al Shabaab Funded by Minnesota Daycare Operations

Posted on May 15, 2018May 15, 2018 by Denise Simon

al Shabaab has operated as a terror organization in East Africa at least since 2012 and has pledged full allegiance to al Qaeda. The translation for the name, al Shabaab is ‘the youth’ or ‘the youngsters’. That is significant in this case. It operates mostly in Somalia and was known for the attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya.

So, we have this extensive case in Minnesota and carry on luggage on flights leaving the United States out of Seattle, with millions of dollars inside.

Millions of dollars in welfare fraud from Minnesota could ...

MINNEAPOLIS (KMSP) – For five months, Fox 9 has been investigating what appears to be rampant fraud in a massive state program.

This fraud is suspected of costing Minnesota taxpayers as much as $100 million a year.

The Fox 9 Investigators reporting is based on public records and nearly a dozen government sources who have direct knowledge of what is happening.

These sources have a deep fear, and there is evidence to support their concerns, that some of that public money is ending up in the hands of terrorists.

SUITCASES FILLED WITH MONEY

This story begins at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, where mysterious suitcases filled with cash have become a common carry-on.

On the morning of March 15, Fox 9 chased a tip about a man who was leaving the country. Sources said he took a carry-on bag through security that was packed with $1 million in cash. Travelers can do that, as long as they fill out the proper government forms.

Fox 9 learned that these cloak-and-dagger scenarios now happen almost weekly at MSP. The money is usually headed to the Middle East, Dubai and points beyond. Sources said last year alone, more than $100 million in cash left MSP in carry-on luggage.

The national, go-to expert on what is behind these mysterious money transfers is Glen Kerns.

“What we were interested in is where it was going,” Kerns said.

He is a former Seattle police detective who spent 15 years on the FBI’s joint terrorism task force, until his retirement.

“It’s an outright crime, it’s unbelievable,” he said.

Kerns tracked millions of dollars in cash that was leaving on flights from Seattle.

It was coming from Hawalas, businesses used to courier money to countries that have no official banking system.

Some immigrant communities rely on Hawalas to send funds to help impoverished relatives back home.

Kerns discovered some of the money was being funneled to a Hawala in the region of Somalia that is controlled by the al Shabaab terrorist group.

“I talked to a couple of sources who had lived in that region and I said, ‘If money is going to this Hawala do you think it is going to al Shabaab?'” said Kerns. “And he said, ‘Oh definitely, that area is controlled by al Shabaab, and they control the Hawala there.’”

He said when the money arrives, whether it was intended for legitimate purposes or not, al Shabaab or other groups demand a cut.

As Kerns dug deeper, he found that some of the individuals who were sending out tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of remittance payments happened to be on government assistance in this country.

How could they possibly come up with such big bucks to transfer back home?

“We had sources that told us, ‘It’s welfare fraud, it’s all about the daycare,’” said Kerns.

FOX 9 REPORTED ON THE FRAUD FIVE YEARS AGO

To better understand the connection between daycare fraud and the surge in carry-on cash, you have to look at the history of this crime.

Five years ago the Fox 9 Investigators were first to report that daycare fraud was on the rise in Minnesota, exposing how some businesses were gaming the system to steal millions in government subsidies meant to help low-income families with their childcare expenses.

“It’s a great way to make some money,” Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said.

In order for the scheme to work, the daycare centers need to sign up low income families that qualify for child care assistance funding.

Surveillance videos from a case prosecuted by Hennepin County show parents checking their kids into a center, only to leave with them a few minutes later. Sometimes, no children would show up.

Either way, the center would bill the state for a full day of childcare.

Video from that same case shows a man handing out envelopes of what are believed to be kickback payments to parents who are in on the fraud.

When asked where the money was going, Freeman said, “I don’t know exactly where it went. But it adds up when you begin to look at how many people were involved.”

FOZIA ALI

One recent federal case points to at least some of the money going overseas.

Fox 9 obtained video of Fozia Ali being sworn in as a member of the city of Hopkins Park Board.

“I will support the constitution of the United States,” she said.

As she was taking her oath of office, she was also under investigation for wire fraud and theft of public money.

“So help me God,” she said during the ceremony.

State and federal agents had already raided Ali’s daycare center in south Minneapolis. The business was suspected of billing the government for more than a million dollars’ worth of bogus childcare services.

