A Syria-based journalist for news magazine Nieuwe Revu has managed to obtain a forged Syrian passport and ID card with a photograph of prime minister Mark Rutte on it.
Harald Doornbos paid some €750 for the passport, which he was able to pick up from the forgers within 40 hours.
The fixer told Doornbos that he would be able to enter Cyprus with the passport, which was in the name of Malek Ramadan.
Doornbos said the aim of the exercise had not been to buy a forged passport featuring Rutte, but he had been asked to supply a name and photograph, so he opted for the prime minister.
Since the outbreak of the Syrian war, thousands of blank passports and the Assad government’s printers have ended up in the hands of insurgents, according to Revu. These insurgents will sell passports showing any photo given to them to anyone willing to pay.
Doornbos describes the consequences as terrifying as it will be even more difficult for security services to detect terrorist if getting hold of a fake identity is this easy. Doornbos describes the route a terrorist will take, according to his sources:
“From an ISIS or al-Qaeda area in northern Syria a returning foreign terrorist fighter will travel to Bodrum in western Turkey. From there he makes the illegal crossing to Greece. In Greece he shows his false Syrian passport to the authorities. Since the fake passport gives a fake name, the Greeks have no idea that they are not dealing with a Syrian refugee but a member of ISIS or al-Qaeda. From Greece the journey goes through Macedonia and Serbia to Hungary. After arriving in Schengen member Hungary, the jihadist can travel with his false Syrian passport through all the other Schengen states without any further checks.”
An explosion close to Erawan shrine in Bangkok, Thailand, killed at least 21 people including seven foreigners.
The tally of foreign tourists killed by the blast now stands at seven, Thai police spokesman Prawut Thavornsiri has told AFP.
According to his office, two Chinese citizens from the mainland, two people from Hong Kong, two Malaysians and a Singaporean have been confirmed among a death toll of 21 at this stage.
Five Thais have been confirmed killed, while the other nine victims have not yet been identified. Investigators have been having trouble establishing the exact number of dead as victims were torn apart so horrendously that they are still trying to match body parts.
The wounded come from Thailand, China, Japan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Maldives, Oman, the Philippines and Singapore.
The revised list of nationalities reflects the popularity of the shrine with visitors from across East Asia and particularly Chinese communities.
The head of Thailand’s junta now says a suspect has been identified from CCTV footage. The blast is believed to have been the work of an anti-government group based in Thailand’s north-east, where the anti-coup Red Shirt movement is based, according to AFP.
No group has claimed responsibility for the blast on Monday evening, which left scores wounded, and officials in Thailand have yet to blame any group.
Thailand’s three southernmost provinces are home to a long-running Muslim separatist insurgency. Since 2004, more than 6,500 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in violence in the region.
The army has ruled Thailand since May 2014, when it ousted the elected government after months of anti-government protests.
Protesters burned a man alive in Burundi’s capital yesterday, saying he was a member of the ruling party’s youth wing, which had attacked them during their demonstrations against the president’s bid for a third term, a witness said.
Protesters have been on Bujumbura’s streets for almost two weeks, often hurling stones at the police, whom they say have fired live rounds at them. The police deny this.
Opponents of the government say the June 26 presidential election should be delayed by a few weeks because of the unrest.
President Pierre Nkurunziza’s spokesman said a delay was unnecessary because most of the country was calm.
The violence has plunged the nation into its worst crisis since the end of a civil war in 2005 that pitted the ethnic Hutu majority against the powerful Tutsi minority.
“They put tyres around his neck and then burnt him,” a witness said in the Nyakabiga district of Bujumbura.
Local media also reported the incident and the Red Cross said a man was killed in Nyakabiga but, in line with its usual practice, did not say how he died. It said a woman was killed in another area yesterday.
Protesters said the victim of the burning was a member of the Imbonerakure youth wing of the ruling CNDD-FDD party, which they say has attacked them. The government has repeatedly dismissed charges that Imbonerakure is fomenting violence.
Activists say at least 14 people have been killed since the protests erupted. Police gave lower figures.
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, wife of Nelson Mandela, called on her supporters to burn political opponents alive.
She is often called ‘Mother of the Nation’, but was personally responsible for the murder, torture, abduction and assault of numerous men, women and children, as well as indirectly responsible for an even larger number of such crimes.
In Munsieville on 13 April 1986, she openly endorsed the practice of necklacing (burning people alive using tyres and petrol) by saying: “[W]ith our boxes of matches and our necklaces we shall liberate this country.”
President Barack Obama told Congress on Tuesday that he plans to remove Cuba from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism, removing a major obstacle to restoring diplomatic relations and reopening embassies.
