Tag: Al-Qaeda

Meet The Navy Seal Who Shot Osama Bin Laden: Rob O’Neil

The identity of a US Navy Seal who shot and killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011 has been revealed as Rob O’Neill.

Mr O’Neill, 38, is a highly decorated veteran who became a public speaker following his 16 years of service in the US military.

He has been named by the special operations community blog SPFrep.com ahead of an interview with Fox News, in which he decides to waive his anonymity and claims to be the man who killed Bin Laden, due to air on 11 and 12 November.

Mr O’Neill’s father, Tom O’Neill, confirmed his son’s identity to the Daily Mail, and told the paper that he is not worried about the potential threat posed by Rob revealing his identity as the member of Team Six who shot the al-Qaeda founder three times in the head.

“People are asking if we are worried that Isis will come and get us because Rob is going public. I say I’ll paint a big target on my front door and say come and get us,” he told the paper.

Mr O’Neill had previously been referred to as “The Shooter” since the two minute raid of Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on 2 May 2011, and his apparent identity has been kept secret by US officials to protect his safety.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton took personal responsibility, and praise, for the US finding and killing Osama bin Laden Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton took personal responsibility, and praise, for the US finding and killing Osama bin Laden.

But Mr O’Neill has reportedly decided to speak out after losing some of his military benefits because he left the Seals after 16 years instead of serving a full 20 years.

The veteran was decorated 52 times and was awarded two Silver Stars and four Bronze Stars with Valour, among many others.

Fox News publicised its interview with O’Neill before he revealed his identity, with correspondent Peter Doocy stating that the two-part programme called The Man Who Killed Osama Bin Laden would provide “an extensive, first-hand account of the mission, including the unexpected crash of one of the helicopters that night and why Seal Team Six feared for their lives”.

The revelation of the identity of Bin Laden’s apparent killer comes a day after the head of the US Naval Warfare Special Command issued a letter warning Navy Seals against breaking their promise to maintain secrecy after their missions.

In the letter obtained by CNN, Adm. Brian Losey reminds Seals that “the most important credit we can garner is the respect of our Teammates and Partners”.

Rob O’Neil has become a public speaker since leaving the US Navy Seals
He writes: “We do not abide wilful or selfish disregard for our core values in return for public notoriety and financial gain.

“Any real credit to be rendered is about the incredible focus, commitment, and teamwork of this diverse network and the years of hard work undertaken with little individual public credit. It is the nature of our profession,” he wrote.

Source: www.theindependent.co.uk

November 7, 2014
IS Millitants Asked For Ransom Before Executing American Journalist

Kneeling in the dirt in a desert somewhere in the Middle East, James Foley lost his life this week at the hands of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Before pulling out the knife used to decapitate him, his masked executioner explained that he was killing the 40-year-old American journalist in retaliation for the recent United States’ airstrikes against the terror group in Iraq.

In fact, until recently, ISIS had a very different list of demands for Mr. Foley: The group pressed the United States to provide a multimillion-dollar ransom for his release, according to a representative of his family and a former hostage held alongside him. The United States — unlike several European countries that have funneled millions to the terror group to spare the lives of their citizens — refused to pay.

Sensitive to growing criticism that it had not done enough, the White House on Wednesday revealed that a United States Special Operations team tried and failed to rescue Mr. Foley — a New Hampshire native who disappeared in Syria on Nov. 22, 2012 — as well as the other American hostages during a secret mission this summer. Mr. Obama said the United States would not retreat until it had eliminated the “cancer” of ISIS from the Middle East.

ISIS also appears determined to increase the pressure on Washington. It has now threatened to kill a second of its hostages, Steven J. Sotloff, a freelance journalist for Time magazine who was being held alongside Mr. Foley.

In the video uploaded to YouTube on Tuesday, the screen goes dark after Mr. Foley is decapitated. Then the ISIS fighter is seen holding Mr. Sotloff in the same landscape of barren dunes, wearing an orange jumpsuit and his hands cuffed behind his back. “The life of this American citizen, Obama, depends on your next decision.”

