terrorism – Page 2

Iranian commander says Islamic State is US creation

The commander of Iran’s Basij (volunteer) force Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi lashed out at the US and Israel for sponsoring the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

He said the US created, equipped and armed the ISIL terrorist group with the help of Britain, Israel and oil-rich countries.

Western countries ordered ISIL to carry out “crimes and large-scale massacre of Shiites and Sunnis on the pretext of a sectarian Sunni war on Shiites” General Naqdi said, addressing a gathering of thousands of Basijis in Lorestan province.

He noted that Western countries wanted to introduce a tainted image of Islam to the world by displaying horrible crimes and savage wickedness against children, women and innocent people with extreme brutality and savagery.

General Naqdi said every now and then the Western powers attack the terrorists to pretend that they are fighting terrorism while American, British and Israeli military advisors are supporting them in the battlefield.

“The outcome of the actions of this terrorist current in Syria was unprecedented as it caused people’s high turnout in that country’s presidential election, which set as yet another example of the inefficiency of weapons and the victory of the resistance movement against the global arrogance,” he added.

Also, in similar remarks in August General Naqdi held the US and certain European states responsible for providing logistics for the terrorist ISIL to find an alibi to boost its buildup in the region.

“American’s intangible presence in the region has been a major cause for the creation of the terrorist ISIL group,” Naqdi said, addressing people in a city near Tehran last month.

He also condemned the US Congress for approving an aid budget for the ISIL, and said, “The European countries, including France, arm the ISIL and the US and the West’s attempts are not aimed at any goal but getting closer to Iran” borders.

On Monday, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Brigadier General Massoud Jazayeri warned of the malicious spread of Islamophobia.

“The world public opinion is aware that the phenomena such as the al-Nusrah Front, the ISIL, al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups in the region, have been created by the intelligence services of the US and the White House’s allies and have a mission to defame Islam to prevent the people’s conversion to the real Islam and to spread Islamophobia and weaken the regional resistance front,” General Massoud Jazayeri said.

Source: farsnews.com

Glencore accused of funding Colombian terrorist group

Glencore, the largest mining company listed on the JSE and headed by South African Ivan Glasenberg, has been accused in a new 245-page report of mining and exporting “blood coal” from Colombia.

The report, “The Dark Side of Coal”, published by Dutch nongovernmental organisation PAX in Germany last week, says that Glencore’s Colombian arm, Prodeco, secretly supported the right-wing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (known by the Spanish acronym AUC) during that country’s bloody civil war.

The AUC was listed by the US State Department as a terrorist organisation in 2005 and demobilised in 2006 after peace negotiations with the Colombian government. Colombia has not resolved its problems yet and the government is still negotiating with left-wing FARC guerrillas in Cuba.

Although the accusations against Glencore date back more than a decade, the report is likely to heighten scrutiny of the way it operates in some of its coal markets.

It has faced claims of tax dodging in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo and of selling materials to Iran for its nuclear programme.

In South Africa, communities who live on its coal mines in Belfast, Mpumalanga, accused Glencore of trampling their rights to blast for new mines in March. Glencore, which is South Africa’s largest exporter of coal, has denied all these claims.

In the Colombian case, Glencore is said to have supported the AUC to counter kidnappings and attacks on infrastructure conducted by left-wing guerrilla groups FARC and the ELN.

The new Colombian accusations are based largely on the testimony of José del Carmen Gelvez Alvarracín, known as “El Canoso”, who was first hired as an intelligence agent by the Colombian army and then became a defence contractor for Glencore’s security department in 1996, before joining the AUC in 2003.

Gelvez described meetings that took place since 1996 between the AUC and Glencore’s security department head, Manuel Gutiérrez.

He testified that he and Glencore’s managers, Manuel Gutiérrez and Luis Ochoa, “drove in a pick-up truck to a farm named La Ucrania …

“On entering, we saw approximately 30 people dressed in camouflage, who introduced us to the commander who went by the alias Lucho,” says the PAX report.

“Manuel Gutiérrez, as head of the security department, spoke on behalf of the company, Prodeco, about providing this group of the AUC with whatever support it might need.

“It was clear that there was a direct link between the company and the AUC.”

Glencore has criticised the report for being one-sided and uncritical in terms of evaluating the testimonies of former paramilitaries.

