about human rights abuses and diversions, saying it took into account both when weighing up an export licence and had blocked transfers on that basis.
The Central and Eastern European weapons supply line can be traced to the winter of 2012, when dozens of cargo planes, loaded with Saudi-purchased Yugoslav-era weapons and ammunition, began leaving Zagreb bound for Jordan. Soon after, the first footage of Croatian weapons in use emerged from the battleground of Syria.
According to a New York Times report from February 2013, a senior Croatian official offered the country’s stockpiles of old weapons for Syria during a visit to Washington in the summer of 2012. Zagreb was later put in touch with the Saudis, who bankrolled the purchases, while the CIA helped with logistics for an airlift that began late that year.
While Croatia’s government has consistently denied any role in shipping weapons to Syria, former US ambassador to Syria Ford confirmed to BIRN and the OCCRP the New York Times account from an anonymous source of how the deal was hatched. He said he was not at liberty to discuss it further.
This was just the beginning of an unprecedented flow of weapons from Central and Eastern Europe into the Middle East, as the pipeline expanded to include stocks from seven other countries. Local arms dealers sourced arms and ammunition from their home countries and brokered the sale of ammunition from Ukraine and Belarus, and even attempted to secure Soviet-made anti-tank systems bought from the UK, as a Europe-wide arms bazaar ensued.
Prior to the Arab Spring in 2011, the arms trade between Eastern Europe and Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, UAE, and Turkey – four key supporters of Syria’s fractured opposition – was negligible to non-existent, according to analysis of export data.
But that changed in 2012. Between that year and 2016, eight Eastern European countries approved at least 806 million euros worth of weapons and ammunition exports to Saudi Arabia, according to national and EU arms export reports as well as government sources.
Jordan secured export licences worth 155 million euros starting in 2012, while the UAE netted 135 million euros and Turkey 87 million euros, bringing the total to 1.2 billion euros.
Qatar, another key supplier of equipment to the Syrian opposition, does not show up in export licences from Central and Eastern Europe.
Jeremy Binnie, Middle East arms expert for Jane’s Defence Weekly, a publication widely regarded as the most trusted source of defence and security information, said the bulk of the weapon exports from Eastern Europe would likely be destined for Syria and, to a lesser extent, Yemen and Libya.
“With a few exceptions, the militaries of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE and Turkey use Western infantry weapons and ammunition, rather than Soviet-designed counterparts,” said Binnie. “It consequently seems likely that large shipments of such materiel being acquired by – or sent to – those countries are destined for their allies in Syria, Yemen, and Libya.”
BIRN and the OCCRP obtained confidential documents from Serbia’s Ministry of Defence and minutes from a series of inter-ministerial meetings in 2013. The documents show the ministry raised concerns that deliveries to Saudi Arabia would be diverted to Syria, pointing out that the Saudis do not use Central and Eastern European stock and have a history of supplying the Syrian opposition. The Ministry turned down the Saudi request only to reverse course more than one year later and approve new arms shipments citing national interest. Saudi security forces, while mostly armed by Western producers, are known to use limited amounts of Central and Eastern European equipment. This includes Czech-produced military trucks and some Romanian-made assault rifles. But even arms exports destined for use by Saudi forces are proving controversial, given their involvement in the conflict in Yemen.
The Netherlands became the first EU country to halt arms exports to Saudi Arabia as a result of civilian deaths in Yemen’s civil war, and the European Parliament has called for an EU-wide arms embargo.
Supply Logistics: Cargo flights and airdrops
Weapons from Central and Eastern Europe are delivered to the Middle East by cargo flights and ships. By identifying the planes and ships delivering weapons, reporters were able to track the flow of arms in real time.
Detailed analysis of airport timetables, cargo carrier history, flight tracking data, and air traffic control sources helped pinpoint 68 flights that carried weapons to Middle Eastern conflicts in the past 13 months. Belgrade, Sofia and Bratislava emerged as the main hubs for the airlift.
Most frequent were flights operated from Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. The flights were either confirmed as carrying weapons, were headed to military bases in Saudi Arabia or the UAE or were carried out by regular arms shippers.
The Middle East Airlift
At least 68 cargo flights from Serbia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic have carried thousands of tons of munitions in the past 13 months to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan, three key suppliers of the Syrian rebels.
These were identified through detailed analysis of airport timetables, cargo carrier history, flight tracking data, leaked arms contracts, end user certificates, and air traffic control sources.
Cargo flights from Central and Eastern Europe to the Middle East, and particularly military bases, were extremely uncommon before late 2012, when the upsurge in weapons and ammunition purchases began, according to EU flight data and interviews with plane-spotters.
The most commonly used aircraft – the Ilyushin II-76 – can carry up to 50 tonnes of cargo or approximately 16,000 AK-47 Kalashnikov rifles or three million bullets. Others, including the Boeing 747, are capable of hauling at least twice that amount.
