Category Archives: U.S. Constitution

The Email Ghost Account, Toby Miles at the IRS, AKA Lois Lerner

Posted on by

It is an epidemic now in the Federal government known as alias accounts with fake names.

Given the patterns of the EPA, the Department of Justice, the State Department and now the IRS, it is a sure bet these email accounts are throughout government and we must add in those still other accounts still unknown that operate on platforms outside of government, where Hillary is a master.

So, how about one of those pesky Barack Obama executive orders, demanding all alias accounts be turned over to the FBI now, all of them and then termination orders on those who violated law? Heh…yeah…for sure, it would likely include POTUS himself and just about everyone at the White House….Yet this is our weapon to use against this administration, you know the most transparent in history.

IRS find yet another Lois Lerner email account

WashingtonTimes: Lois Lerner had yet another personal email account used to conduct some IRS business, the tax agency confirmed in a new court filing late Monday that further complicates the administration’s efforts to be transparent about Ms. Lerner’s actions during the tea party targeting scandal.

The admission came in an open-records lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest law firm that has sued to get a look at emails Ms. Lerner sent during the targeting.  IRS lawyer Geoffrey J. Klimas told the court that as the agency was putting together a set of documents to turn over to Judicial Watch, it realized Ms. Lerner had used yet another email account, in addition to her official one and another personal one already known to the agency.  “In addition to emails to or from an email account denominated ‘Lois G. Lerner‘ or ‘Lois Home,’ some emails responsive to Judicial Watch’s request may have been sent to or received from a personal email account denominated ‘Toby Miles,’” Mr. Klimas told Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, who is hearing the case.

It is unclear who Toby Miles is, but Mr. Klimas said the IRS has concluded that was “a personal email account used by Lerner.”

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, said it was stunning the agency was just now admitting the existence of the address.  “It is simply astonishing that years after this scandal erupted we are learning about an account Lois Lerner used that evidently hadn’t been searched,” he said, accusing the IRS of hiding Lerner-related information throughout — including the existence of the backup tapes of her official email account, which the agency’s inspector general easily found once it went looking for them.

Mr. Klimas didn’t respond to an email seeking comment Monday evening, and a spokeswoman for the tax agency didn’t respond to an email and phone call.

But in his court filing Mr. Klimas argued that the IRS had previously hinted there may be other personal email accounts, pointing back to a footnote in a letter attached to a June 27, 2014, brief that mentioned “documents located on her personal home computer and email on her personal email account.”

He altered that wording in his filing Monday, saying the database of Lerner emails turned over to Congress included messages from her “‘personal home computer and email on her personal email’ account(s).”

The use of secret or extra email accounts has bedeviled the Obama administration, which is has tried to fend off a slew of lawsuits involving former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and her top aides, the White House’s top science adviser, top Environmental Protection Agency officials and the IRS.

Those cases have flooded the federal district court in Washington. Indeed, Judge Sullivan, who is handling the current IRS case, is also presiding over Judicial Watch’s lawsuit seeking Mrs. Clinton’s emails.

Last week, Judge Sullivan ordered the State Department to talk to the FBI about trying to recover messages that Mrs. Clinton may have kept on the email server she ran out of her home in New York.

Mr. Fitton said just as Mrs. Clinton is facing questions over whether she kept classified information on her non-secure email account, Ms. Lerner should face questions about whether she exchanged protected taxpayer information from personal email accounts.

Ms. Lerner’s emails became an issue after she was singled out as a key figure in the IRS’s treatment of tea party and conservative groups who sought tax-exempt status. The IRS improperly delayed hundreds of applications and sent out intrusive questionnaires asking what the agency now says were inappropriate inquiries.  In the wake of the scandal Ms. Lerner retired from the agency. She declined to testify to Congress, citing her right against self-incrimination, but also said she did not break the law.

The Obama administration has declined to pursue the contempt of Congress case that the House brought against her.

