Fears over bitcoin use in terror financing

The global bitcoin craze has attracted almost everyone, from mom-and-pop traders to giant investment banks.


Promoters of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies tout them as being safe and secure, and without oversight from financial regulators.

But there is some concern that these very advantages could be exploited by terrorists to transfer funds from one place to another.

Financial intelligence experts from the region say this is already happening, with several suspicious financial transactions detected recently.

Some of these experts gathered in Malaysia last month for the Third Counter-Terrorism Financing Summit. The security experts from 35 countries unanimously agreed that the first step to disrupting militant operations is by cutting off their funds.

A new alliance between Australia and South-east Asia has also been formed to directly target and disrupt the funding lifeline of terrorist groups by denying them access to the international financial system and other sources of funds.Sources told The Straits Times that the high degree of anonymity offered by digital currencies makes them a possible preferred avenue for militants in South-east Asia.

“The number might not be big but we know it’s picking up. Their ultimate goal is to make sure that these funds get where they’re supposed to be,” said one source.

“Small or big, it can help move any terrorism planning to the next level – launching attacks.”

While the surge in the value of bitcoins and similar cryptocurrencies has garnered widespread media attention, security experts say the terrorists use digital currency not to make money, but for ease of moving funds between borders without the regular banking scrutiny.

For operational reasons, officials declined to reveal the locations and frequency of such transactions. But the identity of some of these financial movements on the Web has been determined, said a second source.

“Special equipment and database are already in place to help analyse these patterns. Identity is key to uncovering terrorism activities. We can monitor and trace the origin of the fund but to know who’s behind it is very tricky,” he said.

“We have all these equipment in place, but it’s still very hard to ‘crawl’ in the dark Web market,” the source added.

Malaysian criminologist P. Sundramoorthy said the consequences of militants or sympathisers switching to the use of cryptocurrency would be devastating as terror groups could be expected to execute attacks after receiving the funds.

“Given that cryptocurrency offers a high degree of anonymity and is popular and user-friendly, measures to control it must be put in place as soon as possible. They will always find a way to exploit such channels. We can’t eliminate the use but we need to limit it.”

Still, some experts say the issue might have been played up.

In a recent study by the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), the British intelligence think-tank suggested that there is little link between cryptocurrency and terrorism. It said the claims that bitcoin is funding terrorism are greatly exaggerated.

Mr David Carlisle, an independent consultant with Rusi, said in a March 2 commentary: “Treating cryptocurrencies as an exceptional threat creates the misleading impression that more conventional financial products are not already equally, or more, vulnerable to terrorist exploitation.”

A regional security source acknowledged that most militants are indeed still channelling funds via conventional banking and money remittance services.

Still, it has been noticed that digitial currency has also been used as a means of transfer.

“We still see most of them funding their operations by taking personal loans, selling their belongings and so on. But to say the possibility of these militants turning to the dark Web is little or unlikely, that’s dangerous as we’re already seeing suspicious movements which we believe are terrorism fundings,” he said. “They will always try to find new ways to exploit technology to materialise their sick agenda.”

The danger of terrorist financing can be gleaned by the capture of Marawi in the southern Philippines by militants that ended in October after a five-month siege.

The Associated Press reported last month that Philippine military chief Eduardo Ano said at least US$1.5 million (S$2 million) was sent by terrorist group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria to finance militants planning the Marawi attack.

As Malaysia begins to impose controls over the growing use of digital currencies, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM), its central bank, has required that conversions of cryptocurrencies into cash must be reported under the strict transactions under anti-money laundering laws.

Deputy Home Minister Nur Jazlan Mohamed said: “BNM has announced measures that would regulate the use of cryptocurrencies in Malaysia, especially the conversion of cryptocurrencies into cash and other equivalents. This measure will help the police and other enforcement agencies to manage terrorism financing.”

source: business.inquirer.net

Shooting on Las Vegas Strip kills 20, wounds more than 100

LAS VEGAS – A gunman on the 32nd floor of a Las Vegas Strip casino opened fire on an outdoor music festival, killing at least 20 people — including two off-duty police officers — and wounding more than 100, officials said early Monday.

Country music star Jason Aldean was performing when the shots began ringing out Sunday night at the Route 91 Harvest Festival.

Officers confronted the suspect on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino across the street from the concert, Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said. Authorities say the man died. Police did not release the suspect’s name but said he was a local resident.

Concert-goers reported hearing what they described as automatic gun fire during the shooting.

Lombardo said they believe this was a “lone wolf” attack but said they were looking for a roommate of the dead suspect as a person of interest.

