New Jihadi John Identified

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

Is this former Anjem Choudary lackey the new Jihadi John? Speculation mounts that former bouncy castle salesman who skipped bail to join ISIS in Syria is killer who executed UK spy

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
Propaganda video shows ISIS thugs shooting five men at point blank range
Executioner threatened Prime Minister, calling him a ‘slave to White House’
Young boy who appears to be around five said ‘we will kill them over there’
British fighter jets began airstrikes on ISIS locations in Syria a month ago
For more news on the latest ISIS video visit www.dailymail.co.uk/isis
If you recognise the boy or man, email [email protected] or call 0203 615 1926

Speculation was mounting today that the ISIS executioner dubbed the ‘new Jihadi John’ is a British fanatic who taunted police after skipping bail to flee to Syria.

British security agents are racing to identify the masked militant who spoke with a clear English accent in a sickening new execution video in which he is seen shooting an alleged British spy.

Claims have been circulating online that it could be Siddhartha Dhar, a British militant who went on the run with his pregnant wife and family while under investigation by Scotland Yard in 2014.

The father-of-four from Walthamstow was one of nine men detained on suspicion of encouraging terrorism and supporting radical cleric Anjem Choudary and the banned group al-Muhajiroun.

The former bouncy castle salesman later posted a picture of himself cradling his baby while brandishing an assault rifle to mock security services whose blunders allowed him to escape the UK.

Dhar, also known as Abu Rumaysah, is believed to have met, and possibly mentored, Michael Adebolajo, one of the murderers of Fusilier Lee Rigby.

Speculation was mounting that the ISIS executioner dubbed the ‘new Jihadi John’ (left) is British fanatic Siddhartha Dhar, also known as Abu Rumaysah (right) who taunted police after skipping bail to flee to Syria.

Dhar was released on bail after his arrest in September 2014 and ordered to hand in his passport.

But less than 24 hours after walking free, he took a coach from London to Paris and headed to the ISIS war zone with his young family.

Prior to posting the photo, Dhar taunted the police on Twitter for clumsily allowing him to slip through their fingers: ‘What a shoddy security system Britain must have to allow me to breeze through Europe to the Islamic State.’

He also boasted how he had fooled MI5: ‘My Lord (Allah) made a mockery of British intelligence and surveillance. Make hijrah (flight) Muslims. Place your trust in Allah.’

Proclaiming his love for ISIS and the importance of the fight against the West, Dhar wrote: ‘The Islamic State will punish the tyrants in the West. The army of Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is coming. Rejoice O Muslims.’

Dhar, who has been courted by broadcast media and repeatedly given a platform on the BBC and Channel 4 to promote his radical views, had publicly stated that he wanted to live under the Islamic State in Syria.

A few weeks before his arrest, he told one interviewer that he was willing to renounce his British citizenship if it meant he was allowed to travel.

Dhar was also interviewed by CBS News’s 60 Minutes programme about radicalisation in the UK earlier this month, telling presenter Clarissa Ward that he was unable to love his mother because she was not a Muslim.

Titled ‘Campaigning for ISIS in the West’, the episode focused on Choudary’s band of London-based radicals.

Slipped from police grasp: Siddhartha Dhar (circled) disappeared only 24 hours after being released on bail. The follower of Anjem Choudary (centre) took a coach to Paris with his family before travelling on to Syria.

Taunting the police: Abu Rumaysah posted a picture of him cradling his baby and brandishing an assault rifle in the other to mock security services whose blunders allowed him to escape the UK

It is understood that Dhar is of Indian origin and was brought up a Hindu before converting to Islam.

He was a key member of al-Muhajiroun and offshoot groups such as the Shariah Project, masterminding ‘roadshows’ in London that aimed to recruit troubled youngsters to Islam.

In the ten-minute footage, the executioner threatens Prime Minister David Cameron and vows that ISIS will one day occupy Britain before shooting the alleged spies in the head.

The fanatic has been compared to feared British executioner Mohammed Emwazi, dubbed Jihadi John, who was killed in a drone strike in November after appearing in several beheading videos.