Of the 68 flights identified, 50 were officially confirmed to have carried arms and ammunition:
Serbia’s Civil Aviation Directorate confirmed that 49 flights departing or passing through Serbia were carrying arms and ammunition from June 1, 2015 to July 4, 2016. The confirmation came following weeks of refusal to comment on grounds of confidentiality and after BIRN and the OCCRP presented its evidence, including photographs showing military boxes being loaded onto planes at Belgrade’s Nikola Tesla Airport on four different occasions.
An official at the Bulgarian National Customs Agency confirmed one flight, operated by Belarussian cargo carrier Ruby Star Airways, was carrying arms from the remote Bulgarian Gorna Oryahovitsa Airport to Brno–Turany Airport, the Czech Republic, and on to Aqaba, Jordan.
An additional 18 flights were identified as very likely to have been carrying arms and ammunition based on one of three variables: the air freight company’s history of weapons supplies; connections to earlier arms flights; or a destination of a military airport:
Ten flights were made to Prince Sultan Air Base in Al Kharj, Saudi Arabia and Al Dhafra Air Base in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, indicating the likely presence of weapons or ammunition. Additionally, 14 flights to Prince Sultan and Al Dhafra air bases are confirmed as having carried weapons during the same period by Serbia’s Civil Aviation Directorate.
Seven flights were operated from Slovakia and Bulgaria by Jordan International Air Cargo, part of the Royal Jordanian Air Force, which were revealed to have carried weapons and ammunition from Croatia to Jordan in the winter of 2012. Bulgarian retired colonel and counter-terrorism expert Slavcho Velkov, who maintains extensive contacts with the military, told BIRN and the OCCRP that the Sofia-Amman flights “were transporting weapons to Saudi Arabia, mostly for the Syrian conflict.” Additionally, one other flight operated by this airline is confirmed as having carried weapons during the same period by Serbia’s Civil Aviation Directorate.
One flight was operated by a Belarussian cargo carrier TransAVIAexport Airlines, which has a long history of transporting weapons. In 2014, the airline was hired by Serbian arms dealer Slobodan Tesic to transport Serbian and Belarussian weapons and ammunition to air bases in Libya controlled by various militant groups. The United Nations, UN, Sanctions Committee investigated the case and found potential breaches of UN sanctions, according to a 2015 UN report. Additionally, five flights operated by this airline are confirmed as having carried weapons during the same period by Serbia’s Civil Aviation Directorate.
Many of these flights made an additional stop in Central and Eastern Europe – meaning they were likely picking up more weapons and ammunition – before flying to their final destination.
EU flight statistics provide further evidence of the scale of the operation. They reveal that planes flying from Bulgaria and Slovakia have delivered 2,268 tons of cargo – equal to 44 flights with the most commonly used aircraft – the Ilyushin II-76 – since the summer of 2014 to the same military bases in Saudi Arabia and UAE pinpointed by BIRN and OCCRP.
Distributing the weapons
Arms bought for Syria by the Saudis, Turks, Jordanians and the UAE are then routed through two secret command facilities – called Military Operation Centers (MOC) – in Jordan and Turkey, according to Ford, the former US ambassador to Syria.
These units – staffed by security and military officials from the Gulf, Turkey, Jordan and the US – coordinate the distribution of weapons to vetted Syrian opposition groups, according to information from the Atlanta-based Carter Center, a think tank that has a unit monitoring the conflict.
“Each of the countries involved in helping the armed opposition retained final decision-making authority about which groups in Syria received assistance,” Ford said.
A cache of leaked cargo carrier documents provides further clues to how the Saudi military supplies Syrian rebels.
According to the documents obtained by BIRN and the OCCRP, the Moldovan company AeroTransCargo made six flights in the summer of 2015 carrying at least 250 tonnes of ammunition between military bases in Saudi Arabia and Esenboga International Airport in Ankara, the capital of Turkey, reportedly an arrival point for weapons and ammunition for Syrian rebels.
Pieter Wezeman, of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a leading organisation in tracking arms exports, said he suspects the flights are part of the logistical operation to supply ammunition to Syrian rebels.
From the MOCs, weapons are then transported by road to the Syrian border or airdropped by military planes.
A Free Syrian Army commander from Aleppo, who asked to remain anonymous to protect his safety, told BIRN and OCCRP that weapons from Central and Eastern Europe were distributed from centrally controlled headquarters in Syria. “We don’t care about the county of origin, we just know it is from Eastern Europe,” he said.
The Saudis and Turks also provided weapons directly to Islamist groups not supported by the US and who have sometimes ended up fighting MOC-backed factions, Ford added.
