German Intelligence 100+ Tips, Merkel Ignored, Obama?

German spy agency got 100 tip-offs about ISIS fighters among refugees: report

Reuters: Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (BfV) has received more than 100 tip-offs that there are Islamic State fighters among the refugees currently staying in Germany, Berliner Zeitung newspaper cited the agency’s chief as saying.

The newspaper said on Friday, without citing its sources, that BfV chief Hans-Georg Maassen had recently mentioned this number at a discussion in the Interior Ministry with politicians who focus on domestic policy issues.

But Maassen also said that among those tip-offs there were some cases of untruthful defamation, the newspaper said.

The domestic intelligence agency was not immediately available to comment when contacted by Reuters.

Islamic State militants have slipped into Europe disguised as refugees, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (BfV) said on Friday, a day after security forces thwarted a potential IS attack in Berlin.

Hans-Georg Maassen said the terrorist attacks in Paris last November had shown that Islamic State was deliberately planting terrorists among the refugees flowing into Europe.

“Then we have repeatedly seen that terrorists … have slipped in camouflaged or disguised as refugees. This is a fact that the security agencies are facing,” Maassen told ZDF television.

“We are trying to recognize and identify whether there are still more IS fighters or terrorists from IS that have slipped in,” he added.

The Berliner Zeitung newspaper cited Maassen on Friday as saying that the BfV had received more than 100 tip-offs that there were Islamic State fighters among the refugees currently staying in Germany.

German fears about an attack have risen since the Paris killings. On Thursday, German forces arrested two men suspected of links to Islamic State militants preparing an attack in the German capital.

Authorities also canceled a friendly international soccer match in Hanover last year and closed stations in Munich at New Year due to security concerns.

Maassen, however, warned against alarm.

“We are in a serious situation and there is a high risk that there could be an attack. But the security agencies, the intelligence services and the police authorities are very alert and our goal is to minimize the risk as best we can,” he said.

***

IN 2015: German intelligence ‘concerned’ Islamists recruiting refugees

Berlin (AFP) – German intelligence warned Tuesday that the number of Islamic extremists in the country had increased sharply in recent months and expressed serious concern that they were recruiting among refugees.

The Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany’s domestic security watchdog, said the number of radical Salafists had surged to 7,900 in September from 7,500 in June, and that many were trying to lure asylum-seekers into their ranks.

“We are very concerned that Islamists in Germany are trying, under the cover of humanitarian assistance, to exploit the situation of the refugees for their own ends and to proselytise and recruit among asylum-seekers,” BfV president Hans-Georg Maassen said in a statement.

Germany expects to receive up to one million asylum-seekers this year, five times more than last year. Syrians, who are fleeing their war-ravaged country, form the largest group.

Maassen said that a total of 740 radical Muslims had left Germany to join jihadists in Syria and Iraq, 20 percent of them female. Around one-third of those who went to the region have returned to Germany, while about 120 of them have been killed.

He said the BfV was keeping close watch on such activities given their “significant radicalisation potential” in the migrant community.

“We are keeping a particularly close eye on unaccompanied minors among the refugees, who could be easy targets for Islamists,” he said.

Maassen stressed that his office had no evidence that jihadist groups were using the large influx of refugees to infiltrate Germany.

And he said the BfV was also concerned that far-right groups were seizing on the issue of Germany’s openness to refugees for propaganda purposes, saying it contained “significant potential for escalation”.

Maassen warned that the risk of clashes with left-wing counter-demonstrators also “should not be discounted”.

– Dawn raids-

German police carried out dawn raids in Berlin Tuesday targeting individuals suspected of inciting people to go and fight for the Islamic State group in Syria.

The raids began at 6:30 am (0430 GMT) and targeted, among others, a 51-year-old Moroccan suspected of recruiting for the jihadists, police said in a statement.

A 19-year-old Macedonian thought to be currently in Syria is also suspected of involvement in the recruitment drive, it said.