Along with the three Americans, ISIS is holding citizens of Britain, which like the United States has declined to pay ransoms, former hostages confirmed. The terror group has sent a laundry list of demands for the release of the foreigners, starting with money but also prisoner swaps, including the liberation of Aafia Siddiqui, an M.I.T.-trained Pakistani neuroscientist with ties to Al Qaeda currently incarcerated in a prison in Texas. The policy of not making concessions to terrorists and not paying ransoms has put the United States and Britain at odds with other European allies, who have routinely paid significant sums to win the release of their nationals — including four French and three Spanish hostages who were released this year after money was delivered through an intermediary, according to two of the victims and their colleagues.

Kidnapping Europeans has become the main source of revenue for Al Qaeda and its affiliates, which have earned at least $125 million in ransom payments in the past five years alone, according to an investigation by The Times. Although ISIS was recently expelled from Al Qaeda and abides by different rules, recently freed prisoners said that their captors were well aware of what ransoms had been paid on behalf of European nationals held by Qaeda affiliates as far afield as Africa, indicating that they were hoping to abide by the same business plan.

While government and counterterrorism officials insist that paying ransoms only perpetuates the problem, the policy has meant that captured Americans have little chance of being released. A handful succeeded in running away, and even fewer were rescued in special operations. The rest are either held indefinitely — or else killed.

In an opinion article for Reuters, David Rohde, a columnist for the news service and a former foreign correspondent for The Times who was kidnapped by the Taliban, said that the uneven approach to ransoms may have cost Mr. Foley his life.

“The payment of ransoms and abduction of foreigners must emerge from the shadows. It must be publicly debated,” wrote Mr. Rohde, who escaped his yearlong custody of the Taliban only when he climbed out a window and freed himself. “American and European policy makers should be forced to answer for their actions.”

Mr. Foley, a freelance videographer and reporter for GlobalPost and Agence France-Presse, went missing 21 months ago in a town 25 miles south of the Turkish border. According to Nicole Tung, a close friend and fellow photojournalist, who gave an account of Mr. Foley’s activities before his capture, he had spent weeks in Syria documenting the country’s spiral into civil war, narrowly avoiding a falling tank shell. The normally calm reporter — who had come under fire in Afghanistan and had been kidnapped a year earlier in Libya — was rattled.

As the Thanksgiving holiday approached in 2012, he contacted Ms. Tung, and they made plans to meet for a few days across the border in Turkey. When Mr. Foley did not show up at the hotel at 5 p.m. as planned, Ms. Tung began calling his cellphone, finally reaching his translator.

The man explained that Mr. Foley had stopped at an Internet cafe to file his last images in Binesh, Syria. Soon after, armed men sped up behind his car and forced Mr. Foley out at gunpoint.

“I was sitting on the bed, in this depressing, dark hotel; the fact that the fixer answered the phone — when Jim was not answering his — was the cue that something had gone terribly wrong,” said Ms. Tung, who immediately contacted Mr. Foley’s family and editors.

Across the ocean at his home in Cambridge, Mass., the chief executive and co-founder of GlobalPost, Philip Balboni, reached for his Blackberry and had a terrible sense of foreboding: The email informing him of Mr. Foley’s abduction was almost an exact replay of the horror his staff had endured a year earlier, when Mr. Foley was kidnapped with three others by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces in Libya.

“We had joked that we needed to take away his passport,” Mr. Balboni said Wednesday. “I don’t want to say it was déjà vu, but in a way, it was,” he added. “It just turns your life upside down — in one way, I knew what was coming, but I did not know the fullness of it.”

When he was executed this week, Mr. Foley became the second Western reporter to be killed by Islamic extremists since 2002, when Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter, was beheaded by a top Qaeda operative. Mr. Pearl’s murder was praised by a leading ideologue in a how-to manual that promoted the tactic of kidnapping foreigners. Since then, the terror network has turned to abducting Westerners to finance itself — seizing more than 50 foreigners in the past five years, almost all of whom were released after their governments paid sizable ransoms, according to a review of the known cases by The Times.