Intelligence analysts are expected to employ the same techniques used to successfully unmask and track down Emwazi, including voice analysis and possibly even vein-recognition technology that mapped the executioner’s hands. They will also be hunting for clues to the identity of a young English-speaking boy who also appears in the video.

Dressed in military fatigues and a black bandanna bearing the white mark of ISIS, the boy declares: ‘We will kill kuffar [non believers]’.

Experts fear the boy, thought to be just five, is a member of one of dozens of families who have left the UK for the blood-soaked warzone of Iraq and Syria.

A spokeswoman for Mr Cameron said the video was a propaganda tool that serves as a reminder of the barbarity of the group.

They said: ‘We are examining the content of the video and the prime minister is being kept updated on that

‘It serves as a reminder of the barbarity of Daesh (ISIS) and what the world faces with these terrorists.

‘It is also clearly a propaganda tool and should be treated as such.’

A Foreign Office spokesman said: ‘We are aware of the video and are examining its content.’

Speculation mounted today that the child could be the son of a notorious Jihadi bride from London, Grace ‘Khadijah’ Dare. This picture of a youngster posing with a toy gun in front of an ISIS flag in 2014 and thought to be Dare’s son, also bears a similarity to the child. It was tweeted by Londoner Umm Khattab, the teenaged widow of an ISIS fighter with the caption: ‘Next generation, Bi’ithnillah (God willing)’. ISIS also threatened David Cameron in the gruesome video in which it executes five suspected spies.

British war veterans said the video was a sign of desperation after ISIS suffered a number of setbacks in Iraq and Syria, notably the fall of the town of Ramadi.

Former Admiralty chief Lord West told The Sun: ‘Terror is part of their policy because they think it shakes and rattles the West.

‘But it’s a sign of desperation, not strength. We must do better at our own propaganda to make them look silly, not terrifying.’

Iraq war hero Colonel Tim Collins added: ‘Nobody is pretending RAF jets are going to do it all, but they are making room for the Iraqis to get the job done.

‘This isn’t going to happen overnight but it’s going to happen.’

It came as speculation mounted today that the child could be the son of a notorious Jihadi bride from London.

The child bears a striking similarity to the young son of Grace ‘Khadijah’ Dare, who grew up in Lewisham, south London, and converted to Islam as a teenager.

In 2014, Dare posted a shocking photograph to her Twitter account of her then four-year-old son Isa, meaning ‘Jesus’, smiling as he aims an AK-47 rifle.

She is married to a Swedish Islamic fighter called Abu Bakr, and is reported to be a convert who previously attended a mosque in South London.

Isa also has a younger brother, who would now be between two and three years old, who his mother has referred to as a ‘mini mujahid’, or holy warrior.

Images of Isa look remarkably similar to those of the young boy featured in the video, who could pass as six years old – the same age as Isa would be now.

The two children also appear to have a mole on their face in the same area and have similarly shaped eyes.

The terror group’s captives (pictured), dressed in orange jumpsuits, were filmed ‘confessing’ in Arabic to spying for British security service

Two years ago, Dare swapped her ‘comfortable life’ in Britain, where she was known for her dimples and her love of her mother’s home cooking, for the horror of Syria, where she has joined the terror group ISIS.

After appearing in an ISIS recruitment video calling on British Muslims to ‘stop being selfish’ and give up their families and studies to join the front line in the Middle East, Dare – a pseudonym – is said to be top of MI6’s list.

Young children have appeared in many ISIS propaganda videos before, including material which shows groups of youngsters being trained with guns.

In one infamous image, a child was pictured holding a severed head, while another photograph that circulated online showed a young child being encouraged to kick a severed head.

More than 30 UK children had been made the subject of family court orders over radicalisation fears, Scotland Yard said in August.

At that time, judges had considered cases involving 12 different families.

Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, the country’s most senior terrorism officer, said in some instances the children were ‘almost babes in arms’, with ages ranging from two up to 16 or 17.

There have been a series of high-profile cases involving families taking their children to Syria, or making unsuccessful attempts to make the journey, in the past year.

In October, police released images of a family of seven from Bradford thought to have begun a journey to Syria or Iraq.