“We are looking for evidence to see whether these allegations are true,” a police spokesman said. No arrests were made.

One raid was conducted at an association linked to a mosque in Berlin’s central Tempelhof district, the spokesman said. Seven homes were also searched.

“We have no indications that anything was being planned in Germany,” he said when asked about indications of any plot to attack targets here.

But people who go to fight in Syria “gain experience of violence there and one day or another can return to Berlin”, he said.

He added that there was no link to an incident last Thursday in which an Iraqi man with a jihadist background stabbed a German policewoman before officers shot him dead in Berlin.

Germany has been spared a major Islamist attack, unlike many of its European neighbours, but the country has been called a potential target in IS propaganda.

In August, two German-speaking jihadists claiming to belong to IS threatened Germany with attacks in an execution video broadcast online.

Immigration: Senator Sessions Just Released Shocking Report

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest released a new chart on Thursday exclusively to Breitbart News that shows that the number of fugitive criminal aliens in America outnumbers the populations of every city in New Hampshire.

Fugitive Criminal Aliens Outnumber Populations Of All New Hampshire Cities

The release accompanying the chart shows:

Breitbart: According to data provided to the Subcommittee by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), there are at least 179,027 aliens in the United States who not only have been ordered to leave the country for violating our immigration laws, but who have also been convicted of a criminal offense, and have not left as required or been removed by ICE. Because of the Obama Administration’s lax enforcement policies, ICE removed only 63,539 of these criminal aliens from the interior of the United States in Fiscal Year 2015. At that rate, it would take nearly three years to remove just the existing criminal aliens who have been ordered removed from the United States (not future criminal aliens who will be ordered removed). While the ICE data includes only criminal aliens who have already been ordered removed, Jessica Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, estimates there are more than 2 million total criminal aliens in the United States.

The chart shows that the at-least-179,027 fugitive criminal aliens in the United States outnumber the populations of every single New Hampshire city. Manchester, New Hampshire, the most populous city, has 110,000 people — about 70,000 less people than fugitive criminal aliens in America — while Nashua has 87,000 people. Concord, New Hamsphire’s capital city, has 42,000 people and Dover has 31,000, while Rochester has 30,000.

The subcommittee, which is chaired by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) — the intellectual leader of the modern conservative movement — has essentially proved that no matter where anyone in the first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire lives, there are well more fugitive criminal aliens in the United States than the entire population of their home city. It will be interesting to see how this plays on the campaign trail in the final days.

Feb. 3, 2016

Refugee and Visa Programs

Homeland Security and State Department officials testified at a hearing on security concerns related to U.S. refugee and visa… read more

Homeland Security and State Department officials testified at a hearing on security concerns related to U.S. refugee and visa policy. Francis Taylor told committee members that the Department of Homeland Security was now looking at the social media accounts of refugees coming from “high risk” nations. The change was in response to the mass shooting by a husband and wife team in San Bernadino, California. The wife was a Pakistani immigrant in the U.S. on a visa

Dutch Report: Life Under Islamic State

Dutch Intelligence Report Exposes Horrors of Daily Life Under ISIS

by Abigail R. Esman

IPT: When the leaders of ISIS declared the caliphate of the Islamic State in June 2014, the world already had a strong idea of who they were: a jihadist group so violent, so barbaric, so extreme, that even al-Qaida, with whom they had once been affiliated, wanted nothing more to do with them.

But as the world soon learned, it would get even worse.

The founding of the Islamic State brought some of the most inhumane violence of modern civilization: captives held in cages and burned alive; beheadings captured on video and broadcast on the Internet; mass enslavement and rape of non-Muslim women; and the genocide of Iraq’s Yazidi tribe.

Coupled with this has been a perverse propaganda campaign that makes the Caliphate look like a teenage summer camp, aimed at recruiting Westerners to join the jihad and enjoy life in their idyllic, Allah-blessed commune-on-the-sea. And for thousands of Western Muslims, it has worked, either by inducing them to make the journey, or hijrah, to Syria and Iraq, or by motivating them to carry out terrorist attacks on Western towns and cities.

