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 | February 16, 2015 |
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| COPENHAGEN ATTACKS |
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NBC News: Dead Suspect In Copenhagen Attacks Identified As 22-Year-Old Danish Man
The gunman killed by Danish police early Sunday — who is believed to be responsible for killing two people and injuring five in back-to-back attacks at a freedom of speech event and at a Copenhagen synagogue Saturday — was a 22-year-old citizen of Denmark, police said later in the day. In fact, the young man, whose name has not been released, was known to police because of past criminal acts involving "violations of the Arms Act and violence," according to a statement from the Copenhagen Police. The suspect was shot and killed by police on Sunday morning after opening fire on officers who were investigating the two attacks, according to the statement. Copenhagen police believe he used two guns in the attacks, the statement said. Read more..
AP: Carnival Parade In Germany Canceled Because Of Terror Threat
Police in the German city of Braunschweig cancelled a popular Carnival street parade on Sunday because of fears of an imminent Islamist terror attack. Police spokesman Thomas Geese said police received credible information that there was a “concrete threat of an attack with an Islamist background” on Sunday’s parade and therefore called on all visitors to stay at home. Geese said the parade was canceled less than 90 minutes before its scheduled start and that “many people arriving at the train station from out of town were already dressed up and very disappointed -- but we didn’t want to take any risks.” Read more..
BBC News: Why Denmark Was Steeled For Terror Attack
It was always a case of not if but when. What's surprising is that it has taken this long for Denmark to be scarred by a fatal terror attack. In September it will be 10 years since the Jyllands Posten newspaper inflamed the Muslim world with the publication of 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, including one of him with a bomb in his turban. The country has been perpetually vigilant since 2005, after its embassies in the Middle East were burned, and Danish exports threatened. Kurt Westergaard, the 79-year-old cartoonist who drew the seminal turban caricature, has spent the past decade living under a death fatwa (religious ruling). He narrowly escaped an attempt to kill him at home, and had to lock himself into a panic room when a Somali militant broke into his home in the city of Aarhus. He continues to live under police protection. Read more..
NYT: Netanyahu Urges ‘Mass Immigration’ Of Jews From Europe
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said on Sunday that his government was encouraging a “mass immigration” of Jews from Europe, reopening a contentious debate about Israel’s role at a challenging time for European Jews and a month before Israel’s national elections. Speaking the morning after a Jewish guard was fatally shot outside a synagogue in Copenhagen in one of two attacks there, the remarks echoed a similar call by the prime minister inviting France’s Jews to move to Israel after last month’s attacks in Paris. Critics said then that the expression of such sentiments so soon after the Paris shootings was insensitive and divisive. Such sentiments also go to the heart of the complexity of Israel’s identity and its relationship with the Jewish communities of the diaspora, whose support has been vital. “Jews have been murdered again on European soil only because they were Jews,” Mr. Netanyahu said Sunday in Jerusalem. “Of course, Jews deserve protection in every country, but we say to Jews, to our brothers and sisters: Israel is your home,” he added. Read more..
The Jerusalem Post: Denmark Contradicts Netanyahu, Urges Jews To Stay Put Despite Terror Attacks
The Jewish community is an integral part of Danish society and it ought to remain in the country despite this weekend’s terror attacks, Copenhagen’s envoy to Israel said on Sunday. “The solution for the Jews of Denmark is not to leave in the wake of the terror attacks in Copenhagen on Saturday,” the ambassador, Jesper Vahr, said on Sunday. “Our prime minister said that an attack on the Jewish community is an attack on all of Denmark’s citizens. I echo this sentiment. We will do everything in our power so that the Jewish community in Denmark feels safe.” Vahr made the statements in response to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s earlier entreaties for Danish Jews to relocate to Israel. Read more..
In Related News... WSJ: Hundreds of Graves Desecrated at Jewish Cemetery in Eastern France
As many as 300 graves were desecrated at a Jewish cemetery in eastern France, officials said Sunday, the latest escalation in a wave of anti-Semitic violence in Europe. French officials are searching for an unknown number of assailants who upended or broke tombstones and headstones in roughly three quarters of the 400 graves at a historic Jewish cemetery in Sarre-Union, a small town near France’s border with Germany, a person familiar with the inquiry said. “Everything will be done to make sure those responsible for the odious and barbaric act will be identified and punished,” said French President François Hollande. “France is determined to fight relentlessly against anti-Semitism and those who would attack our values.” Read more..