The House Ways and Means Committee also approved a criminal referral asking the Justice Department to look into Ms. Lerner’s conduct, but its status is not clear.

Mr. Obama has said the problems at the IRS stemmed from bad laws and lack of funding, not from political bias, and a bipartisan report from the Senate Finance Committee could not reach any firm conclusions about the extent of targeting.

Curiously, the Ways and Means Committee criminal referral mentioned the Toby Miles email address, identified as [email protected]. The address came to light because it was included on an email that also had Ms. Lerner’s official account on the chain of recipients.

An email sent to the msn.com address Monday night went unanswered.

At the time of the referral in April 2014, the committee linked the Toby Miles address to Ms. Lerner’s husband, Michael R. Miles, but said, “The source of the name ‘Toby‘ is not known.”

 

Another Day of Hillary Email Disarray

Posted on by

No Mandated Audit

DHS has no record of State Dept. giving info for Clinton server audit, despite rules

FNC: The State Department does not appear to have submitted legally required information regarding Hillary Clinton’s secret computer server to the Department of Homeland Security during her term as secretary, FoxNews.com has learned.

All federal government agencies are mandated to submit a list of systems, vulnerabilities and configuration issues to DHS every 30 days. The department then performs a “cyberscope audit” to ensure security, a responsibility the agency has had since 2010.

FoxNews.com learned of the lapse as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request submitted June 11. It is not clear if State Department officials in charge of compliance with the DHS audits knew of their boss’s server, which has been shown to have included “top secret” information in emails.

Clinton headed the agency from 2009-2013. The DHS established the “Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation” program in 2010, amid growing concerns government systems could be vulnerable to cyber attack. But Clinton’s computer server, through which she and key aides sent and received tens of thousands of emails, was apparently never audited, according to DHS, which conducted a comprehensive search of Office of Cyber Security and Communications records after FoxNews.com lodged its request.

“Unfortunately, we were unable to locate or identify any responsive records,” wrote Sandy Ford Page, chief of Freedom of Information Act operations for DHS.

The revelation means DHS never audited Clinton’s server, and the State Department allowed Clinton to operate outside the federal mandate aimed at hardening defenses in federal networks, one cyber expert told Fox News.

The State Department has not provided a substantive response to a similar FOIA submitted by FoxNews.com in early June.

The State Department did not comment on media requests about why it did not comply with the DHS security review requirement.

“There are reviews and investigations under way, including by the IG and Congress,” said State Department Spokesman Alec Gerlach. “It would not be appropriate to comment on these matters at this time.”

Denver-based Platte River Networks upgraded and maintained the server Clinton shares with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, after she left the State Department.

The company is not on the list of contractors approved by the Pentagon’s Defense Security Service, the only federal agency with the authority to review and approve private contractors. The department administers the National Industrial Security Program on behalf of the Pentagon and 30 other federal agencies, including the State Department. About 13,000 companies have received clearance.

“But Platte River is not one of them,” a spokesman for the DSS told Fox News. “As Platte River Networks is not a cleared facility under the National Industrial Security Program, DSS has no cognizance over the facility and cannot comment further.”

Clinton, the leading contender for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, and the State Department have been under fire in recent months after it was revealed Clinton had a “homebrew” server and private Blackberry system that could have left classified or sensitive government data open to hackers.

Clinton maintains her use of a private email server was allowed under government regulations and her system was secure.

But this followed the news Clinton wiped her server of some 31,000 private email messages, turning over just 30,000 hard copies of her emails to the State Department amid a congressional investigation into her actions during the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, where four U.S. personnel including the U.S. ambassador to Libya were killed.

While Clinton has maintained that she neither sent nor received information marked classified on her private server or Blackberry, Reuters reported last week that dozens of emails that passed through Clinton’s server while she was secretary of state, under the U.S. government’s own regulations, were automatically considered classified.

That includes 30 email threads starting as early as 2009, which contained information on foreign governments, Reuters said.