This is what we know.

What we have not known has been the reality of life in the Islamic State, including the social order, the availability of housing and health care and other basic necessities and the treatment of women and children.

A new report by the Dutch Intelligence Service (AIVD) now shines a spotlight into the heart of the Islamic State, its workings, and the psychology of its leaders. The picture it paints is no less terrifying than one might expect, a society increasingly paranoid and totalitarian, devoid of human empathy, lacking in the most vital resources, and yet somehow, still surviving through a combination of propaganda, lies, oppression, violence, and the profound power of delusion.

It is that delusion which seems most apparent in the AIVD report: the myth of a life of comfort and companionship and a coziness with God that ISIS’s propaganda promulgates, promotes, and perpetuates on social media; the delusion of those who manage to equate murder and enslavement with religious duty and moral good; and those delusions with which ISIS leaders fill the minds of children raised in their domain – and so, build and secure the future of their narrative and their jihad.

“Violence is inherent to ISIS,” the report says. “On a daily basis, it is practiced, glorified, and preached.” Through that violence has emerged a state (such as it is) that is at once overbearing, tyrannical, and powerful and yet, at its core, vulnerable, fragile, and afraid.

Following are highlights of the AIVD report, which was compiled on the basis of 18 months of research.

DAILY LIFE

While many Westerners make hijrah not to fight, per se, but for the glory of living in a true Muslim state, the reality that greets them is not what they likely anticipate, the AIVD reveals. Constant bombardments from Assad troops, allied forces, and Russia mean that every day is lived in perpetual fear and danger. The trauma this brings to children, especially, and particularly those who travel to the caliphate with their parents from the West, is incalculable.

Moreover, despite photographs ISIS distributes on the Internet of houses with exquisite views and happy families, most homes are in disrepair. There are food shortages. Medical care is as minimal as one might expect in a war zone that receives no legal imports or medicines, where there are excruciatingly few doctors or nurses, and daily streams of wounded. Electricity is also scarce; most homes can rely on only an hour or two of power every day.

And while all men receive a state salary (with supplements for wives and children), those salaries were recently halved– an unwelcome development for Caliphate citizens at a time when oil income has fallen and prices for basic necessities, especially food, skyrocket.

MEN

Men and women are separated on arrival, according to the AIVD. Men are required to swear allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph, before being interrogated to ensure they aren’t spies. They are then sent into military training. Though not all men sign up to fight, all must be prepared to join the battle if called upon and participate actively “in ISIS-led executions, torture, and rape.”

From here, they are generally able to select their own roles, be it as marketing advisers, bus drivers, doctors, or warriors. Some, however, are assigned roles. Reports the AIVD, “specifically-selected men can be trained by ISIS and sent back to stage attacks in Europe.”

WOMEN

While many women make hijrah with the idea of joining in battle, in actuality women are forbidden to participate in what is viewed as men’s work. They also cannot work closely with men who are not family, a law that further bars them from the battlefield.

They have their own parts to play in the Caliphate, the most important of which is childbearing: as many and as fast as possible. Reports the AIVD, “Mothers are [then] required to raise their sons to be ISIS fighters. Daughters, for their part, are to marry fighters and, with the same purpose as their own mothers, to bear children.”

In addition, women can play an active role in recruiting, largely through social media. Others join the all-women Al-Khansaa brigade, which enforces sharia law as it applies to women, be it their manner of dress or their public behavior. “If a woman is apprehended by the brigade and convicted, then another woman carries out the punishment,” the AIVD report explains. “Hence even Western women who have joined Al-Khansaa will execute the lashings of women who have, according to ISIS, violated rules and boundaries.”