The evil and disgusting ISIS propaganda video shows why we need to do much more to tackle radicalisation in Britain.

In the footage released over the weekend, the five captives were forced to confess to their crimes – most probably under duress – before they were paraded to a remote desert location and ordered to kneel.

The English speaking jihadi yelled ‘Allahu Akbar’ before he and four other fanatics shot the men from point blank range.

The video ended with a trailer for another execution in which a young, dark skinned boy warned Britain of coming atrocities.

It raised fears that the child, who appeared to be around five, may have been made to execute someone on camera.

Before killing the prisoners in cold blood, the British jihadi said: ‘This is a message to David Cameron, slave of the White House, mule of the Jews.’

He called the Prime Minister an ‘imbecile’ and warned ‘your children will pay’ for British airstrikes on ISIS targets in Syria.

He added: ‘How strange it is that we find ourselves today hearing an insignificant leader like you challenge the might of the Islamic State.

‘How strange it is that the leader of a small island threatens us with a handful of planes.

‘One would have thought you would have learned the lessons of your pathetic master in Washington and his failed campaign against Islamic State.

‘It seems that you, just like your predecessors [Tony] Blair and [Gordon] Brown, are just as arrogant and foolish.

‘David, only a fool would wage war against a land where the law of Allah reigns supreme and where the people live under the justice and security of the Sharia.

‘As for those of you who wish to continue fighting under the banner of Cameron on the minimum wage, we say to you, to ask yourself, do you really think your government will care about you when you come into our hands?

‘Or will they abandon you, as they have abandoned these spies, and those who came before them.’

The chief executioner (pictured) in ISIS’s newest propaganda video wore military fatigues and spoke in a clear British accent.

The executioner in the new propaganda video bore a chilling resemblance to ISIS’s former executioner in chief, Jihadi Jn.

Reacting to the video, Labour MP Sadiq Khan wrote on Twitter: ‘The evil and disgusting ISIS propaganda video shows why we need to do much more to tackle radicalisation in Britain.’

The masked executioner in the video bore a chilling resemblance to ISIS’s former executioner in chief, Jihadi John.

The fanatic, real name Mohammed Emwazi, was filmed executing British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, American journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, American aid worker Peter Kassig and Japanese journalist Kenji Goto.

He was killed by a US drone strike near an iconic clock tower in the terror group’s de facto capital of Raqqa in Syria in November.

Security experts believe the mass execution is the culmination of an Islamic State manhunt for those who helped Western forces kill Emwazi.

Among the five men shot dead are understood to be those suspected of providing information on his movements and appearance.

The victims give their names and briefly discuss the details of their so-called offences – presumably under duress. Although their identities could not be verified, among them was Umaar Hamud al-Ja’far, 30, from Raqqa, who said he supplied information about the city’s topography. Another victim, Ubi Muhammad Abdul Ghani, 26, said he undertook covert surveillance.

Faisal Hamud al-Ja’far, 25, said he was also from Raqqa and stated he was paid money to open an internet café in the city.

Mahyar Mahmud al-Uthmaan, 31, says he accepted a payment of $300 in Turkey, also to open an internet café. Ha’il Marwan Abdul Razaq, 40, admitted taking pictures of militant activity.

Intelligence agencies are already working to identify the young boy and the older British jihadi in the film.

More than 800 Britons have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight for Islamic State, including families from Luton, Bradford and London.

The new video, which featured a child threatening Britain, comes a month since RAF jets began bombing ISIS targets in Syria.

Russian speaking ISIS fighter threatened President Vladimir Putin before he beheaded a suspected spy on camera in a propaganda video released last month

RAF strikes killed 396 ISIS terrorists from October 2014 to October 2015, with 30 wiped out in a single strike in November, a Freedom of Information request revealed (pictured, US airstrike in Ramadi, Iraq)

In the wake of the Paris attacks and a UN Security Council resolution which called on all member states to double their efforts to eradicate ISIS, British drones, as well as Typhoon and Tornado jets, began airstrikes on Syria.

RAF strikes killed 396 ISIS terrorists from October 2014 to October 2015, with 30 wiped out in a single strike in November, a Freedom of Information request revealed.