The FBI has opened an investigation to determine whether or not Clinton’s private email server was secure and if classified material was improperly shared or stored on the Clintons’ private email account.

A federal court hearing last week only added to the intrigue. The State Department asserted in a court filing that it did not give personal electronic devices to Clinton and may have destroyed the smartphones of her top aides, Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills.

“If the State Department was not providing secure email devices to Mrs. Clinton, who was? Best Buy? Target? Mrs. Clinton clearly did whatever she wanted, without regard to national security or federal records keeping laws,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, who took the State Department to court over its lack of disclosure on the email and server issues.

Huma Lawyers up to Fight Back

Lawyer for Huma Abedin, a Hillary Clinton Aide, Strikes Back at Accuser

A lawyer for Huma Abedin, a top adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton, has accused Charles E. Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, of damaging Ms. Abedin’s reputation through “unfounded allegations” about her time at the State Department.

The lawyer, Miguel Rodriguez, sent a letter to the State Department on Friday responding forcefully to two sets of questions posed by Mr. Grassley, Republican of Iowa: whether Ms. Abedin, while a department official, had been overpaid during her maternity leave and a vacation, and whether she had demonstrated a conflict of interest by aiding one of her part-time employers through her work at the State Department.

Ms. Abedin was granted permission by the State Department to work as a “special government employee” while also performing work for certain outside clients. Mr. Grassley has focused recently on her consulting work in 2012 for the firm Teneo, which was founded by Douglas J. Band, a longtime adviser to former President Bill Clinton.

Mr. Grassley has suggested that emails existed showing that Mr. Band had asked Ms. Abedin to press Mrs. Clinton to seek a White House appointment for Judith Rodin, the head of the Rockefeller Foundation, a Teneo client. Ms. Rodin is a longtime friend of the Clintons.

But Mr. Rodriguez, in his letter on Friday, cited a Washington Post article pointing out that Ms. Rodin, a longtime friend of Mr. Clinton’s, received that White House appointment in 2010, before the Rockefeller Foundation had retained Teneo “and before Teneo hired Abedin.”

Mr. Grassley has also recently disclosed that the State Department’s inspector general had found that Ms. Abedin received nearly $10,000 in excess pay during her maternity leave. But Mr. Rodriguez wrote that Ms. Abedin was contesting that finding because she “extensively worked” during those periods, as the inspector general’s “report itself found.”

“Chairman Grassley also has asked about Ms. Abedin’s 2011 trip to France and Italy,” the letter said. “That trip was intended to be a vacation, and Ms. Abedin personally paid for it.” But, he added, Ms. Abedin — who is married to former Representative Anthony D. Weiner, who resigned from Congress in June 2011 — worked during that trip as well.

Mr. Rodriguez, in his letter, alluded to a recent report that Mr. Grassley had received information from a confidential source about an internal investigation into Ms. Abedin that was completed in May by the State Department inspector general.

“We are deeply concerned that Chairman Grassley’s letter has unfairly tarnished Ms. Abedin’s reputation by making unsubstantiated allegations that appear to flow from misinformation that Chairman Grassley has been provided by an unnamed — and apparently unreliable — source,” Mr. Rodriguez wrote. Those allegations, he wrote, included the “suggestion that Ms. Abedin has violated any criminal statute.”

He also noted Mr. Grassley’s assertion that there were about 7,300 emails mentioning both Ms. Abedin and Mr. Band, but he said that this was because the two remained on many of the same mass email distribution lists thanks to their longstanding ties to the Clintons.

“These are but two examples of the unfortunate and unfounded allegations that have been made about Ms. Abedin,” Mr. Rodriguez wrote. “No staffer — indeed, nobody at all — should be subject to such unfounded attacks based on ill-informed leaks, much less someone who has made countless personal sacrifices in distinguished service to the country she loves.”

Mr. Grassley, who also serves on the Senate Finance Committee, has been aggressive in questioning Ms. Abedin’s status as a special government employee since it was revealed in 2013.