The two slain off-duty officers were attending the concert, Lombardo said. An on-duty officer was in critical condition and another was wounded, Lombardo said.

Several officers from California were attending the music festival. A Bakersfield police officer was shot and taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

Hours after the shooting, Aldean posted on Instagram that he and his crew were safe and said the shooting was “beyond horrific.”

Kodiak Yazzie, 36, said he and his girlfriend were watching Aldean’s performance when he heard what sounded like fireworks. The music stopped temporarily and started up again before another round of pops sent the performers ducking for cover and fleeing the stage.

Thousands fled as bursts of gunfire could be heard for more than five minutes, Yazzie said.

Jose Baggett, 31, a Las Vegas resident, said he and a friend were in the lobby of the Luxor hotel-casino — directly north of the festival — when people began running. He said people were crying and as he and his friend walked away, they encountered police checkpoints where officers were carrying shotguns and assault rifles.

“There were armored personnel vehicles, SWAT vehicles, ambulances, and at least a half-mile of police cars,” Baggett said.

Witnesses said they saw multiple victims and dozens of ambulances near the concert venue. Some attendees later huddled in the basement of the nearby Tropicana hotel-casino.

Authorities shut down part of the Las Vegas Strip and Interstate 15. Flights were temporarily halted at McCarran International Airport because of the shooting, the airport said on its verified Twitter account.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Church destroyed in 9/11 attacks rises again

NEW YORK—A Greek Orthodox church taking shape next to the World Trade Center memorial plaza will glow at night like a marble beacon when it opens sometime next year. It also will mark another step in the long rebuilding of New York’s ground zero.

The St. Nicholas National Shrine, designed by renowned architect Santiago Calatrava, will replace a tiny church that was crushed by the trade center’s south tower on Sept. 11, 2001. The new church will give Greek Orthodox believers a place to worship while also welcoming visitors of any faith who want to reflect on the lives lost in the terrorist attacks.

“It is such a significant church because of what happened here,” said Jerry Dimitriou, executive director of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, which oversees 540 parishes and approximately 1.5 million Greek Orthodox faithful across the United States. He said people may want to stop and pray after they’ve been to the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, a few paces away. “We will give them a place to come and sit, and sit inside of a church,” Dimitriou said.

The large crowd that will assemble Monday for a ceremony on the 16th anniversary of the terror attacks will be able to see the unfinished church, now a raw-looking structure covered in concrete and plywood.

It is one of a handful of unfinished pieces of the reconstruction of the huge trade center site, which is now a combination of green trees, polished stone and glassy towers after being known for years as a dusty, gray construction zone.

Two of four planned office towers are now open. A third is set to open in spring 2018 with Spotify as an anchor tenant. A fourth office tower and a performing arts center are yet to be built.

The church, tucked in a park on the southern edge of the site, is Calatrava’s second World Trade Center commission.

His bird-shaped train hall, called the Oculus, opened in March 2016 and is now a draw for selfie-taking tourists, though some critics grouse that the $4 billion price tag was high for a structure that seems more mall than train station.

The estimated cost for St. Nicholas is $50 million. Unlike the transit hub, built largely with federal transportation dollars, the church is being funded through donations from disparate sources including the Greek government, Greek Orthodox church members around the world and, Dimitriou said, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston and the Italian city of Bari, whose patron saint is St. Nicholas.

The church they are building hardly resembles other Calatrava projects such as the Oculus or the Milwaukee Art Museum with their distinctive ribbed wings.

Rather, the new St. Nicholas was inspired by two Byzantine shrines in Istanbul, the Hagia Sophia and the Church of the Holy Savior in Chora. Like those structures built in the fifth and sixth centuries, St. Nicholas will feature a central dome flanked by towers.

The building will be sheathed in marble from quarries north of Athens —the same vein of marble that was used to build the Parthenon. Calatrava said he was thrilled to receive permission from the Greek government to use the marble because, “for me Hagia Sophia is the Parthenon of Orthodoxy.”

While the towers at the church’s corners will look like solid stone from the outside, the dome and sides will be covered with thin layers of sandwiched marble and glass that will be lighted from the inside at night. “You’ll see that the dome is glowing and the front is glowing,” Dimitriou said. The dome area will all be illuminated like a candle.”

Calatrava said his building will complement the memorial pools directly to the north. “On one side you have water and memory, and on the other side, in the church, you have the idea of the light of the candle and the flame and the sense of hope,” he said. “What I’m trying to do as an architect is give a sense of hope.”

The original St. Nicholas was far more modest. The 35-foot-tall (11-meter-tall) building housed a tavern when Greek immigrants bought it in 1919 to use as a church.

The church stayed put when the trade center’s monumental twin towers were built in the 1970s.