The Saudis are also known to have airdropped arms and equipment, including what appeared to be Serbian-made assault rifles to its allies in Yemen.
Ford said that while he was not personally involved in negotiations with Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania over the supply of weapons to Syria, he believes that the CIA is likely to have played a role.
“For operations of this type it would be difficult for me to imagine that there wasn’t some coordination between the intelligence services, but it may have been confined strictly to intelligence channels,” he said.
The US may not have just played a role in the logistics behind delivering Gulf-sponsored weapons from Eastern Europe to the Syrian rebels. Through its Department of Defense’s Special Operations Command (SOCOM), it has also bought and delivered vast quantities of military materiel from Eastern Europe for the Syrian opposition as part of a US$500 million train and equip programme.
Since December 2015, SOCOM has commissioned three cargo ships to transport 4,700 tons of arms and ammunition from ports of Constanta in Romania and Burgas in Bulgaria to the Middle East likely as part of the covert supply of weapons to Syria.
The shipments included heavy machine guns, rocket launchers and anti-tank weapons – as well as bullets, mortars, grenades, rockets and explosives, according to US procurement documents.
The origin of arms shipped by SOCOM is unknown and the material listed in transport documents is available from stockpiles across Central and Eastern Europe.
Not long after one of the deliveries, SOCOM supported Kurdish groups published an image on Twitter and Facebook showing a warehouse piled with US-brokered ammunition boxes in northern Syria SOCOM would not confirm or deny that the shipments were bound for Syria.
US procurement records also reveal that SOCOM secured from 2014 to 2016 at least 25 million euros (27 million dollars) worth of Bulgarian and 11 million euros (12 million dollars) in Serbian weapons and ammunition for covert operations and Syrian rebels..
A Booming Business
Arms control researcher Wilcken said Central and Eastern Europe had been well positioned to cash in on the huge surge in demand for weapons following the Arab Spring.
“Geographical proximity and lax export controls have put some Balkan states in pole position to profit from this trade, in some instances with covert US assistance,” he added. “Eastern Europe is rehabilitating Cold War arms industries which are expanding and becoming profitable again.”
Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic boasted recently that his country could produce five times the amount of arms it currently makes and still not meet the demand.
“Unfortunately in some parts of the world they are at war more than ever and everything you produce, on any side of the world you can sell it,” he said.
Arms manufacturers from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia are running at full capacity with some adding extra shifts and others not taking new orders.
Saudi Arabia’s top officials – more used to negotiating multi-billion-dollar fighter-jet deals with Western defence giants – have been forced to deal with a handful of small-time arms brokers operating in Eastern Europe who have access to weapons such as AK-47s and rocket launchers
Middlemen such as Serbia’s CPR Impex and Slovakia’s Eldon have played a critical role in supplying weapons and ammunition to the Middle East
The inventory of each delivery is usually unknown due to the secrecy surrounding arms deals but two end-user certificates and one export licence, obtained by BIRN and the OCCRP, reveal the extraordinary scope of the buy-up for Syrian beneficiaries.
For example, the Saudi Ministry of Defence expressed its interest in buying from Serbian arms dealer CPR Impex a number of weapons including hundreds of aging T-55 and T-72 tanks, millions of rounds of ammunition, multi-launch missile systems and rocket launchers. Weapons and ammunition listed were produced in the former Yugoslavia, Belarus, Ukraine, and the Czech Republic.
An export licence issued to a little-known Slovakian company called Eldon in January 2015 granted the firm the right to transport thousands of Eastern European rocket-propelled grenade launchers, heavy machine guns and almost a million bullets worth nearly 32 million euros to Saudi Arabia.
BIRN and OCCRP’s analysis of social media shows weapons that originated from the former states of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, and Serbia, Croatia and Bulgaria are now present on the battlefields of Syria and Yemen.
While experts believe the countries continue to shirk their responsibility, the weapons pipeline adds more and more fuel to a white hot conflict that leads to more and more misery.
“Proliferation of arms to the region has caused untold human suffering; huge numbers of people have been displaced and parties to the conflict have committed serious human rights violations including abductions, executions, enforced disappearances, torture and rape,” said Amnesty’s Wilcken.
Additional reporting by Atanas Tchobanov, Dusica Tomovic, Jelena Cosic, Jelena Svircic, Lindita Cela, RISE Moldova and Pavla Holcova.
This investigation is produced by BIRN as a part of Paper Trail to Better Governance project.
At least this is forward thinking both in Germany and in the United Kingdom. By launching these programs, it is actually a declaration of terror problems in Europe and these are positive steps. Do you wonder if our own DHS or FEMA have a response on this? So do I.
German military training 100 Syrian migrants in pilot project
Reuters: The German military is training more than 100 Syrian migrants for civilian roles suited to helping the eventual reconstruction of their country, Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said in remarks released ahead of publication on Sunday.