However, in Iraq, where ISIS was founded, commanders grabbed foreigners for the sole purpose of killing them. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, became known as the “Sheikh of the Slaughterers” because he personally decapitated his foreign captives.

He created his own execution style, forcing his victims to don orange jumpsuits — a mocking reference to prisoners held at the United States’ detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. So brutal, frequent and graphic were the killings that the then-No. 2 of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, wrote to Mr. Zarqawi advising him to quit the graphic executions and just shoot the prisoners instead.

Mr. Zarqawi’s Iraq-based fighters regrouped in Syria in 2011, where they eventually rebranded themselves as ISIS. Their tactics proved so brutal that Al Qaeda formally expelled them from the terror network this year.

However, in regard to kidnapping, ISIS’s tactics initially appeared to be in line with that of other Qaeda branches.

Before Mr. Foley was killed, his ISIS captors asked for a $100 million ransom, according to a representative of the family and a man held alongside Mr. Foley.

(The Foley family has not responded to requests for comment.)

Once the United States authorized airstrikes in Iraq this month, it appears that ISIS took a leaf out of the book of its founding father: They forced Mr. Foley to wear the telltale orange jumpsuit, and beheaded him on camera — a horrifying ode to the “Sheikh of the Slaughterers,” who himself was killed by United States forces in Iraq in 2006.

The eldest of five children from Rochester, N.H., Mr. Foley graduated from Marquette University in 1996 with a history degree. He joined Teach for America that year, working at an elementary school in Phoenix, officials with the organization said. In 2008, he earned a master’s degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.

“He was so clear on what he wanted to do,” said Ellen Shearer, a professor who taught Mr. Foley at Medill.

Unlike most freelancers who often take sizable risks without the safety net of an established news organization, Mr. Foley found a second family at GlobalPost, which paid a security firm millions of dollars to try to find him, Mr. Balboni said.

After his fortuitous release in Libya, GlobalPost brought him back to Boston, where he spent a stint as an editor, but it did not last long.

“When you are touched by being in a war, you can’t get rid of it,” said Mr. Balboni, a veteran reporter as well as a former Vietnam War Army officer.

Mr. Foley was remembered by colleagues for his courage — to some a bravery that he took to its extreme. Yet at the time of his capture, Ms. Tung said, the tank shell explosion in Syria had spooked him, and he was looking for some time off. “It landed close enough to feel like it was time to get out,” she said.

His colleagues point to the remarkable bravery he displays in his final moments as a testament to the man he was: Looking straight at the camera, Mr. Foley’s face is concentrated. When the jihadist lifts the knife to his throat, and pulls his head back, he does not try to pull away.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/21/world/middleeast/isis-pressed-for-ransom-before-killing-journalist.html

YOUTUBE: youtube.com/user/rilek1corner

FACEBOOK: facebook.com/rilek1corner

TWITTER: twitter.com/Rilek1Corner

WEBSITE: rilek1corner.com

EMAIL: [email protected]

FEEDBACK: CONTACT RILEK1CORNER

August 21, 2014
Malaysians With ISIS Links Raised Funds to Attack Putrajaya

Malaysian militants linked to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) were planning to overthrow the government in Putrajaya and attack several pubs, discos and even the Carlsberg brewery in Shah Alam, Selangor, according to the police.

Federal Special Branch principal assistant director Ayob Khan Pitchay Mydin told The Sunday Times yesterday that out of 19 suspects arrested in a clampdown earlier this year, seven are set to face trial in October for security offences.

“They have the same ideology as groups like Al-Qaeda, where the main objective is to topple the government and install an Islamic state,” said Datuk Ayob, who heads the force’s counter-terrorism efforts.

The suspects had raised several thousand ringgit for their efforts which were nipped in the bud when the police dismantled the group between April and June.

“Their plans were not that advanced. They were only discussing (how) to attack but had not obtained material to make bombs,” he said, adding that the police had seized homemade rifles, shotguns and ammunition.