“We found records that she was collecting a significant amount of money for a much larger number of children than were actually attending the center,” said Craig Lisher from the FBI. “We are aware that some of the funds went overseas, what she was cashing out, money from the business.”

When asked if he had any idea of what it was going for he said, “I can’t say.” When pressed if he can’t say or doesn’t know he responded, “I can’t say.”

Investigators analyzed Ali’s cell phone to track her activities.

She took a two-month trip from Minnesota to Dubai and then Kenya, staying at times in $800 a night hotel rooms.

She used an app on her phone to bill the state of Minnesota for childcare services while she was out of the country.

Ali pled guilty to the daycare fraud and in March started serving time in a federal prison. She declined Fox 9’s request for an interview.

10 DAYCARES UNDER ACTIVE INVESTIGATION

“We believe that there’s a scope of fraud out there that we really need to get our arms around and ensure that those dollars are going to kids that really need them,” Acting Commissioner for the Department of Human Services Chuck Johnson said.

He told the Fox 9 Investigators his agency has 10 daycares currently under active investigation for fraud.

Fox 9 has learned dozens more are considered suspicious.

Search warrants obtained by the Fox 9 Investigators show each one of the suspect centers has received several million dollars in childcare assistance funds.

According to public records and government sources, most are owned by Somali immigrants.

When asked if the Department of Human Services has any evidence to suggest this looks like organized crime, Johnson responded, “There’s a common pattern in how a lot of these are carried out, but beyond that, not something that I would directly categorize as organized crime.”

Sources in the Somali community told Fox 9 it is an open secret that starting a daycare center is a license to make money.

The fraud is so widespread they said, that people buy shares of daycare businesses to get a cut of the huge public subsidies that are pouring in.

Government insiders believe this scam is costing the state at least a hundred million dollars a year, half of all child care subsidies.

“I don’t think half sounds credible,” Johnson said. “I certainly think that some of the schemes that we’re seeing and certainly the ones that we’ve brought forward already for prosecution involve millions of dollars. I mean this is not a small scale that we’re looking at.”

TRACKING THE MONEY?

Minnesota started aggressively going after daycare fraud in 2014. Back then, it was easier to track the flow of money.

The state would pay a daycare’s bill and within hours of the money showing up in the business’s bank account, funds were being wired to the United Arab Emirates.

Those wire transfers stopped after a few centers were busted.

Which brings us back to those mysterious suitcases at Minneapolis-St. Paul International.

In 2015, investigators documented $14 million in carry on cash. By 2016, it had mushroomed to $84 million. Then last year, $100 million.

A trend all too familiar to former terrorism investigator Glen Kerns.

Fox 9 asked him how likely it is that some of the money is going towards terrorism?

“I say absolutely, our sources tell us that. Good sources, from the community leaders,” he said. “My personal opinion is we need a nationwide task force to clamp down on this type of fraud.”

This crime is spreading. Sources tell Fox 9 fraudsters in other states are now using the Minnesota playbook to rip off millions of public dollars meant to help kids.

*** Where was the FBI, the Minnesota governor, DHS?

(KMSP) – A government whistleblower said he warned upper management at the Department of Human Services about massive daycare fraud more than a year ago.

Emails obtained by the Fox 9 Investigators show the Minnesota government agency was told millions of stolen tax dollars were going overseas and likely a portion of the money was being skimmed by terrorism organizations.

Scott Stillman spent eight years managing the state’s digital forensics lab, meaning he mined data from computers and smart phones.

“I have never seen anything like this level or scope in my 27-year career as an investigator,” he told Fox 9.

When the state started going after daycare centers suspected of fraud, Stillman was directly involved in the investigations.

Some of the businesses were gaming the system to steal millions in government subsidies meant to help low-income families with their childcare expenses.

In many of the cases, parents would check in their children at a daycare, only to leave a few minutes later with the kids and sometimes no children would show up at the center. However, it would still bill the state for a full day of childcare.

Stillman was so alarmed by what he found that in March of 2017 he fired off a series of emails to his supervisors at DHS.

“We are working on and overwhelmed by a significant amount of fraud cases involving organized crime, defrauding hundreds of millions of dollars annually in taxpayer monies,” he wrote.

Stillman read from one of the emails he wrote which the Fox 9 Investigators obtained through a public records request.

DHS took two months before it turned over the emails, and much of what it provided was redacted.

“They were not easy to write,” he said. “But I felt I had an obligation because I think there’s a strong possibility this money is being used against innocent civilians and against our military.”

