BERLIN (Reuters) – Militant groups smuggled some of their members into Europe in the wave of migrants who have fled from Syria, German Chancellor Angela said on Monday.
“In part, the refugee flow was even used to smuggle terrorists,” Merkel told a rally of her Christian Democrats in eastern Germany.
More than 1 million migrants arrived in Germany last year, many of them Syrians.
(Reporting by Noah Barkin and Paul Carrel)
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Belgian prosecutors appealed for help in finding a man suspected of leaving a bomb at Brussels Airport on March 22, saying they were eager to find a coat he had discarded and to speak to people who saw him on his hour-long walk back into the city.
Federal prosecutors released new pictures of the suspect, dubbed the “man in the hat”, who appeared to arrive at the airport with two suicide bombers and left along with passengers after the first two bombs exploded.
In a video to accompany their appeal, investigators indicate the route the man took, out of the airport, through the nearby town of Zaventem and along a main road into the city. His last appearance on security cameras was in the district of Schaerbeek almost an hour after the bombing.
Along the way, he took off his light-colored coat and was then seen in a light blue shirt with dark patches. He was wearing a dark hat throughout.
“It is especially the coat which interests us,” prosecutor Eric Van Der Sypt told a news conference, asking if anyone might have seen it along the suspect’s route.
Prosecutors also want to people to come forward who might have filmed or taken a photograph of the suspect or may be able to determine where he went.
Twin bombs at Brussels Airport and another on the city’s metro killed 32 people, excluding the suspected bombers. A controlled explosion destroyed a third bomb at the airport about six hours after the initial attack.
(Reporting by Robert-Jan Bartunek; editing by Philip Blenkinsop)
Ten terrorists who attempted to kill child activist Malala Yousafzai in 2012 have been sentenced to life in prison.
The men could be eligible for release in 25 years.
The men were arrested last September in a district of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, two years after the attack on the then 15-year-old Malala. Taliban militants had targeted the girl for her outspoken insistence that girls had a right to education.
Authorities in the case say the terrorists were taking instructions from the Pakistan Taliban’s leader Mullah Fazlullah. The Taliban told the men that Malala was “a symbol of the infidels and obscenity” for her desire to have girls obtain education.
Officials could not say if the men sentenced today were the actual gunmen in the attack. The Pakistani government has claimed they arrested “the entire gang” involved in the attack but have not named the actual gunmen.
Malala went on to continue her activism after recovering in England from her wounds and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014.
Tunisian officials announced that a 23-member terror cell has been arrested in connection with the attack on the Bardo Museum that left 20 tourists and police dead.
All of the members of the jihadist network were Tunisian. Officials say they are looking for another Tunisian, two Moroccans and an Algerian who have connections to the terrorist networks.
The Tunisian man was identified as Maher Ben Mouldi Kaidi, also known as the “third attacker”, that provided the weapons for the terror attack.
The investigators say they have confirmation that the group was connected with Al-Qaeda, not ISIS as originally believed by some investigators. The group was working with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
AQIM had been the segment of the terrorist group that had been in control of much of Mali until French forces drove them out of the major cities and into the mountains.
A Syrian Christian captured by ISIS that was released after five months said that he had to call his family while he was being electrocuted because the terrorists wanted to force his family to pay a $80,000 ransom.
The man, who wished to remain anonymous, spoke with New York Magazine and related his story of torture.
He said that he was in Beirut and returning to Syria with a co-worker when they stopped at what they believed to be a checkpoint for the Syrian army. Instead, it was the terrorists who took them to a location and chained them to the wall.
“Anyway, we were blindfolded and chained, and every day they would torture us. They would come in, one at a time, and electrocute us or beat us with anything they could find,” the man said. “But they didn’t kill me because they wanted to ransom me. One time, they made me speak to my family on the phone as they were electrocuting me. Then, they made me call a friend, who told them he would pay.”
He said the same day he was forced to call his family, they took the other Christian hostage into the room next to him and shot him to death.
“Then one day, they told me and my friend, the man from Aleppo, that our families had paid and we were to be released,” he explained. “They threw us in the streets of Aleppo, near the Turkish border. My God, it was the most wonderful feeling I’ve ever had. There were Free Syrian Army soldiers. We went to them, and they took us to a church. I saw the cross and I thought, I’m alive.”
ISIS has recruited at least 400 children since the start of the year and has given them military training and indoctrination into their extremist brand of Islam.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the children were recruited near schools and mosques where ISIS has carried out killings and punishments on people who do not live up to their extremist ideology. In many cases, the children go with the terrorists over their objections of their parents.
One boy is believed to be the half-brother of Mohamed Merah, who killed three soldiers, a Rabbi and three Jewish children in France in 2012.
“They use children because it is easy to brainwash them. They can build these children into what they want, they stop them from going to school and send them to IS schools instead,” said Rami Abdulrahman, head of the British-based Observatory.