Obama’s decision follows a summit in Panama where Obama and Cuban President Fidel Castro sat down on Saturday for the first meeting of its kind between US and Cuban leaders in nearly 60 years.
Cuba’s communist government had demanded removal from the US blacklist to move forward on efforts to normalize relations between the two former Cold War foes. Obama ordered a review of Cuba’s presence on the list after he and Castro announced a diplomatic breakthrough on Dec 17.
Obama’s decision was submitted to Congress for a further 45-day review, but lawmakers are extremely unlikely to block the move.
There had been some expectations that Obama would announce his intention to remove the terrorism designation and move forward on restoring diplomatic relations at the summit.
Washington placed Cuba on the list in 1982, citing then-President Fidel Castro’s training and arming of communist rebels in Africa and Latin America. But Cuba’s presence on the list has been questioned in recent years.
American and Israeli military advisors were arrested while aiding Islamic State terrorists in Iraq.
Iraqi counter-terrorism forces arrested four foreign military advisors from the United States and Israel who were aiding the Islamic State, Iranian Tasnim News Agency reports.
Three of the arrested military advisors are dual citizens of the United States and Israel, while the fourth advisor is from a Persian Gulf country, Iraq’s Sarma News Agency said.
The foreign military advisors were captured in a headquarters, from where the Islamic State organized its military operations in Iraq’s Northern Province of Nineveh.
The arrests were made during the Operation, codenamed “The Sting of a Scorpion”. A number of other Islamic State fighters have been killed during the assault. The detained foreign advisors have now been transferred to Baghdad.
The embassies of Germany and Italy have announced evacuation of embassies’ personnel from Yemen. They followed the example of other NATO member states, such as Britain, France and the Netherlands, which have closed their embassies in Yemen over security fears.
US embassy staff were ordered to destroy all top-secret documents and sensitive equipment and pulled out of Yemen altogether Wednesday.
With major western embassies in Yemen evacuated, Houthi rebels and Al-Qaeda militants were left to deal with each other face to face. As Washington tries to enroll Shia rebels to combat terrorism, Islamic extremists are busy seizing military hardware.
In the meantime, an assault by Al-Qaeda militants on the camp of the 19th Infantry Brigade in Yemen’s Baihan on Thursday ended in the surrender of the garrison and the capture of a large quantity of armored vehicles and heavy weaponry. Seven people have been confirmed dead.
Islamic extremists captured a total of “30 tanks, 90 military vehicles, 25 armored vehicles and 28 artillery pieces,” a Yemeni military official told AFP.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), has confirmed the seizure of the camp, accusing troops there of links with the Houthi rebels. Negotiations between Islamic extremists and tribal leaders resulted in Al-Qaeda releasing six Yemeni servicemen.
The Houthi rebels captured the vehicles used for the evacuation of the closed American embassy.
Officials at Sanaa’s airport confirmed that the looted property included more than 25 vehicles used by the US Marines who maintained security at the embassy, as well as three vehicles used by US Ambassador Matthew Tueller and his staff.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki slammed the seizure as “completely unacceptable” and urged the Houthi rebels to “respect international conventions” regarding foreign embassies.
The militia’s foreign relations chief, Hussein al-Ezzi, confirmed the seizure of an unspecified number of vehicles, but insisted they were taken for “safekeeping” and are going to be handed over “to a trustworthy third party, like the United Nations office.”
The US Marine Corps, which organized the evacuation from Yemen, said that Marines destroyed heavy weapons and personal firearms in their possession before leaving the embassy headquarters. They also destroyed computers, documents, phones and other sensitive materials within the embassy’s perimeter.
The closure of the US embassy in Yemen has affected Washington’s ability to conduct counterterrorist operations in the area against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), believed to be one of the world’s most dangerous jihadist networks.
Members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIS, were trained in 2012 by U.S. instructors working at a secret base in Jordan, according to informed Jordanian officials.
The officials said dozens of ISIS members were trained at the time as part of covert aid to the insurgents targeting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. The officials said the training was not meant to be used for any future campaign in Iraq.
The Jordanian officials said all ISIS members who received U.S. training to fight in Syria were first vetted for any links to extremist groups like al-Qaida.
In February 2012, WND was first to report the U.S., Turkey and Jordan were running a training base for the Syrian rebels in the Jordanian town of Safawi in the country’s northern desert region.
That report has since been corroborated by numerous other media accounts.
I’m confused. A few weeks ago we were told in the West that people occupying government buildings in Ukraine was a very good thing. These people, we were told by our political leaders and elite media commentators, were ‘pro-democracy protestors’.