According to Stillman, he alerted a number of people in DHS including the Commissioner’s Chief of Staff with the following message: “Significant amount of these defrauded dollars are being sent overseas to countries and organizations connected to entities known to fund terrorists and terrorism.”

At a Monday press briefing, the governor told Fox 9 his office was not told about the warnings.

Sources tell the Fox 9 Investigators people within the governor’s office were told about the concerns a couple of years ago.

“My chief of staff, current and previous staff, from what I’m told, did not get any information alleging there was that kind of theft,” Dayton said.

The state currently has 10 daycare centers under investigation for fraudulent billing of childcare services.

Each of the suspect centers has received several millions of dollars in government subsidies.

According to public records and government sources, Somali immigrants own most of the daycare centers.

Fox 9 asked the Department of Human Services about the emails Stillman sent in 2017 and more specifically who, in the chain of command, was aware of them and when.

DHS responded with a statement: “The Deputy Commissioner, communications and legal staff learned there may be emails on this subject when Fox 9 made its data request in March. The then-chief compliance officer was informed at the time the emails were originally sent.”

“I would like to have an independent federal investigation of the handling of DHS programs, specifically daycares and the Medicaid fraud program by Homeland Security of the Department of Justice.”

Stillman is no longer with the state. He resigned from his position in March after 10 years on the job.

U.S. Applies New Iran Sanctions, Hardly Enough

Posted on May 15, 2018May 15, 2018 by Denise Simon

We are still at war in the Middle East where Iran with proxies is the real and virtual enemy. The United States uses proxies as well, yet the United States near term and long range strategy remains fleeting.

The talks that continue between Iran and Europe on the JCPOA should include Iran’s war operation in the Middle East.

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Going forward for the United States:

Implications and Future Research

The unwillingness of the United States and its GCC partners to use their vast conventional military superiority has shifted the balance of power in the region from the conventional to the unconventional realm. Iran then relies on its willingness to assume more risk and its ability to better influence proxies than its adversaries, to achieve favorable foreign policy outcomes despite the opposition of the United States and its Arab allies. The use of proxy groups fundamentally decreases the physical cost a state incurs due to conflict. However, when the soldiers of a state die advising and assisting these proxies, it is more difficult to justify domestically, because using proxies signals that the objectives are not important enough to warrant decisive intervention. Therefore, states are most successful when they use proxies not as a cost-reduction mechanism alone but because proxies

are better able to achieve the desired end than conventional military forces. If the United States is unwilling to risk additional battle deaths or domestic political repercussions to prevent Iran from projecting power across the Middle East, then it must instead apply cost-imposing strategies.

Increasing the effectiveness of special operations forces from allied Arab states through intelligence sharing, kinetic strikes, training, and attached American advisors, while encouraging deployments of these elements to areas where Iranian advisors and IRGC units operate, would increase the human cost of Iranian activities. In addition to targeting Iran’s primary efforts in Iraq and Syria, these partnered operations should also confront peripheral Iranian efforts throughout the Gulf, including Yemen, in order to exploit the weakness of Iranian popular support for its presence therein. By working through Arab partners, the United States can apply the indigenous force necessary to confront Iranian proxies, while increasing the likelihood that Arab states achieve a confluence of shared ideology and objectives with their proxies, which eludes the United States

as a separate actor. Saudi and Emirati support to Yemeni military units recapturing the port of Aden and the Bab al-Mandab Strait serve as good examples of the type of effort the United States should expand.

In addition to combating Iranian proxy groups directly, targeting the ground, air, and sea logistical routes that the IRGC Quds Force uses to supply its proxies would affect Iran’s ability to support its efforts in the region. As long as Iran continues to rely on a domestically based force projection model, its network is vulnerable to air strikes, raids, and sabotage. An expanded network of friendly proxies partnered with US and allied

-Arab advisors would be ideally suited to facilitating this type of targeting.

Complete text, context and summary is found here.

