Russia IS in Ukraine and Planning Another Offensive

Posted on August 4, 2016August 4, 2016 by Denise Simon

Militants preparing offensive at Svitlodarsk bridgehead: Ukraine intelligence Militants are preparing for combat operations in the Donetsk and Slaviansk directions, the Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry wrote on Facebook.

Pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine accuse government soldiers of launching a new offensive near a prized but obliterated airport in the separatists’ de facto capital of Donetsk.

“The intelligence service has detected signs of enemy preparations for combat operations in the Donetsk and Slaviansk directions (Svitlodarsk bridgehead). From August 4 to 8, there is threat of an intensified offensive or raid actions to expand controlled areas,” the report read.

The militants also continue to conduct reconnaissance. In particular, the intelligence service spotted a reconnaissance group of the 9th separate Assault Marine Regiment (Novoazovsk) of the 1st Armed Corps (Donetsk) of the Russian Armed Forces. Sabotage and reconnaissance groups are also scheduled to make an appearance in the following settlements: Maiorsk, Zaitseve, Avdiyivka and Opytne, as well as Pisky, Krasnohorivka and Maryinka. In addition, the intelligence service has reported the arrival of railway cargo from the territory of the Russian Federation to Ilovaisk, comprising two railcars filled with anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, six railcars with ammunition, one railcar with medicines and another one with the uniforms. More here.
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Russia has been and is paying special attention to Ukraine. This was the case during tsarist and Soviet times. This is the case now. Consequently, Ukraine has been widely infiltrated by Russian agents, who help their “brotherly neighbors” direct the course of the Ukrainian state into the pro-Russian channel. These agents of influence are not only the Russian mass-media, like the Russian Vesti media conglomerate, the Opposition Bloc Party, the Ukrainian Choice organization (pro-Russian group created by Putin’s crony Viktor Medvedchuk — Ed.), the numerous parishes of the Moscow Patriarchate, and the Russian business structures that continue to operate in Ukraine. Russian agents have even infiltrated the structures that display their pro-Ukrainian orientation.

Putin’s “Brusilov Offensive” is based on isolating Ukraine from the West on the one hand and destabilizing Ukraine on the other. He has already accomplished portions of the plan; he may yet accomplish others. But we alone will determine to what extent we will resist this “offensive” and if we have enough endurance and the ability to be guided by cold reason. Read more here.

$400M is but One Payment to Iran, from a 1996 Legal Case

Posted on August 3, 2016August 3, 2016 by Denise Simon

It is not ransom, it is not ransom…okay…well let’s go further shall we?

Justice Department Officials Raised Objections on U.S. Cash Payment to Iran

Some officials worried about message being sent, but were overruled, WSJ

Then, Obama violated his own Executive Order as noted here and dated February 5, 2012.

Why did we convert to cash in various currencies and not just wire the money into designated Iranian banks? Well the excuse is sanctions. And Iran demanded cash such that later purchases or transactions could not be monitored, so John Kerry was cool with that. The result was smuggling $400 million on pallets on an unmarked cargo plane that landed in the middle of the night. Smuggling?

What is bulk cash smuggling?

Bulk Cash Smuggling is a reporting offense under the Bank Secrecy Act, and is part of the United States Code (U.S.C.). The code stipulates:

Whoever, with the intent to evade a currency reporting requirement, knowingly conceals more than $10,000 in currency or other monetary instruments on the person of such individual or in any conveyance, article of luggage, merchandise, or other container, and transports or transfers or attempts to transport or transfer such currency or monetary instruments from a place within the United States to a place outside of the United States, or from a place outside the United States to a place within the United States, shall be guilty of a currency smuggling offense.

What authorities govern bulk cash smuggling offenses?

Title 31 U.S.C. § 5332 (Bulk Cash Smuggling) makes it a crime to smuggle or attempt to smuggle more than $10,000 in currency or monetary instruments into or out of the United States, with the specific intent to evade the U.S. currency reporting requirements codified in Title 31 U.S.C. §§ 5316 and 5317.