Von der Leyen told the Frankfurter Allgemeine daily that the pilot program was focused on training migrants in a variety of areas such as technology, medicine and logistics.
It was not immediately clear if von der Leyen planned to expand the program to include more of the one million migrants who arrived in Germany last year.
“The idea is that they will go back to Syria one day and help with the reconstruction” of their war-shattered country, von der Leyen told the newspaper.
She said Germany could also play a role in training Syrian security forces once it had a responsible government.
Syrian refugees can carry out civilian tasks for the German military, but are not eligible to work as soldiers, she said.
Von der Leyen sparked controversy within her own Christian Democratic party recently when she suggested that EU citizens could in certain cases take over armed roles in the German military. The defense minister also advocates greater diversity in the German military and moves to recruit more immigrants.
*****
More than 500,000 public sector workers put through Prevent counter-terror training in bid to spot extremism
Exclusive: Training courses criticised as ‘inadequate’ while the strategy has been described as divisive
IndependentUK: More than half a million nurses, teachers, childminders and other frontline public sector workers have been put through a mass counter-terrorism training programme to help them spot and report potential extremists in their workplaces.
The Home Office has confirmed that of the 550,000 now trained in the controversial Prevent strategy, at least 150,000 are public-facing NHS staff, such as doctors and nurses.
They have all completed various online or classroom exercises to comply with a statutory Prevent duty that was forced on a wide range of public authorities by Theresa May as Home Secretary last year.
Aimed mainly at tackling Islamist extremists and far right white supremacists, it is one of the biggest counter-terror awareness programmes ever undertaken by the UK Government.
Some in the Muslim community and beyond feel Prevent is divisive; it creates a “climate of suspicion” and is an attempt to create a huge network of spies.
The training courses themselves, particularly those online, are also being criticised as “inadequate” and an exercise in box ticking that is not being taken seriously enough by attendees.
Under the Prevent strand of the Government’s counter-terror strategy, Contest, extremism is defined as “vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs”.
Anyone who “calls for the death of members of our armed forces” is also an extremist, according to the policy.
The Prevent duty requires a large range of public sector workers to be trained and also includes college lecturers, youth and social workers, probation officers and childcare providers.
But many Prevent trainees have simply clicked through online tutorials recommended by a Home Office catalogue.
Although most of the online courses are free and take about an hour to complete, one provider charges up to £30 a head for a module that uses a snakes and ladders game to teach people about paths to radicalisation.
Another provider listed on the Government’s Gov.uk website charges safeguarding officers in higher education £500 a head for a two-day classroom workshop.
Another course teaches people how to spot far right extremism by training social workers and police and probation officers for signs of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
Under the programme, people are taught how to spot the signs that someone maybe becoming radicalised.
These might be “reports of unusual behaviour, friendships or actions and request for assistance”, according to NHS documents.
Other signs could be “patients or staff accessing extremist material online”, or “artwork or literature promoting violent extremist messages or images”.
The Government wants to teach staff to contact their authority’s designated “Prevent lead” when they have concerns about an individual, such as a student or even a patient.
The Prevent lead will alert the police whenever the risk is deemed immediate or substantiated.
Prevent was introduced by the last Labour government, but it was transformed under Ms May. She widened its scope to include non-violent extremism in 2011 when she also encouraged many authorities to start training programmes.
Between 2011 and 2015, some 300,000 public sectors had received a form of training.
But The Independent has discovered that figure has now almost doubled as a result of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act, which Ms May drove through last year.
The Home Office says that as a result of Ms May’s work, 1,000 people have been referred to the Government’s Channel initiative which tries to de-radicalise individuals.
Earlier this month, the Government’s education watchdog Ofsted warned that some schools and colleges were being too slow in complying with the Prevent duty.
But the Muslim Council of Britain, which has long opposed Prevent, said the mass training of public sector workers risked being “counterproductive”.
A spokesman said: “We need to be vigilant given the real threat of terrorism, and we therefore support effective measures to identify and report terrorist activity.
“However, we are not convinced about the effectiveness of a programme requiring hundreds of thousands of people to look for signs of what they perceive to be behaviour that potentially leads to terrorism. We are instead likely to see many false flags in an inconsistent approach that is applied in a discriminatory way.
“This runs the risk of being –as the parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights said on Friday –counterproductive to our goal of a safe and secure nation.”
The campaign group Students Not Suspects, who say the Prevent strategy unfairly targets black and Muslim students, said in a YouTube video in April: “The Prevent duty under the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act forces colleges and universities to spy on students. They’ll say this is to safeguard students but in reality it is creating a climate of suspicion around students’ political and religious views.
“Prevent is silencing students, promoting a culture of surveillance and self-censorship and undermining our universities and colleges as spaces for free and rigorous debate.”