“All of the buildings around it were sold,” said Olga Pavlakos, a parish board member whose grandparents were among St. Nicholas’ founders. “We stood our ground. Greeks are tough people.”

But the church that survived the twin towers’ construction could not survive their destruction. St. Nicholas was the only building not part of the trade center complex that was completely demolished after hijackers struck the towers.

The new church is a few dozen yards (meters) west of the old St. Nicholas on top of the screening facility for trucks entering the trade center site. The land swap between church officials and government agencies involved in rebuilding lower Manhattan took years to settle, delaying the start of construction.

A temporary icon of Christ gazes down at the sanctuary under construction now. It will be replaced by a permanent icon before the sanctuary starts hosting Orthodox services. Meanwhile, work has started on second-floor meditation and reflection spaces that will be open to all.

A spherical bronze sculpture that stood between the twin towers before Sept. 11, 2001 returned to a spot next to the church just last week. Artist Fritz Koenig’s sphere, seen by many as a symbol of resilience, was placed in a small park just west of St. Nicholas.

Pavlakos said the new church’s welcoming stance honors the legacy of the old St. Nicholas, where area office workers often stopped to light a candle during their lunch hours.

“It’s not only for Greek people, it’s a place for everybody,” she said. “And that’s what we stood for before, so this is a continuation.” JPV

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

One dead, six wounded in Hamburg supermarket knife attack

HAMBURG, Germany—One person was killed and six others were injured on Friday when a failed asylum-seeker brandishing a knife attacked shoppers in a Hamburg supermarket, shouting “Allahu Akbar” before being overpowered by passers-by, police and officials said.

The attack had been motivated by “hate,” mayor Olaf Scholz said, although he stopped short of declaring it a terrorist incident.

“It makes me especially angry that the perpetrator appears to be a person who claimed protection in Germany and then turned his hate against us,” he said.

If confirmed as an Islamist attack, it would be the first in Germany since Tunisian Anis Amri drove a truck into crowds at a Berlin Christmas market on December 19, killing 12 and injuring 48.

Police said that the man was a 26-year-old born in the United Arab Emirates, but were unable to immediately confirm his nationality or identify the motive behind the violence.

News website Spiegel Online reported that the individual was named Ahmad A., who had arrived in Germany seeking asylum and had contact with the Islamist scene as well as a history of mental health problems and drug use.

The attacker had been scheduled to be deported, but the process had been held up as he lacked identity papers, Scholz said.

A police murder unit and a squad specializing in politically-motivated crime are investigating the attack.

High alert

Germany has been on high alert about the threat of a jihadist attack since Amri’s rampage in Berlin, for which the Islamic State group claimed responsibility.


Jihadists have also carried out a string of random assaults in European countries using knives.

Like the Hamburg attacker, Amri was a failed asylum seeker who could not be deported for lack of documents.

The similarity between the two cases risks reopening barely-healed wounds over Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to allow more than million migrants into Germany since 2015, with just two months to go until legislative elections in September.

“These criminals want to poison our free society with fear, but they will not succeed,” mayor Scholz said.

Improvised weapons

The attacker stabbed to death a 50-year-old man, believed to be a German citizen, and “struck out wildly” at others, wounding a woman and four men aged 19 to 64, police said.

Another 35-year-old man was hurt while overpowering the attacker in the street alongside other passers-by shortly after the killing.

“A crowd of about 30 people ran out of the supermarket. They yelled that someone had been stabbed… we saw a man go past with a big knife, like a butcher’s knife, in his hand,” eyewitness Ralf Woyna told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Woyna had been sitting at a cafe opposite the entrance to the shop where the chase began.

“Two customers who also looked Middle Eastern took all the chairs from the cafe and ran after him. I lost sight of them for a minute and heard a shout of ‘Allahu Akbar’ in the distance, I knew it was an attack straight away,” he added.

An amateur mobile phone video published by news site Spiegel Online showed a handful of pursuers confronting the attacker, a bearded man wearing a T-shirt and jeans, amid dense city traffic.

They can be seen hurling chairs at him to keep him at a safe distance as he yells and brandishes the knife.

According to Spiegel Online, the 35-year-old man injured during the struggle was the one who finally forced the suspect to the ground, using a pole.

The witnesses slightly hurt the attacker while they were overpowering him, before handing him over to police.

Newspaper Bild published images of the man lying handcuffed on the ground and sitting in the back seat of a police car, a bloodied white bag pulled over his head.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Sweden arrests man for ‘terrorist crime’ after truck attack

STOCKHOLM—Sweden early Saturday arrested a man for a “terrorist crime” hours after a beer truck ploughed into a crowd outside a busy department store in central Stockholm, killing four and injuring 15.

