An affordable price is probably the major benefit persuading people to buy drugs at www.americanbestpills.com. The cost of medications in Canadian drugstores is considerably lower than anywhere else simply because the medications here are oriented on international customers. In many cases, you will be able to cut your costs to a great extent and probably even save up a big fortune on your prescription drugs. What's more, pharmacies of Canada offer free-of-charge shipping, which is a convenient addition to all other benefits on offer. Cheap price is especially appealing to those users who are tight on a budget
Service Quality and Reputation
Although some believe that buying online is buying a pig in the poke, it is not. Canadian online pharmacies are excellent sources of information and are open for discussions. There one can read tons of users' feedback, where they share their experience of using a particular pharmacy, say what they like or do not like about the drugs and/or service. Reputable online pharmacy canadianrxon.com take this feedback into consideration and rely on it as a kind of expert advice, which helps them constantly improve they service and ensure that their clients buy safe and effective drugs. Last, but not least is their striving to attract professional doctors. As a result, users can directly contact a qualified doctor and ask whatever questions they have about a particular drug. Most likely, a doctor will ask several questions about the condition, for which the drug is going to be used. Based on this information, he or she will advise to use or not to use this medication.
Category Archives: Libya Benghazi Muslim Brotherhood murder
There may be no associations but following the money, the organizations and the long term objectives begs certain questions.
ODAC projects in Libya
Gaddafi insider accused of using state cash to buy luxury Scottish hotels
Libyan prosecutors ask UK officials for help in investigating claims Ali Ibrahim Dabaiba laundered proceeds of embezzlement in England and Scotland
Guardian: Scottish police are investigating claims by Libyan authorities that a powerful member of Muammar Gaddafi’s inner circle used money meant for hospitals and housing to buy luxury hotels in the Highlands and a string of multimillion pound homes.
The allegations were made in confidential documents sent to Scotland’s lord advocate in a request for legal assistance by the Libyan attorney general in 2014. Extracts of these have been shown to the Guardian.
One of an elite group of Gaddafi insiders known as “companions of the leader”, Ali Ibrahim Dabaiba is suspected by Libyan prosecutors of embezzling millions from public funds during his two decades as head of the country’s major infrastructure commission.
Dabaiba may have awarded contracts worth more than £200m to companies that he ultimately controlled, Libyan prosecutors claim. They allege he then laundered the proceeds in England and Scotland. They say he may have been helped by his sons, his brother, and a group of British associates based in Dunfermline, near Edinburgh.
The Dabaiba family have dismissed the allegations as baseless. They maintain that they are not under investigation in Libya, and their lawyer claims they are “not wanted by any judicial, financial or security bodies”. Their alleged associates did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Companies the Dabaibas appear to control, according to Libyan prosecutors, have invested in at least six prestigious properties in England with a current value of more than £25m. In London these include a £16.5m flat in Mayfair, a £1m flat in Marylebone, a £7m house in Hampstead; Land Registry records also show two £1m homes in Surrey.
Dabaiba’s salary at ODAC was equivalent to just £12,000 a year. His declared earnings were not, according to Libyan prosecutors, sufficient to allow him to own these properties.
Officers from Police Scotland’s serious organised crime division are understood to be actively pursuing their own investigation. A Scottish Crown Office spokesman said: “We can confirm we have received a request for mutual legal assistance from the Libyan authorities. As this relates to an ongoing investigation it would not be appropriate to comment further.”
**** Reports have also filtered through social media that one of those arrested is Ali Dabaiba, a former Gaddafi official who is wanted by Interpol for crimes including embezzlement and abuse of office. Dabaiba, formerly in charge of the Libyan Organisation for Development of Administrative Centres, turned against the Gaddafi government and provided financial support for the 2011 uprising that eventually overthrew the former dictator.
WSJ: 2014, LONDON—Libyan authorities are seeking international help in apprehending a former senior official in Moammar Gadhafi’s government who has been under investigation for alleged crimes including embezzlement and abuse of office.
Interpol last week published a so-called Red Notice seeking Ali Dabaiba, who ran Libya’s main government-contracting office for decades during the Gadhafi era. The notice, posted on Interpol’s website, said Mr. Dabaiba is “wanted by the judicial authorities of Libya for prosecution/to serve a sentence.”
A lawyer for Mr. Dabaiba had no immediate comment. An Interpol spokeswoman said the notice was published on Thursday at the request of Libyan authorities. Officials in the office of Libya’s attorney general weren’t available to comment.
The Interpol notice says the allegations against Mr. Dabaiba, 68 years old, include embezzlement, money laundering, abuse of power and other crimes. The notice didn’t address whether Mr. Dabaiba has been criminally charged in Libya.
