Report: ISIS Leader Baghdadi ‘Seriously Wounded’ in Air Strike

Breitbart

by Jordan Schachtel

www.washingtonpost.com

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State (ISIS) caliphatist group that has usurped territory in much of the Middle East, was seriously wounded in an air strike in western Iraq, the Guardian reports.

A local source told the Guardian that Baghdadi was critically injured in a March strike, but his injuries are no longer life threatening, and the self-declared Caliph of the Islamic State is on a slow road to recovery. However, the ISIS leader has not been able to command his jihadi group’s day-to-day operations, and he has temporarily shifted those responsibilities to other individuals in the Islamic State’s Shura Council, the source claimed.

When it appeared as if Baghdadi may succumb to his wounds, the ISIS inner circle met to discuss a successor for the jihadi group, the report adds.

Baghdadi’s three-car convoy was attacked on March 18 near the Syrian border, an unnamed western diplomat and Iraqi advisor confirmed with the Guardian. Iraqi advisor Hisham al-Hashimi told the publication, “Yes, he was wounded in al-Baaj near the village of Umm al-Rous on 18 March with a group that was with him.” The advisor explained that Baghdadi chose al-Baaj “because he knew from the war that the Americans did not have much cover there.” He added, “From 2003 (the US military) barely had a presence there. It was one part of Iraq that they hadn’t mapped out.”

Just four days earlier, a U.S. air strike blew up one of the cars in Baghdadi’s two-car escort outside of Mosul, resulting in the death of his confidant, Auf Abdul Rahman al-Efery, who was believed to be in the other vehicle.

Baghdadi, who has been described by jihadists as the successor to Osama bin Laden, was born in 1971 in Samarra, Iraq. He was reportedly captured in 2004 during the most recent Iraq war and spent close to a year at U.S. military prison Camp Bucca in the south of Iraq.

US General to Senate: Terror Groups Benefiting from Latin American Drug Trade

emora1983

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Where Are They Now? The Fate of Bowe Bergdahl's Taliban Five

Breitbart

By John Hayward

At least three of five Taliban fighters swapped for the freedom of Bowe Bergdahl, a Taliban captive now being charged with desertion, are reportedly actively making efforts to join the terrorist cause once again.

Catherine Herridge of Fox News decided to check up on them after news of Bergdahl’s desertion charges broke. It turns out that according to an unnamed government source, at least three of the Taliban 5 have “tried to plug back into their old terror networks.”

Evidently, one of them came much closer to successfully advising his old chums in the “armed insurgency” (as Obama decided to describe the Taliban’s terror war against American troops, while trying to mask the stench of the Bergdahl deal) than the other two, placing a few long-distance phone calls to fellow militants.

It is believed they will have an easier time plugging back in after their probation in Qatar expires, just two months from now. “The director of the Defense Intelligence Agency recently told Congress that, after that expiration, all his officers can do is warn the U.S. government if the men return to the battlefield,” Herridge reports.

The Obama administration took pains to assure everyone that “mere communication with individuals or organizations” does not count as engagement to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, at least not until the “motives, intentions, and purposes of each communication are taken into account.”

These battlefield enemies of America are receiving “royal treatment” in Qatar, according to International Business Times. They were feeling “homesick,” so each of the superstar ex-detainees was allowed to bring five Taliban families to Doha to attend their needs. Despite these posh accommodations, at least two of the Taliban 5 are said to be eager to return to battlefield service in Afghanistan.

Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) wrote a letter to Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter on Wednesday, asking the Pentagon to take steps to ensure that none of the Taliban 5 return to the battlefield after their travel ban from Qatar expires on June 1. “No American should ever have to confront a former Guantanamo detainee on the battlefield,” wrote Ayotte. “Based on disturbing public reports regarding the Taliban 5, I am concerned that the administration is not doing enough to prevent that from happening.”