The company said it had contacted the human rights organisations involved in March, when the report was being written, but PAX did not include its objections in the final draft.

Last month, Glencore’s head of sustainability, Dr Michael Fahrbach, sent a letter to PAX saying: “The report is distorted and unbalanced, and blindly follows accusations made by a condemned criminal, which came up years ago, in a judicial hearing to which we had no access and didn’t have the right to be heard.” – South African Sunday Times Business Report

Al Qaeda loots Iraqi banks

As reported yesterday, in yet another humiliating blow to US foreign policy and the State Department, Al Qaeda-linked ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham) militants took over the key northern town of Mosul, where an unknown number of US-made Black Hawk helicopters were parked and have been captured by Al Qaeda (potentially the same forces that have been trained by the US across the border in Syria).

Adding insult to injury the Al Qaeda militants also appear to have looted some $429 million from local banks. From IBtimes:

The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams (Isis) has become the richest terror group ever after looting 500 billion Iraqi dinars – the equivalent of $429m (£256m) – from Mosul’s central bank, according to the regional governor.

Nineveh governor Atheel al-Nujaifi confirmed Kurdish televison reports that Isis militants had stolen millions from numerous banks across Mosul. A large quantity of gold bullion is also believed to have been stolen.

Following the siege of the country’s second city, the bounty collected by the group has left it richer than al-Qaeda itself and as wealthy as small nations such as Tonga, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and the Falkland Islands.

The financial assets that Isis now possess are likely to worsen the Iraqi governement’s struggle to defeat the insurgency, which is aimed at creating an Islamic state across the Syrian-Iraqi border.

In other words, now that it is armed with US-made weapons, this particular al-Qaeda group also happens to be the world’s richest terror force!

And so with all disposable cash it needs for a long time and armed to the teeth, what is Al Qaeda to do? Why continue expanding of course. Moments ago, via Reuters, we got confirmation that the “insurgents” have just captured yet another symbolic Iraqi town, Tikrit: the birthplace of none other than Saddam.

Sunni insurgents overran parts of the Iraqi city of Tikrit on Wednesday, security sources said.

Tikrit, which is located 150 km (95 miles) north of Baghdad, is the hometown of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Will they stop here? Of course not. Expect the ISIS force to continue south until finally it overruns Baghdad itself and until all of Iraq, courtesy of a crippled army, officially belongs to Al Qaeda. America’s job is done here.

One can’t wait until Al Qaeda is also in charge of all the other countries recently liberated by the US and/or CIA.

Source: Zero Hedge

The true aims of the Terror War

By Chris Floyd.

The moral insanity of the Terror War continues to spawn more violence, more extremism, more repression, more injustice, and the total subversion of the “Western values,” all of which it is ostensibly designed to defend.

A new piece by Patrick Cockburn in the Independent provides a grimly illuminating look at this insanity in action on a specific front: Syria. It’s worth reading in full, but here is an excerpt:

The Syrian war has turned into a Syrian version of the Thirty Years War in Germany four centuries ago. Too many conflicts and too many players have become involved for any peace terms to be acceptable to all.. … It has become increasingly obvious over the past year that al-Qa’ida type movements, notably Isis, Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, have come to dominate or can operate freely in a great swathe of territory across northern Iraq and northern Syria. This gives Isis a vast hinterland in which it can manoeuvre and fight on both sides of what is a largely nominal Syrian-Iraqi border. …

Europeans have not yet woken up to the significance of these anarchic zones opening up on the shores of the Mediterranean in Syria and Libya. This is because the threat has been largely abstract but it is getting less so with the attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels by a French jihadi who had been in Syria. US and European politicians do not want to explain why, 13 years after 9/11, when the “war on terror” was supposedly launched, thousands of al-Qa’ida militants have been able to carve out enclaves so close to Europe.

US and European politicians won’t explain it because any honest explanation would expose the emptiness at the core of all their proffered reasons for the Terror War. They can’t explain it because the Terror War system — including the increasing militarization and repression in their own countries — has now become organizing principle of Western society. Or rather, it is the latest incarnation of what has been the guiding principle of Western society since World War II: organizing society and the economy around war, either active war or the ever-present “threat” of war (assiduously exaggerated — or even manufactured — at every turn). For government and big business, the immense power and profit and control they inevitably accrued from conducting total war on a global basis was far too enticing to give up once the war was over. The full mobilization of society’s resources for war simply carried on; indeed, was expanded and amplified.