CHILDREN

It is the children, however, who suffer most in the Islamic State – children whose lives are made of daily confrontations with death and agony and fear. Nonetheless, shockingly more and more Western families are making their way to ISIS territory with their children, or with pregnant mothers wishing to give birth there. And then there are the children born not just to ISIS brides, but to rape victims and sexual slaves such as the Yazidis.

But where most boys of 7- or 8 years of age may go on fishing trips with their fathers or play soccer in local parks, these frequently are brought to observe public executions and beatings. Parents may pose their child with the head of a beheaded enemy. At school, they learn English, Arabic, and the tenets of ISIS doctrine alongside lessons in the use of firearms and “execution practice.” By the age of 9, girls are expected to cover themselves in public, while their male schoolmates are ushered off to training camps to learn to fight.

“Children take an increasingly frequent role in ISIS propaganda,” states the report. “In various execution videos made by the group in the first half of 2015, boys between the ages of ten and twelve served as executioner, shooting or beheading prisoners. The use of children in propaganda fits the strategy of ISIS, which largely hopes to use media images to shock and so, gain attention. Through this propaganda, which is often picked up by regular mass media, it becomes clear that parents who travel to the ISIS territory have a fully realistic view of what awaits their children when they get there.”

The Overview

Increasingly, it appears that life in the Caliphate is becoming tougher. A growing paranoia and fear that disillusioned fighters might leave and counter their propaganda with the truth – not to mention a concern about spies attacking from within – haunts ISIS leaders. They are cracking down in response. It is becoming harder and harder to leave the Islamic State, even for temporary, medical reasons.

Similarly, contact between residents of the Caliphate and those on the outside is being increasingly controlled. “Since July, 2015, it is no longer permissible to use wireless internet in Raqqah,” according to the report. “The Internet can only be accessed through ISIS-approved Internet cafes, where careful watch is kept over which sites are visited. In some cases, permission must be granted by a military leader or emir to spread information to the outside. Whoever fails to observe these rules must appear before a sharia court.”

Such measures ensure that the myth of an idyllic state continues, along with the flow of new warriors and the women who will give birth to them.

Ultimately, concludes the intelligence agency, “the so-called caliphate of ISIS stands far from what the organization purports it to be. The region that is occupied by ISIS is not a holy state or ideal society in its infancy. ISIS functions as a totalitarian regime. Whoever emigrates to the ISIS territory makes a conscious, deliberate choice to take part in an organization, an institution that commits terrorist activities and conducts attacks in Europe. In practice, this means that men as well as women who join the Islamic State, armed or otherwise, take part in ISIS’s jihad.”

Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, ofRadical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New York and the Netherlands.

***

Bikers Vs. ISIS: Dutch Motorcycle Gang Fighting ISIS In Syria After Getting Legal Green Light

ISIS will now be facing a new foe as the terror group continues its brutal and bloody campaign to take over Syria and bring it under the so called Islamic State “caliphate.” Members of a Dutch biker gang known as “No Surrender” have already joined the battle against ISIS in Iraq, and on Tuesday authoities in the Netherlands gave them a legal green light to keep up the battle.

“Joining a foreign armed force was previously punishable, now it’s no longer forbidden,” said Wim De Bruin, a spokesperson for the Dutch public prosecutor, to the French Press Agency Agency. “You just can’t join a fight against the Netherlands.”

 

According to Klaas Otto, the leader of the notorious motorcycle thug gang, said that three No Surrender members made the trip to Syria last week and had taken up the fight against ISIS alongside Kurdish forces, such as those struggling to fend off heavily armed ISIS militants now besieging the crucial town of Kobani, on the border between Syria and Turkey.

A biker identified only as Ron was recently seen on Kurdish television alongside Kurdish fighters. Ron was shown dressed in battle fatigues and wielding a Kalashnikov rifle and is heard to say, “the Kurds have been under pressure for a long time.”

About 70,000 Kurds, the majority of them political refugees from Turkey, now live in Holland.

De Bruin made clear, however, that while Dutch bikers or other citizens would not be prosecuted for joining the Kurdish fight against ISIS, any Dutch national leaving the country in order to fight on the ISIS side of the conflict would be prosecuted as a criminal.