Mr Ayob said the group had dispersed after their leader and second-in-command were arrested between April and May. The police are searching for the remaining members.

“Their plan is to go to Syria for training. More than 20 are already there but we have identified them and will nab them if they return,” he said.

ISIS is a splinter group of Al-Qaeda that wants to set up an Islamic caliphate encompassing both Iraq and Syria.

Malaysian factory worker Ahmad Tarmimi Maliki died as an ISIS suicide bomber in May, sparking alarm over renewed Islamic extremism in Malaysia.

Muslim-majority Malaysia practises moderate Islam and has not been the target of any notable terror attacks in recent years.

But it has been home to several key figures in militant Islamic groups, such as the Al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah, blamed for the deadly 2002 Bali bombings.

Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi has said that a regional ring he dubbed the “Nusantara network” might be recruiting citizens of Malaysia, Indonesia, southern Thailand and the Philippines to join militant activities abroad.

In June, the police arrested three alleged militants in Sandakan, Sabah. One of them had allegedly received training from Islamic militant group Abu Sayyaf in the southern Philippines, while another was a Royal Malaysian Navy personnel. The latter was released last month and has since returned to full service.

In late June, the United Nations revealed that 15 Malaysians were allegedly killed in Syria after joining terrorist and jihadist activities with ISIS.

ISIS fighters have engaged in a bloody war across Iraq, overrunning large areas of the country and conquering a substantial part of the north.

Iraq’s Prime Minister-designate Haider al-Abadi said last week that Iraqis must unite to face terrorism, promising that his government will fight to “salvage the country from security, political and economic problems”.

Source: http://www.straitstimes.com/the-big-story/asia-report/malaysia/story/malaysian-govt-brewery-pubs-militants-target-list-20140817

YOUTUBE: youtube.com/user/rilek1corner

FACEBOOK: facebook.com/rilek1corner

TWITTER: twitter.com/Rilek1Corner

WEBSITE: rilek1corner.com

EMAIL: [email protected]

FEEDBACK: CONTACT RILEK1CORNER

August 18, 2014
Captured Malaysian ISIS ‘Jihadists’ Plan to Bomb Putrajaya

While concern for the atrocities committed by Israel in Gaza reaches an all-time high, a far more insidious threat is growing, and cannot be ignored any longer.

In Syria and Iraq, a war is being fought by the Islamic State, formerly known as Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), to establish a new caliphate in the Middle East and, by extension, over Muslims worldwide.

Led by the enigmatic Abu Bakr al-Baghadi, who claims to be a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, ISIS in its original form comprised several Sunni insurgent groups supported by Al-Qaeda.

In 2006, ISIS announced its rulership over the governorates of Baghdad, Anbar, Diyala, Kirkuk, Salah al-Din, Nineveh and Babil in Iraq, before realising that an opportunity lay in the 2013 Syrian Civil War to expand its reach.

ISIS currently controls the following provinces in Syria: Al Barakah, Al Kheir, Ar-Raqqah, Al Badiya, Halab, Idlib, Hama, Damascus and the Coast, and boasts a fighting force of an estimated 4,000 jihadists.

But its ambitions extend much further than that, as it looks to dominate the Levant, which includes Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Cyprus, and parts of southern Turkey.

The actions of ISIS militants have become so extreme that the group has been denounced by al-Qaeda.

And with its claim as a Salafist regime that practices a harsh brand of Islam and Islamic law, it looks to cull non-Muslims and Muslims that do not adhere to the policies of the new caliphate of blood and violence.

Bone-chilling violence

Between January and July of this year, the violence caused by ISIS in Iraq caused some 5,500 civilian deaths and 11,660 more wounded.

The horror stories that come out of the region tell of acts that we had hoped and prayed humanity would be incapable of.

Videos circulating on the Internet show civilians and soldiers being beheaded even after succumbing to coercion to convert to Islam. Tales of crucifixion of Arab Christians abound. Minorities are forced to flee their homes or be slaughtered.

And all over the world, images and reports of bright young Muslims seduced into migrating and joining the jihad send chills up the spine of their governments.