However, the war also had a life-transforming impact on many of its survivors. The savagery and loss — and the class-effacing comradeship — they had experienced during the war imbued millions of people with a burning desire to change society for the better, to do away with the poverty and injustices of the past, and build a better, more decent, more peaceful world. This spirit is evoked with remarkable power in a new book, Harry’s Last Stand, by Harry Leslie Smith, a 91-year-old WII veteran enraged to see the neoliberal extremists that have held sway in the US and Britain for more than 30 years sweeping away the progress toward a more just society that his generation tried to build on the ruins of the war. (Some of Smith’s writing can be found here and here.)

Source: Empire Burlesque

Venetian nationalists accused of ‘terror’

Italian police on Wednesday arrested 24 people involved in a campaign to demand independence for Venice and its surrounding region and seized a tractor that they said the activists had tried to convert into a sort of tank.

The surprise arrests came just two weeks after activists held an online vote calling for the Veneto region, which encompasses the lagoon city, to break away from the rest of Italy and declare itself the “Repubblica Veneta”.

The authorities accused the 24 separatists of being involved in “terrorism”, “fabrication of weapons of war” and “subversion of the democratic order”.

The activists were part of a “secessionist group that was planning various initiatives, some of them violent, aimed at pushing for the independence of Veneto and other parts of the national territory of the Italian State,” the paramilitary Carabinieri said.

The activists were allegedly planning to use the “tank”, which was armed with a makeshift cannon, to stage a protest in Venice’s St Mark’s Square, 17 years after a similar stunt in which Veneto separatists drove a home-made armoured car into the famous square.

Police claim the makeshift tank was in good working order and was capable of firing projectiles from its barrel.

Those arrested included Franco Rocchetta, a former MP and the founder of the Liga Veneta, or Veneto League, one of several separatist movements calling for independence for the affluent north-eastern region.

In last month’s unofficial referendum, organisers claimed that 56 per cent of registered voters in the region cast a vote online and that an overwhelming majority supported secession from Italy.

They said that out of a total 2.36 million votes cast, 2.1 million voted for independence.

The drive for independence is supported by Veneto’s most powerful politician, Luca Zaia, who is president of the region and a member of the separatist Northern League.

Mr Zaia leads a regional assembly which is debating holding an official referendum on the issue, just as Scotland secured the right to hold September’s vote on seceding from the UK. He says there are powerful economic and cultural reasons for Veneto to strive for independence.

Venetians and the people of surrounding cities such as Padova and Vicenza deeply resent the fact that each year Rome takes 20 billion euros of their tax revenue.

They feel that the money is squandered on corrupt and dysfunctional parts of Italy, particularly in the crime-ridden south.

Source: The Telegraph

Mandela’s legacy: the Shell House massacre

by Dan Roodt

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Twenty years ago, on 28 March 1994, the ANC’s militia massacred a crowd of protesting Zulus in downtown Johannesburg, using automatic weapons against men armed only with symbolic “cultural weapons”, such as spears and cowhide shields. Mandela himself gave the order “to kill, if necessary”.

The official death toll ranges from 9 to 53, but anecdotal evidence suggests it may have been much larger. Pamela Wallace, a commenter on the Daily Maverick article on the massacre, claims that there was so much blood on the floors of the Johannesburg General Hospital on 28 March that staff had to wear gumboots:

My late husband was working at the Johannesburg General at the time. They wore gum boots as they waded in blood and that hospital alone declared more than a hundred and fifty dead when the official figure at the time was about ten. I wonder what that figure is today?

And here lies the rub: no-one has ever been charged with any wrongdoing! Mandela, who gave the order to mow down the Inkatha men, afterwards delivered a speech in parliament exonerating himself and placing the blame squarely on the Zulu nationalist movement. Even more curiously, the De Klerk government – who were still in charge at the time – did nothing to ensure justice for the many people who were killed on 28 March.

FW de Klerk was just a puppet leader at the time; his response to the Shell House massacre constitutes one more proof of his spineless expediency.

