Tag: Islam

Son of Osama Bin Laden Banned From Entering Egypt

CAIRO – Osama bin Laden’s son Omar was refused entry to Egypt on Saturday, airport sources said, giving no reason why his name was on a list of people banned from the country.

Omar, 34, Osama bin Laden’s fourth-eldest son, was traveling with his British wife Zaina al Sabah from Doha, and they asked to be sent to Turkey, the sources said.

The couple, who lived in Egypt for several months in 2007 and 2008, were previously denied entry to the country in 2008.

Omar bin Laden broke with his father in 2001 after living in Afghanistan for much of 1996 to 2001.

In an interview with Reuters in 2010, Omar said he was working with Saudi Arabia and Iran to end his separation from a group of brothers and sisters that dates back to the chaos in Afghanistan following the al Qaeda attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Omar said bin Laden’s children were trying to be “good citizens of the world” but suffered from the lack of a father and the stigma of being the al Qaeda leader’s children. None were part of al Qaeda, he said at the time.

“We are working with the Iranian government and with the Saudi government at the moment to have my mother’s children and grandchildren join us,” he said.

Osama bin Laden was killed at his Pakistani hideout by U.S. commandos in 2011 in a major blow to the militant group which carried out the Sept. 11 attacks.

Source: www.todayonline.com

December 18, 2016
Protesters Condemn International Inaction In Aleppo

BERLIN (AFP) – Protesters rallied in Berlin on Saturday (Dec 17) against the war in Syria denouncing the international community for failing to help civilians, especially children, in the besieged city of Aleppo.

Holding banners saying “The children of Aleppo are calling you!”, or “Aleppo is bleeding and the world is watching”, around 900 people braved plunging temperatures to gather in front to the Reichstag, the German parliament building, according to police estimates.

At the same time, another 1,800 people joined a second demonstration elsewhere in the German capital, police said.

“What is happening there amounts to what is the worst in the world,” said Mahmoud Almizeh, a 19-year-old Syrian refugee who comes from Raqa, now the bastion of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria militant group.

Germany has opened its doors to some 600,000 Syrian refugees since the conflict began in 2011.

Having arrived in Germany a year ago, Almizeh lamented that European leaders were “unfortunately doing nothing”.

In Aleppo on Saturday, trapped Syrian civilians and rebels waited desperately for evacuations to resume from an opposition-held enclave of the city which has fallen to the brutal onslaught by Syrian government forces.

Aleppo has been ravaged by some of the worst violence of the nearly six-year war that has killed more than 310,000 people.

“We feel so powerless” about the tragedy facing the Syrians, said Anna Bone, a Berlin resident at the demonstration where another banner declared: “Stop murdering! Peace talks NOW.”

“This powerlessness… this grief, it’s what brought me here today,” she added.

Hundreds of protestors also joined demonstrations in France on Saturday in the cities of Paris, Lille, Strasbourg and Marseille.

“It’s crazy that the world powers cannot intervene,” commented two protesters of Turkish origin, Hilal, 25, and Gulsan, 26, in Paris.

Thousands of trapped civilians and the last remaining opposition fighters in Aleppo were waiting for evacuations to resume on Saturday, a day after the operation was suspended by the Syrian government.

Meanwhile, in New York, the UN Security Council could vote as early as this weekend on a French-drafted proposal to allow international observers into Aleppo and ensure urgent aid deliveries.

Source: www.straitstimes.com

December 18, 2016
Indonesia Police Chief Warns Of Growing Role Of Women In Terrorism

National Police Chief Gen. Tito Karnavian said Friday that terrorist groups have developed a new trend of recruiting women to launch attacks in the country.

“Using women to carry out acts of terror is becoming increasingly more popular with terror groups because women are seen as less suspicious,” Tito told the press on the sidelines of a ceremony at the National Police headquarters in South Jakarta, adding that recruiting women for terrorism was not new in other parts of the world.

The National Police have arrested three women that have been implicated in a foiled plot to bomb the State Palace. The women include Dian Yulia Novi, Tutin, alias Ummu Abza, and Arinda Putri. They are suspects for their roles in planning and preparing for the thwarted attack.

The three women are affiliated with the Surakarta terrorist cell, which was reportedly planning to attack the State Palace under the guidance of Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian jihadist who is currently fighting for the Islamic State in Syria.

National Police Spokesperson Insp. Gen. Boy Rafli Amar said that the police had anticipated involvement of women in terrorist groups in the the country but did not expect that women would take on direct and core roles in planning attacks.

“Terrorist groups here are recruiting women to avoid suspicion when carrying out attacks. It’s a new strategy to deceive the targets,” Boy said.

Source:www.thejakartapost.com

December 17, 2016
International Crisis Group: Rohingyas Involved In Attack On Border Guards Headed With People With Links To Pakistan And Saudi Arabia

A group of Rohingya Muslims that attacked Myanmar border guards in October is headed by people with links to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the International Crisis Group (ICG) said on Thursday, citing members of the group.

The coordinated attacks on Oct. 9 killed nine policemen and sparked a crackdown by security forces in the Muslim-majority northern sector of Rakhine State in the country’s northwest.

At least 86 people have been killed, according to state media, and the United Nations has estimated 27,000 members of the largely stateless Rohingya minority have fled across the border to Bangladesh.

