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Terrorism Tag

Posted by Mandy Nagy on March 02, 2014 18 Comments
At least 29 people were killed Saturday after assailants wielding knives stormed a train station in southwestern China, in what has been described as "an organized, premeditated violent terrorist attack." From the Associated Press via ABC News:

More than 10 assailants slashed scores of people with knives at a train station in southern China in what state media said Sunday was a terrorist assault by ethnic separatists from the far west. Twenty-nine slash victims and four attackers were killed and 143 people wounded.

Police fatally shot four of the assailants, captured one and were searching for the others following the attack late Saturday at the Kunming train station in Yunnan province, the official Xinhua News Agency said. State broadcaster CCTV said two of the attackers were women — one of the slain and the one who was captured and later brought to a hospital for treatment.

Witnesses described assailants dressed in black storming the train station and slashing people indiscriminately with large knives and machetes.

Student Qiao Yunao, 16, was waiting to catch a train at the station when people starting crying out and running, and then saw a man cut another man's neck, drawing blood.

"I was freaking out, and ran to a fast food store, and many people were running in there to take refuge," she told The Associated Press via Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblog. "I saw two attackers, both men, one with a watermelon knife and the other with a fruit knife. They were running and chopping whoever they could."

"It was an organized, premeditated violent terrorist attack, according to the authorities," reported China's official Xinhua news agency.  The identities of the attackers reportedly killed had not yet been confirmed.   Additional reports described the scene at the time of the attack, based on witness accounts.

Posted by David Gerstman on January 29, 2014 10 Comments
On American TV, a show called "Lovers' Tales," would likely be a romantic comedy. On Ma'an, the independent Palestinian television network, it is a weekly show interviewing freed prisoners. This week Palestinian Media Watch reports on the interview of one Issa Abd Rabbo.
Until his release, Issa Abd Rabbo was serving two life sentences for killing two Israeli university students, Ron Levi and Revital Seri, who were hiking south of Jerusalem on Oct. 22, 1984. At gun point he tied them up, put bags over their heads and then shot and murdered both. Abbas' "hero" has now given an interview to the independent Palestinian news agency Ma'an on its weekly TV program Lovers' Tales, which interviews released prisoners. There he calmly describes how he initiated the killing, spotted the two hiking university students and waited until they sat down to rest under a tree. He then recounts how he tied them up and murdered them in cold blood.
Here's the clip. Note how he betrays absolutely no remorse.