The author is: Maj. Alex Deep is an assistant professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He is a Special Forces officer with ten years of service and multiple deployments to Afghanistan in conventional and special operations task forces. He served as a rifle platoon leader and company executive officer in the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team prior to completing Special Forces Assessment and Selection and subsequently the Special Forces Qualification Course. He then served as a Special Forces detachment commander and battalion assistant operations officer in 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne). He currently teaches SS307: Introduction to International Relations. Deep holds a Bachelor of Science in American Politics and Arabic from the United States Military Academy at West Point and a Master of Arts in Strategic Studies and International Economics from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

CIA Haspel Confirmation: Sen. Warner and Harris can GTH

Posted on May 9, 2018May 9, 2018 by Denise Simon

The open session in the Senate for the confirmation of Gina Haspel to be the new Director of CIA quickly became a contest between Democrats in the committee on who maintained the higher moral authority all at the expense of Gina Haspel. Countless questions were asked in various forms on the enhanced interrogation techniques, torture and the destruction by Jose Rodriguez of the video tapes on an interrogation session with one al Qaeda detainee.

Remember, it is the Democrat party that is good with abortion, late term abortion that is when a fetus can live and thrive outside the womb. Death versus waterboarding…humm and by the way, not one Democrat mentioned that the Army Field Manual included waterboarding and that during SERE training, our military personnel are waterboarded.

The CIA does not do interrogations, it is contracted out to professionals. Document below as explained by an interrogator.

An Interrogator Breaks His Silence by J. Swift (TWS) on Scribd

At the end of the open confirmation session, Senator Burr asked Gina Haspel to explain who Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abd al Rahim al Nashiri were. She responded in detail.

Un tribunal militar de EEUU ultima el juicio al cerebro ... photo

On the matter of al Nashiri, below is a fact that should tell you the reader just how twisted things get regarding the war on terror. Enter Navy Lt. Alaric Piette and al Nashiri. Everyone deserves a lawyer, but c’mon.

The bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen was concocted by al Nashiri along with Fahd al Quso and Jamal al Badawi.

*** Attorney Navy Lt. Alaric Piette, with his SEAL trident topping his uniform, at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on Nov. 3, 2017. Carol Rosenberg

2017: GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba

After suicide bombers attacked the USS Cole 17 years ago, this young Navy SEAL from Wisconsin would have gladly risked his life on a mission to snatch someone suspected of plotting the attack that killed 17 U.S. sailors.

Now, the former SEAL sits in the war court with the man accused of orchestrating the bombing that killed his shipmates. And Navy Lt. Alaric Piette, 39, is navigating a different kind of treacherous assignment.

Piette, a lawyer for just five years, is the lone attorney in court representing Saudi captive Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, whose long-serving death-penalty defender and two other civilian lawyers quit the case over a clandestine ethical conflict. So across two weeks of court hearings, Piette has answered the trial judge’s instruction to litigate by arguing that until a new capital defender is found, the case cannot go on.

“When military attorneys are assigned to these cases, people just expect us to go along and roll over. And I’m not going to,” Piette said in an interview at the end of a week in which the judge sentenced the Marine general overseeing the defense teams to 21 days confinement for letting Nashiri’s civilian lawyers quit.

Piette was one of the last military attorneys hired on the team led by Rick Kammen, the 71-year-old capital defense attorney from Indiana who for years led a constantly changing cast of military lawyers with a kangaroo pin on his lapel to express his contempt for the war court system.

Their courtroom style is a study in contrasts.

Where Kammen wore a kangaroo pin, Piette wears the coveted trident of a SEAL, the elite Navy unit whose slogan is “the only easy day was yesterday.”

Where Kammen was confrontational in both words and attire, Piette has been nothing but courteous, even as he has explained again and again that he must sit mute alongside Nashiri, litigate no motions and question no witnesses until a qualified death-penalty defense attorney arrives in court.

Nashiri, 52, is accused of orchestrating al-Qaida’s Oct. 12, 2000, bombing of the Cole while it was on a resupply mission off Aden, Yemen. Two men pulled alongside in an explosives-laden skiff, ostensibly to collect the ship’s garbage, then blew themselves up.

Nashiri was captured in Dubai in 2002 and held for four years in the CIA’s Black Sites, where he was waterboarded, rectally abused and subjected to other torture techniques. He was first charged at Guantánamo in 2011, five years after his arrival. All those circumstances have caused delays in getting him to trial.

After a clearly frustrated lead prosecutor Mark Miller fired off an invective against defense lawyers — accusing the Marine general in charge of “obstruction” and the civilian attorneys of adopting a “scorched-earth strategy,” and calling Piette “a potted plant defense” — the soft-spoken Navy lieutenant responded with this:

“What I am asking — the only reason I’m up here now — is to ask the courts, when they’re looking at this on the record, to look deeply and without the hats of cynicism and understand that everybody here cares about justice and getting to the truth.”