The man was arrested “on suspicion of a terrorist crime through murder,” Karin Rosander, a communications director at the Swedish Prosecution Authority, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Police said earlier on Friday after the attack that they had detained the man who “matched the description” of a photo released of a suspect wearing a dark hoodie and military green jacket.

But they did not confirm if he drove the truck.

According to the Aftonbladet newspaper, the same man is a 39-year-old of Uzbek origin and a supporter of the Islamic State (IS) group.

If confirmed as a terror attack, it would be Sweden’s first such deadly assault. The 15 injured included children and nine people were “seriously” wounded, health authorities said.

Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said he had strengthened the country’s border controls.

“Terrorists want us to be afraid, want us to change our behavior, want us to not live our lives normally, but that is what we’re going to do. So terrorists can never defeat Sweden, never,” he said.

The attack occurred just before 3:00 pm (1300 GMT) when the stolen truck slammed into the corner of the bustling Ahlens store and the popular pedestrian street Drottninggatan, above ground from Stockholm’s central subway station.

Pictures taken at the scene showed a large blue beer truck with a mangled undercarriage smashed into the Ahlens department store.

Witnesses described scenes of terror and panic.

“A massive truck starts driving … and mangles everything and just drives over exactly everything,” eyewitness Rikard Gauffin told AFP.

“It was so terrible and there were bodies lying everywhere… it was really terrifying,” he added.

The truck was towed away in the early hours of Saturday.

Trapped

Police cars and ambulances rapidly flooded the scene after the attack, as central streets and squares were blocked off amid fears that another attack could be imminent.

Helicopters hovered overhead across the city, sirens wailed, and police vans criss-crossed the streets using loudspeakers to urge people to head straight home and avoid crowded places.

But with the metro system and commuter trains shut down for several hours after the attack, other streets heading out of the city were packed with thousands of pedestrians trying to find a way home.

Haval, a 30-year-old sales clerk who didn’t want to reveal his last name, was in the metro at the time of the attack.

His train stopped immediately and he had to get out, along with all the other passengers.

They walked along the street before being ushered inside a nearby hotel for safety.

“We were suddenly trapped inside a hotel and there was the worst kind of horror in there,” he told AFP.

“We were scared, we were scared something else would happen, he added.

‘Bleeding to death’

Marko was in coffee shop near the scene with his girlfriend when he saw the truck ram into the store.

“He hit a woman first, then he drove over a bunch of other people … We took care of everyone lying on the ground,” he told Swedish daily newspaper Aftonbladet.

Hasan Sidi, another passerby, told Aftonbladet he saw two elderly women lying on the ground.

He said people at the scene urged him to help one of the women who was “bleeding to death”.

“One of them died… I don’t know if the other one made it,” Sidi said.

“The police were shocked. Everyone was shocked.”

‘You can’t break us’

In an editorial, Sweden’s biggest broadsheet Dagens Nyheter wrote: “What we feared for a long time finally happened.”

“The fear and panic right after the incident was inevitable. The images from the attack were terrible,” the paper said.

But Stockholm managed to stay “cool-headed” even though the attacker struck “Sweden and Stockholm’s heart”, it added.

Friday’s attack was the latest in a string of similar assaults with vehicles in Europe, including in London, Berlin and the southern French city of Nice.

The deadliest came last year in France on the July 14 Bastille Day national holiday, when a man rammed a truck into a crowd in the Mediterranean resort of Nice, killing 86 people.

Last month, Khalid Masood, a 52-year-old convert to Islam known to British security services, killed five people when he drove a car at high speed into pedestrians on London’s Westminster Bridge before launching a frenzied knife attack on a policeman guarding the parliament building.

And in December, a man hijacked a truck and slammed into shoppers at a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people.

In 2014, IS called for attacks on citizens of Western countries and gave instructions on how they could be carried out without military equipment, using rocks or knives, or by running people over in vehicles.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Last of the 49 bodies removed from Orlando nightclub

ORLANDO, Florida — The last of the bodies were removed from an Orlando gay nightclub overnight as investigators dug into the background of the gunman, who called 911 to profess allegiance to the Islamic State during the attack that left 49 victims dead.

At the White House, President Barack Obama said Monday there is no clear evidence so far that gunman Omar Mateen was directed by the extremist group. He said Mateen was inspired by radical information over the internet, calling it another apparent example of “homegrown extremism.”

Wielding an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and a handgun, Mateen opened fire at the crowded Pulse Orlando club early Sunday in the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history. He was killed in a gun battle with a SWAT team after police used explosives and a small armored vehicle to punch a hole in a wall and allow dozens of club-goers to escape, police said.