And on December 9, Chancellor George Osborne said 16 RAF jets had killed four since MPs voted to extend strikes to Syria a week prior.

In another propaganda video released last month, a Russian speaking ISIS fighter threatened President Vladimir Putin before he beheaded a suspected spy on camera.

The jihadi vowed revenge on Putin in response to Russian jets which had been targetting ISIS and rebel fighters in aid of President Bashar al-Assad.

The executioner, who was later named as Anatoly Zemlyanka, 28, said to Russia: ‘You will not find peace in your homes.

‘We will kill your sons… for each son you killed here. And we will destroy your homes for each home you destroyed.

All praise be to Allah the greatest, the only one worthy of worship, obedience and submission.

And may the peace and blessings be upon the prophet Muhammad, the final messenger sent to all of mankind.

This is a message to David Cameron.

O slave of the White House, o mule of the Jews.

How strange it is that we find ourselves today hearing an insignificant leader like you challenge the might of the Islamic State.

How strange it is that the leader of a small island threatens us with a handful of planes. One would have thought you would have learned the lessons of your pathetic master in Washington and his failed campaign against Islamic State.

It seems that you, just like your predecessors Blair and Brown, are just as arrogant and foolish.

In fact David, you are more of an imbecile.

Only an imbecile would dare to wage war against a land where the law of Allah reigns supreme.

And where the people live under the justice and security of the Sharia.

Only an imbecile would dare to anger a people who love death the way that you love your life.

O British Government. O people of Britain. Know that today your citizenship are under our feet.

And that the Islamic State, our country, is here to stay.

And we will continue to wage jihad, break borders and one day invade your land where we will rule by the sharia.

But as for those of you who wish to continue fighting under the banner of Cameron on the minimum wage, we say to you, to ask yourself, do you really think your government will care about you when you come into our hands?

Or will they abandon you, as they have abandoned these spies, and those who came before them.

Because you will lose this war, as you lost in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But this time when you lose, your children will pay for your deeds.

And remember you as the fools who thought they could fight the Islamic State.

Russia: The Troll State

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

Saint Petersburg (AFP) – Lyudmila Savchuk says it was money that wooed her into the ranks of the Kremlin’s online army, where she bombarded website comment pages with eulogies of President Vladimir Putin, while mocking his adversaries.

“Putin is great,” “Ukrainians are Fascists,” “Europe is decadent”: Savchuk, 34, listed the main messages she was told to put out on Internet forums after responding to a job advertisement online.

“Our job was to write in a pro-government way, to interpret all events in a way that glorifies the government’s politics and Putin personally,” she said.

Performing her duties as an Internet “troll”, Savchuk kept up several blogs on the popular Russian platform LiveJournal, juggling the virtual identities of a housewife, a student and an athlete.

I could not be happier that a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley wrote this piece below as he is quite right and it must be understood. His study has validated the propaganda item noted above.

If you as a reader want to further understand Vladimir Putin and is mission leading Russia, to know his background is key. That is found here.

Russia has propaganda operations that literally troll events in the United States and in fact creates them causing alarm and worry for American citizens that pay attention. Well done to Andrew Kornbluth.

AtlanticCouncil: In the eighteen months since Russia annexed Crimea, the world has been alternately captivated and bewildered by the wild swings and sudden shifts that describe Russian foreign policy under President Vladimir Putin. Particularly alarming for those who fear a direct clash between Russia and the West has been Putin’s tendency to swerve between antagonism and conciliation, or—even more bizarrely—to pursue both simultaneously.

In an attempt to put a name to this behavior, a variety of epithets, from “rogue state” to “spoiler,” have been dusted off and applied to the present Russian government. But insofar as the current state of Putin’s Russia represents a new kind of autocracy, none of these labels do justice to its innovative nature. Perhaps a better indication of what drives this system can be found in the Russian government’s well-documented embrace of Internet “trolling,” which corresponds surprisingly well to the seemingly random and contradictory fluctuations of the country’s relations with the outside world.