Kammen spent years overtly salting the record with asides for a post-conviction appeal in civilian courts. With that remark, Piette did the same.

The contrast doesn’t end there. Kammen started practicing law seven years before Piette was born in Wisconsin to a family of Belgian ancestry. Kammen says he has defended about 40 capital cases, none ending in a death sentence, and has never voluntarily left one before. Kammen handled his first capital case before Piette was in first grade.

Piette has worked on none.

But on one issue they are in agreement: Something secret has gone on at the prison to make it impossible for any defense attorney to trust in the confidentiality of privileged attorney-client conversations. And because it’s classified, neither Nashiri nor the public can know precisely what it is.

Piette says he has the same ethical conflict as the three lawyers who quit: He can’t carry on confidential conversations with Nashiri, and can’t provide the Saudi with a classified explanation. But he has stayed on the case in part because, as a military attorney, it took him longer to get an ethics opinion through Navy channels. By then, Kammen and fellow civilian defenders Rosa Eliades and Mary Spears had all resigned.

“The only reason I think I can stay on right now is because I view my scope of representation as limited solely to getting him a learned counsel, and making sure that his rights aren’t violated while he doesn’t have learned counsel,” Piette said. “I am not representing him on substantive matters for the trial.”

Now, he said, he has a duty to represent Nashiri — not by arguing motions or filing new pleadings but by helping him find capital counsel.

Only after that person is found, gets top secret clearances, reads the record, and finds out about the classified confidentiality problem, might that attorney decide whether he or she is ethically bound to quit the case as well.

The trial judge, Air Force Col. Vance Spath, meantime has been hearing from witnesses on potential trial evidence — basic litigation, as the judge sees it, that any lawyer with court-martial experience can handle.

“Death is different,” says Piette. Last week he responded to every opportunity to argue or cross-examine witnesses by saying the defense has no position because no learned counsel is in court. Spath, who at one point considered holding Piette in contempt, replied on Friday: “There is a position and a strategic decision from the defense and the defense community.”

Three more military defense attorneys are waiting in the wings — two from the Air Force, the other a Marine. None is death-penalty qualified. But, to Spath’s annoyance, Piette sits there alone.

“I think Colonel Spath, whom I have a lot of respect for, is in a bad position,” Piette said, explaining that the Manual for Military Commissions gives the chief defense counsel authority to hire and fire. That authority exists in “no other court in the United States,” he said.

In other U.S. courts an attorney of record must go before a judge to be released from a case. Spath argues his power is the same.

So much so that, after Marine Brig. Gen. John Baker, the chief defense counsel for military commissions, refused to return Kammen and the other civilian attorneys to the case, the judge found the general in contempt of the war court and ordered him confined to his quarters in a trailer park behind the court for 21 days. A senior Pentagon official suspended that sentence after 48 hours.

Piette got to the case in April and only got a clearance to begin seeing classified material in June.

But he said that even while he was a junior lawyer representing sailors accused of housing allowance fraud, he followed Guantánamo’s USS Cole case. Navy colleagues and mentors had served as defense attorneys at the military commissions.

Tom Clancy novels, Michael Bay movies and a shadowy terrorist named Osama bin Laden drew him to the SEALs from high school, Piette said. By his account, he didn’t really know anything about al-Qaida but from the news, but he was well aware of the “audacious” Feb. 26, 1993, first World Trade Center bombing and enlisted four years later.

After six months of indoctrination and Basic Underwater Demolition SEALS training, he was assigned to SEAL Team Two.

“I had joined the Navy because I thought there was this covert war on terror going on,” he said. “I thought it was clear, if they’re willing to do that, they’re not going to stop. So we must be fighting this war out there, that’s a secret nobody knows about. And I wanted to be part of that; thought that would be cool.”

He felt that even more so after the bombing of the USS Cole. “I thought after the Cole happened that we were going to go to war and start doing the things I came in to do. We didn’t. Not until after September 11th.”

Piette says that he never saw combat as a SEAL and never fired a shot outside training, and his missions were mostly “recons” and the occasional “snatch and grab” in Kosovo, a hot area of commando activity at the time. He didn’t know much about who the targets were, but says he believes they were mostly weapons smugglers who were ultimately let go.

Had his team been ordered to snatch someone suspected of being the USS Cole bomber, Piette “would’ve been happy to do it,” he said. “Whoever did this killed my fellow sailors. I would’ve been eager to do it.