President Obama defines ISIS

Sleeper Cells In Canada: Islamic State recruiter to Canadian Embassy in Jordan

Mary Greeley

Pakistani man allegedly plotted Toronto attacks

Toronto Sun

SHAWN JEFFORDS and ANDREW MCINTOSHI, QMI Agency

A Pakistani man arrested Monday on allegations he plotted to blow up several Toronto buildings including the U.S. Consulate was interviewed several times by officials from Canada Border Services Agency and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, QMI Agency has learned.

The authorities interest in Jhanzab Malik, 34, grew substantially after he returned to Toronto’s Pearson International Airport in April 2013.

Malik came to Canada on a student visa in 2004 and became a permanent resident five years later after a marriage that has now ended.

The authorities gathered evidence that links Malik directly to violent extremism, its promotion and further evidence emerged that he was planning a violent terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate building in Toronto.

According to a statement issued by the Immigration and Refugee Board Wednesday afternoon, Malik was allegedly a self-proclaimed supporter of the Islamic State and al Qaida. He allegedly planned to attack the U.S. consulate in Toronto and other targets in the city's financial district, an immigration review body heard on Wednesday.

He allegedly planned to carry out the attack using remote controlled bombs.

The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) is seeking his continued detention until he can be deported. The IRB ordered Malik's continued detention at a hearing Wednesday because he is considered a security and flight risk.

The CBSA said Malik told an undercover police officer he had attended weapons, combat and landmine training in Libya, and sought to build an explosive device for use in Toronto, the reports said.

He also claimed to have been a personal friend of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born spokesman for al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, who was killed in a CIA drone strike in 2011.

The accusations have not been proven. A CBSA investigation into the matter is still on-going.

Court records confirm Malik has faced assault and fraud charges in the past.

Those charges have been dealt with, according to a court clerk at Old City Hall, but the outcome was not immediately known.

Malik has no criminal matters currently before the courts.

The Canadian government is seeking to deport Malik as a security threat and the hearing at the Immigration and Refugee Board on Wednesday was held to determine whether he should be detained during the deportation process, which can take months.

Another Pakistani man suspected of militant links, Muhammad Aqeeq Ansari, is being held awaiting possible deportation.

Malik is expected to appear before the IRB next on March 16.

-- With files from Chris Doucette, Reuters​

Guantanamo adviser: DOJ allowed Pentagon to bypass Congress in Taliban-Bergdahl swap

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Why ISIS Murdered Kenji Goto

The New Yorker
By George Packer

www.cogninotech.com

Why did ISIS execute a second Japanese hostage? Before the beheading of the journalist Kenji Goto, Japan didn’t think that it was even in a fight with the Islamic State. All Japan had done was contribute a couple of hundred million dollars in humanitarian aid to countries fighting ISIS. Then the man who has come to be known as Jihadi John, the executioner with the London accent seen in several of the group’s videos, threatened death to every Japanese person on the planet as he prepared to slaughter Goto. As a result, a political scientist at the University of Tokyo told the Times, “The cruelty of the Islamic State has made Japan see a harsh new reality. … We now realize we face the same dangers as other countries do.” People in Japan are now calling Kenji Goto’s murder their 9/11.

Why did ISIS allow its negotiations with Jordan to collapse? Jordan’s 9/11 occurred on November 9, 2005, when Iraqi suicide bombers blew up fifty-seven people in three Amman hotels, including twenty-seven members of a wedding party. One of the wedding-bombing team was a newly married woman named Sajida al-Rishawi, whose vest failed to detonate, and who is currently held in a Jordanian prison under a death sentence. The failure of the talks—a potential deal might have involved trading Goto and/or the Jordanian Air Force pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh, an ISIS captive, for Rishawi—has apparently turned public opinion in Jordan, which is fertile ground for infiltration by the Islamic State, against ISIS. For its trouble the Islamic State got no cash and no Sajida al-Rishawi, only worldwide revulsion. (Update: The barbaric burning alive of Lieutenant al-Kasasbeh by ISIS makes no tactical sense. Nor does the release, Tuesday, of a video of his death. It will only enrage Jordanians. The Islamic State did it, the organization stated, to gladden the hearts of “believers”—as a morale booster.)