The tragedy shocked the nation and cast a pall over Orlando, known the world over as the home of Walt Disney World and other theme parks.

“We will not be defined by the act of a cowardly hater,” Mayor Buddy Dyer vowed.

Mateen was a 29-year-old American-born Muslim who worked as a security guard in Florida. FBI officials said they had investigated him in 2013 and 2014 on suspicion of terrorist sympathies but could not make a case against him.

Counterterrorism experts have been warning in the past few years about the danger of so-called lone wolf attackers who act in sympathy with extremist groups like the Islamic State but are not directed by them.

Despite the 911 call from the club, the picture became murkier when Mateen’s Afghan immigrant father suggested another motive: anti-gay hatred. The father said his son got angry a few months ago when he saw two men kissing in Miami.

Also, Mateen’s ex-wife attributed the violence to mental illness, saying he was bipolar and abusive toward her.

Obama said investigators are still looking into killer’s motivations and considering all possibilities, noting that like the Islamic State have been known to target gays.

The Islamic State’s radio called Mateen “one of the soldiers of the caliphate in America.” Al-Bayan Radio, a media outlet for the extremist group, hailed the attack, saying that it targeted a gathering of Christians and gays and that it was the worst attack on U.S. soil since 9/11.

The statement gave no indication of whether the group planned or knew of the attack beforehand.

Mateen’s father, Seddique Mir Mateen, told reporters Monday that the massacre was “the act of a terrorist,” and added: “I apologize for what my son did. I am as sad and mad as you guys are.”

He wouldn’t go into details about any religious or political views his son held, saying he didn’t know. Asked whether he missed his son, he said: “I don’t miss anything about him. What he did was against humanity.”

Thirty-nine of the dead were killed at the club, and the others died at hospitals, the mayor said. By Monday morning, families of 24 of the victims had been notified, Dyer said.

Workers removed the bodies four at a time on stretchers and loaded them into white vans. The action was repeated over and over. The covered bodies were taken to the county medical examiner’s office. All were there by 11 p.m., Dyer said.

At least 53 people were hospitalized, including five in grave condition, meaning the death toll could rise.

On Monday morning, officials emphasized that there was no immediate threat to the public.

The shooting started about 2 a.m., with more than 300 people inside the Pulse, where it was Latin night.

“He had an automatic rifle, so nobody stood a chance,” said Jackie Smith, who saw two friends next to her get shot. “I just tried to get out of there.”

Jon Alamo had been dancing for hours when he wandered into the club’s main room just in time to see the gunman. “You ever seen how Marine guys hold big weapons, shooting from left to right? That’s how he was shooting at people,” he said.

“My first thought was, ‘Oh, my God, I’m going to die,'” Alamo said. “I was praying to God that I would live to see another day.”

Pulse patron Eddie Justice texted his mother, Mina: “Mommy I love you. In club they shooting.” About 30 minutes later, hiding in a bathroom, he texted her: “He’s coming. I’m gonna die.”

Justice’s name would eventually be added to the list of the dead.

On the same day as the Orlando attack, an Indiana man armed with three assault rifles and chemicals used to make explosives was arrested in Southern California and told police he was headed to a West Hollywood gay pride parade, authorities said.

The previous deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history was the 2007 attack at Virginia Tech, where a student killed 32 people and took his own life.

Mateen was not unknown to law enforcement: In 2013, he made inflammatory comments to co-workers and was interviewed twice, according to FBI agent Ronald Hopper, who called the interviews inconclusive. In 2014, Hopper said, officials found that Mateen had ties to an American suicide bomber, but the agent described the contact as minimal, saying it did not constitute a threat at the time.

Mateen bought at least two guns legally within the last week or so, according to Trevor Velinor of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Mateen exchanged gunfire with 14 police officers at the club and took hostages at one point. In addition to the assault rifle and handgun, he had a weapon in his vehicle, police said.

Police Chief John Mina said officers held back for some time because Mateen indicated he had a bomb vest. About 5 a.m., authorities sent in a SWAT team to rescue the remaining club-goers, Mina said.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Nightclub shooter was a body builder, security guard

FORT PIERCE, Florida — He was a body builder and a security guard, a religious man who attended the local mosque and wanted to become a police officer.

Early Sunday, 29-year-old Omar Mateen opened fire at a gay nightclub in Orlando in an attack that left 50 people dead and 53 wounded, police said.

Mateen was the son of an Afghan immigrant who had a talk show in the United States, the nature of which was not entirely clear: A former Afghan official said the program was pro-Taliban and a former colleague said it was enthusiastically pro-American.