The group said that ISIS has had children carry out beheadings and executions as a way to show them the “power” of ISIS. The children are also being used as informants after being returned to their families. They report on actions within their communities to the ISIS leadership.
A new report says that ISIS is training terrorists in Britain via video conference to carry out chemical weapons attacks on trains and other public transportation systems.
“I am convinced that IS (another name for ISIS) fighters are all being given training in chemical weapons and the British ones, who are likely to be more educated, will all be targeted in the hope they may return home,” said Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, the retired head of chemical and biological weapons for the British Army, according to the Mail Online.
The Colonel said that because of British laws, people can obtain large amounts of chlorine without a license, so the bomb could be a chlorine weapon.
“They will have a reasonable idea on how to use chlorine and other toxic chemicals as a terror weapon,” he added.
“This could happen on a train or tube or even at a big football match. Acquiring weapons and ammunition is very difficult in the UK but you can get up to 90 tonnes of chlorine without any license.”
Chlorine can burn the lungs when present in the air in a concentrated amount.
“Chlorine is not very toxic and the green and yellow clouds are easy to see and avoid. It is very non-persistent only lasting for a few minutes. It was used in the First World War but dropped because it did not work very well,” he continued.
“It is key that ISIS don’t get the advantage of an unexpected chemical attack in the UK. If you can hold your breath for 30 seconds and run in the opposite direction you will be okay. If outside you should aim to climb or reach higher ground.”
A British security guard who traveled to Iraq to defeat ISIS has told the British newspaper The Sun about an act of brutality that goes beyond anything seen so far by the terrorist group.
ISIS fighters in Mosul killed a Kurdish prisoner and then chopped up the body into little pieces. The body was then placed into a rice dish and fed to the victim’s mother when she arrived to demand her son’s release.
“The ISIS men told her to sit down because she had traveled a long way and said she could have some food before they took her to meet her son,” Yasir Abdullah said. “They brought her cups of tea and fed her a meal of cooked meat, rice and soup. She thought they were kind.”
Abdulla also confirmed that ISIS is burning many of their prisoners alive, not just the Jordanian pilot whose brutal killing was shown on video.
“They dig a trench, put tree branches and leaves in there, set it alight and then throw prisoners on so they burn alive,” Abdulla said. “IS are very good at making people scared. If they make one person scared then that person will make another person scared and soon everyone is scared of IS.”
“ISIS are wrong,” he proclaimed. “They behead, burn and get those they are against to dig their own graves before they execute them. Nobody wants to get captured by ISIS; that would be the worst thing. If I was defending, I would fight to my last bullet and use that on myself.”
Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram has released their first public video showing the beheading of two men they claim are “spies.”
“This latest release shows Boko Haram is not a mere copycat of ISIS; rather, it is incorporating itself into the Islamic State,” said Veryan Khan, editorial director of Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium.
“Islamic state supporters are already starting to call Boko Haram the ‘Islamic State Africa.'”
The video shows a farmer being beaten by Islamic state terrorists and forced to “confess” he was “spying” for local police. The video then shows the farmer and another man beheaded with their hands folded on their chests.
I believe Boko Haram is more than just copying the Islamic State — their image is being ‘shaped’ at very least in the ISIS media wing,” he continued. “Immediately after Baghdadi declared the Islamic State Caliphate, Boko Haram’s leader Abubakar Shekau did the same. We then started seeing (in the videos) the Islamic State flags being painted onto Boko Haram’s most prized possessions, their AFVs and tanks, most recently on Feb. 20 during the ops within the Northeastern Nigeria border.”
Analysts say that Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, is insane and too extreme even for Boko Haram. They say that Shekau mixes voodoo into his version of radical Islam.
Three New York residents have been arrested in connection with support and attempts to join ISIS.
The three men, two with Uzebkistan citizenship and the other Kazakhstan, wanted to “wage jihad” and one said he would attempt to kill the President if he was ordered to do so by ISIS leadership.
The men were identified in the complaint as Abdurasul Hasanovich Juraboev, 24, a resident of Brooklyn and a citizen of Uzbekistan; Akhror Saidakhmetov, 19, a resident of Brooklyn and a citizen of Kazakhstan; and Abror Habibov, 30, a resident of Brooklyn and a citizen of Uzbekistan.
The men were focused upon by federal authorities after making online statements supporting ISIS and calling for others to join with them to support ISIS. They also posted online in foreign message boards attempting to recruit new ISIS members.
One was arrested at JFK Airport trying to board a plane to Turkey. The other two men had place tickets for travel to the region within the next month.
The group also had plans to conduct domestic terror attacks if they could not make it to join ISIS in Syria.
“We will vigorously prosecute those who attempt to travel to Syria to wage violent jihad on behalf of ISIL and those who support them,” U.S. Attorney Loretta E. Lynch said in a statement. “Anyone who threatens our citizens and our allies, here or abroad, will face the full force of American justice.”