A former investigator on the Finance Committee who worked with Mr. Grassley there and was at one point expected to work for him on the Judiciary Committee, Emilia DiSanto, is now a deputy inspector general at the State Department.

The U.S. Refugee Immigration Costs Back to 1997

Posted on by

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES ADMINISTRATION FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES REFUGEE AND ENTRANT ASSISTANCE report is full of the budget numbers. You have no concept of what bad law and policy has cost the American taxpayers. Imagine these decades of dollars as well as grants, USAID, the Merida Initiative, State Department programs, military assistance and the Millennium Challenge dollars added in, we effectively own these countries.

 

Unaccompanied Alien Children: An Overview

Summary

In FY2014, the number of unaccompanied alien children (UAC, unaccompanied children) that were apprehended at the Southwest border while attempting to enter the United States without authorization increased sharply, straining the system put in place over the past decade to handle such cases. Prior to FY2014, UAC apprehensions were steadily increasing. For example, in FY2011, the Border Patrol apprehended 16,067 unaccompanied children at the Southwest border whereas in FY2014 more than 68,500 unaccompanied children were apprehended. In the first 8 months of FY2015, UAC apprehensions numbered 22,869, down 49% from the same period in FY2014.

UAC are defined in statute as children who lack lawful immigration status in the United States, who are under the age of 18, and who either are without a parent or legal guardian in the United States or without a parent or legal guardian in the United States who is available to provide care and physical custody. Two statutes and a legal settlement directly affect U.S. policy for the treatment and administrative processing of UAC: the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (P.L. 110-457); the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (P.L. 107-296); and the Flores Settlement Agreement of 1997.

Several agencies in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS’s) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) share responsibility for the processing, treatment, and placement of UAC. DHS Customs and Border Protection (CBP) apprehends and detains unaccompanied children arrested at the border while Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) handles custody transfer and repatriation responsibilities. ICE also apprehends UAC in the interior of the country and represents the government in removal proceedings. HHS coordinates and implements the care and placement of unaccompanied children in appropriate custody.

Foreign nationals from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico accounted for almost all UAC cases in recent years, especially in FY2014. In FY2009, when the number of UAC apprehended at the Southwest border was 19,688, foreign nationals from Mexico accounted for 82% of all UAC apprehensions at the Southwest border and the three Central American countries accounted for 17% of these apprehensions. In FY2014, the proportions had almost reversed, with Mexican UAC comprising only 23% of UAC apprehensions and unaccompanied children from the three Central American countries comprising 77%.

To address the crisis, the Administration developed a working group to coordinate the efforts of federal agencies involved. It also opened additional shelters and holding facilities to accommodate the large number of UAC apprehended at the border. In June 2014, the Administration announced plans to provide funding to the affected Central American countries for a variety of programs and security-related initiatives; and in July, the Administration requested $3.7 billion in supplemental appropriations for FY2014 to address the crisis. Congress debated the supplemental appropriations but did not pass such legislation.

For FY2015, Congress appropriated nearly $1.6 billion for the Refugee and Entrant Assistance Programs in ORR, the majority of which is directed toward the UAC program (P.L. 113-235). For DHS agencies, Congress appropriated $3.4 billion for detection, enforcement, and removal operations, including for the transport of unaccompanied children for CBP. The Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, FY2015 (P.L. 114-4) also permits the Secretary of Homeland Security to reprogram funds within CBP and ICE and transfer such funds into the two agencies’ “Salaries and Expenses” accounts for the care and transportation of unaccompanied children. P.L. 114-4 also allows for several DHS grants awarded to states along the Southwest border to be used by recipients for costs or reimbursement of costs related to providing humanitarian relief to unaccompanied children.

Congressional activity on two pieces of legislation in the 114th Congress (H.R. 1153 and H.R. 1149) would make changes to current UAC policy, including amending the definition of UAC, altering current law on the treatment of unaccompanied children from contiguous countries, and amending several asylum provisions that would alter how unaccompanied children who assert an asylum claim are processed, among other things. Several other bills have been introduced without seeing legislative activity (H.R. 191/S. 129, H.R. 1700, H.R. 2491, and S. 44). The full report is here.