“I actually had to have a friend talk me down about my anger about the issue. He said, ‘Look, it’s upsetting but at the same time that’s why we’re here, that’s why we wear the uniform. So we’re the targets.’ ”

Truth be told, he said, had a target ever been identified for a snatch-and grab, that assignment would have no doubt gone to SEAL Team Six, the best of the best. But none was.

It was only after he left the Navy, got a bachelor’s degree at Old Dominion University and went on to study law at Georgetown that he began to think hard about defendants and due process.

He said he studied law “intending to become rich,” and pay for his degree. But at a Georgetown legal clinic he found his calling in criminal defense. If the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia had accepted his application, he said, he never would have turned to the Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps.

In his five years as a naval officer, he has tried 15 cases to court martial verdict. Probably the most serious crime he handled was a sailor accused of attempted murder. Piette, who got it reduced to battery, called it classic prosecution overcharging.

But he says he’s learned a lot from his clients — about human struggle and consequences — and to distrust career prosecutors, whom he describes as “often arrogant and smug.”

“Prosecutors tend to be so judgmental and dismissive of these human beings and think that people make out these well thought-out deliberate choices. It’s just people, living.”

Now the lone defense lawyer in court, he said his time as a SEAL is serving him well. “Sometimes I miss parts of it but I’ve found my calling as a criminal defense lawyer.” Being in the teams taught him “the paramount importance of disciplined and thorough preparation.”

It sounds nerdy, perhaps dull — not exactly fodder for an action thriller. But this is a man who points to his favorite part of the SEAL code as this: “Excel as warriors through discipline and innovation.”

Putin Denies Military Operations Against Ukraine, Proof Emerges

Posted on May 7, 2018May 7, 2018 by Denise Simon

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The Ambassador predicted liberation of Mariupol in 2014, the plan was in place, was anyone listening? Liberation? That is how Moscow packaged it? And the Active Measures/propaganda continues.

Russian troops attacking Mariupol, Ukrainian militia ... photo

Breaking: Russian Officers and Militants Identified as Perpetrators of the January 2015 Mariupol Artillery Strike

The investigation can be viewed here.

На русском языке

The Bellingcat Investigation Team has determined conclusively that the artillery attack on targets in the Ukrainian town of Mariupol on 24 January 2015, which resulted at least 30 civilian deaths and over 100 injuries, came from Russia-controlled territory. Bellingcat has also determined that the shelling operation was instructed, directed and supervised by Russian military commanders in active service with the Russian Ministry of Defense. Bellingcat has identified nine Russian officers, including one general, two colonels, and three lieutenant colonels, involved directly with the military operation.

Furthermore, Bellingcat has determined that two artillery batteries of Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS) were transported from Russia into Ukraine the day before the Mariupol operation. In the early morning of 24 January 2015, these batteries were deployed near the village of Bezimenne exclusively for the shelling of targets in and around Mariupol, after which they were repatriated back into Russia.

In the course of analyzing the events in the eve of and on 24 January 2015, Bellingcat has also identified two Russian generals involved with the selection and assignment of Russian artillery specialists to commanding roles in eastern Ukraine.

This investigation was made possible due to access to raw video and audio data that is being submitted by the Ukrainian government to the International Court of Justice as part of an ongoing legal case. This data was made available to a small group of international investigative media for the purposes of independent assessment. Bellingcat and its media partners analyzed a large volume of intercepted calls from and to participants in the armed conflict located in the area of Bezimenne at the time of shelling. Bellingcat conducted detailed cross-referencing of events, names and locations, as well as metadata from the calls, to open source data, including satellite photography data, social media posts, and voice samples from public statements of some of the identified persons. A detailed analysis permitted the identification of persons and military units, and the reconstruction of events leading up to the shelling of residential areas in Mariupol.

While previous reports, including the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine report from 24 January 2015, have identified that shelling of Mariupol’s residential areas came from separatist-controlled territory, Bellingcat’s investigation is the first to fully detail and identify the role of active Russian military units, as well as the direct commanding role of active Russian army officers in this military operation.

Our full report identifying the nine Russian officers involved with the military operation that led to the deaths of 30 Ukrainian civilians in Mariupol will be published later this week. Today, we are revealing the names of these individuals, along with a sampling of the telephone conversations that led to their identification.