ICE HSI relies on other financial authorities granted under Title 31 U.S.C. (Money and Finance), specifically those related to violations of reporting requirements and structuring financial transactions, as well as criminal authorities, such as Title 18 U.S.C. § 1960 (Unlicensed Money Transporter/Transmitter), Title 18 U.S.C. § 1952 (Interstate and Foreign Travel or Transportation in Aid of Racketeering Enterprises) and Title 18 U.S.C. § 1956 (Money Laundering). These authorities allow ICE HSI to disrupt and dismantle criminal networks that move bulk cash, wherever they may operate.

What are monetary instruments?

Monetary instruments are financial instruments that can be used similarly to cash. Specifically, monetary instruments are defined on the second or reverse side of the FinCEN Form 105:

Coin or currency of the United States or of any other country.
Traveler’s checks in any form.
Negotiable instruments (including checks, promissory notes, and money orders) in bearer form, endorsed without restriction, made out to a fictitious payee, or otherwise in such form that title thereto passes upon delivery.
Incomplete instruments (including checks, promissory notes, and money orders) that are signed but on which the name of the payee has been omitted.
Securities or stock in bearer form or otherwise in such form that title thereto passes upon delivery.

Monetary instruments do not include the following:

Checks or money orders made payable to the order of a named person which have not been endorsed or which bear restrictive endorsements.
Warehouse receipts
Bills of lading. More here.

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Remember the plane was delayed for reasons no one was willing to declare but then John Kerry blamed it on a glitch with the passenger list.

There had been expectations that they would leave on Saturday, while the final round of talks on sanctions were taking place. But the Swiss plane carrying Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post’s Tehran bureau chief, Saeed Abedini, a pastor from Idaho and Amir Hekmati, a former Marine from Flint, Michigan as well as some of their family members did not leave until Sunday morning.

It had been reported when the plane took off that Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari, about whom little is known, was on board. But a senior U.S. official later said he was not traveling with the other released prisoners. More here.

It is also important to remember as Iran released 4 prisoners, the United States released 7. It is also important to remember that Obama had to issue a pardon for those 7 to be released.

Iran’s official state news agency, IRNA, named the Iranians set for release as Nader Modanlou, Bahram Mechanic, Khosrow Afghahi, Arash Ghahraman, Tooraj Faridi, Nima Golestaneh and Ali Saboonchi. Mechanic’s lawyer told Reuters that Mechanic, Faridi and Afghahi had been pardoned, but Mechanic and Faridi had not yet been freed from custody as their release was contingent on the four American prisoners leaving Iran. The U.S. government has yet to confirm the identities of the Iranians to be freed. All seven have the option of staying in the U.S. rather than returning to Iran. The U.S. State Department also dropped an international request to detain 14 Iranians on trade violations on Saturday, saying the extradition requests were unlikely to be successful. More here.

Okay, so with all of that, what about the rest of the money allegedly owed to Iran?

Well it seems someone needs to look at the lawsuit in clear detail as it was not filed until 1996. The U.S. response to the lawsuit is here in .pdf.

On August 12, 1996, the Islamic Republic of Iran filed aStatement of Claim (Doc . 1) in a new interpretive dispute againstthe United States, Case No . A/30, alleging that the United Stateshas violated its commitments under the Algiers Accords byinterfering in Iran’s internal affairs and implementing economicsanctions against Iran.

The Government of Iran, which has a long record of using terrorism and lethal force as an instrument of state policy, isseeking a ruling from the Tribunal that the United States hasviolated the Algiers Accords by intervening in Iran’s internalaffairs and enacting economic sanctions against it . Iran assertsthat the United States has violated two obligations under theAlgiers Accords : the pledge in Paragraph 1 of the GeneralDeclaration that it is and will be the policy of the UnitedStates not to intervene in Iran’s internal affairs, and therequirement in Paragraph 10 of the General Declaration to revokeall trade sanctions imposed in response to Iran’s seizing the

U.S . Embassy and taking 52 American hostages on November 4, 1979.

To hear the State Department spokesperson, Admiral Kirby (ret), John Kerry and the White House spokesperson Josh Earnest tell it, the U.S. was about to be rendered a decision by The Hague that we lost the case. Really when it began over kidnapping, hostages and terrorism? C’mon….

October Surprise, POTUS Clearing the Middle East Decks

Posted on August 3, 2016August 3, 2016 by Denise Simon

It is all about politics which is all about timing. Obama is clearing the mess in Iraq and Syria for Hillary and while he is scheduled to take October off to campaign for Hillary, big military operations are planned for Islamic State destruction. Hillary then enters the White House to take on Supreme Court judges and social issues? It is political extortion to sway the elections and the electorate.