The US government warned the Ukrainian authorities against using force against these ’pro-democracy protestors’ even if, according to the pictures we saw, some of them were neo-Nazis who were throwing Molotov cocktails and other things at the police and smashing up statues and setting fire to buildings.
Now, just a few weeks later, we’re told that people occupying government buildings in Ukraine are not ‘pro-democracy protestors’ but ’terrorists’ or ’militants’.
Why was the occupation of government buildings in Ukraine a very good thing in January, but it is a very bad thing in April? Why was the use of force by the authorities against protestors completely unacceptable in January, but acceptable now? I repeat: I’m confused. Can anyone help me?
The anti-government protestors in Ukraine during the winter received visits from several prominent Western politicians, including US Senator John McCain, and Victoria Nuland, from the US State Department, who handed out cookies. But there have been very large anti-government protests in many Western European countries in recent weeks, which have received no such support, either from such figures or from elite Western media commentators. Nor have protestors received free cookies from officials at the US State Department.
Surely if they were so keen on anti-government street protests in Europe, and regarded them as the truest form of ’democracy’, McCain and Nuland would also be showing solidarity with street protestors in Madrid, Rome, Athens and Paris? I’m confused. Can anyone help me?
A few weeks ago I saw an interview with the US Secretary of State John Kerry who said, “You just don’t invade another country on phony pretexts in order to assert your interests.” But I seem to recall the US doing just that on more than one occasion in the past 20 years or so.
Have I misremembered the ’Iraq has WMDs claim’? Was I dreaming back in 2002 and early 2003 when politicians and neocon pundits came on TV every day to tell us plebs that we had to go to war with Iraq because of the threat posed by Saddam’s deadly arsenal? Why is having a democratic vote in Crimea on whether to rejoin Russia deemed worse than the brutal, murderous invasion of Iraq – an invasion which has led to the deaths of up to 1 million people? I’m confused. Can anyone help me?
We were also told by very serious-looking Western politicians and media ’experts’ that the Crimea referendum wasn’t valid because it was held under “military occupation.” But I’ve just been watching coverage of elections in Afghanistan, held under military occupation, which have been hailed by leading western figures, such as NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen as a “historic moment for Afghanistan”and a great success for “democracy.” Why is the Crimean vote dismissed, but the Afghanistan vote celebrated? I’m confused. Can anyone help me?
Syria too is rather baffling. We were and are told that radical Islamic terror groups pose the greatest threat to our peace, security and our ’way of life’ in the West. That Al-Qaeda and other such groups need to be destroyed: that we needed to have a relentless ’War on Terror’ against them. Yet in Syria, our leaders have been siding with such radical groups in their war against a secular government which respects the rights of religious minorities, including Christians.
When the bombs of Al-Qaeda or their affiliates go off in Syria and innocent people are killed there is no condemnation from our leaders: their only condemnation has been of the secular Syrian government which is fighting radical Islamists and which our leaders and elite media commentators are desperate to have toppled. I’m confused. Can anyone help me?
Then there’s gay rights. We are told that Russia is a very bad and backward country because it has passed a law against promoting homosexuality to minors. Yet our leaders who boycotted the Winter Olympics in Sochi because of this law visit Gulf states where homosexuals can be imprisoned or even executed, and warmly embrace the rulers there, making no mention of the issue of gay rights.
Surely the imprisonment or execution of gay people is far worse than a law which forbids promotion of homosexuality to minors? Why, if they are genuinely concerned about gay rights, do our leaders attack Russia and not countries that imprison or execute gay people? I’m confused. Can anyone help me?
We are told in lots of newspaper articles that the Hungarian ultra-nationalist party Jobbik is very bad and that its rise is a cause of great concern, even though it is not even in the government, or likely to be. But neo-Nazis and ultra-nationalists do hold positions in the new government of Ukraine, which our leaders in the West enthusiastically support and neo-Nazis and the far-right played a key role in the overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected government in February, a ‘revolution’ cheered on by the West. Why are ultra-nationalists and far-right groups unacceptable in Hungary but very acceptable in Ukraine? I’m confused. Can anyone help me?
We are told that Russia is an aggressive, imperialist power and that NATO’s concerns are about opposing the Russian ‘threat’. But I looked at the map the other day and while I could see lots of countries close to (and bordering) Russia that were members of NATO, the US-led military alliance whose members have bombed and attacked many countries in the last 15 years, I could not see any countries close to America that were part of a Russian-military alliance, or any Russian military bases or missiles situated in foreign countries bordering or close to the US. Yet Russia, we are told, is the ‘aggressive one’. I’m confused. Can anyone help me?