The Russian officers who were in charge on high and lower levels of the MLRS batteries on the day of the shelling at Mariupol, or provided target instructions from another location in Eastern Ukraine, have been identified by Bellingcat as:

Major General Stepan Stepanovich Yaroshchuk

Alexander Iozhefovich Tsapliuk, call sign ‘Gorets’

Alexander Anatolevich Muratov

Maksim Vladimirovich Vlasov, call sign ‘Yugra’

Sergey Sergeyevich Yurchenko, call sign ‘Voronezh’

Alexander Valeryevich Grunchev, call sign ‘Terek’

The Russian officers who were in charge of selecting and sending artillery commanders and artillery equipment to Eastern Ukraine have been identified by Bellingcat as:

Colonel Oleg Leargievich Kuvshinov

Major General Dmitry Nikolaevich Klimenko

Colonel Sergey Ivanovich Lisai

The two Russian and Ukrainian militants in direct charge of the artillery units that shelled Mariupol have been identified by Bellingcat as:

Alexander Mikhailovich Evtody, call sign ‘Pepel’

Grayr Manukovich Egiazaryan, call sign ‘Shram’

Our full investigation, with biographical details on each of these men, our research process, and our analysis of the shelling attack itself, will be published later this week.

The investigation can be viewed here.

From the APP Store, Notifica ICE Raids

Posted on May 4, 2018May 4, 2018 by Denise Simon

Ah yes those pesky apps found on iTunes and Google Play, funded by George Soros. This app helps illegal immigrants avoid federal immigration authorities. The group behind this scheme is United We Dream and guess what? That organization receives taxpayer funding. Uh huh…

Notifica is a project of United We Dream

United We Dream is the largest immigrant youth-led network in the country. With over half a million members, we advocate for the justice and dignity for all immigrants. Notifica was made thanks to the knowledge of immigrant youth organizing, and a generous partnership with Huge and Matter Supply, full service design/digital agencies.

***

Notifica, is a new app that will act as a panic button for undocumented immigrants who are detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Wired reports.

To help immigrants who have been detained, the organization United We Dream, which is led by young immigrants, and digital agency Huge developed the Notifica app. When immigrants are detained by ICE their families and loved ones might not even know what happened, but Notifica aims to change that.

“You have the right to be prepared,” says the app’s site. “Be prepared with Notifica, an app that sends out secure messages to your support network when you need it most.”

How The Notifica App Works

With Notifica, users can select contacts they want to notify in case they are taken by ICE. The app allows users to set up a personalized notification to each recipient, for example, a message to your mom or sibling would be different than the one you send to your attorney. After you write the preloaded messages, others will not have access to them and will not be able to read them. There is also a pin that seals off the messages in case your device is lost or stolen.

If the user is taken by ICE, a single click will send all messages via text in less than two seconds. Huge has also launched a phone hotline for those who don’t have a phone in reach but may be able to make a call afterwards. More here.

***

A division of the Justice Department awarded at least $206,453 to the National Immigration Law Center, which advises illegal immigrants on their rights, according to records obtained by Judicial Watch.

The Office of Justice Programs awarded the grants between fiscal years 2008 and 2010, the records cited by the conservative government watchdog group show. That would overlap the administrations of both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

One of the projects of the National Immigration Law Center is United We Dream, which describes itself as a youth program for “undocumented” immigrants.

The Laredo Morning Times quoted Adrian Reyna, director of membership and technology strategies for United We Dream, as saying that “when something actually happens, most people don’t know what to do at that moment.”

The Texas newspaper also reported that United We Dream is working on a second version of Notifica that will include the ability to use more languages besides Spanish and English.

The second version, set to be released this summer, would include Vietnamese, Korean, and Chinese. The updated app also will be able to determine where an illegal immigrant is being detained, the newspaper reported.

United We Dream pushes to give legal status to so-called Dreamers, illegal immigrants brought to the United States when they were children. The organization, which has a hotline, advises illegal immigrants against cooperating with agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In a press release, the group says: “United We Dream calls on our communities to defend their rights, not open the door to ICE, and to report ICE activities to the United We Dream MigraWatch hotline.”

The April release adds: “United We Dream has also developed the mobile app, Notifica, which immediately alerts your loved ones and legal advocates to the user’s location in cases of detention. Text ‘Notifica’ to 877-877 for a link for download.”

The Soros-backed Open Societies Foundations don’t have a direct role in the app, but doesn’t find it objectionable, said Angela Kelley, the senior strategic adviser on immigration at the Open Society Foundations.