Get Ready for Obama’s ‘October Surprise’ in Iraq

If Iraqi and Kurdish troops—with stepped-up U.S. support—retake Mosul as planned, it could be a big boost for Hillary.

Politico: The American public could be treated to a major U.S.-led military victory in Iraq this fall, just as voters are deciding who will be the nation’s next president—but U.S. military officials insist the timing of the operation has nothing to do with politics.

Iraqi and Kurdish military and paramilitary units are preparing for a push on Mosul, the Islamic State-held city that is now in the cross hairs of the U.S.-led coalition battling the terrorist group across the Middle East. “The idea is to isolate Mosul, cut it off, kill it,” a senior U.S. Central Command officer told me.

Senior military officers say the city in northern Iraq, which has been under Islamic State control since June 2014, will be enveloped in a complex pincer movement from Iraqi military forces battling their way into the city from the southeast and Kurdish units storming the city from the northwest. The military offensive, months in the planning, is now tentatively scheduled to begin sometime in early October, with a final battle for Mosul coming at the end of that month.

If Mosul is retaken, it would both mark a major political triumph for Barack Obama and likely benefit his party’s nominee at the polls, Hillary Clinton, undercutting Republican claims that the Obama administration has failed to take off the gloves against the Islamic State. Even so, senior officers at U.S. Central Command who are overseeing the effort scoff at the notion that the Mosul offensive is being timed to help the candidate Obama is now actively campaigning for, his former secretary of state.

“Hurrying this thing along for political benefit would be just about the dumbest thing that we could do,” the senior Centcom officer told me this week, “and there’s been no pressure for us to do that. None. Iraqi and Kurdish fighters are going to fight for the city when they’re damned good and ready, and not before. There’s too much at stake to do it any other way.”

Iraqi and Kurdish fighters are going to fight for the city when they’re damned good and ready, and not before. There’s too much at stake to do it any other way.”

All evidence supports that notion, but U.S. officials have confirmed the Pentagon is planning ways to time their offensive against Mosul with an attack on the Islamic State “capital” in Raqqa, Syria. A coordinated Mosul-Raqqa military offensive could yield a dual defeat to the ISIS caliphate, unhinge ISIS power in both Syria and Iraq and have the added benefit of pinning ISIS units moving into Iraq along interior lines from Syria in place. In late March, the Centcom stepped up its monitoring of the Syria-Iraq border, with the intended purpose of spotting and bombing ISIS units headed toward Mosul.

The ambitious plans for Mosul and Raqqa reflect a shift in tactics and deeper U.S. involvement that has not been fully reported in the U.S. media—or talked about in the presidential campaign. Most recently, Centcom has gained White House permission to deploy U.S. advisers with Iraqi units at the battalion level, which would place U.S. advisers and trainers in greater danger, but would also give them more control of the battlefield. And the U.S. has been quick to flow advisers (an initial tranche of some 200 in all) into al-Qayyarah air base, about 40 miles south of Mosul, which was overrun by Iraqi military forces last week. Washington has also boldly stepped up its support of the Peshmerga, the veteran military units of the Kurdistan Regional Government who will lead the assault on Mosul from the north, despite the risk of upsetting the delicate regional politics—especially suspicions by the Shia-led Iraqi government that the U.S. is favoring the Kurds. On July 12, the U.S. signed an agreement with the KRG to provide Peshmerga units with $415 million for the purchase of ammunition and medical equipment. The agreement would also provide heavy weapons to Peshmerga units, which have been consistently outgunned by ISIS fighters, according to one senior civilian Pentagon official. The $415 million would correct that shortfall, with weapons flowing into Peshmerga units near Mosul.

The stepped-up aid to the Kurds reflects U.S. military confidence that the Islamic State is being rolled back. Since the campaign was initiated on August 8, 2014, the U.S.-led coalition has launched over 13,000 airstrikes on Islamic State military targets. Just as crucially, the four near-term goals laid out by the U.S. military to combat ISIS are on the verge of completion: to stabilize Anbar, prepare coalition ground forces to take Mosul, organize a ground campaign in Syria for a planned assault on Raqqa and ramp up the flow of weapons for anti-ISIS ground forces.