The reason for the difference is simply that ISIS is classified as a terrorist organization, and joining a terrorist group is illegal under Dutch law. By the same token, even Dutch bikers who fight against ISIS, but do so by joining with the Kurdistan Workers Party — generally known as the PKK — are also committing a crime.

The PKK is categorized as a terrorist group by the Dutch, as well as by most of the international community. The United States State Department has listed the PKK on its roster of foreign terrorist organizations since 1997.

De Bruin cautioned that the Dutch bikers fighting ISIS do not have a free hand to commit other crimes, such as rape, or torturing captives. But De Bruin conceded that even such heinous offenses would not likely be prosecuted because the fight against ISIS “is happening a long way away.”

Pathetic, Kerry is Begging Russia

As Syria Talks Fizzle, ‘War Has No Meaning Anymore’

NYT: GENEVA — Four Syrian rebel commanders huddled in a knot, all broad shoulders and shiny gray suits, surveying the hotel lounge. Gigantic portraits of Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix gazed down at the carpet, a checkerboard of faux zebra-hide in squares of orange and magenta. On a low sofa, a couple snuggled to the sounds of Amy Winehouse. The fighters decamped to a smokers’ enclosure behind a plate-glass window, its back wall a trompe-l’oeil image of electric-blue waves that made it seem as though they were submerged in a fish tank. It was an effect that fit their mood. They were in Geneva, notionally at least, for peace talks, but back in Syria, the government and its Russian allies were battering insurgents with scores of airstrikes. With their men under fire, the commanders were asking themselves how much longer they could credibly stay.

“Maybe a day,” one, Maj. Hassan Ibrahim, said on Monday night.

By Wednesday, the talks were indeed suspended, as the intense fighting on the ground proved there was as little to talk about as ever.

In an interview earlier, under the watchful eye of an adviser from Saudi Arabia, Major Ibrahim had dutifully projected strength and determination. But when the Saudi man walked away, the Syrian, who had defected from the government army in 2011, leaned forward and confided that the fighters he led in southern Syria were struggling. Supplies of weapons and salaries from the United States and its allies are dwindling. Moving in and out of Jordan is getting harder.

“They are doing it to put pressure on us to accept a political process,” he said, one in which he doubted that the Syrian government — or Russia, a sponsor of the talks — would make any compromise.

Major Ibrahim was reflecting a growing foreboding among the opposition’s fighters and civilians, mirrored by growing hope on the government side, that Washington, interested only in bombing the Islamic State militant group, is ceding the field to Russia and leaving the opposition on its own.

So much in Geneva this week was exactly like the last round of Syria peace talks in the city two years ago. Soft-lit hotel lobbies sweltered in the heat of glass fireplaces. Room service offered staple Syrian food — “Oriental mezze” — for about $40, which in Syria might constitute two weeks’ decent wages. Government and opposition delegates still seemed to be coming from different planets and witnessing different wars. Continue here.

Russia ignores Kerry plea to stop Syria bombing, deploys advanced fighter jets

FNC: Russia seemingly has ignored Secretary of State John Kerry’s appeals to stop bombing civilians and allow critical humanitarian aid to starving Syrians – and is instead escalating its military involvement, deploying four of its most capable fighter jets to Syria, two defense officials confirmed to Fox News.

The decision to send the Su-35S jets poses yet another hurdle for Kerry’s efforts to proceed with peace talks. The Su-35S is Russia’s most advanced warplane, capable of air-to-air and air-to-ground missions, one official familiar with the jet said.

Already, continued Russian airstrikes against Syrian opposition fighters, some backed by the CIA, were enough to derail proposed peace talks in Geneva Wednesday.

Despite backing two U.N. resolutions in support of a ceasefire, Russia reneged on its promise to stop bombing civilians in Syria, a prerequisite for the U.N.-backed talks in Geneva.