Meanwhile, the group is running out of high-profile hostages whom it can use to threaten, extort, and terrify the world. (The hundreds of Syrian journalists and activists who disappeared in ISIS territory, the hundreds or thousands of Yazidi women taken into sexual slavery, the tens or hundreds of thousands of ordinary Syrians and Iraqis living against their will under the Islamic State’s control—none of them, unfortunately, have much influence over international opinion.) So what’s the strategy behind the beheadings, other than to lengthen the list of countries that now talk about “their” 9/11? Why would ISIS want to make more enemies than it already has?

Why, for that matter, would ISIS send thousands of its men to besiege Kobani, a strategically unimportant Kurdish town on the Turkish-Syrian border where more than a thousand ISIS fighters, including many foreigners, perished after months of street fighting and American air raids? The Kurds, having secured a bitter victory, regard the destroyed city, with justified pride, as their Stalingrad. (Based on the pictures, the comparison does not seem like a stretch.) The world owes the people of Kobani a debt, and in the coming years the battle might be seen as a crucial milestone on the road to Kurdish nationhood. But why would ISIS throw away a large fraction of its fighting force there?

Is the larger aim to control all the lands in the Tigris and Euphrates river basin? If so, why do Islamic State spokesmen have a habit of declaring war against millions of citizens of various far-flung countries—Japan, France—on YouTube and Twitter?

It’s natural to ask these questions. We want to understand the Islamic State’s thinking, to anticipate its next moves, to assess its relative strength. But ISIS keeps on defying ordinary questions. The Islamic State doesn’t behave according to recognizable cost-benefit analyses. It doesn’t cut its losses or scale down its ambitions. The very name of the self-proclaimed caliphate strikes most people, not least other Muslims, as ridiculous, if not delusional. But it’s the vaulting ambition of an actual Islamic State that inspires ISIS recruits. The group uses surprise and shock to achieve goals that are more readily grasped by the apocalyptic imagination than by military or political theory. The capture of Mosul last June shocked the Iraqi and U.S. governments; for a while, ISIS seemed to believe that it could even take Baghdad. The genocidal attack on the Yazidis of Sinjar, in August, shocked the conscience. The videotaped beheadings that began at the same time shocked the West. Last week’s decapitation shocked Japan. Sooner or later, it seems, everyone will have a turn. And yet, if the group thinks that it will intimidate countries into keeping out of or leaving the anti-ISIS coalition, its tactics have so far been a failure.

In the end, it isn’t very useful to hold ISIS to the expectations and standards of other violent groups. Even Al Qaeda admonished Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of the Islamic State’s predecessor organization, Al Qaeda in Iraq, for his nasty habit of beheading hostages on camera. Why not a bullet to the back of the head, Ayman al-Zawahiri helpfully suggested from his hideout in the mountains along the Afghan-Pakistani border? But Zarqawi knew what he was doing, and he kept on, though he’s been vastly outperformed by his successors in ISIS. The point isn’t to use the right level of violence to achieve limited goals. The violence is the point, and the worse the better. The Islamic State doesn’t leave thousands of corpses in its wake as a means to an end. Slaughter is its goal—slaughter in the name of higher purification. Mass executions are proof of the Islamic State’s profound commitment to its vision.

Keep reading here >>

The reason the Obama admin will not define the Islamic Jihad

Charlie Hebdo Terror Mentor's Wife Living on Benefits in UK

Breitbart

by Nick Hallett

The wife of a man who mentored the Kouachi brothers is living on state benefits in Leicester in the UK after deciding France was too strict on Muslims.

Sylvie Beghal, whose husband Djamel is suspected of training the men who attacked satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday, lives rent-free in a four bedroom house after she left France in search of a more “Islamic environment”, the Telegraph reports.