The stepped-up aid to the Kurds reflects U.S. military confidence that Islamic State is being rolled back.”

A dual offensive targeting Raqqa as well as Mosul was hinted at by Lt. General Sean MacFarland, the U.S. officer commanding the anti-ISIS effort, in a July 11 news conference. Seizing control of Raqqa, he said, would mean that ISIS would “lose a base of operations, would “lose financial resources” and would “lose the ability to plan, to create the fake documentation that they need to get around the world.” Centcom military planners say that, from a U.S. military perspective, the fight for Raqqa will be even more important than the fight for Mosul.

“It is clear who will be in the Mosul fight,” former Syrian diplomat Bassam Barabandi told me this week, “but just who will take part in the Raqqa fight is not so clear. It is being negotiated now. But I don’t think there’s any doubt, it will be Raqqa and Mosul, and Iraqi officials have confirmed that they would like to take the city in October.”

The fight for Mosul will be done by a trifecta of military forces: Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (the controversial Hashd al-Shabi), the Peshmerga and Iraqi Security Forces, large numbers of whom are being trained by U.S. advisers. The U.S. is uncomfortable with the predominantly Shia Hashd forces leading the assault, as they are only nominally controlled by the Baghdad government and have proved recalcitrant in taking American advice. Formed in June 2014 after Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called on Shias to fight ISIS, some elements of the Hashd are closely aligned with the Iranian al-Quds force, with their commander reporting to Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani.

But according to Robert Tollast, a U.K.-based military analyst who has traveled to Iraq and spoken with a number of Hashd commanders, Hashd is proving to be a bigger help than ever; the group is increasingly recruiting Sunni tribesmen eager to expel ISIS from their towns and villages. “We’re seeing a replay of what happened during the Anbar Awakening,” Tollast says. “ISIS brutality has forced a lot of Anbar’s Sunnis into an alliance with Hashd, just as, back in 2006, Al Qaeda’s brutality forced the Sunnis into the arms of the Americans.” Crucially, the Islamic State’s cultural cleansing of Anbar has begun to increase the appeal of Hashd units to Anbar’s Sunnis, the exact opposite of ISIS’s strategy of maintaining and exacerbating Iraq’s sectarian divide.

But while Sunnis in increasing numbers are now joining the fight against the Islamic State, their presence has not always been welcome by Iraqi Shias already doing the fighting. “The Shias view ISIS as just another form of Sunni Baathism,” Tollast says. In this, at least, they are not wrong: The senior leaders of ISIS were often prominent in the Saddam’s Baath Party, which brutally suppressed Shias during his nearly 25-year rule. The divide is deep. During a recent trip, Tollast had a meeting with a Shia leader whose office included a poster depicting Baathist Republican Guardsmen executing Shia civilians in 1991. Tollast told me that the parallel to the June 2014 Camp Speicher massacre, in which an ISIS unit commanded by a former Saddamist murdered over 1,500 Iraqi Air Force cadets, all of them Shia, was unmistakable.

The Shias view ISIS as just another form of Sunni Baathism,” Tollast says. In this, they are not wrong.

All of which helps explain why the Kurdish Peshmerga are considered a mainstay of the Mosul operation; U.S. military officials have enormous faith in the Peshmerga’s fighting abilities, even as the strong U.S.-Kurdish relationship has proved difficult for the Iraqi central government (which recently accused Peshmerga forces of arresting and torturing Iraqi army soldiers), as well as the commanders of a variety of Popular Mobilization Force units. Turkey is another key player, since the neighboring country also fears growing Kurdish influence with the U.S.—especially since the failed coup attempt earlier in July, which the Turkish government has blamed on a Muslim cleric living in exile in Pennsylvania—as Turkey jockeys for position in a post-conflict Mosul against the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers Party, which now controls an arc of territory from northern Iraq into northern Syria. So far, the fight against ISIS has provided the glue for a tense, if uneasy, truce among these political factions—but U.S. officials concede the informal alliance on the battlefield could be shattered by political disagreements.