Details of a leaked phone call between EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton and Estonian foreign affairs minister Urmas Paet presented evidence that the US-backed opposition was responsible for hiring snipers who gunned down protesters in Kiev and not the deposed government of Viktor Yanukovich, as the media widely claimed.
More than 90 people were killed and another 900 injured during the standoff between police and protesters at Maidan Saquare in Kiev last month.
During the phone call, Paet tells Ashton that evidence presented to him by a doctor, Olga Bogomolets, who treated victims of the sniper attacks clearly indicates both police and protesters were being shot at by the same people. She has also just turned down the position of Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine for Humanitarian Affairs offered by the coup-appointed regime.
“There is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovich, but it was somebody from the new coalition,” said Paet during the phone call.
The Estonian FM has described the whole sniper issue as “disturbing” and added, “it already discredits from the very beginning” the new Ukrainian power.
His overall impressions of what he saw during his one-day trip to Kiev are “sad,” Paet said during the conversation.
He stressed that the Ukrainian people don’t trust the Maidan leaders, with all the opposition politicians slated to join the new government “having dirty past.”
The file was reportedly uploaded to the web by officers of Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) loyal to ousted President Viktor Yanukovich who hacked Paet’s and Ashton’s phones.
“And second, what was quite disturbing, this same Olga [Bogomolets] told as well that all the evidence shows that the people who were killed by snipers from both sides, among policemen and then people from the streets, that they were the same snipers killing people from both sides,” the Estonian FM added.
Ashton reacted to the information by saying: “Well, yeah…that’s, that’s terrible.”
The true narrative therefore suggests that forces within the opposition hired the snipers in order to kill protesters and then blame the deaths on Yanukovich’s administration, thereby delegitimizing his bid to hold onto power.
This is a classic example of the kind “false flag” attack that NATO, which has vehemently sided with the opposition, perfected in Europe with Operation Gladio.
“I think we do want to investigate. I mean, I didn’t pick that up, that’s interesting. Gosh,” Ashton said in response to Paet.
A secretive British “forensic team” who refused to tell the BBC who they were working for, concluded that the Yanukovich government was responsible for the “bloodbath” before any formal results were published. There is strong reason to believe they were quickly sent in to clean up the crime scenes and destroy evidence.
Paet indicated that the newly installed government had since launched a cover-up of the sniper attacks, remarking, “They don’t want to investigate what exactly happened.”
The phone call was conducted after Paet visited Kiev on February 25 at the height of the clashes between police and protesters.
It is indeed necessary to debate issues concerning the concentration camps of the Anglo-Boer War.
My grandparents were in the Bethulie and Aliwal North camps as children, and they could never shake off the horror that they experienced. They went from healthy homes with everything they needed to situations of starvation and extreme thirst (children were sometimes deprived of water for a full day).
Their suffering motivated me to translate the stories of some of the survivors of those camps. I also point out how the children experienced the symptoms due to lack of food when they would slowly starve to death. I called the book British Terrorism against Boer Civilians, because the actions of the British soldiers meet the criteria for terrorism.
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The symptoms of fear and starvation are discussed, as well as the psyche of the soldiers that would, for example, force children to sleep in the mud or deny women the use of toilets. Years spent in the Middle East enabled me to show the difference between the actions of the US in building up Middle East societies after the discovery of oil, versus the ways in which Britain destroyed the Boer republics by means of the concentration camps.
The movie, Die Wonderwerker, points out that some people “were never the same again”; that some parents were too traumatised to look after their children, and had to farm them out to strangers. With more research in epigenetics, possible damage to future generations should also be considered. I would suggest descendants of survivors of those camps be consulted, before it is too late.
It is indeed time to discuss the damage the camps did to the psyche of the Boer people. But, I would urge Ms Morris to visit the camps, and to talk to us — not to strangers who had no family in those camps.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal appeals court judges are questioning the CIA’s efforts to block information on the use of unmanned drones to kill suspected terrorists.
A lower court federal judge sided with the CIA last year, dismissing a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union seeking records about the use of drones. In response to an ACLU Freedom of Information Act request, the CIA refused to confirm or deny the existence of responsive records.
The ACLU counters that several high-ranking officials, from then-CIA Director Leon Panetta to President Barack Obama, have publicly acknowledged the use of drones.
Judge Merrick Garland suggested at a hearing Thursday that a speech this year by President Barack Obama’s counterterrorism chief, John Brennan, amounted to an official acknowledgment of the CIA drone program.
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