Even more chilling, perhaps, is ISIS’s trumpeting of its actions, recently seen in its Twitter boasts of executing as many as 1,700 prisoners, posting gruesome pictures as proof.

Homegrown jihadists

“That is scary,” you may say, “But what does all that have to do with Malaysia?”

A lot more than you may think. Just a few days ago, buried under news about the current Selangor political crisis, was an interview in the South China Morning Post with Ayub Khan, the senior counter-terrorism division official at Bukit Aman.

In that interview, Ayub revealed that some 19 Malaysian jihadists captured had confessed that there are plans to storm Putrajaya and replace the government with an Islamic Syariah government through armed warfare.

Along with that, they also planned to attack a disco, a Carlsberg factory and several pubs.

Are you starting to feel scared yet?

That’s just the tip of the iceberg, however. To date, some 30 Malaysians have flown to the Middle East to join ISIS’s cause, and last May, Ahmad Tarmimi Maliki was celebrated by ISIS on its website as Malaysia’s very first suicide bomber.

In an article titled “Mujahidin Malaysia Syahid Dalam Operasi Martyrdom”, ISIS detailed how the 26-year-old, who received militant training in Port Dickson, rammed a military SUV crammed with explosives into a SWAT headquarters, preceding an attack by other jihadists. He reportedly killed 25 Iraqi soldiers in his suicide charge.

Tarmimi is not alone. According to Ayub Khan, the number of actual militants currently looking to overturn our country’s government is probably much higher than the 19 already captured.

For a nation like Malaysia that touts itself as a successful moderate Muslim nation, this news is cause for panic.

Moderation is the better option

The rise of extremism in recent years is a worrying phenomenon, with groups like ISMA declaring that the Chinese are nothing more than migrants and should be treated as such and demanding additional taxation on those they deem have grown fat on the wealth of the land. This not so far from ISIS’s demand that non-Muslims pay a tax, be executed, or leave their territories.

Add to this the fact that our young men and women are now wilfully going through training to become militant jihadists, no time has ever been riper for Malaysia to return to the middle ground.

Despite one glaring black spot in our history and the occasional tension since, our society has been plural, accepting, inclusive and peaceful.

The days are not so far gone that we do not remember visiting our friends’ homes on cultural celebrations, sharing food with them, or roving through malls and streets speaking Malay despite our different skin colours.

The rise of extremism by nature demands that such behaviour be curbed in recognition of the “superiority” of a given ideology, and that is the way of life that we are in danger of losing should we continue to allow this miasma to creep its way into our society.

That way of life is Malaysia’s pride, as well as it’s biggest strength. The pluralistic society we live in has garnered praise and is looked upon as a model for other nations experiencing the phenomenon of multiculturalism.

The acceptance and respect of other beliefs and practices is one well-rooted in the teachings of Prophet Muhammad, who strove to govern his people with fairness and equality.

Prophet Muhammad’s covenant with the Christians in Madinah is astounding to read about. It’s no wonder that the rulers that followed his path closely led Islam into a stunning era of artistic and scientific advance. And that should be our goal as well.

Friends, we need each other. No person is an island unto himself. And Malaysia, as a nation, is no different. We should return to the principles that made this country great.

It’s time for the majority as one voice to speak out against extremism and the threat it holds against our very way of life because if we stay silent, we will have only ourselves to blame when groups like ISIS begin to wage their war on our shores.

“By the grace of Allah, you (Muhammad) are gentle towards the people; if you had been stern and harsh-hearted, they would have dispersed from round about you.”—The Quran, 3:159

Source: http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/highlight/2014/08/16/malaysias-isis-problem/

YOUTUBE: youtube.com/user/rilek1corner

FACEBOOK: facebook.com/rilek1corner

TWITTER: twitter.com/Rilek1Corner

WEBSITE: rilek1corner.com

EMAIL: [email protected]

FEEDBACK: CONTACT RILEK1CORNER

August 16, 2014
From Gaza to Syria: Managing Spirituality Amidst Tribulation
Shaykh Ahmad Muhammad Saad Ash-Shafi’ie Al-Azhari Al-Hasani