Interpol’s Red Notice system is designed to help law-enforcement authorities in one country get assistance from other countries to track down and apprehend suspects. Interpol’s website says that the alerts are “to seek the location and arrest of wanted persons with a view to extradition or similar lawful action,” and that the notices are issued “on the basis of a valid national arrest warrant.”
As Libyan authorities try to recoup tens of billions of dollars in assets they believe were looted during Gadhafi’s reign, Mr. Dabaiba’s family has been one focus, according to the investigators and documents submitted to British law-enforcement authorities. Mr. Dabaiba is on a long list of individuals whose assets are restricted in Libya pending further investigation.
Unlike some former government officials who are under investigation, Mr. Dabaiba hasn’t been subject to restrictions on him leaving the country, according to both Libya’s asset-freeze law and the Libyan attorney general’s office.
Among the Dabaiba family’s investments Libyan investigators have been scrutinizing is a 2011 investment in a posh British real-estate agency, Chesterton Humberts, according to people familiar with the investigation and a person close to the family. That investment was the focus of a recent article in The Wall Street Journal.
Chesterton Humberts said on Twitter this month that the Dabaiba family “are not shareholders” and that the company has “never been approached by Libyan government or any law-enforcement agency.” The tweets didn’t address whether the Dabaiba family previously invested in Chesterton Humberts.
As recently as April, Mr. Dabaiba was living in the Libyan port city of Misrata, although he regularly left the country, said people who know him.
Libya’s audit agency said it found multiple questionable financial decisions at Libya’s Organization for Development of Administrative Centers when Mr. Dabaiba was in charge.
Supporters of Mr. Dabaiba say his family’s financial support for the 2011 revolution that ultimately overthrew Gadhafi makes up for any alleged misdeeds during his years at ODAC
Dabaiba ran the Organisation for Development of Administrative Centres (ODAC) for two decades until moving to London in 2011, the year Gaddafi was toppled and killed. During that time, ODAC spent an estimated £28bn of public money on building projects in the oil-rich state.
In his request for assistance from Scotland, the recently retired attorney general Abdulkader Radwan claimed “huge amounts of money” may have been “illegally transferred to the banks in Britain and Scotland”. His prosecutors were investigating whether Dabaiba was involved in embezzlement of public money, money laundering, “illicit gain” and abusing an official position.
The information originally came to light through the Panama Papers. A network of more than 100 companies in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), Malta, Liechtenstein and Britain connected to the Dabaibas and their suspected associates has been identified by asset trackers appointed by the Libyan government. More than 40 of them are in Scotland.
Dabaiba’s suspected assets include the 500-year-old Kenmore hotel on the banks of the river Tay, which claims to be Scotland’s oldest inn. The Kenmore is managed by the Aurora Hotel Collection, a small but growing portfolio of boutique Scottish hotels.
Coolbillboards, which places posters on trucks for Morrisons and Homebase, is among a number of businesses in Britain which Libyan prosecutors also suspect may ultimately belong to Dabaiba.
The request for assistance states Kenmore’s controlling companies, Coolbillboards and the Aurora group “may contain assets belonging to the State of Libya”.
Aurora and Coolbillboards did not respond to requests for comment.
On the British register of company directors, Dabaiba has given as his London address an opulent five-bedroom home at Lowndes Court, a short stroll from Harrods in Knightsbridge. It was advertised for sale in 2013 at £16.5m. The flat has been owned for at least five years a BVI company called Panthino Property SA.
An estate agent photograph of the Lowndes Court apartment. Photograph: Zoopla
BVI regulators forwarded information to Libyan prosecutors in November 2013 which showed an individual called Ali Dabaiba of Misrata, Libya, was the beneficial owner on Panthino. The company is also listed on the Land Registry as having paid £2.9m for a period detached house in Prince Arthur Road in Hampstead in 2006. The property has a market value of £7m today.
Libyan prosecutors claim a Liechtenstein entity called Cirrus Establishment is also ultimately controlled by the family. Cirrus is a former parent company of Coolbillboards. According to the Land Registry it previously owned a plush London apartment at Dorset House, Gloucester Place, in Marylebone, which Dabaiba’s son Al gave as his address in company filings. And in 2014 the Land Registry shows Cirrus bought two large homes in Surrey valued at £1m each.
Dabaiba was also found by Libyan prosecutors to have purchased a property in an imposing terrace on the upmarket Heriot Row in Edinburgh in 1998, paying £475,000, before selling it in 2006 for more than £1m.
Radwan’s letter cited a number of suspected frauds, including alleged overpayments for building housing units.