He attended evening prayer services at the city’s Islamic Center three to four times a week, most recently with his young son, said Imam Syed Shafeeq Rahman. Although he was not very social, he also showed no signs of violence, Rahman said. He said he last saw Mateen on Friday.

“When he finished prayer he would just leave,” Rahman told The Associated Press. “He would not socialize with anybody. He would be quiet. He would be very peaceful.”

He was also bipolar, Mateen’s ex-wife, Sitora Yusufiy, told reporters in Boulder, Colorado.

“He was mentally unstable and mentally ill,” Yusufiy said. Although records show the couple didn’t divorce for two years after the marriage, Yusiufiy said she was actually only with Mateen for four months because he was abusive. She said he would not let her speak to her family and that family members had to come and literally pull her out of his arms.

Authorities immediately began investigating whether Sunday’s attack was an act of terrorism. A law enforcement official said the gunman made a 911 call from the nightclub professing allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The law enforcement official is familiar with the investigation but was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Yusufiy said she was “devastated, shocked, started shaking and crying” when she heard about the shooting, but she attributed the violence to Mateen’s mental illness, not any alliance with terrorist groups.

Rahman agreed.

“My personal opinion is that this has nothing to do with ISIS,” he said.

Seddique Mir Mateen, the father of the alleged shooter, is a life insurance salesman who started a group in 2010 called Durand Jirga, Inc., according to Qasim Tarin, a businessman from California who was a Durand Jirga board member. The name refers to the Durand line, the long disputed border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Tarin said Seddique Mir Mateen had a television show on which they discussed issues facing Afghanistan.

“It’s shocking,” he said about the shooting. “(Omar Mateen’s) father loves this country.”

Some of Seddique Mir Mateen’s shows were taped and later posted on YouTube. During one episode, a sign in the background read: “Long live the U.S.A! Long live Afghanistan. … Afghans are the best friends to the U.S.A.”

But a former Afghan official said the “Durand Jirga Show” appears on Payam-e-Afghan, a California-based channel that supports ethnic solidarity with the Afghan Taliban, which are mostly Pashtun. Viewers from Pashtun communities in the United States regularly call in to the channel to espouse support for Pashtun domination of Afghanistan over the nation’s minorities, including Hazaras, Tajiks and Uzbeks, the official said.

The “Durand Jirga Show” expresses support for the Taliban, has an anti-Pakistan slant, complains about foreigners in Afghanistan and criticizes U.S. actions there, the official said. Seddique Mir Mateen lavished praise on current Afghan President Ashraf Ghani when he appeared on the show in January 2014, but he has since denounced the Ghani government, according to the official, who said that on Saturday, Seddique Mateen appeared on the show dressed in military fatigues and used his program to criticize the current Afghan government.

He also announced on that show that he would run in the next Afghan presidential election, said the official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because he did not want to be linked to coverage of the shooting.

In 2013, Omar Mateen made inflammatory comments to co-workers, and he was interviewed twice, FBI agent Ronald Hopper said. He called those interviews inconclusive. In 2014, Hopper said, officials found that Mateen had ties to an American suicide bomber. He described the contact as minimal, saying it did not constitute a threat at the time.

Mateen purchased at least two firearms legally within the last week or so, according to Trevor Velinor of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Mateen had no criminal record. Yusufiy said he wanted to be a police officer and had applied to the police academy. Mateen was a security guard at the G4S company, which identifies itself on its website as “the leading global integrated security company.”

Daniel Gilroy told multiple news outlets that he worked with Mateen at G45. Gilroy called him an angry, loud, profane man who used slurs for gay people, blacks, Jews and women. “He never used other words to describe them,” Gilroy told the Tampa Bay Times. Mateen also regularly made threats of violence, according to Gilroy.

“He talked about killing people all the time,” Gilroy told The New York Times. And Gilroy wasn’t surprised when he learned of the massacre: “I saw it coming.”

Gilroy said Mateen started badgering him and sending dozens of text messages to him daily. Gilroy said he reported Mateen’s behavior to his bosses.

“I kind of feel a little guilty that I didn’t fight harder,” Gilroy said. “If I didn’t walk away and I fought, then maybe 50 people would still be alive today.”

But Rahman said Mateen was not, as far as the imam could see, someone who would ever commit such a gruesome act of mass violence. Rahman said he knew Mateen and his family since the shooter was a young boy. Playful as a child, he became more serious as an adult, Rahman said. He spoke both English and Farsi, and was into body building

“It was totally unexpected,” Rahman said.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Duterte: Beheadings must stop; Roxas: Extinguish Abu Sayyaf, save captives

MANILA — Beheadings must stop.  This was the curt reaction of Davao City Mayor and presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte on the beheading of Canadian John Ridsdel by his Abu Sayyaf kidnappers on Monday (Apr. 25).
Duterte, who was in North Cotabato, to facilitate the release of a soldier from the New People’s Army, refused to comment at length on the beheading.