In its most basic form, trolling refers to the phenomenon of Internet users who post inflammatory messages in online forums like comment sections and social media threads with the aim of antagonizing others. Although most trolling is idle provocation, the Kremlin was famously revealed in the last year to be paying large numbers of professional “trolls” to both write and up-vote posts praising Russia’s occupation of Ukrainian territory and condemning its critics. But how can trolling be a technique of rule?

To begin with, trolls, regardless of the anger they unleash online, are not people who want to definitively cut themselves off from the real world. Trolls seek instant gratification and attention by spreading vitriol on the Internet, but resume their normal lives offline. With this in mind, Russia’s sudden intervention in the war in Syria can be understood as the latest in a long line of trolling campaigns, beginning with the suspension of foreign adoptions three years ago. These acts were intended to needle the West and cheer Russians, but without risking an actual breakdown in foreign relations (in this respect, the war in Ukraine proved to be a serious miscalculation).

The label of “rogue state” is therefore misplaced when it comes to Russia, which clearly desires to win readmission to the “clubhouse” of world powers. Thus the bombing of Syrian rebels, for all the consternation it has caused, has been accompanied by thinly-veiled pleas for Western governments to lift the isolation imposed on Russia over the Ukrainian crisis.

Trolling is also an effective substitute for constructive activity. By tormenting others, trolls create the illusion of action and assuage their own nagging feelings of powerlessness. Likewise, Putin’s military adventures in Ukraine and Syria have been remarkably successful at distracting attention from the worsening decay of Russia’s human and economic capital.

But the satisfaction derived from trolling is inherently short-lived. To sustain their short attention spans, trolls must constantly find new and varied ways to bait their opponents. Hence the dizzying pivot from promoting the so-called “People’s Republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk, which were banished from the headlines almost overnight, to heralding the creation of an “anti-terrorist coalition” in Syria.

Unfortunately, trolling is a tactic that cannot serve as a platform for a long-term vision or strategy. In place of ideology-based opposition to the West, Russia’s troll state offers up only irascibility and schadenfreude, the glee derived from other people’s frustrations. Perhaps it could not be otherwise. After all, Russia’s elite depends on the West—for recreation, money-laundering, medical treatment, and the education of its children. In many ways, Russia’s rulers have more in common with the West’s upper class than they do with the pensioners scraping by in the Moscow suburbs.

The danger, of course, is that even bloodless trolling can unintentionally escalate into life-or-death confrontation, a risk that was made real when, after months of Russian incursions into foreign airspace from the Baltics to Japan, Turkey shot down a Russian bomber passing over its territory. But the state’s reliance on trolling in an ideological vacuum gives some cause for hope. After all, a sustained and sober response, both online and in real life, is often sufficient to curb trolling. In the commotion set off by Russia’s Syrian interlude, many seem to have forgotten that limited sanctions and diplomatic ostracism appear to have persuaded the Kremlin to restrain its forces in the Donbas region. Although the conflict in eastern Ukraine continues to claim lives on a daily basis and has flared back up, no major offensive has been launched since February 2015.

To think of Russia as a troll state is not to assume that it has no real goals or that its targets are chosen purely on a whim. It does, however, help to explain a style of statecraft that might otherwise seem increasingly irrational and unpredictable. Certainly, the Russian public delights in the spectacle of their President poking Western leaders in the eye. And Putin does seem to have hit on something fundamental about the age we live in. As the unexpected popularity of Donald Trump’s run for the American presidency has demonstrated, trolling is a political technique perfectly suited to more than one easily-bored, confrontation-hungry modern society.

Saudi Executes 47, Including Iranian Cleric

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

And so it begins Iran versus Saudi Arabia, a matter to be watched closely.

Earlier today: A flight left Tehran heading to possibly Riyadh to evacuate Iranians or collect those that Saudi Arabia is expelling.

Embedded image permalink

Fury in Iran and Iraq as Saudis execute top Shiite cleric

Tehran warns Riyadh will ‘pay high price’ for killing Nimr al-Nimr, accused of role in al-Qaeda attacks; 46 others also put to death

Saudi Arabia on Saturday executed a prominent Shiite cleric behind anti-government protests along with 46 other men, drawing angry condemnation from Iran and Iraq.