Later in 2014 his department sent a longer 76-page dossier, compiled by a team of asset trackers including New York-based investigator Ann Marlowe on behalf of the Libyan litigation department.
The dossier also calls for help in investigating taxpayer-funded deals worth more than 437m Libyan dinars (now £225m) for consultancy work on hospital and archaeology projects in Libya, allegedly awarded in 2008 by Dabaiba to companies controlled by twin brothers Malcolm and Andrew Flinn and their associate Steven Turnbull, who operate from an office at Dunfermline.
The directors appear to have little or no experience in these sectors.
Filings show Marco Polo Storica, a Scottish company awarded two contracts for planning restoration work at ancient Greek and Roman sites along the Libyan coast, was originally wholly owned by the Flinns, whose background is in banking; Turnbull, who is a business graduate; and Walter Calesso, an Italian living in Scotland whose previous work was in interior design, according to a biography he posted on one company website. Calesso is named as the signatory for the ODAC contracts, as is Dabaiba.
The Libyan legal assistance request claims: “It is likely that Marco Polo Storica was set up … to misappropriate Libyan state funds in violation of both Libyan and Scots law” and requires investigation.
The same claim is made of Evergreen Consulting Ltd, based in Malta. Part owned by Calesso, the Flinns and Turnbull, according to the Libyan litigation department, from 2008 until 2010, Evergreen signed six contracts with ODAC for supervising construction work on a series of hospitals.
In UK company filings, Turnbull and the Flinns appear as directors and shareholders in dozens of concerns. Of these companies, 35 shared the same address: 16 Comely Park in Dunfermline.
The Libyan prosecutors claim: “In many, if not all, of these companies, they appear to be acting in some capacity on behalf of Ali Ibrahim Dabaiba.”
The Flinn brothers, Turnbull and Calesso did not respond to requests for comment.
Libya has a new but rather feeble UN backed government. This has caused still more political conflict in the country and there are divided regions that remain.
The Government of National Accord and the council has worked to gain political power in the divided country, including by appropriating government facilities in Tripoli, such as the Central Bank and the National Oil Corporation, as well as freezing the assets of political opposition members. While the international community hailed the Presidential Council’s arrival as the coming of Libyan unity, events on the ground suggest this is far from reality.
Meanwhile, several Western allied countries have had some small deployments in Libya since 2015 due to Islamic State having an estimated 5 to 6000 fighters in the region. The United States has 2 small teams LPOP’s (listening posts/observation posts) there gathering intelligence, cultivating friendlies and plotting action should the order be given to take on ISIS controlled towns.
U.S. establishes Libyan outposts with eye toward offensive against Islamic State
WaPo: American Special Operations troops have been stationed at two outposts in eastern and western Libya since late 2015, tasked with lining up local partners in advance of a possible offensive against the Islamic State, U.S. officials said.
Two teams totaling fewer than 25 troops are operating from around the cities of Misurata and Benghazi to identify potential allies among local armed factions and gather intelligence on threats, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive mission overseas.
A 2011 photo shows buildings ravaged by fighting in Sirte, Libya, \an Islamic State stronghold. U.S. Special Operations troops have established outposts in Libya to build relations with Libyan forces moving on Sirte. (Manu Brabo/AP)
The insertion of a tiny group of U.S. personnel into a country rife with militant threats reflects the Obama administration’s worries about the Islamic State’s powerful Libyan branch and the widespread expectations of an expanded campaign against it. For months, the Pentagon has been developing plans for potential action against the group, which has at least several thousand fighters in the coastal city of Sirte and other areas. And the U.S. personnel, whose ongoing presence had not been previously reported, is a sign of the acceleration toward another military campaign in Libya.
The mission is also an illustration of President Obama’s reliance on elite units to advance counterterrorism goals in low-visibility operations.
The activities of the American “contact teams,” as they are known, take place in parallel to those of elite allied forces from France and other European nations in the same areas, U.S. and Libyan officials said.
Officials hope the special operators will ultimately have an outsize impact on the effectiveness of local forces. Special Operations forces in Syria, for instance, have been trying to guide opposition operations and help them capitalize on foreign air power as they advance on the Islamic State.
“These types of activities can be the difference between success and failure in what the administration refers to as areas outside of active hostilities,” said William F. Wechsler, who was a senior Pentagon official overseeing Special Operations activities until last year. “You’re mapping local networks, both friendly and unfriendly.”
The U.S. troops, who began making visits to Libya last spring and established their twin outposts six months later, have been cultivating relationships among forces that are mobilizing for a possible assault against the Islamic State in its Sirte stronghold.
Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook declined to provide specific information about the U.S. assessment teams. But he said that military personnel had been meeting periodically with a variety of Libyans “in an effort to help them reestablish a safe and secure environment.” The effort is part of a larger Obama administration strategy to bring Libya’s feuding factions together behind a fragile new unity government, which officials believe is best positioned to combat the Islamic State.
In Libya, a key element of the mission is identifying which factions will align themselves with the unity government. Since a civil conflict erupted in 2014, Libya has been dominated by two rival governments in the country’s east and west. The Obama administration and its European allies are hoping the unity government, installed after U.N.-brokered peace talks, can end Libya’s partition, which opened the door to extremists and plunged the oil-rich country into economic crisis.
The troops also are assessing security conditions so that, if a broader mission takes place, the United States can move in additional personnel more safely.
“How do you avoid Libya becoming like Syria?” said Paul Scharre, a former Army Ranger and Defense Department official who is now at the Center for a New American Security. “This is one of the tools in your toolbox to stave that off.”
Although the Islamic State is far smaller in Libya than its parent organization in Iraq and Syria, the group and has used similar tactics to enforce its brutal version of Islam, including mass executions, and has launched attacks across the North African nation.
“We’re obviously watching the threats very closely,” a senior administration official said, also speaking on the condition of anonymity.
If the White House does authorize a broader campaign in Libya, it is expected to be on a smaller scale than operations in Iraq and Syria. Apart from the ongoing air campaign against the Islamic State, the United States has more than 5,000 troops on the ground in Iraq, and Obama recently expanded the Special Operations force in Syria.
The United States has launched two airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Libya since late 2015, but Pentagon officials have said they have identified dozens of other targets that might be hit if a more sustained operation takes place.
An expanded mission in Libya will be forced to grapple with the same internal divisions that have undermined other foreign attempts to foster stability since 2011. In an illustration of those tribal and political fissues, the two forces preparing to advance on the Islamic State — militia forces loyal to Misurata and army troops under Gen. Khalifa Hifter — have clashed with each other.
The Misuratan forces recognize the unity government in Tripoli; those loyal to Hifter do not. Likewise, three factions have established separate command centers to oversee an offensive against the Islamic State in Sirte, including Hifter; the unity government; and an alternate prime minister in Tripoli, who continues to assert his authority.
American officials fear that uncoordinated offensives will only afford the Islamic State an opportunity to grow stronger.
At the same time, some officials privately complain that foreign support for eastern forces loyal to Hifter — including from U.S. allies France and Egypt — makes consolidation of the unity government’s power more difficult.
“We have been working with our allies to urge focus on ISIL and not fueling rivalries across the country,” a senior U.S. official said, using an acronym for the Islamic State. Local factions are being asked to do the same, and “as the ISIL threat becomes clearer and clearer, it becomes easier to find Libyans who are prepared to do that.”
The French Embassy in Washington declined to comment on French military activity in Libya. “Our priority in Libya is full support to the government and not support to a particular force,” a French diplomatic official said.
A spokeswoman for the Egyptian Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Military officials have sought to keep the ongoing presence of U.S. personnel quiet, in part because of Libyans’ sensitivities about foreign troops and also because of the vulnerability of small teams operating in a country gripped by lawlessness. Benghazi was the site of the 2012 attacks that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador.
Last December, a visit by one team of special operators to far western Libya was made public when local militia forces took photos of the Americans with their assault rifles, grenade launchers and GPS devices. The U.S. personnel promptly departed.
The Pentagon is seeking to enhance protection of its advance force from the sky. This year, Italy granted the United States permission to use Italian airfields to launch armed drone flights over Libya for defensive purposes.
Wechsler said the Pentagon had been willing to accept the dangers faced by such teams because of the value they provided to subsequent military operations.
“When the military is dropping Hellfires from a drone, there is by design a zero percent chance of
an American getting killed,” Wechlser said. “But when you’re trying to do the important work to understand the human terrain and build up surrogates, the risk . . . can never be mitigated down to zero.”
New witnesses admit more could have been done in Benghazi
New insight into the interagency response to the attacks; Adam Housley goes in depth for ‘Special Report’
See the video here explaining how many people were ready on the flight line, engines hot…just waiting for the GO order. It never came.
NRO: In a terse submission to the federal district court in Washington, D.C., the Obama Justice Department has announced that it will not seek the death penalty against Ahmed Abu Khatallah. He is the only terrorist charged in the Benghazi massacre of September 11, 2012, in which U.S. ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other American officials were killed in an attack carried out by dozens of jihadists. Government lawyers provided no explanation for this decision. If you are wondering whether politics played a role in it, you have good reason to be suspicious.