 

US Patent Office, Fraudulent Employees Play Golf

Posted on by

Is there any government agency that is without scandal? The fleecing of the taxpayer is without limits.

The 29 page investigation report is here.

Since we tend to forget, how about a reminder that Barack Obama said he would go through the budget line by line.

Well in 2011: GOP: Obama never scoured budget ‘line by line’

The Hill: House Republicans are arguing President Obama broke a promise to scour the federal budget “line by line” to look for savings. 

Obama made the promise during the 2008 campaign, but House Energy and Commerce Investigations subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) and committee Republicans insisted Wednesday there is no evidence that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) conducted such an exhaustive review.

Stearns also said that the $17 billion in program savings Obama’s budget office found was half of that found in the Bush administration.

Republicans said that Obama’s review does not differ from the ordinary presidential budget process and that the president has exaggerated any savings found by including tax increases and savings from drawing down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Congressional Research Service expert Clinton Brass said he would be “surprised” if the president would be able to take the time to read his entire budget. He testified that the administration has produced a list of programs to be terminated or reduced, but that such a list was also produced in prior administrations.

Democrats at a Wednesday hearing said Obama was speaking figuratively when he said he would conduct a line by line review.

“If this is a ‘gotcha’ hearing on whether the administration has actually done a line-by-line review, I reject its premise,” Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said. “There is no question if it has examined the budget closely … I am afraid my colleagues have misunderstood a figure of speech.”

Republicans were irate that OMB would not send Budget Director Jack Lew to explain whether a line-by-line review was conducted. Committee ranking member Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) also said she regretted that OMB would not send anyone to testify.

Committee staff said that OMB told them Lew does not testify to subcommittees, and since there is no confirmed deputy director, there is no one available to testify.

At the hearing, Waxman said Congress should look in the mirror at its own budget failings. He pointed out that Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) promised to do away with omnibus spending bills and is now contemplating one. He also said Congress has delegated important responsibilities to the deficit supercommittee.

*** None of these things are working out well at all, certainly since 2011. So how about that Patent Office?

Government Employee Paid to Golf, Play Pool

Half of worker’s hours at the U.S. Patent Office were fraudulent
FreeBeacon:

Taxpayers paid a government worker at the U.S. Patent Office to play golf and pool, according to an investigation by the Commerce Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) that found nearly half of the employee’s billed hours were fraudulent.

The employee, who worked as a patent examiner in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), earned over $70,000 a year despite “egregious time and attendance abuse,” which was not checked by managers at the office. The employee, referred to in the report as “Examiner A,” resigned after learning of the OIG’s investigation.

“According to the evidence, Examiner A received payment for over 18 full weeks of work, in aggregate, that he did not actually work,” the audit said. “Ultimately, USPTO management’s system of internal controls did not detect Examiner A’s time and attendance abuse; to the contrary, these issues did not come to light until a whistleblower submitted anonymous notes to the examiner’s supervisor and another manager.”

The anonymous letter in August 2014 that sparked the investigation said the employee “never shows up to work,” “seems to get away with anything,” and that he would only come into the office at the end of every quarter to submit “garbage” work.

“The note questioned how the supervisors could ‘allow this type of behavior’ to occur and why Examiner A had not ‘been fired by now for performance,’” the OIG said.

In all, the employee “committed at least 730 hours of time and attendance abuse, resulting in the payment of approximately $25,500 for hours not worked in FY 2014 alone.” The majority of the hours he did not enter the office building, or use his government-issued laptop.

The abused hours accounted for 43 percent of the employee’s total hours for the year. The hours amounted to 91 eight-hour workdays, or roughly 3 months. The OIG recorded 58 full workdays where there was no evidence that he entered the building.