Djamel is a former lieutenant of hate preacher Abu Hamza, who was yesterday sentenced to life imprisonment for terror offences in the US. He recruited another Cherif Kouachi while they were both in prison serving sentences for other terror offences. The two men remained close and were photographed in 2010 by French police playing football with other convicted terrorists.

Beghal also mentored Amedy Coulbaly and Hayat Boumeddiene, who held up a Kosher store yesterday, killing four hostages a day after killing a police woman.

Although he was excluded from the UK on national security grounds in 2009, his family have been allowed to stay.

Sylvie Beghal lives with her four children in the city of Leicester. Her landlord told the Telegraph: “She doesn’t have a job. She doesn’t even leave the house much.” If she claims the full housing benefit to which she would be entitled, she would receive more than £10,000 a year. As she has two children under 18, she would also be entitled to around £1,500 in child benefit.

If you add housing benefits to this, Mrs Beghal may have cost the British taxpayer more than £150,000 since she moved to the UK.

Mr and Mrs Beghal married in 1990 in France, before moving to Leicester in 1997. Djamel made sandwiches for a living before starting a computer course. They then moved to Afghanistan, then under control of the Taliban, in 2000, as they “wanted to live in a Muslim country”.

Djamel was arrested at Dubai airport in 2001 and was found to have organised a terror cell while living in Leicester. He was discovered to have links with Algerian group GSPC and Takfir Wal Hirja, a group founded by Bin Laden’s deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri.

In a UK court case, Beghal was described as being so extreme that even Osama bin Laden thought him to be “beyond the pale”.

Mrs Beghal maintains her husband’s innocence, however. She also said that she decided to move back to Leicester “mainly for religious reasons”.

“I wanted to educate my children surrounded by Muslim brothers and sisters. It wasn’t really possible [in France].

“I wanted help for my children. I wanted them to live in an Islamic environment. It is not possible in France since we cannot really live in community.

“Most of all, I was asked to remove my headscarf to work. For me, it was unimaginable. I was not ready to make that kind of compromise.”

Speaking yesterday, she said her husband had nothing to do with the Paris shootings.

“Once again my husband is punished for something he didn’t do. He has been placed in solitary confinement after all the false media coverage. He has nothing to do with the attack against Charlie Hebdo.

“The media is repeating false allegations which have been made against him for 14 years now. Our family too is suffering. We just want to be left alone and lead a peaceful life.”

False rumor: Paris Attack Suspect Killed and Two in Custody, U.S. Officials Say

Read at nbcnews >>

NYT: Bergdahl Deal Weighed Heavily on US-Cuba Prisoner Swap Talks

cubaconfidential

by Chris Simmons

via Newsmax.com

The secret talks to free Alan Gross from Cuba were complicated by the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in return for five Taliban commanders, The New York Times reports.

Bergdahl, who had been held prisoner in Afghanistan for nearly five years, had just been released for the detainees at Guantanamo Bay when two White House officials, Benjamin Rhodes and Ricardo Zuniga, traveled to Ottawa, Canada, for negotiations with their Cuban counterparts. The Cubans were able to point to Bergdahl’s release as the precedent for the Obama administration to approve a Gross exchange deal for three Cuban agents held in the United States, a senior administration official told the Times.

The Cubans were in a hurry to have the prisoner swap approved by the White House because Gross’s mother Evelyn was dying of cancer, and they feared her death (she died June 18) would result in a then-distraught Gross killing himself and thus wiping out their main bargaining chip.

Gross was working for a subcontractor of U.S. Agency for International Development in 2009 when he was arrested and sentenced to 15 years in prison. As a contractor, he was installing internet access for the island's small Jewish community that bypassed Cuba's restrictions.

But Bergdahl’s freedom added a new wrinkle to the talks with the Cubans to get Gross out, especially in light of allegations that the soldier had deserted his outpost in a remote area of Afghanistan, according to the newspaper.

Bergdahl’s release in exchange for the Taliban terrorists caused a firestorm in Congress, with Republicans in particular taking aim at President Barack Obama’s deal. And the uproar led the White House to demand that any arrangement to free Gross and the Cuban spies would have to be more than a simple prisoner swap.