According to the senior Pentagon official, the recently negotiated U.S.-Kurdish understanding came with strings attached, including Peshmerga battlefield coordination with Iraqi Security Forces operating on the Mosul front. Peshmerga commanders, according to this official, have now agreed to stand aside when the Iraqi Security Forces pass through their units during the initial assault on Mosul. The move is part of a U.S. effort to make sure that the units involved in the Mosul fight don’t end up battling each other. The memorandum of understanding was signed in Erbil, with the Americans represented by acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Elissa Slotkin. It was Slotkin who, back in January of 2015, gave the cold shoulder to Sunni Anbar leaders who came to Washington to plead that the U.S. government bypass the Baghdad government to arm them directly. The U.S. refused.

While the refusal of the Obama administration to arm Anbar’s Sunnis met with widespread criticism on Capitol Hill, the administration still maintains that arming the Sunnis directly would be a mistake. In the wake of the visit by Anbar Sunnis in 2015, the administration quietly responded to its critics by pointing out that large numbers of weapons the U.S. had provided the tribes during the Bush years had ended up in the hands of ISIS. “They’re nice people, they mean well,” an administration official told me at the time. “But we can’t trust them.”

The U.S. continues to insist that all support for Anbar’s Sunni tribes be funneled through Iraq’s Ministry of Defense. But while the U.S. is still saying “no” to Anbar leaders who demand the U.S. bypass the Iraqi government in supporting them, the answer now is more nuanced: It’s more of a “no, but … ” More regular support for Anbar’s Sunnis is now possible, U.S. officials say, because the Defense Ministry is under the control of Khaled al-Obaidi, a Sunni from Mosul who has made it a point of touring Iraq military units preparing to storm the town. Obaidi’s appointment in October 2014 was widely criticized by Iraq’s Shia political parties, and there was an assassination attempt on him last September, when his convoy was hit by sniper fire north of Baghdad. Despite the controversy over his appointment, the U.S. told Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi that Obaidi’s presence was essential in the anti-ISIS fight because it would help to heal the rift between the Shia dominated government and Anbar’s tribes.

Still, Sunni tribal leaders complained throughout the early part of 2015 that the Iraqi government was slow to provide them with the weapons they needed. So last October, Pentagon officials say, Defense Secretary Ash Carter increased pressure on the Iraqi government to accelerate weapons’ deliveries to Anbar’s newly created Tribal Mobilization Force. Carter told the Congress that the U.S. had provided “two battalions’ worth of equipment for mobilizing Sunni tribal forces,” adding that it was up to the Iraqis to “ensure it is distributed effectively.” He added that “local Sunni forces need to be “sufficiently equipped and regularly paid.”

The fight for Mosul and Raqaa will likely be a turning point in the war against ISIS.

What Carter didn’t say, but the Pentagon officials now confirm, is that the U.S. has also channeled funding support to key tribal leaders through Obaidi’s ministry, as a kind of replay of the financial support that helped jump-state the Sunni Awakening in 2006. While the new Tribal Mobilization Force cannot match the combat power of the Hashd al-Shaabi (Anbar’s Sunnis can contribute 10,000 soldiers to the Mosul effort, at most, one Centcom officer says), its participation is essential as a symbol of the Abadi government’s attempt to build an anti-ISIS coalition of diverse Iraqi forces. (Suhaib al-Rawi, Anbar’s governor, said he preferred to withhold any comment on this report.)

The fight for Mosul and Raqqa will likely be a turning point in the war against ISIS. But while no one in Baghdad or Washington is guaranteeing victory, the U.S.-led coalition’s control of the air and the continued degradation of ISIS’s battlefield assets (they have lost nearly 150 tanks and over 7,000 reinforced fighting positions, according to Centcom’s precisely tabulated data), means that the Mosul fight could follow the model provided by the Battle for Fallujah, which the Iraqis reconquered from ISIS back in June. In that case, according to Joel Wing who charts events in the country and writes the “Musings on Iraq” blog, “there were tougher outer defenses and then little in the interior.” Mosul, he says, could be “even more like that.” Then too, he adds, the fight for Mosul has become so important that “everyone wants in on it.”

That’s the good news. The bad news is that while the broad U.S.-led coalition to fight ISIS remains unified, the same cannot be said for the forces on the ground. The only thing that unites them, it seems, is that they hate ISIS more than they hate each other. So while senior U.S. military officers are confident that a final assault on Mosul will succeed, they also know that the offensive could break apart even before it is launched.