If ever I find the time, I want to write a proper history of South Africa from after World War II to the present, showing the rapid rise and decline of the Afrikaner nation. Thanks to the patriotic fervour of our people, our previously fine education system with its emphasis on literature, mathematics and science, we were able to build an industrial society on the African continent within a few decades. The whole of the subcontinent benefited from this feat and even today South Africa is considered an exception, surrounded by countries such as Zimbabwe and Mozambique that have held or are still holding the dubious position of “poorest country in the world”. The growing squalor, corruption and decay of present-day South Africa stands in stark contrast to the order, progress and optimism of the immediate postwar period. Ultimately Afrikaners were not conquered militarily, but they were utterly defeated through propaganda, terrorism and calumny.

In the grand scheme of the relentless propaganda war against Afrikaners, the armed police response to the black rioters at Sharpeville on 21 March 1960 became a cause célèbre and to this day is constantly referred to in the media worldwide, while Shell House and the ANC’s war crimes in the form of terrorist attacks on unarmed civilians go almost unmentioned. It is therefore curious that a liberal website such The Daily Maverick should even recall the events of Shell House as they did today, including some gruesome photographs of the bloodshed.

Incidents such as Shell House, together with the ANC and Communist Party’s terror campaign during the 1980s demonstrate the doctrine of “people’s war”, an apparently North-Vietnamese strategy whereby one gains “democratic support through terror and violence”. The seasoned political and historical researcher, Dr. Anthea Jeffery, wrote a lengthy book on the ANC’s strategy of People’s War: New Light on the Struggle for South Africa (Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2009), which explains why we were destined to become a one-party state.

Video warning the public against ANC terrorist bombings in the 1980s:

Communist Party leader Joe Slovo had a master plan to conquer South Africa through a combination of propaganda, people’s war and urban terror, in which he largely succeeded.

And still the carnage continues; just look at the murder of Afrikaner farmers today which have as object the destruction of the rural economy and agriculture. When there is famine, he who controls the food supply, controls the population, as Mengistu and his British “humanitarian” collaborators so amply demonstrated in Ethiopia.

South Africa remains in the grip of the ruthlessly radical people who summarily shot practically unarmed Zulu nationalist demonstrators in the streets of Johannesburg twenty years ago. That the whole of the so-called West, in the form of the USA and EU, still bend over backwards in rolling out the red carpet to them at every occasion, speaks volumes about the moral confusion that exists out there.

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FBI: Cyber-attacks worse threat than terrorism

Cyber-attacks are increasingly becoming the primary threat against the United States, according to the head of the FBI.

During his first testimony as the new FBI director, James Comey told Congress on Thursday that while the threat of traditional terrorist strikes inside the United States is now lower than it was before 2001, the potential threat from cyber-attacks continues to rise.

“That’s where the bad guys will go,” Comey said, as quoted by the Guardian. “There are no safe neighborhoods. All of us are neighbors [online].”

Comey’s comments were echoed by Rand Beers, the acting secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, and Matt Olsen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, both of whom also testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.

The three officials agreed that while the potential for an attack on the scale of 9/11 is more likely to occur overseas, Congress should be wary of rolling back surveillance programs like the one employed by the National Security Agency. Over the next decade, cyber-attacks are likely to become the primary domestic threat, they said.

The officials added that any changes to the US surveillance program should be on the “margins,” and not directly affect the agencies’ “core capabilities.”

In fact, Beers and Comey both pushed Congress to expand the government’s power to gain access to data held by privately owned companies, with Beers suggesting that new legislation grant corporations liability protection for sharing sensitive information with federal agencies.

According to the Guardian, at least one senator, Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), expressed concern over the suggestion, saying that companies should have the chance to willingly cooperate with the government before being told to hand over data.

In 2008, the US passed legislation protecting telecommunications companies and internet providers helping the government conduct warrantless surveillance from privacy lawsuits.

USA Today reported that the officials noted how difficult it is to detect self-radicalized terrorists, and that Americans are urged to report something suspicious when they see it.

“The challenge of the home-grown violent extremist is that [the person] really doesn’t hit all the trip wires,” Olsen said. – RT

Sexwale’s detention signals US terror watch list still active

A former black South African government Minister has been detained in New York apparently because his name is on a terrorism watch list.

Tokyo Sexwale became a member of the Black Consciousness Movement in the late 1960s and a local leader of the radical South African Students’ Movement. In the early 1970s, he joined the African National Congress’s armed wing to wage a terror campaign against white civilians.