“We made the point, ‘This shows you how controversial swaps are. This is something we are only willing to consider in the context of an appropriate exchange,’ ” a senior official told the Times. “The important thing was not to see the swap as the end, but the gateway to the policy changes.”

Eventually, the deal included the controversial resumption of diplomatic relations between the two countries after 53 years of enmity, as well as the release of 53 Cuban political prisoners and an ex-Cuban intelligence officer, Rolando Sarraff Trujillo, who had worked for the CIA.

Article continues here:  Bergdahl >>

SHRINKING GITMO: Obama ships out 5 more prisoners, eyes camp closure

soon it will be a guantanamo beach & resort.

------------------------------- 

 

Read on foxnews >>

Cuando la Base Naval sea una playa de Oriente -U.S. prepares to accelerate detainee transfers from Guantanamo Bay prison

siguiendo las motivaciones politicas e ideologicas de barack obama era posible predecir la aceleracion del traslado de los terroristas detenidos en la base naval de guantanamo, tal y como recientemente subrayabamos aqui >>, no se necesita mucha mollera neuronal para dejar establecido que antes que el actual inquilino de la white house la abandone, la actual instalacion militar arrendada a cuba desde 1903, aunque los castros se nieguen a aceptar el pago, se convertira en una nueva victoria de los que ahora si van a construir el socialismo prospero y sustentable, cuando se convierta en una "playa de oriente" como pedia el trovador erik sanchez ["cuando aparezca el petroleo" >>], o en el exclusivo complejo turistico para pesetuos -aunque algun charquito le dejaran a los guantanameros- con terminal de cruceros y marina incluidos: victoria resort-patria o muerte, venceremos.
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The Washington Post

U.S. prepares to accelerate detainee transfers from Guantanamo Bay prison

By Missy Ryan and Adam Goldman

The Obama administration is accelerating its efforts to shut down the Guantanamo Bay detention center, preparing to move dozens of inmates out of the prison in coming months in a step forward for President Obama’s redoubled attempt to achieve a core national security objective before he leaves office.

U.S. officials, describing administration plans to significantly reduce the Guantanamo population over the next six months, said they are in talks with a wide range of countries that they hope will accept all 64 detainees approved for transfer.

President Obama has spoken to fellow heads of government in an effort to arrange transfers, the officials said, one sign of the increased personal role they expect he will take as he inches closer to the closure of the prison.

“He does not want to leave this to his successor,” Paul M. Lewis, the Pentagon’s special envoy for shutting down Guantanamo, said in an interview.

After a virtual halt to detainee transfers in 2011-2013, officials hope to whittle the prison’s population from 132 to the mid-120s by the middle of next month. That would leave roughly half the number of detainees housed at the military complex in Cuba when Obama took office in 2009.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has approved the transfer of five detainees to a host country by the end of 2014, officials said. Relocating those prisoners would bring to 28 the total number of detainees transferred this year. Five or six more prisoners are expected to be moved in the first weeks of January.

Obama remains a long way from achieving his goal of closing Guantanamo and could yet be forced to threaten executive action if he cannot overcome congressional opposition to moving or releasing detainees. But officials are optimistic that they can make significant progress in pressing other countries to accept transfers.

They are betting in particular on leaders in Latin America, who they hope will follow the lead of Uruguay, which welcomed six Guantanamo detainees this month. Officials also are hoping that Obama’s decision to recast U.S. policy on Cuba and recent calls by the Vatican for the prison’s closure will encourage potential host countries.

At the same time, officials still must resolve the fate of detainees from Yemen, who make up the largest portion of the remaining prisoners and are unlikely to be sent home anytime soon because of U.S. concerns about militant activity in their home country.

“We’ve been able to break the logjam,” said Clifford Sloan, who steps down this month from his position as Lewis’s counterpart at the State Department. “There’s a very clear path ahead for significant progress and ultimate closure of the facility.”