Posted by David Gerstman on January 23, 2014 11 Comments
It was reported yesterday that Israel's internal security agency, the Shin Bet broke up an al Qaeda cell operating in Jerusalem. According to the report, three men in Jerusalem were recruited by an al Qaeda operative in Gaza to carry out three attacks: targeting the Jerusalem-Maale Adumim bus line, the Jerusalem convention center and the American embassy in Tel Aviv. (Last year, in an apparently unrelated case, Israel arrested an Iranian national photographing the embassy.) The Jerusalem Post notes:
The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) said an al-Qaida operative in Gaza, named as Ariv al-Sham, recruited the men separately as three independent terrorist cells. Senior Shin Bet sources said they believed Sham received his orders directly from the head of al-Qaida, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Using Skype and Facebook, Sham was able to recruit Iyad Khalil Abu-Sara, 23, of Ras Hamis of east Jerusalem, who has an Israeli ID card. During questioning, Abu-Sara, who was arrested on December 25, admitted to volunteering to carry out a “sacrifice attack” on an Israeli bus traveling between Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim. In the planned attack, terrorists would shoot out the bus’s tires, causing it to overturn, before gunning down passengers at close range and firing on emergency responders.
One of them was planning to arrange to bring foreign terrorists to Israel posing as Russian tourists to aid in the execution of his plans. The report in USA Today explained why this discovery is a big deal:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 03, 2014 7 Comments
Via The Times of Israel, Thwarted Israeli bus blast similar to Boston bombings:
The bomb that tore through a Dan No. 240 bus in the central Israeli city of Bat Yam on December 22 was assembled in a pressure cooker and activated by cellphone, much like the devices that killed three people and wounded hundreds more during the Boston Marathon in April 2013, the Shin Bet investigation has revealed.... The bomb, which exploded at the corner of Mivtza Sinai and Katzenelson streets in the Tel Aviv suburb of Bat Yam, caused no injuries because an alert passenger had noticed the bag containing the device left unattended by the bus’s rear door. The driver evacuated the bus, and the device was detonated as an Israeli sapper attempted to defuse it. The bus was wrecked, but there were no injuries.... According to information released by the Shin Bet, the bomb, consisted of two kilograms of improvised explosives surrounded by nails and screws and stuffed into a pressure cooker. This was a method akin to the one used by Boston murderers, brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. It was made popular by an al-Qaeda manual placed online.
More on the plot, via Haaretz:
Israeli security forces carried out a series of arrests in the West Bank city of Bethlehem following the attack, detaining members of the Islamic Jihad militant group. The Shin Bet believes that two of the central suspects in the plot to bomb the bus are former security prisoners in Israel: Shahada Ta'amri, 24, and his 21-year-old brother Hamdi Ta'amri, a former cadet in the Jericho Police officers' course. Another central suspect was named as Yousef Salame, 22.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 29, 2013 13 Comments
So that the Palestinians would agree to talk.  That's the deal Israel had to agree to just to start the talks. Why agree to it? Because Bibi couldn't afford to piss off Obama any more than he already had, so he had to cave in on the precondition (which no one wants to call a precondition, just a good will gesture). From The Times of Israel, Israel publishes list of Palestinian inmates to be freed:
A panel of Israeli cabinet ministers on Saturday night approved a list of 26 Palestinian prisoners to be released on Monday in the third phase of a four-stage series of releases agreed on when peace talks with the Palestinians were resumed earlier in 2013. All of the prisoners on the list (Hebrew PDF), save three, were convicted of murdering Israeli civilians or soldiers, as well as Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel. In a press release Saturday night, the Prime Minister’s Office said all of the inmates had been convicted of offenses committed prior to the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1994....
Among the victims was a Hebrew University Professor:
•Muammar Ata Mahmoud Mahmoud and Salah Khalil Ahmad Ibrahim, convicted of murdering Menahem Stern, a history professor at Hebrew University. Stern, 64, a winner of the prestigious Israel Prize, was stabbed to death while walking to work at the university’s Givat Ram campus on June 22, 1989. A monument in his memory figures in a scene from the prize-winning Israeli film “Footnote.” Ibrahim was also convicted in the murder of Eli Amsalem. In addition, the two murdered a Palestinian suspected of collaborating with Israel, Hassin Zaid.
More on Professor Stern here. This image, according to Wikipedia, is of Professor Stern in 1988, the year before he was stabbed to death. [caption id="attachment_74564" align="alignnone" width="288"](Menahem Stern, 1988) (Menahem Stern, 1988)[/caption] There will be celebrations to welcome home these "heroes." As more information becomes available as to the victims, we will update this post. Update: Israel National News (via Carl in Jerusalem) has more details:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 20, 2013 17 Comments
We reported on some of the gruesome details and testimony at the trial of the killers of British soldier Lee Rigby on a street in London by machete and knife wielding Islamic radicals, Killer of British soldier Lee Rigby: “I am a soldier and this is war”. The evidence concluded last week, and this week the jury returned guilty verdicts. Via Fox News, 2 Muslim radicals -- 'soldiers of Allah' -- convicted in brutal murder of British soldier:
A jury on Thursday convicted two men who called themselves "soldiers of Allah" of murdering a British soldier who was run down with a car, stabbed to death and nearly decapitated in a brutal attack on a London street. The jury of eight women and four men deliberated for just 90 minutes before finding Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale guilty of murdering Fusilier Lee Rigby. They were acquitted of attempting to murder a police officer. Both men had pleaded not guilty to murder, though neither denied taking part in the May 22 attack. Neither defendant reacted as the jury foreman announced the verdicts. Adebolajo smiled and kissed a copy of the Quran as he was led down to the cells.
Lee Rigby Here is a video timeline of what happened that murderous day:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 13, 2013 13 Comments
The murder trial of two Islamic radicals who hacked British soldier Lee Rigby to death on the street continues. We noted how the murderer pictured in so many of the newpaper covers holding a bloody machete argued in his defense that he was a "soldier of Allah" and that he was in a war, Killer of British soldier Lee Rigby: “I am a soldier and this is war” The second murderer decided to offer no defense evidence, as reported by the Daily Mirror, which has a live blog of the proceedings:
The second man accused of hacking Fusilier Lee Rigby to death has refused to give evidence. Michael Adebowale, 22, was due to take the stand to explain the attack on the 25 year-old soldier near Woolwich Barracks in south London. His co-defendant Michael Adebolajo, 28, has already told the court that he tried to decapitate Lee Rigby to protest against British foreign policy. Abbas Lakha, representing Adebowale, told the court: "I call no evidence on behalf of Mr Adebowale." ... The judge sent the jury of eight women and four men away for the weekend and told them the court will contact them by mobile phone when they should return to court. He said there was more legal argument to sort out before closing speeches start but said the case was still due to conclude by Christmas.
Here's video of his capture immediately after the attack:

Posted by David Gerstman on December 12, 2013 4 Comments
One of President Obama's pitches for re-election was "Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive." Or as the President said, slightly more elaborately, in a speech shortly before his re-election:
Remember, in 2008, we were in the middle of two wars and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Today, our businesses have created nearly 5.5 million new jobs. (Applause.) The auto industry is back on top. (Applause.) Home values are on the rise. (Applause.) We’re less dependent on foreign oil than any time in the last 20 years. (Applause.) Because of the service and the sacrifice of our brave men and women in uniform, the war in Iraq is over. The war in Afghanistan is winding down. Al Qaeda is on the run, and Osama bin Laden is dead. (Applause.) So we’ve made real progress these past four years.
Yes, Al Qaeda is on the run.

To Yemen:

Yemen which has been in a state of political turmoil since the ouster of its long time dictator, Ali Abdullah Saleh, is facing two insurgencies in the north: one are the Iran backed Houthi separatists and the other are Salafists. Both groups are fighting each other as well as Yemen's central government.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 09, 2013 25 Comments
The trial of the murderers of British army drummer Lee Rigby with machetes and knives on a London street continues. We reported before, Murderers of Lee Rigby searched for British soldier to kill. The trial is receiving almost no mainstream media coverage in the U.S. One of the killers took the stand today, and was proud of what he had done, as reported by The Telegraph:
Michael Adebolajo, 28, also told the Old Bailey jury that he was a “soldier of Allah” and that he had no regrets over the killing because he was obeying his god. He said after the case he should be either “ransomed” back to his Mujahideen brothers, freed or killed.
At the start of his defence in chief, Adebolajo sat in the witness box of Court number 2, surrounded by five security guards and just feet from Fusilier Rigby’s family. He and Michael Adebowale, 22, are accused of murdering Fusilier Rigby by running him down with a car and then hacking him to death with a meat cleaver and knives near Woolwich Barracks in south east London on May 22. Asked who al Qaeda were by his counsel, David Gottlieb, Adebolajo replied: "Al Qaeda, I consider to be Mujahideen. I love them, they're my brothers. I have never met them. I consider them my brothers in Islam." He added: "Mujahideen are the army of Allah." He said: “I am a soldier and this is war.” When asked what his defence to the charge of murder is, Adebolajo said: "I'm a soldier. I'm a soldier of Allah and I understand that some people might not recognise this because we do not wear fatigues and we do not go to the Brecon Beacons and train and this sort of thing. But we are still soldiers in the sight of Allah as a mujahid. "This is all that matters, if Allah considers me a soldier, then I am a soldier."