Predominantly Buddhist Myanmar’s government, led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, blamed Rohingyas supported by foreign militants for the Oct. 9 attacks, but has issued scant additional information about the assailants it called “terrorists.”

A group calling itself Harakah al-Yakin claimed responsibility for the attacks in video statements and the Brussels-based ICG said it had interviewed four members of the group in Rakhine State and two outside Myanmar, as well as individuals in contact with members via messaging apps.

The Harakah al-Yakin, or Faith Movement, was formed after communal violence in 2012 in which more than 100 people were killed and about 140,000 displaced in Rakhine State, most of them Rohingya, the group said.

Rohingya who have fought in other conflicts, as well as Pakistanis or Afghans, gave clandestine training to villagers in northern Rakhine over two years ahead of the attacks, it said.

“It included weapons use, guerrilla tactics and, HaY members and trainees report, a particular focus on explosives and IEDs,” the group said, referring to improvised explosive devices.

It identified Harakah al-Yakin’s leader, who has appeared prominently in a series of nine videos posted online, as Ata Ullah, born in Karachi, Pakistan, to a Rohingya migrant father before moving as a child to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

“Though not confirmed, there are indications he went to Pakistan and possibly elsewhere, and that he received practical training in modern guerrilla warfare,” the group said. It noted that Ata Ullah was one of 20 Rohingya from Saudi Arabia leading the group’s operations in Rakhine State.

Separately, a committee of 20 senior Rohingya emigres oversees the group, which has headquarters in Mecca, the ICG said.

U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a news briefing on Thursday that the United States was aware of the report and reviewing it, but declined to comment further.

Groups like Islamic State and al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent have referred to the plight of the Rohingya in their material, and the battlefield experience of at least some of the Rohingya fighters implied links to international militants, the ICG said.

However, ICG said the group has notably not engaged in attacks on the civilian Buddhist population in Rakhine. Harakah al-Yakin’s statements to date indicate its main goals are to end the persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar and secure the minority’s citizenship status.

“It is possible, however, that its objectives could evolve, given its appeals to religious legitimacy and links to international jihadist groups, so it is essential that government efforts do not focus only or primarily on military approaches, but also address underlying community grievances and suffering,” the ICG said.

Source: www.reuters.com

December 16, 2016
Indonesia Police Arrests 3rd Woman In Foiled Bomb Attack On The Presidential Palace

JAKARTA — Indonesian police early on Thursday (Dec 15) nabbed a woman believed to have instructed a female would-be suicide bomber to launch a foiled attack on the Presidential Palace, as a senior Indonesian Cabinet Minister declared that the government is not losing the fight against radicalism.

National police spokesperson Senior Commander Martinus Sitompul said they nabbed the female suspect, Tutin Sugiarti, 37, at a rented home in a village near Tasikmalaya city in West Java at 4.30am (local time).

“She has given motivation to Novi to jihad (martyr),” he was quoted as saying in Antara news portal.

Sugiarti is believed to have played a part in recruiting Dian Yuli Novi, 27, who was arrested on Saturday in Bekasi, West Java. Novi had intended to use a 3kg homemade pressure-cooker bomb for a suicide attack at the palace during the change of guard ceremony on Sunday.

Sugiarti’s husband Hendra Gunawan, 39, was also arrested but it is not clear if he was involved in the terror plot, the authorities said.

Sugiarti is the third woman arrested over the planned Sunday attack inspired by the Islamic State (IS), after Novi and Arida Putri Maharani, 25, were arrested by the police counter-terrorism squad over the weekend.

Novi, who was among a group of seven people arrested, had worked in Singapore as a nanny, while Indonesian reports said Maharani facilitated the use of funds in the making of the bomb. Novi’s arrest came minutes after two men who delivered the bomb were ambushed by the counter-terrorism squad in

East Jakarta. Another bomb maker was later caught in Central Jakarta.

Maharani was arrested on Sunday in Sunda, a town in Solo. She is believed to be the wife of one of the two men and was also being prepared as a suicide bomber.

Authorities said the group was controlled by a new terrorist cell based in Solo. The cell, police said, was set up by Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian militant who is in the Middle East fighting alongside IS militants.

Naim is the mastermind of a terror attack in Jakarta in January, a July suicide attack on a police station in Solo, Central Java, and more recently, a plot to attack Singapore’s Marina Bay by launching a rocket from Batam.

Meanwhile, senior Indonesian Cabinet Minister Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, who is close to President Joko Widodo, said the government needs to reinforce Indonesia’s founding ideology, Pancasila, which included national unity and social justice among its five principles.

He said it has been neglected since the fall of former President Suharto in 1998 ushered in democratic rule.

“We are not losing control (against radicalism),” he declared.

Massive protests demanding the arrest of Jakarta governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, who is on trial for alleged blasphemy, have affected the image of Indonesia as practising a moderate form of Islam and shaken the secular government.

The blasphemy controversy has also given a national stage to the Islamic Defenders Front, previously known as a morals vigilante group with members involved in protection rackets.

Its leader, Rizieq Shihab, told a Dec 2 protest in Jakarta that Indonesia would be peaceful if there was no blasphemy and other problems such as gays.

Mr Pandjaitan said the government has Mr Shihab in its sights.

“We have quite detailed data about him. We’ll see what happens. We know what we are going to do,” he said. “The President is very brave to do whatever is necessary for the benefit of this country. No hesitation at all.”

Source: www.todayonline.com

December 16, 2016