“[T]here will be a ceasefire,” Kerry predicted Tuesday in Rome. “We expect a ceasefire. And we expect adherence to the ceasefire. And we expect full humanitarian access.”

Two days later, the Russian bombing hasn’t stopped and thousands of Syrians remain starving.

Kerry said he was assured by his Russian counterpart the Russians would stop bombing.

“I talked to Foreign Minister Lavrov a couple of days ago and I specifically discussed a ceasefire with him, and he said they are prepared to have a ceasefire,” Kerry said.

But Kerry’s counterpart responded the next day saying the strikes would continue.

“Russian strikes will not cease [in Syria] … I don’t see why these airstrikes should be stopped,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday in Oman. Hours later, the U.N. talks fell apart.

Kerry continued calling on Russia to stop bombing Thursday in London.

“It could not be more clear. That is an obligation that is not tied to talks. It is an obligation accepted by all parties in the United Nations resolution. Russia voted for that, Russia has a responsibility, as do all parties, to live up to it,” he said.

The Russians have carried out 270 airstrikes since Monday, according to its defense ministry.

On Wednesday, a United Nations special envoy suspended the peace talks, which include participation from Russia and Iran, just hours after they began.

“It is not the end and it is not a failure of the talks,” said U.N. Special Envoy to Syria Staffan di Mistura.

The State Department denied the peace conference was a waste of time.

“It’s not a charade because they were there and because there was a beginning,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday.

The top U.S. general in Iraq said the U.S. wants to avoid a confrontation with Russia, despite Russia bombing U.S.-backed rebels.

“I wouldn’t characterize it as a proxy war. I would say that we are pursuing different goals,” Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland told reporters, speaking from Baghdad earlier this week.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Syrians are starving inside the country, besieged by Russian airstrikes preventing humanitarian aid from reaching them.

The U.N. chief humanitarian coordinator says close to 500,000 Syrians are cut off from food assistance surrounded by Bashar Assad’s forces. Fifty-one people have died of hunger in Madaya, a town of 20,000, located an hour outside Damascus and just 10 miles from Lebanon and 40 miles from the Israeli border.

Aid workers who arrived with the first and only food convoy last month said they have never seen such devastation.

“We saw people who are clearly malnourished, especially children, we saw people who are extremely thin, skeletons, that are now barely moving,” said Yacoub El Hillo, the U.N. resident and humanitarian coordinator in Syria to Reuters.

There are currently no plans for the U.S. military to help the U.N. get food to the hundreds of thousands trapped in Syria.

“There are no plans for that at this time,” said Col. Steve Warren, a U.S. military spokesman for the coalition based in Baghdad. “We’ll, of course, support them if asked and able, but our focus is the defeat of ISIL.”

“We haven’t seen a catastrophe like this since World War II,” said Kerry in Rome. “[I]n recent months its people have been reduced to eating grass,” he added.

A Washington Post editorial blamed Secretary Kerry’s compromise with Russia in the pursuit of peace talks, in part, for the prolonged starvation crisis: “Unfortunately, the Obama administration’s handling of the Syrian crisis appears to be enabling those very war crimes.”

In a statement late Wednesday, the State Department said the peace talks in Geneva were “paused” and would resume later this month.

About that Mosque that Barack Visited Today

A deep investigation was performed on the Muslim Brotherhood and organizations in the United States under that umbrella. The full summary is here.

Mosque Obama Visiting Graduated Terrorist Who Targeted Federal Building

The Al-Rahmah School at Islamic Society of Baltimore as seen in 2007. The mosque is hosting President Obama on Wednesday. (AP) According to CIA Director John Brennan ‘jihad’ means struggle…..

InvestorsDaily: Islamophilia: President Obama is conferring legitimacy on a Baltimore mosque the FBI just a few years ago was monitoring as a breeding ground for terrorists, after arresting a member for plotting to blow up a federal building.