On the face of it, Khatallah is a textbook case for capital punishment. The Benghazi indictment alleges that he willfully and maliciously caused the death of Americans in a terrorist attack that he helped coordinate. The facts of his offense check several of the “aggravating factor” boxes in federal death-penalty law. There is, moreover, a national-security component, inherent not only in the Benghazi atrocity itself but in the perverse incentive that the government’s failure to seek an available death sentence would create for others considering mass-murder attacks against American installations overseas. In addition, terrorists imprisoned by the United States after being prosecuted for successful attacks against America become iconic figures in the jihad. As long as they live, they can and do inspire more attacks, recruitment, and fundraising. Thus, legal and national-security considerations militate in favor of seeking capital punishment. Remember, Mr. Stevens was the first U.S. ambassador killed in the line of duty since 1979. An attack on our ambassador and on sovereign American facilities abroad is an act of war against the United States. Since national security is the core responsibility of the federal government, there can be no federal offense more worthy of capital treatment. We are talking about the Obama administration, though, so there are always political considerations. And when it comes to Benghazi, they always take precedence.
A criminal trial is an opportunity for a defendant to challenge the government’s version of events. It is not like a press conference or a congressional hearing, at which administration officials can get away with spin and stonewalling. Presided over by an independent judiciary applying rigorous rules of due process, criminal trials arm highly capable defense lawyers with copious discovery of the government’s files and legal avenues to demand further disclosures. And because of the life-and-death stakes of death-penalty litigation, federal law gives no one more ample opportunity to test the government’s story than a death-penalty defendant. Unlike a normal trial, a death-penalty case is bifurcated. First comes the “guilt phase,” which is the familiar criminal trial, at which the defendant is found guilty or acquitted on the charges. Next, if the verdict is guilty, comes the “sentencing phase.” In it, the same jury decides whether the defendant should be put to death. (In a normal, non-capital criminal trial, the jury’s work is done when it reaches a verdict; the judge subsequently imposes sentence.) If the government seeks the death penalty in a case, it changes the trial dramatically.
In a normal case, the only real issue is whether the defendant is guilty of the offenses charged. In a death case, however, the question is not merely guilt; it is broadly about relative culpability: In the greater scheme of things, how responsible is the defendant for what has happened? It is possible that during the guilt phase of Khatallah’s trial, the prosecution would be able to narrow the scope of the trial to Khatallah’s own actions on the night of the attacks. But if the government had sought the death penalty, Khatallah would have been entitled, during the sentencing phase, to attempt to show that he was just a minor player; that there are other, more culpable actors who are not even being prosecuted, much less subjected to the death penalty; that the government’s own missteps — its own support of jihadists — played a role.
That is, a death-penalty prosecution would call into question many aspects of Benghazi that the Obama administration has long sought to keep under wraps: how Obama-administration policy empowered the jihadists who carried out the attack; how those jihadists were linked to al-Qaeda, which the president was then ludicrously claiming to have defeated; how those jihadists attacked Western targets in Benghazi several times before September 11, 2012; how, despite that fact, the State Department led by Hillary Clinton reduced security at its Benghazi facility; how there has been no explanation why the State Department had a facility in Benghazi, one of the most dangerous places in the world for Americans; how there were American military assets in place that might have been able to rescue at least some of those killed and wounded in Benghazi, yet they were not used.
As pled in the Khatallah indictment, the Obama administration’s version of what happened in Benghazi is woefully incomplete and misleading. As I’ve previously explained: In the indictment against Khatallah, the Justice Department alleges that nothing of consequence happened until the day of the Benghazi attack, when [Khatallah] is said to have complained aloud that “something” had to be done about “an American facility in Benghazi” that he believed was an illegal intelligence operation masquerading as a diplomatic post. Suddenly, at 9:45 that night, “twenty armed men,” including “close associates of Khatallah” (not identified by prosecutors), “violently breached” the facility.
In the ensuing violence, the Americans were killed. Khatallah is alleged to have participated in the mayhem and to have prevented “emergency responders” from stopping it. Of course, there is far more to the story than the Justice Department has elected to tell. In the months preceding September 11, the “diplomatic facility” and other Western compounds in Benghazi were targeted in terrorist bombings and threats. September 11 would be the eleventh anniversary of the killing of nearly 3,000 Americans by al-Qaeda, which had every incentive to mark that occasion with a significant attack. American forces, moreover, had recently killed Abu Yahya al-Libi, al-Qaeda’s top Libyan operative; that prompted Ayman al-Zawahiri, the terror network’s leader, to call on fellow jihadists to avenge al-Libi — an incitement issued just a day before the Benghazi attack. So al-Qaeda was very much on the offensive. Obama, however, was on the campaign trail falsely assuring Americans that the terror network had been “decimated.” Obama’s decision to back Libyan “rebels” against Moammar Qaddafi had resulted in the arming of anti-American jihadists and the teetering of Libya on the brink of collapse. Obama, however, was on the campaign trail pronouncing his Libya policy a boon for regional stability.