Ustaz Muhammad Zahid Mohd Zin

Public Lecture & Discussion From Gaza to Syria: Managing Spirituality Amidst Tribulations A Special Fundraiser for Gaza Emergency Relief
Speakers (1) Shaykh Ahmad Saad Al-Azhari (2) Ustaz Muhammad Zahid Mohd Zin
Date: Friday 22 August 2014Time: 7.45 pmVenue: UE Convention Centre [map]2 Changi Business Park Ave 1Singapore 486015(Next to Expo MRT & Changi City Point) SynopsisThis lecture & discussion program aims to address the spiritual issues faced by Muslims, especially in the current tide of tribulations faced by Muslims in Gaza, Syria, and so on. The program will discuss spiritual approaches for Muslims when faced with tribulations. It aims to address the following questions:
- How can we reconcile the oppression and tribulation of the Muslim Ummah with the Divine Mercy and Divine Decree?
- What can Muslims do to help the people of Gaza or Syria and other oppressed communities?
- Allah instructed believers who are facing tribulations to be firm and remember Allah frequently and strengthen the internal tapestry of the community. How can we maintain this steadfastness in the midst of manifest trouble as can be seen in places like Iraq, Syria and Gaza?
- How should Muslims react when faced with calls of jihad, confrontation and adversity?
- How can spiritual empowerment be the way forward?
About the Speakers

Shaykh Ahmad Muhammad Saad Ash-Shafi’ie Al-Azhari Al-Hasani was born into a family of scholars whose lineage goes back to the Prophet Muhammad (salla Allahu alayh wa sallam) in the northern Egyptian governorate of Monofiyyah. He completed the memorisation of the Holy Qur’an at the age of ten and studied basic Arabic and Islamic sciences before enrolling into Al-Azhar system of schools where he spent almost 17 years of his life graduating with a B.A. Honours in Islamic Studies in English. Alongside with his academic studies, he studied traditional Islamic sciences at the hands of senior scholars and specialists in Egypt, the most notable of whom is his late father Shaykh Muhammad Saad and the Grand Mufti of Egypt Sheikh Ali Gom’ah. He completed the memorisation of the Holy Qur’an at the age of ten, and went to memorise Riyad As-Salihin of Imam An-Nawawi at the age of 15 and Al-alfiyyah of Ibn Malik at the age of 13 and committed to memory thousands of lines of poetry and prose. He has also memorised texts on logic, tajwid, aqidah, morphology, rhetoric and many other sciences. He has toured the world as an Imam, speaker and lecturer; he visited Canada, USA, Germany, Malaysia, Singapore, Sweden and currently lives in London, United Kingdom. He is the Founder and Director of the Ihsan Institute for Arabic & Islamic Studies (UK) [website], and was the former Imam of North London Central Mosque. [more]

Ustaz Muhd Zahid Zin completed his early Islamic studies at Madrasah Aljunied Al-Islamiah Singapore. He then went to further his studies at the famous Abou Nour Institute in Damascus, Syria. He was the Imam Executive at Masjid Muhajirin for 2 years. He is currently the Head of Programmes For Muslim With Disabilities at Badan Agama Dan Pelajaran Radin Mas or Radin Mas Association of Religious Education (BAPA). Beyond teaching, he also serves as the Naib Kadi and an active motivational speaker, having been invited by various local Muslim organizations, including SimplyIslam, PERGAS, PPIS, Darul Arqam and Jamiyah. Ustaz Zahid is also member of a local Qasidah group, Madeehul Mustafa.

Source: http://singapore.eventful.com/events/gaza-syria-managing-spirituality-amidst-tribu-/E0-001-073194112-5

YOUTUBE: youtube.com/user/rilek1corner

FACEBOOK: facebook.com/rilek1corner

TWITTER: twitter.com/Rilek1Corner

WEBSITE: rilek1corner.com

EMAIL: [email protected]

FEEDBACK: CONTACT RILEK1CORNER
August 12, 2014