However, the OIG said the employee likely got away with being paid for more hours he was not working because the employee was “given the benefit of the doubt.”

The employee was paid for full days of work, even though he often left to “hit golf balls at Golf Bar, play pool, or socialize at restaurants.”

The OIG examined instant messages between the employee and his coworkers about hitting the driving range.

One message occurred just before 1 p.m., after the employee spent less than 3 hours at the USPTO office.

“Ok, did u wanna [hit golf balls at Golf Bar] today at all?” he said. His coworker replied, “actually yeah, let’s just go there now?”

“I’ll walk over lemme just hit the restroom,” the employee said.

The other employee also said he was probably leaving soon anyway, saying, “godda go watch walking dead, etc.”

On another occasion the employee tried to convince a colleague to leave to play pool because he was “bored,” but they declined because they were “writing up a case.”

“Call me later if you wanna chill,” he said.

The USPTO did not review the employee’s time and attendance records despite “numerous red flags” the OIG said. The employee also was not fired despite receiving an “unacceptable” performance rating in 2012, 2013, and 2014, and “numerous complaints” about his work.

The employee’s supervisor said he “never suspected” that he was violating work policies, and cited that numerous employees at the USPTO have flexible work schedules that allow telecommuting.

The OIG has found attendance abuse in the agency before. Paralegals working for the agency were “paid to do nothing,” passing their time watching Netflix, doing laundry, and shopping online, costing taxpayers at least $5 million.

The audit warned that telework abuse could be widespread, given that nearly 10,000 patent office employees work from home at least once a week, and 5,000 work from home full time, or four to five days each week.

“While this report presents a case study of only one individual’s time and attendance abuse at USPTO, it illustrates the difficulties in preventing and detecting such activity in USPTO’s geographically dispersed workforce,” the OIG said.

“Although the USPTO has touted the benefits of its telework program, such as a reduction in rent, increases in employee satisfaction and retention, and a workforce much less affected by severe weather and traffic, this and other OIG efforts show that these programs also carry risks for abuse,” they said.

The OIG said the agency should try to recover the $25,500 in fraudulent pay through the legal system.

 

The Rest of the Story of the Train Attack Foiled by Americans

Posted on by

When will Europe get serious? It is not for lack of attacks, evidence, intelligence or testimony. The leadership in Europe is just plain stupid and that is not only dangerous, but bloody and deadly.

It is in Belgium but for sure all over Europe.

Unarmed, 3 Americans stopped what could have been a very deadly train ride.

Their interview is here.
To see the real video of the attack:

The gunman is 25-year-old Moroccan national Ayob El Khazzani, boarded the Amsterdam-Paris express in Brussels on Friday with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, a Luger automatic pistol, nine cartridge clips and a box-cutter, investigators say. Spanish police actually alerted the French intelligence wing and French police in March of 2014 and al Khazzani was in the French database. Truth be told, this jihadi was in at least 26 European databases and with good reason. He and his family lived in Spain and he was arrested several times for drug trafficking and still had outstanding warrants.

In 2014, he moved from Spain to France and traveled to Syria and Belgium intelligence services upgraded the information in their own database. France has at least 5000 jihad inspired and or trained names in their database but it is unknown what Belgium has. However, none of this should come to any surprise in Europe and there is a reason for that, so read on.

‘Sharia4Belgium’ Leader and Dozens of Other Militants Are Sentenced to Jail Time

ViceNews: A Belgian court ruled on Wednesday that Sharia4Belgium, an Islamist group accused of running a jihadist recruitment cell in the country, was “a terrorist organization” and found 45 members guilty of terror charges.

The correctional tribunal in the port city of Antwerp sentenced Fouad Belkacem, the group’s 32-year-old leader who goes by the alias “Abu Imran,” to 12 years in prison. The other 44 members on trial were sentenced to between three and 15 years in jail, with some of the sentences being suspended.