“It’s too early to comment,” he said. “I’m not yet the president of the Philippines. But this has to stop,” he added.

In Negros Occidental, Liberal Party presidential candidate Mar Roxas expressed his outrage over Ridsdel’s beheading.

“The Abu Sayyaf Group must be extinguished,” he told a press conference in La Carlota City, Negros Occidental.

“I am outraged by the horrific murder of Mr. John Ridsel  at the hands of the terrorist Abu Sayyaf. The full force of the state and of the law must be applied to apprehend and bring the perpetrators to justice,” he added.

He said that since the abduction of Ridsel and the other hostages was reported, all means have been sought to free them.

“Let us double our efforts. Let us not give up hope that the others can be rescued,” he said,  as he appealed for the cooperation and support of all in this mission.

“Terrorism is bullying at its most worst  form,” he said. “Why kill a defenseless man just to make a point.”

“Terrorism preys on the weak and defenseless. Where is the courage in hurting let alone killing a defenseless person. It does not make you strong. It does not further your cause. It only leads to fear and subjugation which we know is your true purpose and we will not be cowed by that,” he said.

Roxas extended his condolences to  the family, loved ones and fellow citizens of  Ridsel.

“The terrorists Abu Sayyaf should be should be neutralized and face the immeasurable consequences of their brutality and inhumanity,” he said.

He said the 400 Abu Sayyaf members reported to have massed up on Sulu Island, should not be allowed to escape, and should be finished off.

“There is no room for the brutality exercised by the Abu Sayyaf…they must be extinguished,” he said.

The Abu Sayyaf killed Ridsdel on Monday and dumped his head on a Jolo street, Sulu.

The Abu Sayyaf is still holding another Canadian, a Filipina and a Norwegian resort manager.  SFM

source: globalnation.inquirer.net

Explosions rock Brussels airport, subway; 26 reported dead

BRUSSELS— Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. At least 26 people were reported dead and dozens of others injured.

A spokesman for the Brussels Metro said 15 people were killed and 55 injured, 10 very seriously, in an explosion on a train. Belgian media initially reported at least 13 dead in two explosions in the airport’s departures area, but later decreased that to 11, citing information from Belgian Health Minister Maggie de Block, who also said 81 people were injured.

“What we feared has happened,” Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told reporters. “In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity.”

Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level, diverting planes and trains and ordering people to stay where they were. Airports across Europe immediately tightened security.

European security officials have been bracing for a major attack for weeks, and warned that the Islamic State group was actively preparing to strike. The arrest Friday of a key suspect in the November attacks in Paris heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved than originally thought, and that some are still on the loose.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesday’s attacks, and Michel said there was no immediate evidence linking key Paris suspect Salah Abdeslam to them. After his arrest Friday, Abdeslam told authorities he had created a new network and was planning new attacks.

“We are at war,” French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said after a crisis meeting called by the French president. “We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war.”

Belgian media reported that 11 people were killed at the airport, where two explosions splattered blood across the departure lounge and collapsed the ceiling. The explosions hit during the busy morning rush. Smoke was seen billowing out of the terminal.

Anthony Deloos, an airport worker for Swissport, which handles check-in and baggage services, said the first explosion took place near the Swissport counters where customers pay for overweight baggage. He and a colleague said the second blast hit near the Starbucks cafe.

“We heard a big explosion. It’s like when you’re in a party and suddenly your hearing goes out, from like a big noise,” Deloos said, adding that shredded paper floated through the air as a colleague told him to run.

“I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe,” he said.

Tom De Doncker, 21, check-in agent intern, was near the site of the second explosion.

“I saw a soldier pulling away a body,” he said. “It felt like I was hit too” from the concussion of the blast.

Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with victims’ blood.

“It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed,” he said. “There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere.”

“We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene,” he said.

Near the entrance to Brussels’ Maelbeek subway station, not far from the headquarters of the European Union, rescue workers set up a makeshift medical treatment center in a pub. Dazed and shocked morning commuters streamed from the metro entrances as police tried to set up a security cordon.

“The Metro was leaving Maelbeek station for Schuman when there was a really loud explosion,” said Alexandre Brans, 32, wiping blood from his face. “It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the Metro.”