Which means that while Obama would welcome an October surprise, he continues to caution that the fight against ISIS could take years. And it’s why Prime Minister Abadi has ignored calls that he expel U.S. military advisers, that he seize control of the Shia-dominated Hashd al-Shabi, that he dismiss Obaidi, that he cease all support for Anbar’s Tribal Mobilization Force and that he get tougher with the Kurds. And that’s because Abadi knows that the fight for Mosul is a battle Iraq can’t afford to lose.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/08/iraq-offensive-2016-mosul-islamic-state-isis-isil-obama-foreign-policy-kurdish-214121#ixzz4GG8Oadmu
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Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/08/iraq-offensive-2016-mosul-islamic-state-isis-isil-obama-foreign-policy-kurdish-214121#ixzz4GG80b3Jn
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$400 Million to Tehran on Pallets in Unmarked Cargo Plane

Posted on August 3, 2016August 3, 2016 by Denise Simon

We don’t pay ransom, and there were 7 prisoners. Since, Iran has kidnapped our navy sailors and captured 2 more Iranian-Americans.

Where are the emergency congressional hearings?

Washington, D.C. – House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA) issued this statement in response to the Wall Street Journal’s report on the Obama administration’s $400 million cash payment airlifted to Iran the same day Iran released American prisoners:

“The logistics of this payment – literally delivering a plane full of cash to evade U.S. law – shows yet again the extraordinary lengths the Obama administration will go to accommodate Iran, all while hiding the facts from Congress and the American people. Hundreds of millions in the pockets of a terrorist regime means a more dangerous region, period. And paying ransom only puts more American lives in jeopardy. We already know the Iran nuclear deal was a historic mistake. It keeps getting worse. What else is the Obama administration hiding?”

NOTE: In February, Chairman Royce sent a letter to Secretary Kerry requesting detailed information about the administration’s handling of a $1.7 billion payment to Iran. Following an incomplete reply, the Chairman sent a follow-up urging the administration to comply with Congressional inquiries. In particular, Chairman Royce asked for detailed information on how the payment was processed and delivered to Iran. To date the administration has not responded.

U.S. Sent Cash to Iran as Americans Were Freed

Obama administration insists there was no quid pro quo, but critics charge payment amounted to ransom

WSJ: WASHINGTON—The Obama administration secretly organized an airlift of $400 million worth of cash to Iran that coincided with the January release of four Americans detained in Tehran, according to U.S. and European officials and congressional staff briefed on the operation afterward.

Wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies were flown into Iran on an unmarked cargo plane, according to these officials. The U.S. procured the money from the central banks of the Netherlands and Switzerland, they said.

The money represented the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement the Obama administration reached with Iran to resolve a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal signed just before the 1979 fall of Iran’s last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

The settlement, which resolved claims before an international tribunal in The Hague, also coincided with the formal implementation that same weekend of the landmark nuclear agreement reached between Tehran, the U.S. and other global powers the summer before.

“With the nuclear deal done, prisoners released, the time was right to resolve this dispute as well,” President Barack Obama said at the White House on Jan. 17—without disclosing the $400 million cash payment.

Senior U.S. officials denied any link between the payment and the prisoner exchange. They say the way the various strands came together simultaneously was coincidental, not the result of any quid pro quo.

“As we’ve made clear, the negotiations over the settlement of an outstanding claim…were completely separate from the discussions about returning our American citizens home,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said. “Not only were the two negotiations separate, they were conducted by different teams on each side, including, in the case of The Hague claims, by technical experts involved in these negotiations for many years.”

But U.S. officials also acknowledge that Iranian negotiators on the prisoner exchange said they wanted the cash to show they had gained something tangible. Read more here from the WSJ.

Half of Those Remaining at Gitmo are Cleared for Release

Posted on August 2, 2016August 2, 2016 by Denise Simon

There remains a key question to be asked: If those remaining are not a risk or a threat then why has it taken a more than a decade to form this conclusion? Additional questions include how much are we paying other countries to take a detainee as no agreements or conditions have ever been published.

Is this the right time to be doing this? Not so much as noted here:

Key takeaways in this month’s Terror Threat Snapshot include:

– There have been 24 ISIS-linked plots or attacks against Western targets in the first half of 2015, up from 19 in all of last year.