The accelerated effort to close Guantanamo is at the center of a larger effort to wind down a war-time detainee system that was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Also this month, the U.S. military shut down the Parwan detention facility in Afghanistan, which held a small number of prisoners on a military base near Kabul. Parwan was a final vestige of what was once a massive U.S. military operation to capture, process and house around 30,000 prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq.

If officials can find host countries for all 64 detainees who have been cleared for transfer out of Guantanamo, they will then tackle the even harder task of dealing with the remaining prisoners. Ten detainees, including five accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks, are at some stage of a military trial process. Almost 60 more are slated to undergo official reviews that may result in some being deemed eligible for transfer. But officials expect that others — perhaps more than a dozen — will remain permanently in legal limbo, considered too dangerous for release but ineligible for trial because of insufficient or problematic evidence.

Increasingly, Obama is making a financial argument for closing the prison, which costs $400 million to $500 million a year to operate. Keeping the lights on at Guantanamo becomes even more costly on a per-detainee basis as the prisoner population falls.

Keeping Guantanamo open “is contrary to our values, and it is wildly expensive,” Obama told CNN over the weekend.

But he faces significant obstacles to closing the prison, including deep congressional opposition and turnover among his top detainee officials. Sloan and J. Alan Liotta, a senior Pentagon official on detainee policy, are stepping down around the end of the year.

There also has been friction between the White House and Pentagon over the pace of detainee transfers.

Administration officials see glimmers of hope in Congress despite lawmakers’ long-standing ban on moving prisoners to the United States for trial or detention. They hope that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has expressed some support for closing the prison, will build momentum as he takes leadership of the Senate Armed Services Committee next year.

But Sen. James M. Inhofe (Okla.), now the committee’s top Republican, cautioned that political fault lines on Guantanamo may remain unchanged.

“Democrats and Republicans in the House and the Senate — they’re not real excited about lining up with him on these things that he’s doing,” Inhofe said. “I don’t think he’ll get by with it.”

Congressional objections are driven in part by the reappearance of some released Guantanamo detainees on the battlefield. U.S. intelligence officials have said that 17 percent of the more than 600 Guantanamo detainees released or transferred since 2002 have reengaged in militant activity and that 12 percent more are suspected of doing so.

The phenomenon is not limited to Guantanamo detainees. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic State, was once a prisoner at a U.S. detention center in Iraq.

Obama “is definitely putting his agenda way ahead of our national security,” Inhofe said. “He should not be doing this, but it’s consistent with other things that he’s done.”

Officials declined to say what actions Obama would, or could, take if hoped-for congressional support does not materialize. But any steps to circumvent Congress are sure to stir the kind of Republican outrage that followed the president’s recent executive action on immigration policy.

Liotta said that the risks of transferring or releasing detainees could be reduced but not eliminated. “The only way to have a zero reengagement number is to never release anybody, a position the Defense Department has never supported,” he said.

Julie Tate and Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.

Pope Francis: 'Door Is Always Open' to Dialogue with ISIS

breitbart

By Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D. 

Asked whether dialogue with the Islamic State is possible, Pope Francis said it wouldn’t be easy, but that he would never rule it out. Pope Francis tackled this and other issues in his Q&A session with journalists on the plane returning to Rome from Strasbourg on Tuesday.

“I never consider something a lost cause, never,” Francis said. “Maybe we can’t have a dialogue, but never close the door. It is difficult, you might say ‘almost impossible,’ but the door is always open.”

The door may be open from the Pope’s side, but everything suggests that things look quite different from the side of ISIS.

On the cover of its October issue, the Islamic State’s online magazine Dabiq placed a doctored photo showing Saint Peter’s Square with its central obelisk flying a black flag, with the title: "The Failed Crusade."