This is the biggest-ever trial of its kind in Belgium. Only seven defendants were present in court, with the remainder believed to be either dead or still fighting in Syria. The photograph above shows Michael ‘Younes’ Delefortrie outside the main entrance of the courthouse.

Sharia4Belgium — a group once credited with being a major source of Belgian jihadists to Syria — disbanded in 2012 when Belkacem was arrested and sentenced to two years for inciting hatred and violence towards non-Muslims. But, according to the court, the organization continued to operate as a recruitment cell into 2013.

Belkacem, who has been described by public prosecutor Ann Fransen as “the group’s undisputed ringleader,” is no stranger to the courts and he has been arrested several times in the past for theft.

“Belkacem is responsible for the radicalization of young men to prepare them for Salafist combat, which has at its core no place for democratic values,” Judge Luc Potargent said on Wednesday.

The trial took place amid a wider debate on escalating radicalization in Europe. It opened in September 2014, four months after a French national with links to militant groups opened fire in the Jewish Museum of Belgium in Brussels, killing four people. Wednesday’s verdict also comes in the wake of the Paris terror attacks that left 17 dead in early January.

There have been several high-profile police raids against suspected jihadist networks since then, including a shootout in the eastern Belgian town of Verviers, when counter-terrorist units reportedly foiled a jihadist plot to stage a major terror attack.

It has been estimated that 450 Belgian nationals could be fighting in Iraq or Syria. On those figures, Belgium has one of Europe’s highest per capita ratio of jihadists fighters overseas.

“Sharia4Belgium recruited young men for armed combat and organized their departure for Syria,” the judge at the correctional tribunal said.

According to reports, Sharia4Belgium was responsible for 10 percent of these departures. Romain Caillet, a researcher and specialist in Islamic movements based in Beirut, told VICE News that most of the group’s recruits are believed to be fighting alongside the al Nusra Front — al Qaeda’s branch in Syria.

Sharia4Belgium was a Salafist group that followed in the footsteps of Islam4UK, a UK-based organization formed in 2008 by radical preachers Omar Bakri and Anjem Choudary. Offshoots of the group were subsequently opened in Holland, Denmark, and even in the US. The Belgian version surfaced around the 2010 parliamentary elections and established itself in the northern city of Antwerp.

Belgian sociologist and religions expert Felice Dassetto told VICE News that the group was born of a shared vision with its UK counterpart: “Sharia4Belgium is a classic radical movement which promotes a pro-sharia ideology. According to the movement, a true Muslim must display the religion in the public space, [it is] a political vision of religion.”

As its name implies, the group’s ambition was to impose sharia law throughout Belgium. In the past, the group has declared Belgian elections illegal and threatened to destroy the Atomium tourist attraction in Brussels. The group also criticized France’s full-veil ban, saying it would support any woman who chose to wear a full-body veil in public.

In June 2011, a few months after protesters in Paris staged a demonstration against the French ban on face covering, VICE interviewed Belkacem. At the time, he described himself as “a spokesman” for both Sharia4Belgium and Sharia4Holland. “We’re tired of people constantly attacking our Ummah,” he said, referring to the worldwide Islamic community. “It’s not fair. No one is listening to us.”

At the time, Belkacem denied being at the head of a terror cell. “We want to fulfill Allah’s wish — that’s our mission,” he explained. “The true religion must dominate the world. Of course, I mean Islam. We want out message to be clear. Islam does not compromise. We don’t beat about the bush. We openly affirm the supremacy of Islam in the world.”

“We don’t believe in the separation of church and State. Look at what this democracy has brought us: nothing but economic crisis. Our country has had no government in a year. How can we still be boasting the values of democracy?”

There are several theories about why Belgium produces so many militants. For Montasser AlDe’emeh, a researcher who has been studying the Belgian jihadist movement, tensions between the Flemish and the Walloon communities in the country and the ensuing lack of national unity are a factor of radicalization.

“We live in a divided country,” AlDe’emeh told Germany’s Der Spiegel. “The obvious structure of an Islamic theocracy seems more and more alluring.”