Sexwale, a former Robben Island prisoner turned billionaire businessman, was stopped for questioning at John F. Kennedy airport for a second time while attempting to enter the United States on a recent business trip. He was also stopped for the same reason in 2002.

Sexwale has become a major player in the diamond industry, with his company reportedly being the third biggest after De Beers and JFPI Corporation. He was praised by no less a figure than Harry Oppenheimer, the patriarch of the Anglo-American and De Beers corporations, as having an understanding of the South African and international diamond mining industry that few can equal.

In the 1970s and 80s, the African National Congress (ANC) and various other groups were officially designated terrorist organisations as a result of waging a racial terror campaign against unarmed civilians, as well as women and children.

Other countries, including the U.S., followed suit. After the end of apartheid in 1994, certain names remained on the U.S. terrorism watch list. Even Nelson Mandela was only removed in 2008.

Ebrahim Rasool, the South Africa Ambassador to the U.S., was forced to intervene this week with the U.S. State Department to secure Sexwale’s release, according to a tweet by the South African public broadcaster SABC’s US correspondent, Sherwin Bryce-Pease.

Sexwale now intends to take legal again action through the American courts, the national broadcaster SABC reported. In 2002, when he was refused a visa to enter the United States, for the first time, it later transpired that he, along with many prominent South African anti-apartheid figures such as Nelson Mandela and South African cabinet minister Sidney Mufamadi, were still on the global terror list.

After initiating legal action, going so far as to having papers served on the U.S. Department of State and following personal intervention by Condoleezza Rice, Sexwale and the others received ten-year waivers from the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Department of Homeland Security, as the US felt that permanently delisting them would mean changing the law, which would be a “lengthy process”.

In April 2008 the waiver was lifted and the ANC members along with the ANC were removed from the terrorist list in the USA. However it seems that Sexwale remains on the terror list.

Soweto-born Sexwale is one of the country’s richest men, although he is a sworn Marxist. In 1975 he went into self-imposed exile to the then Soviet Union and received military training there to launch a terror campaign in South Africa.

A year later, on his return to South Africa, he was arrested, charged with conspiracy to overthrow the government and sentenced to 18 years in prison. After his release in 1990 he pursued careers in both politics and business.

The Church Street bombing, a car bomb attack on 20 May 1983 by Umkhonto we Sizwe, the terror group, in Pretoria, killed 19 and wounded 217, and was one of the largest attacks against whites.

A further black mark against Sexwale is the appearance of his name in a United Nations report on illegal transactions under the Oil-for-Food Programme. Sexwale’s Group 5 has received criticism for their involvement with corrupt tender contracts in South Africa.

The ANC reacted angrily to Mr. Sexwale’s treatment by U.S. authorities. “If indeed it is true, we think it is totally unacceptable,” said Jackson Mthembu, the party’s national spokesman.

“We would have thought the Americans would have taken all credible struggle heroes off the list. This is very disappointing. It makes us very worried. If Tokyo can be arrested, who will not be?

In 2008 Condoleezza Rice, the then U.S. Secretary of State, described it as “embarrassing” that Nobel peace laureate Mandela remained on the terrorist watch list and needed special permission to visit the country.

Later that year Mandela was removed under a bill signed by President George Bush but it is unclear if this applied to other ANC leaders.

A former US diplomat said on Sunday: “During the apartheid era the ANC and other organisations ended up being listed as terrorist organisations and it was difficult to get them removed because of various senatorial pressures. I was not aware there were still people whose names are specifically listed on such an index.”

Clayson Monyela, spokesman for South Africa’s international relations department, said it had been told that a resolution is needed in the U.S. Congress to remove all the names.

Stasi Meets Steve Jobs

By Eric Margolis

“Gentlemen do not read other gentlemen’s mail” sniffed US Secretary of State Henry Stimson in 1929 when told that American cryptographers had broken Japan’s naval and diplomatic codes.

Stimson, who later headed the War Department, ordered code-breaking shut down.

Alas, there are not any old-school gentlemen left in Washington these days. Revelations of US electronic spying by whistleblower Edward Snowden have ignited a furor across Latin America and now Europe.

This week’s uproar was intensified by claims that the US National Security Agency (NSA) had tapped into the cell phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Europe’s most important and influential leader. Further outrage erupted in France after reports that its leaders and diplomats had been tapped by NSA’s big ears.