Francoise Ledune, a spokeswoman for the Brussels Metro, said on BFM television there appeared to have been just one explosion on the subway in a car that was stopped at Maelbeek. Spokesman Guy Sablon said 15 were killed and 55 injured in that attack.

At the airport, passengers fled as quickly as they could.

Amateur video shown on France’s i-Tele television showed passengers including a child running with a backpack dashing out of the terminal in different directions as they tugged luggage. Another image showed a security officer patrolling inside a hall with blown-out paneling and what appeared to be ceiling insulation covering the floor.

Marc Noel, 63, was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta, to return to his home in Raleigh, North Carolina. A Belgian native, Noel says he was in an airport shop buying automobile magazines when the first explosion occurred 50 yards away.

“People were crying, shouting, children. It was a horrible experience,” he told AP. He said his decision to shop might have saved his life. “I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off.”

With three runways in the shape of a “Z,” the airport connects Europe’s capital to 226 destinations around the world and handled nearly 23.5 million passengers in 2015.

Passengers were led onto the tarmac and the crisis center urged people not to come to the airport. More than 200 flights to Brussels were diverted or canceled, according to flight tracking service Flightradar24

Authorities told people in Brussels to stay where they were, bringing the city to a standstill. Airport security was also tightened in Paris, London and other European cities.

In Paris, France’s top security official said the country was immediately reinforcing security at airports, train stations and metros.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Supposed ISIS video threatens attack on Washington, other countries

CAIRO - A video supposedly from Islamic State warned on Monday that countries taking part in air strikes against Syria would suffer the same fate as France, and threatened to attack in Washington.

The video, which appeared on a site used by Islamic State to post its messages, begins with news footage of the aftermath of Friday's Paris shootings in which at least 129 people were killed.

The message to countries involved in what it called the "crusader campaign" was delivered by a man dressed in fatigues and a turban, and identified in subtitles as Al Ghareeb the Algerian.

"We say to the states that take part in the crusader campaign that, by God, you will have a day, God willing, like France's and by God, as we struck France in the center of its abode in Paris, then we swear that we will strike America at its center in Washington," the man said.

It was not immediately possible to verify the authenticity of the video, which purports to be the work of Islamic State fighters in the Iraqi province of Salahuddine, north of Baghdad.

The French government has called the Paris attacks an act of war and said it would not end its air strikes against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

French fighter jets launched their biggest raids in Syria to date on Sunday targeting the Islamic State's stronghold in the city of Raqqa. The operation was carried out in coordination with US forces.

Police raided homes of suspected Islamist militants across France overnight following the Paris attacks.

"Al Ghareeb the Algerian" also warned Europe in the video that more attacks were coming.

"I say to the European countries that we are coming, coming with booby traps and explosives, coming with explosive belts and [gun] silencers and you will be unable to stop us because today we are much stronger than before," he said.

Apparently referring to international talks to end the Syrian war, another man identified in the video as Al Karrar the Iraqi tells French President Francois Hollande "we have decided to negotiate with you in the trenches and not in the hotels." — Reuters

Solidarity messages over deadly Paris attacks set social media ablaze

The multiple attacks across Paris Friday night (Saturday morning in the Philippines) that killed over a hundred people have shocked the world, and social media have been ablaze with millions of solidarity messages from all corners of the world.

#PrayForParis immediately became trending topic on Twitter in the Philippines and worldwide, with more than 4 million tweets about it as of posting time.

World leaders, as well as international and local celebrities expressed their sadness and solidarity for Parisians on Twitter.

source: gmanetwork.com

Gunmen in Paris attacks killed

A total of eight militants were killed, including seven by their suicide belts, during Friday's attacks in Paris that left at least 120 dead, a source close to the investigation said.

Four of the attackers were killed in the Bataclan concert hall, three by activating their suicide vests and one shot by police, a report from agence France-Presse said.

Three more died near the national stadium and a fourth was killed in a street in eastern Paris.
"The terrorists who were not far from here were killed," Hollande said on television after visiting a security command centre near the Bataclan concert hall where the gunmen held people hostage before an assault by security forces.

Three of the attackers activated explosive belts while the fourth was hit by police fire, AFP added.

At least 100 people were killed in the concert hall. —with reports from Agence-France Presse and Reuters

At least 20 dead in Ankara blast: reports

At least 20 people were killed Saturday in a huge explosion close to the main train station in Turkey's capital Ankara ahead of a peace rally, media reports said.

Eyewitnesses told AFP several corpses were seen lying on the ground while NTV television and the Dogan news agency said at least 20 people were killed. Some 100 people were wounded, NTV added.

The area was to have hosted an anti-government peace rally organised by leftist groups later in the day, including the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP). —Agence-France Presse

source: gmanetwork.com