A list published by the official Saudi Press Agency included Sunni Muslims convicted of involvement in al-Qaeda attacks that killed Saudi and foreigners in the kingdom in 2003 and 2004.

One of those executed was Fares al-Shuwail, described by Saudi media as al-Qaeda’s top religious leader in the kingdom. He was arrested in 2004.

Mohammed al-Nimr, the father of Ali al-Nimr, a Saudi youth facing execution for taking part in pro-reform protests speaks to AFP in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, on September 23, 2015. (STR/AFP)

Notably absent from the list, however, was Nimr’s nephew, Ali al-Nimr, whose arrest at the age of 17 and alleged torture during detention sparked condemnation from rights watchdogs and the United States. More here from TimesofIsrael.

WashingtonInst.: Iran’s history of targeting Saudi Arabia: On April 27, the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, lashed out at Saudi Arabia and its recent military intervention in Yemen, accusing the “treacherous Saudis” of “following in Israel’s footsteps” by “shamelessly and disgracefully bombing and mass killing” the Yemeni people. The increased Saudi aggression in the region, he contended, demands a tougher response from Tehran. Similarly, Hezbollah deputy secretary-general Naim Qassem warned in an April 13 interview with the Associated Press that the kingdom will “incur very serious losses” and “pay a heavy price” as a result of its Yemen campaign. Given historical precedent — not to mention numerous other angry statements from Tehran of late (see PolicyWatch 2423, “Yemen’s War Heats Up Iran’s Anti-Saudi Rhetoric”) — Riyadh should take such threats at face value.

TRACK RECORD OF TARGETING SAUDI INTERESTS

Iran has a long history of plotting attacks against its Saudi rivals in response to transgressions real and perceived. These plots, carried out by Iranian agents and Hezbollah proxies, have targeted Saudi interests in the Middle East and elsewhere. One of the most recent — traced back to IRGC Qods Force commander Qasem Soleimani and other senior Iranian decisionmakers — was the failed October 2011 plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington by bombing a restaurant he frequented. Yet Tehran’s earliest anti-Saudi schemes stretch back nearly to the regime’s founding.

WashingtonInst.: Hassan Rouhani’s victory in Iran’s presidential election has been widely heralded as a protest vote against the hardliners and a window of opportunity for diplomatic breakthrough with Western powers. But such assumptions beg the question: just how much moderation should be expected from a “moderate” Iranian president, particularly with regard to state sponsorship of terrorism? Past precedent suggests that expectations should be tempered.

RAFSANJANI’S TERRORISM REPORT CARD

Rouhani is not the first Iranian “moderate” to win the presidency. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, elected in 1989, was frequently described as a moderate as well. According to U.S. intelligence, however, he oversaw a long string of terrorist plots during his eight years in office.

The CIA linked Rafsanjani to terrorist plots as early as 1985, when he was serving as speaker of parliament. In a February 15, 1985, memo, the agency assessed that “Iranian-sponsored terrorism is the greatest threat to US personnel and facilities in the Middle East…Iranian-backed attacks increased by 30 percent in 1984, and the numbers killed in Iranian-sponsored attacks outpace fatalities in strikes by all other terrorist sponsors. Senior Iranian leaders such as Ayatollah Montazeri,…Prime Minister [Mir Hossein Mousavi], and Consultative Assembly speaker Rafsanjani are implicated in Iranian terrorism.”

In September of 2015: WashingtonInst.: Two weeks ago, according to several media reports, Ahmed al-Mughassil, the military chief of Saudi Hezbollah (Hezbollah al-Hijaz) and the principal architect of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, was apprehended in Beirut — where it was believed he lived under Lebanese Hezbollah protection — and was transferred to the custody of Saudi Arabia. A physically small man, standing at five feet four inches and weighing 145 pounds, Mughassil is accused of orchestrating and then personally executing one of the most spectacular terrorist attacks carried out by Iran and its proxies against the United States.

The circumstances of Mughassil’s capture are still unknown, but the timing raises multiple questions. How did a man who evaded capture for almost 20 years suddenly get caught? And what does it mean that the arrest comes against the background of the Iran nuclear deal and in the context of rising tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia and between their respective allies in Lebanon?

