I’m going on a holiday trip for a fortnight, and I don’t think that I will be able to use Internet. So, I hope you’re there when I get back!
Daily Archives: 06/25/2011
Terror: Kenyans Recruited for Al-Shabaab
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Somali al-Qaida affiliate al-Shabaab is recruiting scores of militants from Kenya, reports Nairobi TV (NTV). The media organization’s recent undercover investigation also indicates the terrorist group has infiltrated the Kenyan military.
Al-Shabaab has waged war against Sheikh Sherif Ahmed’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in Somalia since 2006, conducting suicide bombings and guerrilla assaults against the government and its foreign allies in Somalia. Recent offensives by the Somali government have carved out a new territory from the terrorist organization’s holdings.
The undercover investigation also indicated some Kenyan military personnel were supporting al-Shabaab. Corporal Hussein Abdullahi Athan, a member of the Kenyan military, actively recruits for the terrorist group in Isiolo, a city deep within the heart of Kenya, hundreds of miles from the Somali border.
via Kenyans Recruited for Al-Shabaab :: The Investigative Project on Terrorism.
Related:
- Kenya: Somali radical Islamists slipping easily into the country (teaandpolitics.wordpress.com)
- Al-Shabab, the American connection (teaandpolitics.wordpress.com)
- Somalia: Minister killed by Al-Shebab (teaandpolitics.wordpress.com)
UK: Christian peer questions the government’s role in Pakistan
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A Christian peer\’s speaking out about the persecution of minorites in Pakistan. Lord Alton has asked a question in the House of Lords inquiring what the government is doing to support the religious in the country.
via Christian peer questions the government\’s role in Pakistan | Premier.org.uk, Current News.
Very interesting link: it has lots of information about the persecution that Pakistani Christians are suffering.
Related articles
- Pakistan: Muslim think-tank denounces persecution against Christians (teaandpolitics.wordpress.com)
- Pakistan: Christians demonstrate to call for the release of kidnapped Anglican pastor (teaandpolitics.wordpress.com)
- Pakistan: Court Acquits 70 Muslim Radicals of Burning 8 Christians Alive during 2009 Gojra Massacre (teaandpolitics.wordpress.com)
- Pakistan: Christians are forbidden to eat in restaurants (teaandpolitics.wordpress.com)
Pakistan: Seized phone offers clues to Osama bin Laden’s Pakistani links
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Double-side game from Pakistan revealed… something which was cleared for a long time…
The cellphone of Osama bin Laden\’s trusted courier, which was recovered in the raid that killed both men in Pakistan last month, contained contacts to a militant group that is a longtime asset of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, senior American officials who have been briefed on the findings say.
The discovery indicates that Bin Laden used the group, Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen, as part of his support network inside the country, the officials and others said. But it also raised tantalizing questions about whether the group and others like it helped shelter and support Bin Laden on behalf of Pakistan’s spy agency, given that it had mentored Harakat and allowed it to operate in Pakistan for at least 20 years, the officials and analysts said.
In tracing the calls on the cellphone, American analysts have determined that Harakat commanders had called Pakistani intelligence officials, the senior American officials said. One said they had met.
via Seized phone offers clues to Osama bin Laden\’s Pakistani links.
More in Long War Journal: Continue reading
Egypt: Christian Girls Kidnapped and ‘Sold’
Two teenage Coptic girls, cousins, were recently kidnapped and then “sold” in Minya, Egypt—the same region where a Coptic church was recently attacked and desecrated. I tried to find this story in English-language media and, as expected, found nothing, except for one report in Al-Masry Al-Youm titled “Clashes between police and Coptic protesters in Minya”—as if that’s the important story (as usual, the media prefers headlines portraying harried Christian minorities as equally culpable as their Muslim persecutors, thereby justifying use of the preferred phrase, “sectarian strife“).
At the end of the Al-Masry Al-Youm report, we get a trailing sentence alluding to “claims” that two Christian girls “were abducted by Muslims and forced to convert to Islam” as the reason why Copts were demonstrating and clashing with the police in the first place.
… The two girls, Christine Azat (aged 16) and Nancy Magdi (aged 14) were on their way to church Sunday, June 12, when they were seized. Their abductors demanded $200,000 Egyptian pounds for their release. The people of the region quickly put their savings together and came up with the ransom money; but when they tried to give it to the kidnappers, they rejected it, saying they had already “sold” the girls off to another group which requires $12 million Egyptian pounds to return them.
via Egypt: Christian Girls Kidnapped and ‘Sold’ | FrontPage Magazine.
Should I expect a worldwide condemnation of this? 
Found here.
Related articles
- Egypt: Muslims attack Coptic church, Copts are sentenced to 5-yrs imprisonmnet for poseesion of firearms and pocket knives (teaandpolitics.wordpress.com)
- Egypt: Christians begin to flee the country (teaandpolitics.wordpress.com)
Libya: ‘Only’ 15 Percent of Rebels Are Islamic Extremists
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Expert John Rosenthal writes:
In an interview published today in the French daily Le Figaro, a spokesman for Libya’s National Transitional Council acknowledged that Islamic extremists figure among the rebels fighting to overthrow the rule of Muammar al-Gaddafi. But the spokesman, Mahmoud Shamman, insisted that the “radical elements” represent only a “tiny portion” of the rebels: namely, “no more than 15 percent.” Shammam also acknowledged that members of the al-Qaeda-affiliated Libyan Islamic Fighting Group form part of the opposition.
I had already written something about this here and here.
Related articles
- Al Qaeda at work in Libyan city of Derna? (cbsnews.com)
Iran: U.S. hikers to be tried on July 31, says their lawyer
Evin Prison
Iran will hear the case against three Americans detained for nearly two years on spying charges on July 31, their lawyer told Reuters on Tuesday, and he said he hoped a final decision on their case will be made then. Josh Fattal, Shane Bauer and Sarah Shourd were arrested by Iranian forces on July 31, 2009, on suspicion of spying after crossing into Iran from neighboring Iraq.
via Iran says U.S. hikers to be tried on July 31: lawyer – Yahoo! News.
Related articles
- U.S. hikers ‘abused’ in Iranian prison (edition.cnn.com)
- Iran: US hikers tortured (teaandpolitics.wordpress.com)