The issue describes Islam’s “final crusade” with the bulk of jihad directed against “the cross-worshipping Romans.” This will be the case, it reads, “until their cross is broken by the Masih Isa.” It goes on to narrate a prophecy in which Islam crushes Christianity. Rome, it reads, “refers to the Christians of Europe and their colonies.” All events, the prophecy ends, “lead up to the final, greatest, and bloodiest battle between the Muslims and the Romans.” This battle “ends the era of the Roman Christians, as the Muslims will then advance upon Constantinople and thereafter Rome, to conquer the two cities and raise the flag of the Caliphate over them.”

Recent reports, in fact, suggest that threats to the Pope’s life are very real. Some have noted, for instance, that the Pope’s decision to live in the Santa Marta residence, while highly symbolic, is also risky. It is a hotel, after all, and receives everything from the outside: pasta, bread, meat, and other foodstuffs. Moreover, it is separated from Italy only by an old brick wall.

The Pope, however, bristles at the idea of greater security. In his visit to an outlying Roman parish of Tor Sapienza in December of 2013, the Pope said from the pulpit: “If anything about this visit has bothered you, like excessive security, know that I am not okay with that. I agree with you.”

Earlier this month, the Buenos Aires daily La Nación reported that Father Juan Carlos Molina, an Argentinian priest, had a recent personal conversation with Pope Francis, in which Molina said to the Pope, “Be careful, they could kill you.” Francis replied, “Look, it’s the best thing that could happen. To you, too.”

According to Father Molina, these were not words of resignation, but the Pope understands that “martyrdom” is part of his job description.

Who are the most wanted extremists in Canada?

CBC News

The government rarely offers details about Canadian extremists it believes pose a threat, but with the help of terrorism experts and using open sources of information, CBC News has pieced together a list of 18 Canadians accused of dangerous terrorist connections.

The same information is not publicly available from the RCMP or the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), raising questions about why Canadian law enforcement agencies aren’t more transparent about who is a threat to Canada and why.

"This is exactly how they operate," says Mubin Shaikh, an undercover operative for CSIS in the Toronto 18 terror case. "This is their style. You really have to squeeze it out of them to get any information."

See the list of Canadians with alleged terrorist links >>

More >>

The Mystery of Abdul-Rahman, or Peter Kassig

newyorker

By Amy Davidson

“They tell us you have abandoned us and/or don’t care but of course we know you are doing everything you can and more,” Abdul-Rahman Kassig, born Peter Kassig, wrote to his parents, Ed and Paula, when he had been held by the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham for several months. He knew that his captors might kill him—“it may very well be coming down to the wire here”—and in the end they did: over the weekend, ISIS released a video of a member of the group displaying Kassig’s severed head. He was twenty-six years old, and from Indiana. In the letter, he’d sought to prepare his parents for that end, and, perhaps, to forestall the visions they might have of his last moments: “Don’t worry Dad, if I do go down, I won’t go thinking anything but what I know to be true. That you and mom love me more than the moon & the stars.”

Kassig was kidnapped delivering medical aid to people affected by the civil war in Syria. He had been a soldier, a Ranger in Iraq, then a college student, and, very briefly, a husband. (The marriage ended in divorce.) Along the way, he took classes to learn to be an emergency medical technician.* On a vacation to Lebanon, where he encountered Syrian refugees, he realized that his medical knowledge was an asset, a gift he could hand to desperate people. Just before he was supposed to go home, he had, as he wrote in an e-mail to family and friends, “the best conversation that I have ever had with my mom. From 4,000 miles away in a shelled out parking lot in Beirut I told her about what I had been involved in over the last week.” He had found his “calling”:

Yesterday my life was laid out on a table in front of me. With only hours left before my scheduled flight back to the United States, I watched people dying right in front of me. I had seen it before and I had walked away before.… I’m just not going to turn my back this time, it’s as simple as that.

More >>

Saudi prince paid for 9/11 hijackers’ flight lessons

Mary Greeley

New video captured Emir of ISIS in Kobane, Abdul-Hadi Obaid

Liveleak 2014

Spanish Intelligence Intercepts Plot to Weaponise Ebola

Read at breitbart >>

Mary Greeley