As Obama next called for the ouster of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and reports surfaced of covert American support for the Syrian “rebels,” arms used by jihadists in Libya were shipped to jihadists in Syria by way of Turkey. Was that why we needed a “diplomatic facility” with a CIA annex in Benghazi, which was a transit point for some of these weapons? Was that why Ambassador Stevens was in Benghazi meeting with Turkey’s ambassador on September 11 despite the obvious peril? The Obama administration refuses to say. Throughout 2012, American personnel in Benghazi were under heightened terrorist threat. Despite their pleas for more protection, however, the State Department under Secretary Clinton actually reduced security. Finally, when the September 11 siege occurred, the Obama administration knew from the first moments that it was a terrorist attack of the sort that any competent assessment of the red-blinking intelligence would have predicted. Obama and Hillary Clinton, however, colluded in an elaborate scheme to convince the public that the atrocity was not an al-Qaeda-connected terrorist attack but a spontaneous protest run amok, provoked by an anti-Muslim video.
This last point is worth emphasizing. We now know, thanks to the belated disclosure of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails, that even as she and the administration were fraudulently telling the American people that the attack was a video-inspired protest that spun out of control, she was frankly discussing with foreign government officials (and her daughter, Chelsea) that it was a terrorist attack involving al-Qaeda affiliated jihadists.
In a criminal trial — and especially in a death-penalty phase — there would be significant disclosure of communications between government officials during and after the attacks. In this case, it could become ever more embarrassingly clear that, for weeks, administration officials were knowingly telling the public things that were not true. By opting not to seek the death penalty, the Justice Department is in a stronger position to argue to the court that the only narrow issue for the jury is whether Khatallah’s conduct makes him guilty of the specific charges in the indictment. Prosecutors have a far better chance of preventing the trial from becoming a free-wheeling inquiry into what happened in Benghazi, and why. And now, if the administration could just get Khatallah to plead guilty to a count or two, maybe it could make the whole thing go away. — Andrew C. McCarthy is as senior policy fellow at the National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review.
Dozens of terrorism suspects among refugees who entered Germany
BERLIN (Reuters) – German authorities are investigating 40 cases in which Islamic militants are suspected of having entered the country with the recent flood of refugees from the Middle East, the federal police said on Wednesday.
Getty image
That represents a doubling of such cases since January and is likely to deepen concerns about the threat level in Germany, which has not suffered a large-scale Islamist attack like those that have rocked neighbours France and Belgium in recent months.
In the past, the German government has played down the risks of Islamic State fighters entering Europe with the tide of migrants, in part to avoid exacerbating public concerns about the influx, which hit a record 1.1 million last year.
But the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency Hans-Georg Maassen told a conference last week that although there were more efficient ways to smuggle in fighters, Islamic State appeared to have sent some via the Balkan route from Greece in order to fan fears about refugees and “send a political signal”.
“I am not telling you a secret when I say that I am concerned about the high number of migrants whose identities we don’t know because they had no papers when they entered the country,” Maassen said.
PARIS ATTACKS
The number of migrants entering Germany reached peaks of more than 10,000 a day last autumn, but has fallen dramatically in recent months due to the closing of the Greek border with Macedonia and a deal between the European Union and Turkey that has discouraged refugees from crossing the Aegean Sea.
The reduction in the numbers has eased pressure on German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who came under fierce criticism last year for welcoming hundreds of thousands of migrants fleeing war in the Middle East with the optimistic slogan “We can do this”.
A spokeswoman for the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA), or federal police, said there had been 369 warnings about possible extremists entering the country since the influx of refugees accelerated last year, of which 40 merited further investigation by federal and state authorities.
That represents a sharp increase from the 213 warnings and 18 investigations that the police had recorded in early January.
“German security officials have indications that members and supporters of terrorist organisations are being smuggled in with refugees in a targeted, organised way in order to launch attacks in Germany,” the BKA spokeswoman said, noting however that there was no definitive confirmation of this.
Two of the suicide bombers from the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris that killed 130 people came into Europe through the Balkan route and so did two men who authorities believe were meant to participate in those attacks but were delayed and arrested in a refugee centre in Salzburg in December.