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 02, 2013 8 Comments
The machete murder of British soldier Lee Rigby on the open street by Islamic terrorists garnered widespread media attention in the U.S. at the time. Leslie wrote about the case last May, My Memorial Day Tribute to Self Defense, and we featured British newspaper front pages: Daily Mirror Cover - Machete Terror Attack The ongoing trial of the murderers, however, has not received much attention in the U.S. media.  Here are some updates from British media.

Posted by David Gerstman on November 28, 2013 9 Comments
The Israeli delegation has just returned from the Philippines after nearly two weeks of providing emergency care to the island nation's survivors of Typhoon Haiyan. According to the Jerusalem Post the first baby delivered by the Israeli medical teams was named "Israel." In fact Israel - the IDF particularly - has been one of the world's great first responders in recent years, helping countries across the globe deal with the results of man made and natural disasters. The IDF has a map on its blog, with links to many of its notable accomplishments. View #IDFWithoutBorders in a larger map Japan, 2011, Earthquake/Tsunami According to the IDF:
The majority of the medical equipment taken to Japan by the IDF, including x-ray machinery and lab equipment, will remain in Japan in order to benefit the physicians and local authorities providing care to the community of Minamisanriku and its vicinity. ...

Posted by New Neo on October 01, 2013 17 Comments

A few days ago I used the term "barbarism" in reference to the Nairobi mall attack. An excellent article by Brendan O'Neill appeared today in the Telegraph making a similar point, and entitled "I'm sorry, but we have to talk about the barbarism of modern...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 25, 2013 18 Comments

As hard as it is to believe, things still are up in the air as to the status of the Nairobi, Kenya Westgate mall attack. Kenyan officials are in "control" of the mall, but not all of the attackers or potential victims are accounted for. Via Hot...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 23, 2013 13 Comments
The attack is over, but the current situation is unclear as to whether there still are hostages. Live Twitter feed at bottom of post. CNN reports:
Night fell Monday in Nairobi with no clear resolution of the standoff between Kenyan forces and terrorists at Westgate Shopping Mall. Kenyan authorities sounded increasingly confident that they had brought the three-day standoff to a close with a final assault Monday, reassuring a nervous public that there was little chance of escape for any surviving Al-Shabaab gunmen who had terrorized the mall, killing at least 62 people. "Taken control of all the floors. We're not here to feed the attackers with pastries but to finish and punish them," Kenyan police Inspector General David Kimaiyo said on Twitter. But it wasn't clear Monday evening whether any hostages remained inside the four-story mall, and authorities had yet to sound the all-clear about six hours after the assault by Kenyan forces.
https://twitter.com/NewsBreaker/status/382201774058115073

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 22, 2013 27 Comments
The hostage standoff at the Nairobi Mall attacked by Somali jihadists still is ongoing. There are conflicting reports as to the involvement of Israeli commandos in trying to free the hostages, with some reports indicating an active role, other reports just an advisory role. At of this writing 59 people are dead.  The jihadists reportedly killed only non-Muslims, asking targets to recite a Muslim prayer as a means of sorting out the victims. We will continue to update throughout the day. The live Twitter feed is at the bottom of the post. https://twitter.com/KenyaRedCross/statuses/381839150460051456 https://twitter.com/FoxNews/status/381914119810461696

Posted by Leslie Eastman on September 12, 2013 17 Comments
For event organizers, the definition of failure is when counter-protesters and police outnumber your intended audience. A good example to total event failure was the "Million Muslim March," which was just a bit shy of its goal...by 999,975 people. And it seems that the event wasn't so much about Islam, but about the theories of 9-11 "Truthers".
Attendance evidently ran into the dozens, although it was hard to pick the demonstrators out from counter-demonstrators and reporters covering the event, who may have outnumbered them. It didn’t help that the event was linked to anti-Semites and 9/11 conspiracy theorist lunatics.
While the Biker's event was less than "2 Million", the turnout for these patriots was much more substantial. Via Twitter and Twitchy, it looks like there were over 75,000 hogs on the roads of the nation's capital today.
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