– The number of homegrown terror plots since 9/11 has reached 116, tripling in just the past five years.

– Foreign fighters continue to flow into Syria and Iraq. There has been an 80 percent increase in fighters traveling to the conflict zone since ISIS declared its “caliphate” one year ago.

– More than 200 Americans are believed to have traveled—or attempted to travel—to fight in Syria, a 33 percent increase overall since the beginning of this year.

The full report is here.

Half of Guantánamo’s uncharged captives are OK’d to go

Musab Omar Ali al Madhwani in a photo from his 2008 prison profile provided to McClatchy by WikiLeaks.

McClatchy: The Guantánamo parole board on Monday said it had cleared a Yemeni captive for release to resettlement outside his homeland, reaching a milestone:

Now, 33 of the last 76 captives at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba can go to nations providing security assurances that satisfy Secretary of Defense Ash Carter. Ten captives are charged with war crimes. So half of those long-held, uncharged detainees are now approved to go.

The figure could rise. Seventeen captives not currently facing charges await their parole board hearings, or decisions from them.

Musab Omar Ali al Madhwani, 36, “never held extremist views or any desire to harm Americans,” his U.S. military advocate told the Periodic Review Board on June 28. “I am confident Musab is honest in his intentions after Guantánamo” to pursue a career as an accountant, marry and have children.

Pakistani security forces captured him on Sept. 11, 2002, in a day of raids in Karachi, according to his 2008 prison profile, parts of which an updated assessment discredited. He arrived at Guantánamo on Oct. 28, 2002, after 30 or more days in CIA custody, according to a portion of the so-called Senate Torture Report on the spy agency’s secret prison network.

At Guantánamo, U.S. military intelligence dubbed him a member of the “Karachi Six,” calling him part of a six-member “al-Qaida operational cell intended to support a future attack” in the Pakistani port city, the country’s largest and most populous.

The decision released Monday by the board, however, noted that by March he had been “reassessed to be that of a low-level fighter” who was probably trying to get home to Yemen when he was arrested. The board said he should be resettled in a third country with “reintegration support” and security assurances.

His lawyer, Patricia Bronte, told the board that her client had grown at Guantánamo into someone she would welcome into her family home. She and two other no-charge defense lawyers who had represented him vowed to attend his wedding “regardless of where it takes place,” she said.

“Musab is no longer the shy, gullible youth whom two men convinced to run away from home and go to Afghanistan,” she said. Once, she added, he was “afraid of being alone in the dark.” Now, “he reaches out to calm his brothers’ fears and resolve their disputes.”

Madhwani was one of two Yemeni clients for whom Bronte bought socks and shoes last year after she noticed the men’s footwear looked scruffy. She said she didn’t mind the expense, but was disturbed by what appeared to be prison camp cost-cutting. The spokesman at the time called reports of shortages at the Most Expensive Prison on Earth “baseless”

*****

MIAMI (AP) — A review board has decided that a Saudi prisoner at Guantanamo Bay who attended flight school in the U.S. and was trained to make explosives by al-Qaida should continue to be held without charge.

The Periodic Review Board said in a decision released Friday that Ghassan Abdallah al-Sharbi should remain in custody at the U.S. base in Cuba because he remains a security threat.

Factors cited by the board include what it said was his past involvement in terrorism as well as “hostile behavior” while detained, including organizing confrontations between detainees and the guard force at the detention center.

A short statement added that “the board considered the detainee’s prior statements expressing support for attacking the United States, and the detainee’s refusal to discuss his plans for the future.”

The 41-year-old al-Sharbi attended Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona, and later went to a U.S. flight school, where he “associated with” two of the hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, according to a profile released by the Pentagon before his review board hearing in June.

Authorities said he later received training by al-Qaida in the manufacture of improvised explosive devices and was captured in a raid on a terrorist safe house in Pakistan in 2002.

He faced charges that included providing material support for terrorism before the military commission at the base. But U.S. courts have ruled that material support at the time of the alleged offenses did not constitute a war crime that could be prosecuted at Guantanamo and the case was withdrawn. He cannot be tried in civilian court because Congress has prohibited the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the U.S. for any reason, including prosecution.

Al-Sharbi is one of 76 prisoners held at Guantanamo, including 32 who have been approved for release and are awaiting transfer.