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Showing posts from July 21, 2013

Bulgaria distributes images of terror suspects

SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) - Bulgarian authorities distributed on Thursday the names and images of two wanted suspects involved in a bomb attack that killed five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver last year. The first alleged terrorist is identified as Meliad Farah, also known as Hussein Hussein, an Australian citizen born Nov. 5, 1980. The second is Hassan El Hajj Hassan, a Canadian citizen born March 22, 1988, according to a statement of the interior ministry. The ministry asked people who might have seen them to report to the nearest police station. A third suspect, a suicide bomber who died on the scene, has not been identified. Last August, Bulgarian experts produced the image of a young, dark-haired man based on the remains of his body, which was decapitated in the explosion. Fingerprints and DNA samples also have not led to results so far. The interior ministry said that three weeks before the attack on July 18, 2012, the two named suspects were spotted in several ne

Canadian charity funding terror in Kashmir?

The dreaded Kashmiri militant outfit Hizbul Mujahideen may be receiving money through a  Pakistan -based agency from an Islamic charity in  Canada  engaged in helping the poor and needy in this country. The federal charity watchdog of Canada is now threatening to revoke the charity status of Mississauga's ISNA (Islamic Society of North America) Development Foundation, the  Toronto  Star reported. A Canada Revenue Agency audit revealed the foundation shipped more than USD 280,000 to a Pakistan-based agency, which the government fears went to supporting the Hizbul Mujahideen - a militant group that seeks the secession of Kashmir from  India , the paper said. The foundation "facilitated the transfer of resources that may have been used to support the efforts of a political organisation . . . And its armed wing," the CRA said in a letter to the charity outlining its findings. Federal auditors say money raised by the ISNA Development Foundation may have been sent to armed mil

Rare tactics paved way for this militant's long survival

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Known as "master strategist and decoy expert", Jash-e-Muhammad's (JeM) last operational commander Qari Yasir, now slain, exceeded an average militant's active life, which is six to nine months, by strictly following no-woman, no-SIM cards and no-permanent friends rule. Yasir (32), who infiltrated into the Valley in around 2006, was from Pakistan's Swat area, the most frequented by Jaish-e-Mohammed last operational commander Qari Yasir, was killed in an encounter on the  intervening night of July 22-23 at around 5.30 am. HT photo JeM founder Masood Azhar, released in exchange of hostages in 1999. "Qari would pick up things from our operations too and strategise accordingly," said Kupwara superintendent of police Abdul Jabbar, whose men had to track movement of Yasir, using both technical and human intelligence, for around a month to zero in on his location. Yasir, immediately after the Maidanpora encounter in 2011 that left five top commanders

Seven security men killed in Gwadar check post attack

QUETTA: Unknown gunmen attacked a coastguard check post with rockets and heavy weaponry near Pakistan-Iran border in Balochistan’s Gwadar district on Saturday, killing seven officials and wounding seven others, officials said. The incident happened in the Suntsar area of Gwadar district, 1,420 kilometres (882 miles) southwest of Quetta, the capital of the oil and gas rich Balochistan province that borders Iran and Afghanistan. According to Interior Secretary Balochistan Akbar Durrani, armed attackers ambushed a security check post in Suntsar area, a mountainous region near Gwadar port city, where at least 14 security men were deployed. "Around 24 gunmen armed with rockets and heavy weapons, attacked the check post and killed seven coastguard officials," Akbar Durrani told. He said at least seven coastguard officials were also injured in the early morning attack. A local tribal police official also confirmed the attack and casualties and said the identit

Syrian Kurds’ struggle for autonomy threatens rebel effort to oust Assad

BEIRUT — Infighting has escalated in recent days among Syria’s rebel forces as Arab opposition fighters clash with ethnic Kurds bent on carving out an independent administrative region in Syria’s northeast. Underscoring the tension, a coalition of Islamist rebel groups vowed Wednesday to “cleanse” the flash-point northeastern town of Ras al-Ayn of fighters affiliated with the dominant Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD). The groups accused it of working in the interests of the Syrian government — a charge its leader denies. While President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have been bolstered by militants from Iran and the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah, helping them gain the upper hand in central and southern Syria, the hard-pressed rebels appear to be increasingly embroiled in power plays and factional disputes in the northern areas beyond government control. As fighting has engulfed the rest of the country over the past two years, Syria’s Kurds, who make up about 15 percent o

Afghan governor survives roadside bomb attack: officials

KABUL: The governor of a province in northern Afghanistan survived a roadside bomb attack Saturday while he was headed to work, officials said. "The governor of Samangan province (Khairullah Anosh) was heading to his office in his pick-up truck in Aibak city. Along the way his vehicle hit a roadside bomb," Sediq Aziz, his spokesman told. "As a result of the attack, the governor along with his two bodyguards were slightly wounded," Aziz said. The attack came a day after a suicide bomber riding a motorcycle struck a busy marketplace in Afghanistan's insurgency-wracked province of Ghazni province that killed seven people including an anti-Taliban militia leader. The Taliban claimed responsibility for Saturday's attack. "Our mujahideen (holy warriors) have attacked a convoy of Samangan provincial governor," militant spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement. The insurgents have frequently used roadside bombs to target

Kidnapped and Sold: Inside the Dark World of Child Trafficking in China

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Wang Bangyin, a local farmer, holds his rescued son after the pair were reunited at Guiyang Welfare Centre for Children in Guiyang, Guizhou province. (Reuters) In March 2011, Rose Candis had the worst lunch of her life. Sitting at a restaurant in Shaoguan, a small city in South China, the American mother tried hard not to vomit while her traveling companion translated what the man they were eating with had just explained: her adopted Chinese daughter Erica had been purchased, and then essentially resold to her for profit. The papers the Chinese orphanage had shown her documenting how her daughter had been abandoned by the side of a road were fakes. The tin of earth the orphanage had given her so that her daughter could always keep a piece of her home with her as she grew up in the U.S. was a fraud, a pile of dirt from the place her daughter's paperwork was forged, not where she was born. Candis had flown thousands of miles to answer her daughter Erica's question -- who

Militants use badly run jails for recruitment and raising funds

THE deadly Tanjung Gusta prison riot in Indonesia’s fourth largest city of Medan, resulting in the escape of 218 prisoners including convicted terrorists, was a disaster waiting to happen. A combination of overcrowding and outnumbered prison guards, enabled dangerous militants to escape last week. The four convicted militants are deemed “dangerous”. They could help revitalise Indo nesia’s terror groups, which had been weakened by police raids and arrests in recent years. The militants’ escape also comes shortly after 250 sticks of dynamite went missing in Bogor, West Java, on June 27, while being transported to a mining company, raising fears of the explosives falling into the wrong hands. Till today, the dynamite has yet to be found. “I am concerned about this escape and the missing dynamite,” a senior police source from Jakarta said in a phone interview. “If it should fall into the hands of the fugitive terrorists, it would be very dangerous,” he added. The overcro