There is also evidence that Saleh Abdeslam, believed to be the lone surviving suspect from the attacks, picked up three unidentified militants who entered Europe with the refugees in the southern German city of Ulm in October of last year.
In early February, German authorities arrested a 35-year-old Algerian man and his wife at a refugee centre in the town of Attendorn. The man, a suspected Islamic State member, reportedly posed as a Syrian when he entered Germany in the autumn of 2015.
Days later, a 32-year-old man was arrested in the city of Mainz who is suspected of having fought with the militant group in eastern Syria before travelling to Germany via Turkey.
****
Almost 700 Iranian troops and militia fighters ‘killed in Syria’ to preserve Bashar al-Assad
Telegraph: Almost 700 Iranian soldiers and militia fighters have been killed in Syria’s civil war, laying bare the scale and cost of Tehran’s intervention to preserve Bashar al-Assad’s grip on power.
Officially, Iran maintains that only “military advisers” have been deployed in Syria. But the state media has reported numerous battlefield casualties, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) disclosing last week that 13 of its fighters were killed near Aleppo.
About 2,000 troops from the Quds Force – the special forces wing of the IRGC – are present in Syria, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). In addition, 13 Shia militias have been identified among the forces fighting for Assad’s regime.
The IRGC provides these units with recruits, weapons, training and military planning. In total, at least 3,000 Iranian military personnel are believed to be in Syria.
Their losses on the battlefield are becoming increasingly severe. About 280 Iranians were killed in Syria between the onset of Russia’s intervention on Sept 30 last year and May 2, according to a tally compiled by the Levantine Group, a risk consultancy. The Iranian media reported another 400 “martyrs” in Syria between 2013 and mid-2015.
The 13 deaths in the most recent battle near Aleppo would bring the total number of Iranian dead to 693 in the last three years. Given that the first IRGC personnel arrived in Syria in 2012 and many losses have probably gone unreported, the real toll is almost certainly higher.
As Mr Zarif spoke those words, Iranian military personnel were helping Assad’s forces to break through rebel lines and encircle Aleppo from the north. In the 16 days before Mr Zarif’s denial, at least 51 Iranian troops were killed in Syria, amounting to Tehran’s heaviest combat losses since the beginning of the war, according to the Levantine Group.
The presence of Iranian forces in Syria – along with their allies from Hizbollah, the Lebanese militia – has proved “indispensable” for Assad’s regime, said Emile Hokayem, a senior fellow at the IISS. “It is complicated, but certainly Iran’s support – both material and financial – has been a decisive factor in Assad’s survival,” he added.
Assad is one of Iran’s few allies in the Arab world. His survival in office provides Iran with a crucial overland supply route to Hizbollah in Lebanon.
But Iran has been less anxious to conceal its military role in Syria since the emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) as a formidable threat in 2014. Since then, Iran has presented itself as being foremost in the struggle against Isil.
“The emergence of Isil has given the Iranians a retrospective pretext for their presence in Syria,” said Mr Hokayem. “It’s easier for them today to justify the intervention in Syria. They have martyrs to celebrate.”
The mask slipped still further last month when the regime disclosed that soldiers from the army’s 65th Airborne Brigade had been sent to Syria. This was Iran’s first deployment of regular troops – as opposed to IRGC fighters – in a war outside the country since the conflict with Iraq in the 1980s.
At least two soldiers from the 65th Brigade have since been killed. The arrival of regular soldiers could be the army’s attempt to claim credit for joining the struggle against Isil. Their presence may also be a sign that the IRGC is short of manpower, particularly as its personnel are also present in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.
“It could be that the Revolutionary Guard is overstretched,” said Mr Hokayem. “It has many missions around the region and it could need the manpower.”
We have arrived at a malfunction junction where the intersection between intelligence and politics crash and politics wins over the defeat of global jihad.
And then there is Russia.
‘The U.S. can’t fix it’: James Clapper on America’s role in the Middle East
WaPo: Early in his tenure as director of national intelligence, James Clapper could sometimes be heard complaining, “I’m too old for this [expletive]!” He has now served almost six years as America’s top intelligence official, and when I asked him this week how much longer he would be in harness, he consulted his calendar and answered with relief, “Two hundred sixty-five days!”
Clapper, 75, has worked in intelligence for 53 years, starting when he joined the Air Force in 1963. He’s a crusty, sometimes cranky veteran of the ingrown spy world, and he has a perspective that’s probably unmatched in Washington. He offered some surprisingly candid comments — starting with a frank endorsement of President Obama’s view that the United States can’t unilaterally fix the Middle East.