To no surprise, President Obama officially denied listening in to Merkel’s calls. A US source sought to lessen the damage by claiming NSA had only tapped her office phone, not her cell phone. German anger was not assuaged.

Back in the day, French Interior Ministers – notably Nicholas Sarkozy – used to stay up late poring over wire taps of fellow officials’ peccadillos. That was good fun. Today, by contrast, the NSA and CIA are sweeping up all communications of supposed allies as part of the runaway US national security state. Call it the Stasi meets Apple’s late Steve Jobs.

Last month alone, NSA reportedly sifted through 70 million French phone calls, text and email under the lame pretext of fighting terrorism. What NSA was really finding were the phone numbers of prominent Frenchmen’s mistresses or boyfriends – very useful for CIA blackmail ops – and important commercial information. Terrorism is a red herring. NSA’s run amok spying, allegedly to combat “terrorism,” is making a lot of Americans wonder again about the events of 9/11 that triggered the explosion of America’s spy state, restrictive laws, and foreign wars.

Still, one wonders if President Obama knew what his spies were doing. He has little control over the Pentagon and probably even less over America’s mammoth, ever-growing spy state built by former President George W. Bush that costs over $80 billion per annum. Some 4.8 million Americans now have secret security clearance and work for the octopod national security state.

Obama would not be the first president not to know what his spooks were up to. But he should have been this time. Bugging the leaders of America’s closest European and Latin American allies was an incredibly stupid act. Nothing thereby learned could have been worth the damage caused.

US Elint (electronic spying) has humiliated European and Latin leaders and made them and NATO look like American vassals to be dismissed or disdained.

How can Europe’s leaders face their own voters after this shameful episode? Revelations by Snowdon and Army private Bradley Manning show that Washington treats its NATO allies in the same imperious manner the old Soviet Union bossed around the Warsaw Pact.

Europe’s leaders are under mounting pressure to demonstrate their independence of Uncle Sam by taking some stern retaliatory action against US interests.

A starting point would be building a brand-new electronic communications architecture for Western Europe that resists US penetration, and creating a truly independent Europe military capability. Time for Europe to stop being foot soldiers to America’s nuclear knights.

US reputation in Europe and Latin America is now at an all-time low. The next NSA spying scandals will likely come from the Mideast, India and Pakistan, Canada, South Korea and Japan. Obama may be remembered as having gotten the world even angrier at the US than predecessor George W. Bush – quite an accomplishment.

Washington claims “everyone does spying.” True enough, but no one is anywhere close to NSA’s giant vacuum cleaner and all-hearing bugs. What the US has been doing is far more than information gathering against a handful of anti-American militants. It’s heavy-duty intimidation. A reminder that Big Brother is watching and listening.

The deeply corrupt US Congress won’t do much to curtail NSA’s information theft. Too many of its members profit from market trades made on the basis of NSA snooping. – The Gulf Times

South Africa to address ‘outdated ANC terror lists’

Scene of the Amanzimtoti bomb planted by the ANC and SACP

The department of international relations would continue in its attempts to rectify the travel restrictions of former ANC urban terrorists in some international countries, it said on Monday.

“The SA government has repeatedly raised this matter with the US and will continue until this matter is sorted,” said international relations spokesman Clayson Monyela.

The New Age reported earlier that ANC stalwart Tokyo Sexwale had been briefly detained by immigration control at the John F Kennedy International Airport in New York.

His lawyer Leslie Makhabela said: “They alleged he posed a threat to international security.”

Sexwale and many other anti-apartheid terrorists had been on a list of people banned from entering several countries since the apartheid era.

They were not removed after the country gained democracy in 1994.

Sexwale had since returned to the country. – Sapa and PRAAG

‘White widow’ rented property in South Africa

Samantha Lewthwaite and Germaine Lindsay pose with their son.

A British woman thought to be linked to the Nairobi mall attacks used an assumed South African identity to take out bank loans and rent property in Johannesburg, local media reported Wednesday.

Samantha Lewthwaite — wanted by Kenyan police for alleged involvement in a separate terror plot — used the known alias Natalie Faye Webb to rent at least three properties and run up debts of $8,600 (6,400 euros), according to the eNews Channel Africa (eNCA).

The 29-year-old Muslim convert — nicknamed the “White Widow” because her husband was among the 2005 London suicide bombers — signed rental leases around Johannesburg, but it was unclear whether she lived at any of the premises.