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| ISLAMIC STATE LATEST |
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BuzzFeed: New Video Purports To Show ISIS Beheading Egyptian Christians In Libya
A video released Sunday purports to show the beheading of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya by ISIS militants. The video, being widely circulated on the Twitter accounts of ISIS supporters, is entitled “A Message Signed With Blood To The Nation Of The Cross.” Like previous ISIS beheading videos, the footage is highly edited with slick production values. It opens with the men in orange jumpsuits being lead along a beach purportedly on the Mediterranean by men in black with masks. The location is said to be near Tripoli, Libya, making it the first video in which ISIS apparently carried out an execution outside of the territory that the militant group seized in Iraq and Syria. Read more..
NYT: Islamic State Sprouting Limbs Beyond Its Base
The Islamic State is expanding beyond its base in Syria and Iraq to establish militant affiliates in Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt and Libya, American intelligence officials assert, raising the prospect of a new global war on terror. Intelligence officials estimate that the group’s fighters number 20,000 to 31,500 in Syria and Iraq. There are less formal pledges of support from “probably at least a couple hundred extremists” in countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Yemen, according to an American counterterrorism official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential information about the group. Lt. Gen. Vincent R. Stewart, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said in an assessment this month that the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, was “beginning to assemble a growing international footprint.” Nicholas Rasmussen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, echoed General Stewart’s analysis in testimony before Congress last week. Read more..
Washington Post: Iraq’s Pro-Iranian Shiite Militias Lead The War Against The Islamic State
Shiite militias backed by Iran are increasingly taking the lead in Iraq’s fight against the Islamic State, threatening to undermine U.S. strategies intended to bolster the central government, rebuild the Iraqi army and promote reconciliation with the country’s embittered Sunni minority. With an estimated 100,000 to 120,000 armed men, the militias are rapidly eclipsing the depleted and demoralized Iraqi army, whose fighting strength has dwindled to about 48,000 troops since the government forces were routed in the northern city of Mosul last summer, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials. A recent offensive against Islamic State militants in the province of Diyala led by the Badr Organization further reinforced the militias’ standing as the dominant military force across a swath of territory stretching from southern Iraq to Kirkuk in the north. Read more..
NBC News: McCain On ISIS Fight: We Should Not Restrain The President
Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., said Sunday that Congress should not restrict the president's broad authority in authorizing the use of military force against the terrorist group known as ISIS. "If we don't like what the commander-in-chief is doing, we can cut off his funds for doing so. But to restrain him in our authorization of him taking military action, I think frankly, is unconstitutional," McCain said on NBC's "Meet the Press." He added that restraining the president's authority to take military action "eventually leads to 535 commanders-in-chief," referring to the total number of members of Congress. McCain's comments came after the president sent a draft of a new authorization of military force — or AUMF — to take action against ISIS. The draft stipulates a three-year authorization with no geographic limits and limited use of ground troops. The authorization would repeal the 2002 AUMF, which former Pres. George W. Bush used for the war in Iraq. Read more..
AP: Kayla Mueller's Boyfriend Describes Effort To Free Her
Kayla Mueller was in a detention cell, face to face with her Syrian boyfriend. Had she told her captors she was married to Omar Alkhani, she might have been freed from the hands of Islamic State militants, he said. Instead, she denied being his wife. After posing as Mueller's husband and persuading a string of people to let him plead for her release, Alkhani left the room empty-handed. He said he saw her face for just a few seconds when guards uncovered it. The guards had assured Mueller, 26, that Alkhani would not be harmed if she told the truth, so she apparently stuck to honesty to save him rather than take the slim chance to save herself, he said. "Since she's American, they would not let her go anyway. No sense to stay here, both of us," Alkhani said. "Maybe she wanted to save me. Maybe she didn't know I came back to save her." Read more..
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