Given Clapper’s view that intelligence services must cooperate against terrorism, a small breakthrough seems to have taken place in mid-April when Clapper met with some European intelligence chiefs near Ramstein Air Base in Germany to discuss better sharing of intelligence. The meeting was requested by the White House, but it hasn’t been publicized.
“We are on the same page, and we should do everything we can to improve intelligence coordination and information sharing, within the limits of our legal framework,” said Peter Wittig, German ambassador to Washington, confirming the meeting.
The terrorist threat has shadowed Clapper’s tenure. He admitted in a September 2014 interview that the United States had “underestimated” the Islamic State. He isn’t making that mistake now. He says the United States is slowly “degrading” the extremists but probably won’t capture the Islamic State’s key Iraqi stronghold this year and faces a long-term struggle that will last “decades.”
“They’ve lost a lot of territory,” he told me Monday. “We’re killing a lot of their fighters. We will retake Mosul, but it will take a long time and be very messy. I don’t see that happening in this administration.”
Even after the extremists are defeated in Iraq and Syria, the problem will persist. “We’ll be in a perpetual state of suppression for a long time,” he warned.
“I don’t have an answer,” Clapper said frankly. “The U.S. can’t fix it. The fundamental issues they have — the large population bulge of disaffected young males, ungoverned spaces, economic challenges and the availability of weapons — won’t go away for a long time.” He said at another point: “Somehow the expectation is that we can find the silver needle, and we’ll create ‘the city on a hill.’” That’s not realistic, he cautioned, because the problem is so complex.
I asked Clapper whether he shared Obama’s view, as expressed in Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in the Atlantic, that America doesn’t need the Middle East economically as it once did, that it can’t solve the region’s problems and that, in trying, the United States would harm its interests elsewhere. “I’m there,” said Clapper, endorsing Obama’s basic pessimism. But he explained: “I don’t think the U.S. can just leave town. Things happen around the world when U.S. leadership is absent. We have to be present — to facilitate, broker and sometimes provide the force.”
Clapper said the United States still can’t be certain how much harm was done to intelligence collection by the revelations of disaffected National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. “We’ve been very conservative in the damage assessment. Overall, there’s a lot,” Clapper said, noting that the Snowden disclosures made terrorist groups “very security-conscious” and speeded the move to unbreakable encryption of data. And he said the Snowden revelations may not have ended: “The assumption is that there are a lot more documents out there in escrow [to be revealed] at a time of his choosing.”
Clapper had just returned from a trip to Asia, where he said he’s had “tense exchanges” with Chinese officials about their militarization of the South China Sea. He predicted that China would declare an “air defense identification zone” soon in that area, and said “they’re already moving in that direction.”
Asked what he had achieved in his nearly six years as director of national intelligence, Clapper cited his basic mission of coordinating the 17 agencies that work under him. “The reason this position was created was to provide integration in the intelligence community. We’re better than we were.”
After a career in the spy world, Clapper argues that intelligence issues are basically simple; it’s the politics surrounding them that are complicated. “I can’t wait to get back to simplicity,” he said, his eye on that calendar.
**** Sampling of how bad things are:
Al Qaeda issued a call for Muslims to mobilize to fight in al Sham. Al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri urged Muslims to fight in Syria and for the factions in Syria to unify. Zawahiri described the Syrian uprising as the only one from the Arab Spring to have continued along the right path. He sought for Muslims to defend the gains made in Syria against other actors like Russia, Iran, and the West, and stated the objective of a governing entity establishing itself in the territory. Hamza bin Laden, Osama bin Laden’s son, echoed the call for mobilization. He also called on Muslims to unify in Iraq and Syria and for those who cannot travel to conduct lone-wolf attacks.
A pro-Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) cell attempted to weaponize anthrax and plan a mass-casualty attack similar to the 2013 Westgate Mall attack, according to Kenyan and Ugandan authorities. The cell’s ringleader may have communicated with ISIS militants in Libya and Syria, indicating an expansion of ISIS’s influence in East Africa. Governments seeking counterterrorism funding may also exaggerate ISIS’s presence, however.
ISIS resumed a territorial growth strategy in Libya after planned offensives on its stronghold in Sirte stalled. ISIS militants seized strategically located towns from Misratan militias to the west of Sirte as part of efforts to expand its contiguous zone of control in central Libya. ISIS is also bolstered by the support of tribal leaders and elders, representing factions of a large tribal federation that has suffered since the fall of Qaddafi. These tribal leaders are aligning with ISIS against opponents in both the Libyan National Army bloc in the east and the Misratan bloc in the west in order to protect their political and economic interests. [See CTP’s backgrounder on forces in Libya and a forecast of ISIS’s courses of actions in Libya.] (From: The American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project ) Add in Russia’s building war on NATO….