Officials in Beirut, Riyadh, and Washington have yet to confirm Mughassil’s capture, but it is no secret that both Saudi and American investigators have been keen to apprehend him for years. Mughassil was indicted in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia for the bombing, and the U.S. State Department’s Rewards for Justice Program offers $5 million for information leading to his capture. More reading here from Matthew Levitt, at Washington Institute.

How Saudi fought al Qaida:

A documentary series aired on the Al Arabiya News Channel reveals never-seen-before footage of al-Qaeda’s operations in Saudi Arabia and the subsequent raids and crackdowns on the group by authorities.

In 2003 the then security chief Prince Mohammed bin Nayef launched a counter attack that would see a three-year security crackdown on the group, with thousands of its members thrown into prison.

More than ten years on, the Al Arabiya News Channel is airing TV series on the attacks, promising an inside look into al-Qaeda, after hours of footage from cameras and mobile phones were recovered and released by Saudi security officials.

The documentary series, split into three episodes, was produced for the Al Arabiya News Channel by OR Media, a London-based independent production company. The three videos listed below will play in your video player.

http://saic.alarabiya.net/program/15/12/04/20151204-terrorinksa-002.mp4 Part 1
http://saic.alarabiya.net/program/15/12/05/20151205-terrorinksa-001.mp4 Part 2
http://saic.alarabiya.net/program/15/12/04/20151204-terrorinksa-003.mp4 Part 3

Drug Traffickers Hacking Surveillance Drones

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

DefenseOne; The drug cartels aren’t just buying golden Uzis anymore. As the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, or CBP, has upped its drone patrols along America’s Mexican border, narcotics traffickers have responded with expensive technology of their own.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and local law enforcement confirmed that Drug Traffickers are hacking surveillance drones on the border.

Small drones are another powerful tool used by the US Department of Homeland Security to monitor its borders, but drug traffickers already adopting countermeasures. In order to avoid surveillance, drug traffickers are hacking US surveillance drones used to patrol the border.

According to Timothy Bennett, a Department of Homeland Security program manager, drug traffickers are using technology to spoof and jam the US surveillance drones.

“The bad guys on the border have lots of money. And what they are putting money into is spoofing and jamming of GPSs, so we are doing funding to look at small UAS that we can counter this,” Bennett said during a panel at the Center for Strategic & International Studies.

The principle behind the GPS spoofing attack is that sending to control system of the drone fake geographic coordinates it is possible to deceive the onboard system hijacking the vehicle in a different place for which it is commanded. Non-military GPS signals are not encrypted, this makes drones vulnerable to this kind of attacks.

Using jamming techniques against drones, it is possible to interrupt the GPS receiving transmitted to the UAVs. In this scenario the aircraft could potentially lose the capability to monitor its route and to calculate its location, altitude, and the direction in which it is traveling.

Both attack techniques are adopted by drug traffickers that belong to well-funded organizations that has access to modern advanced hacking technology.

DHS hasn’t provided further details on the attacks, but Bennett confirmed that the attacks are interfering with the operations conduced by members of the law enforcement.

“You’re out there looking, trying to find out this path [they’re] going through with drugs, and we can’t get good coordinate systems on it because we’re getting spoofed. That screws up the whole thing. We got to fix that problem,” Bennett told Defense One.

Entire Police Dept. Busted for Laundering Drug Money

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

Entire Florida police department busted for laundering millions for international drug cartels

RawStory: The village of Bal Harbour, population 2,513, may have a tiny footprint on the northern tip of Miami Beach, but its police department had grand aspirations of going after international drug traffickers, and making a few million dollars while they were at it.

The Bal Harbour PD and the Glades County Sheriff’s Office set up a giant money laundering scheme with the purported goal of busting drug cartels and stemming the surge of drug dealing going on in the area. But it all fell apart when federal investigators and the Miami-Herald found strange things going on.

The two-year operation, which took in more than $55 million from criminal groups, resulted in zero arrests but netted $2.4 million for the police posing as money launderers. Members of the 12-person task force traveled far and wide to carry out their deals, from Los Angeles to New York to Puerto Rico.