IBD has learned that the FBI had been conducting surveillance at the Islamic Society of Baltimore since at least 2010 when it collared one of its members for plotting to bomb an Army recruiting center not far from the mosque in Catonsville, Md.

Agents secretly recorded a number of conversations with a 25-year-old Muslim convert — Antonio Martinez, aka Muhammad Hussain — and other Muslims who worshipped there. According to the criminal complaint, Martinez said he knew “brothers” who could supply him weapons and propane tanks.

“He indicated that if the military continued to kill their Muslim brothers and sisters, they would need to expand their operation by killing U.S. Army personnel where they live,” FBI special agent Keith Bender wrote. Martinez said that in studying the Quran he learned that Islam counsels Muslims to “fight those who fight against you.”

Sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2012, Martinez also stated in a social media posting that he wanted to join the ranks of the “mujahideen” in “Pakistan or Afghanistan (a country that struggle[sic] for the sake of allah).” Most of ISB’s board members are from Pakistan.

To help disrupt the plot, the FBI reportedly put an undercover agent in the mosque, which upset the leadership there. After protests, the FBI sent an official to ISB to take questions and mollify concerns the bureau was spying on Muslims.

Members of the mosque complained that the FBI tried to “entrap” Martinez and other Muslim terrorism suspects by sending “spies with Muslim names” into the mosque.

“If I was the president of the mosque, I would not let you come here without strip(-searching) you,” one member angrily told the FBI official, “because you might drop something (like a bug) to hear what’s going on here.” “The Muslim Link” newspaper described the questioner as Pakistani.

This is the mosque that will be honored with a visit from Obama on Wednesday, the first U.S. mosque visit of his presidency.

It’s now abundantly clear the White House failed to properly vet the venue. Reportedly, it let the Council on American-Islamic Relations choose the site, even though the FBI has banned CAIR from outreach because of known ties to the Hamas terrorist group.

“For a number of years we’ve been encouraging the president to go to an American mosque,” CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said. “With the tremendous rise in anti-Muslim sentiment in our country, we believe that it will send a message of inclusion and mutual respect.”

As we reported Tuesday, ISB is affiliated with the Islamic Society of North America — which federal prosecutors in 2007 named a radical Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas front and an unindicted terrorist co-conspirator in a scheme to funnel more than $12 million to Hamas suicide bombers — and ISB has helped organize the terror-tied ISNA’s conferences.

The Shariah-compliant mosque was led for 15 years by a radical cleric — Imam Mohamad Adam el-Sheikh — who once represented a federally designated al-Qaida front group. El-Sheikh also has argued for the legitimacy of suicide bombings, according to the Washington Post.

We also first reported that ISB board member and vice president Muhammad Jameel has blamed American foreign policy — namely, U.S. support for Israel — for terrorism and the rise of Osama bin Laden.

“I hope (his death) does not camouflage the bigger picture, which is to look at what gave rise to OBL and what are the root causes of terror,” Jameel said in a local 2011 interview. “Just eliminating him does not resolve the longer-term problems, which I consider to be (U.S.) foreign policy.”

ISB board members are required to have “an in-depth understanding of the Shariah,” and “must take Islam as the way of life,” according to recently amended articles of incorporation papers filed with the state of Maryland.

We have also learned that ISB invited one of the imams of the Boston Marathon bombers’ mosque to headline a 2013 fundraiser for its Islamic school.

Then-Islamic Society of Boston imam Suhaib Webb spoke at the 25th anniversary banquet of ISB’s Al-Rahmah School — even though two days before 9/11, according to an FBI surveillance report, Webb was raising cash for a Muslim cop-killer together with al-Qaida cleric Anwar Awlaki, the hijackers’ spiritual leader.

So let’s recap. The mosque that is hosting the commander in chief, while receiving his historic benediction graduated a terrorist who plotted to blow up a local Army recruiting station, hired an imam who condoned suicide bombings and blames American “foreign policy” for terrorism.

Obama has to be willfully blind not to see all these ties to terror.