According to credit records released by eNCA, she was listed as living in the city’s predominantly South Asian neighbourhood of Mayfair for four years.

Kenya’s foreign minister has said a British woman was among the Islamist attackers who shot dead dozens of people at a Nairobi shopping mall from Saturday.

President Uhuru Kenyatta later said the reports could not be confirmed.

But Kenyan authorities issued a wanted notice for Lewthwaite after she entered the country from Tanzania’s northeastern Lunga and Namanga border posts in February and August 2011 using a South African passport in the name of Webb.

Two months later South African clothing stores signalled debt defaults worth almost $2,700.

In August 2012 a Johannesburg court issued an order against her for defaulting on $2,800 debt with South Africa’s First Rand Bank.

Lewthwaite was married to Germaine Lindsay, one of four suicide bombers who attacked the London transport network in July 2005, killing 52 people.

A local terror expert and academic said earlier this week that she regularly travels to South Africa and stayed in South Asian suburbs of Johannesburg earlier this year.

However residents either denied Lewthwaite had lived at the cited addresses or could not remember having seen her.

Close to a bustling street with shops where women dressed in headscarves walked with their children, the structure of a new building now stands in the yard where two houses were demolished over a year ago.

“I have not seen her here before,” said a neighbour who has lived across the road for seven years, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A man who identified himself only as Junaid, and said he was redeveloping the property — bought from a 65-year-old owner two years ago — denied an English woman had lived there.

On the other side of the city in the leafy suburb of Bromhof, neighbours who have lived since 2008 across the road from the house Lewthwaite was said to have rented, also could not recall her living there. – AFP

Tony Blair’s daughter held at gunpoint

Tony Blair’s daughter Kathryn has been threatened at gunpoint in a botched robbery.

The young barrister was walking her dog with her boyfriend and a group of friends when the attackers struck.

The pair were in Marylebone, a mile from the million pound home her father bought her in 2010, and near his own central London property.

Neither 25-year-old Miss Blair nor her boyfriend were harmed in the attack, which took place at around 8pm on Monday.

The attempted mugging is thought to be linked to another similar incident in the area on the same night.

The two attempted robberies took place just half an hour apart and both involved the use of a firearm to threaten a couple.

A spokesman for the Blairs said: ‘Kathryn was with a group of friends. No one was hurt and nothing was stolen.’

The group were approached by two men, one armed with a gun, and were asked for cash and jewellery before the suspects fled empty-handed.

No arrests have been made and the race of the attackers were not mentioned.

The attack raises concerns for the safety of the Blairs, who could be targeted due to the former prime minister’s role as peace envoy to the Middle East, and to his decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003.

One security expert said last night: ‘It seems staggering that the daughter of a man who evokes such extreme emotions in some should be wandering around in the dark at night without protection.

‘Neither of the two victims were injured. A firearm was shown on each occasion though no shots were discharged. Officers are investigating both attempted robberies. There have been no arrests at this stage.

‘We would urge anyone with information to contact us immediately,’ the police said. – Daily Mail

At least 12 die in US Navy Yard shooting

At least one gunman opened fire inside a building at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday morning.

Police were looking for two other potential gunmen wearing military-style uniforms, including one who had on a beret, chief Cathy Lanier said.

DC Mayor Vincent Gray said at least 12 people were killed in the Navy Yard rampage and one shooter killed at the scene. Authorities are looking for two other men who may also have been involved in the attack.

Authorities have identified the dead shooter as a Navy employee whose work status had been changed earlier this year, a federal government official told the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak on the record.

While that may suggest the motive was job related, authorities haven’t ruled out anything, including terrorism, the official said.

A senior federal law enforcement official said authorities were investigating whether the main shooter, a black male, was motivated by a dispute with employees at the Navy Yard.

Authorities were still clearing the building early Monday afternoon but expected the death toll could reach as high as eight people, including the shooter, said the official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity.

The two at large suspects were dressed in military garb but are not believed to be US service personnel, Lanier said.

One was a young white man in a khaki like uniform and the other was a black man in his 50s with a long rifle in an olive colored garb, she said.

Lanier said there were multiple fatalities at the scene but exact numbers were not immediately.

A Navy spokesman said early Monday that four people were killed and eight wounded in shooting at the Washington Navy Yard — though the death toll is expected to climb.