Along the way, the small-town cops got a taste of luxury as they used the money for first-class flights, luxury hotels, Mac computers and submachine guns. Meanwhile, the Bal Harbour PD and Glades County Sheriffs were buying all sorts of fancy new equipment.

Besides these “official” uses of the money, confidential records obtained by the Miami-Herald show that officers withdrew hundreds of thousands of dollars with no record of where the money went.

“They were like bank robbers with badges,” said Dennis Fitzgerald, an attorney and former Drug Enforcement Administration agent who taught undercover tactics for the U.S. State Department. “It had no law enforcement objective. The objective was to make money.”

The operation, which was not fully reported to federal authorities, funneled millions of dollars to overseas criminals and interfered with investigations being carried out on known money launderers.

The latest revelations show that at least 20 people in Venezuela were sent drug money from the Florida cops, including William Amaro Sanchez, the foreign minister under Hugo Chavez and now special assistant to President Nicolas Maduro.

They wired a total of $211,000 to Sanchez, even while the U.S. government was investigating Venezuelan government leaders involved in the drug trade. Instead of reporting their knowledge of Sanchez to federal agencies, the cops went on laundering money, taking their cut, and all the while aiding Sanchez in his machinations, which likely included political corruption.

Four other Venezuelan criminals and smugglers were major recipients of the millions being wired from the Bal Harbour PD and Glades County Sheriff’s Office, including a figure tied to one of the largest drug cartels in the hemisphere.

These actions violated strict federal bans on sending illegal money overseas, and the Florida cops never investigated the backgrounds of the people receiving their laundered drug money.

“I can’t think of a more podunk town than Bal Harbour — not in a bad way. But in the sense that these cops would have otherwise been stopping traffic or shooting radar,” said Ruben Oliva, who has represented alleged narco-traffickers since the 1980s. “In reality they were being launderers. The minute they started doing busts, it would have been over.

“This is like a movie. You’ve got these guys and they’re flying all over. They’re saying, ‘Hey, I’m in the big leagues.’ I’ve seen every kind of law enforcement money-laundering investigations. I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s really one for the ages.”

After the Department of Justice busted the Bal Harbour PD for misspending seized money to pay police salaries, the Miami-Herald began deeper investigations and found a much bigger pool of money that was never noticed by the feds. Soon after that, the ambitious sting operation—which was really just a money-making scheme—began to fall apart.

“The Miami Herald gained unprecedented access to the confidential records of the undercover investigation, reviewing thousands of records including cash pickup reports, emails, DEA reports, bank statements and wire transfers for millions of dollars. The inquiry found:

▪ Police routinely withdrew cash — thousands at a time — totaling $1.3 million from undercover bank accounts, but to this day there are no records to show where the money was spent. “In all my years of law enforcement, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Chief Overton said.

▪ Bal Harbour officials say they cannot find receipts for hundreds of thousands in expenses, including five-star hotel bookings, dinners that ran up to $1,000 and scores of purchases like laptops, iPads, electronic money counters, flower deliveries, and even iTunes downloads.

▪ While posing as launderers, police delivered nearly $20 million to storefront businesses in Miami-Dade to launder the money for drug groups — gathering critical evidence against the business owners — yet took no action against them. Years later, the businesses are still open, some still suspected by federal agents of laundering for the cartels.”

Cash deposits to SunTrust Bank totaling $28 million do not appear anywhere in police records. It’s no coincidence that the operation was launched “at a time law enforcement agencies across Florida were looking to boost their budgets during one of the state’s toughest economic periods.”

“We had to find a revenue stream,” said Duane Pottorff, chief of law enforcement for Glades. “It allowed us to have resources we wouldn’t normally have.”

Federal authorities and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement have launched probes into the Bal Harbour police, which will surely confirm the rampant abuses of power. However, the fact that these types of shady operations, carried out with the help of agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, can occur at all is even more troubling.

Government creates a black market of drugs and blood money through prohibition, then under the War on Drugs it grants itself the power to break the law and get involved in money laundering operations. While the professed goal is to “sting” the bad guys, government rakes in millions upon millions of dollars to further bolster its prohibition and war on drugs.