Mayor Vincent Gray said officials are still working to determine the number of fatalities during a press conference at noon.

All the injuries occurred in the Building 197, which is home to the Naval Sea Systems Command.

Navy officials had reported three shots were fired at 8:20 a.m. at the headquarters of the Naval Sea Systems Command in Southeast Washington.

DC police quickly deployed an “active shooter team” within seven minutes of reports of shots fired, Ms. Lanier said.

Two of the shooting victims are DC police officers.

Omar Grant, a civilian worker at the Navy Yard said he was on the first floor of the five-story atrium when he heard the first shot. “At first I didn’t know if someone dropped something,” Mr Grant said. “It echoes in an atrium.”

Then he heard the other shots, Mr. Grant said.

“It was unmistakable,” he said. “Nobody had dropped anything. Those were shots.”

The Navy has issued a shelter-in-place order for personnel, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said.

“We believe there has been loss of life and several injuries,” Little said. “We continue to monitor this ongoing situation.”

George Washington University Hospital has confirmed that a 60-year-old male was killed in the Navy Yard shooting Monday morning.

A spokesman said the man, whose name was not given, was dead on arrival to the hospital at around 9 a.m, about 40 minutes after the shooting.

The spokesman said the man was shot in the left temple and the wound was “not survivable by any stretch.”

The hospital said it was told to be prepared to take more victims of the shooting.

A spokeswoman for Medstar Washington Hospital Center said the hospital has already received three people wounded in Monday’s shooting at the Navy Yard and “we’ve been told to expect more.”

The rampage plunged DC into chaos during the morning commute.

The 11th Street Bridge was shut down, and people were routed away from the area, the police spokesman said.

Flights departing from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport were stopped, the FAA said, and incoming flights are being held at their origin. Flights resumed shortly after 11 a.m.

At least six DC public schools in the area went into lockdown.

Also, people in the neighborhood around Fort Myer could hear a “shelter in place” order being issued over the loudspeakers about the time of the shooting.

About 3,000 people work at the headquarters of the Sea Systems Command, which is responsible for engineering, building, buying and maintaining ships, submarines and combat systems for the Navy.

The Washington Navy Yard is an administrative center for the Navy, housing the headquarters for several commands including Commander, Naval Installations Command, and Naval Sea Systems Command, which is located in Building 197 and is responsible for procurement and maintenance on the Navy’s fleet of ships and submarines.

The National Museum of the U.S. Navy and the Naval History and Heritage Command are also located on base. It also serves as the location for court martials, or military trials, for the Washington area, including Annapolis.

It is the Navy’s oldest shore command, according to Naval History and Heritage Command’s website, and has been in operation since the beginning of the 19th century, first as a shipbuilding site before being designated as the manufacturing plant for all Navy ordnance after the Civil War.

It is now used for ceremonial and administrative functions, like change of command ceremonies for Navy leaders like the Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy or the Chief of Naval Personnel. – Washington Times

Mandela responding to treatment says Zuma

Former president Nelson Mandela is responding to treatment but is still in a critical but stable condition, says President Jacob Zuma.

“We are encouraged that Madiba is responding to treatment and urge the public to continue providing support and showering him with love, which gives him and the family strength,” President Jacob Zuma said in a statement on Wednesday.

Zuma visited Mandela in hospital on Wednesday evening.

The elder statesman was spending his 33rd day at the Mediclinic Heart Hospital in Pretoria for treatment of a recurring lung infection. He was admitted on June 8.

Zuma turned up shortly after Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula left the hospital. He left after about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, people continued to flock to the hospital to leave messages of support for Mandela; among them New York University students.

The students are in the country for a month to study education and social reforms. They lit candles near the wall filled with messages and well wishes for Mandela.

Inspired by Mandela
“His influence and what he stands for has touched all of us,” said Curtis Outlaw.

He said he was inspired by Mandela and all he had accomplished in his life.

“I look at him as an inspirational individual. From him I have learned that with perseverance, anything can be accomplished,” he said.

Crystal Soto said it was very important for them, as social welfare students, to visit the hospital and see what the country had been saying about Madiba.

“As educators, it is also important to study who he is and what he has accomplished as a person,” she said.

The students said it was important for them to show respect for the sacrifices Mandela had made, to ensure peace and unity in the country. – Sapa