Poor, poor Africa. Yet another scramble for the continent's resources by Western countries helping to organise violence and advertise it through their media to encourage more bloodshed and disunity.
BANJUL (Reuters) - Gambia's President Yahya Jammeh returned to Banjul on Wednesday and accused dissidents backed by unnamed foreign powers of mounting an attack on the capital the day before.
Earlier on Wednesday, shops and banks reopened a day after gunfire erupted around the presidential palace in an apparent coup attempt led by a former commander of the presidential guard.
In a sign of heightened security, government forces set up three checkpoints on the Denton Bridge into the capital to search people as they headed into work and check identity papers, witnesses said.
The U.S. government and the United Nations both issued statements condemning any attempts to seize power but also warning against any further violence.
Addressing Gambians for the first time since he returned from abroad after the attack, Jammeh dismissed talk of a coup, saying his country had been attacked by dissidents based in the United States, Germany and Britain.
"It was an attack by terrorist groups backed by some foreign powers which I will not name now," he told state television.
Jammeh said weapons seized by security forces had been made in the United States and authorities would release further intelligence gathered from the attackers on Thursday.
The capital was locked down by security forces on Tuesday after gunfire erupted early in the morning. An earlier government statement played down the incident.
Diplomats monitoring the country, one of the most secretive in West Africa, warned of the possibility of a crackdown on those accused of having links to the attack.
"There are fears of reprisals. It is about whether (Jammeh) can be seen to be calm and in control without it getting too bloody," said one Western diplomat.
The diplomat said four attackers were reported killed and four others injured in clashes. Most are believed to be former members of the Gambian military, the diplomat said.
A senior State Department official told Reuters on Wednesday the United States had no role in the coup attempt, after local media and several analysts said some of the assailants were U.S. residents or dual nationals.
Among those named were Lamin Sanneh, a former head of the presidential guard, and a U.S. Army reservist who had U.S.-Gambian nationality.
SECURITY COUNCIL
Following brief talks at the U.N. Security Council, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for a transparent investigation into the events and also urged restraint.
Jammeh's security forces foiled a coup plot in 2006 and Amnesty International said after that incident it feared some of the alleged plotters may have been executed without trial.
Jammeh, 49, took power in a coup 20 years ago and since then has stifled dissent in his impoverished West African nation of 1.9 million. He has faced increasing criticism from abroad over issues ranging from human rights to his claim he can cure AIDS.
This year the European Union withdrew millions of dollars in aid after Jammeh signed into law an act that could imprison homosexuals for life. The U.S. government also recently removed Gambia from AGOA, its African duty-free trade partnership.
In 2012, Jammeh was criticised for suddenly executing nine people being held in prison.
The country attracts tourists, particularly during the northern hemisphere's winter. They include about 60,000 Britons a year. The British foreign office advised its citizens to stay indoors and avoid public gatherings.
Gambia's national territory comprises a splinter of land wedged into Senegal and facing the Atlantic. Senegalese police said on Wednesday Gambia's borders remained open.
(Reporting by David Lewis and Diadie Ba in Dakar, Lesley Wroughton in Washington, Louis Charbonneau in New York; Writing by David Lewis and Matthew Mpoke Bigg; Editing by Giles Elgood)
Counterterrorism officers told Al Jazeera's investigative unit that extrajudicial killings were sanctioned by the Kenyan government, and the chain of command reached all the way to the president's office.
Officers confessed to being behind hundreds of extrajudicial killings a year, targeting what they referred to as "Muslim radicals", and planting evidence to make victims appear like terror suspects.
But speaking to Inside Story, Kenya's Information Minister Fred Matiangi said: "The accusations of the police being involved in the killing of Muslim clerics and so on is just gossip, rumour and innuendo, pedalled by people who have a different kind of agenda."He blamed criminals for carrying out killings in the country, but added that if police were found to be involved they would face "the full force of the law".Al Jazeera was also told Britain and Israel knew of the elimination programmes, and provided training, support and intelligence.
denisfidha: Then revalations that Kenya refused any kind of assistance from UK and US during the westgate mall siege of wich part of the response police team were the GSU recces that are trained in UK only seems to show that the relatioship are not that kind like in the past were britain and US dictate terms before giving any help or aid.
In the past UK and US would stop training of Kenyan soldiers and even selling equipment after they were acused of any human rights violations. But now they provide training and even intelligence and look the otherway and dont ask questions.
According to the paper, the Kenyan authorities were also reluctant to have Britain and France help with attempts to wrest control of the mall from the terrorists.
They instead turned to the Israelis. Israel dispatched advisers from the Israeli Defence Forces who have since been working closely with Kenyan commandos inside the mall, helping plan specific tactical operations.The New York Times said the Israeli advisers did not engage in combat and stayed out of public view.
“American, French and British officials have been left with a more back-seat role from a command centre just down the street from the Westgate Mall, helping the Kenyans with the investigation of the attack and some intelligence matters,” the paper quoted a high-ranking Kenyan official as saying.The UK’s Daily Mail reported that an off-duty member of the Britain’s Special Air Service who was at Westgate at the time of the attack single handedly rescued 100 people.- See more at: http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/article-137194/kenya-turned-down-americas-help-says-new-york-times#sthash.qssWApbB.dpufAnother UK paper revealed thatA crack unit of Israeli commandos was airlifted to Kenya as soon as the Westgate Mall siege began, as Nairobi invoked a secret security pact between the two countries under which Jerusalem guarantees military assistance should the Kenyan government be threatened by a foreign force.
Why would those countries "look the other way"? I agree that something very fishy and political is going on.
It seems Africa's old slave masters are getting more desperate in their quest to get free resources under the cover of social unrest.
In Nigeria, this tactic would be unimaginatively referred to as "boko haram assassinating 'rival clerics'". At least we know these same Western countries are here taking charge of our national security with the same bloody results...or failures, if you like.
It is interesting to note that the same countries training and arming Kenya's police would probably be the same ones training and arming the people they say they are fighting, all for a tidy profit.
Kenyan counter-terrorism police confess to extrajudicial killings
For the first time, members of Kenya’s counter-terrorism police admit to ‘eliminating’ radical Muslims Police eliminations could be “almost 500” Prima facie evidence” to suggest Britain and Israel involved
Speaking exclusively to Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit, officers from four units of Kenya’s counter-terrorism strategy admitted the police assassinate suspects on government orders.
An Anti-Terrorism Police Unit (ATPU) officer said the order comes from Kenya’s National Security Council: “It comprises of the President, Deputy President, Chief of the Defence Forces, Inspector General of Police, National Security Intelligence Service Director, Cabinet Secretary of Interior, and the Principal Secretary Interior. Any decision is made within that club of people.”
President Uhuru Kenyatta and National Security Council members denied running an extrajudicial killing programme.
Police eliminations, according to the ATPU officer, could run into the hundreds every year: “Day in, day out, you hear of eliminating suspects. We have the police itself. We have special units like GSU. So not a total, but you can say about almost 500.”
The officers admitted to personally killing suspects. The General Service Unit (GSU) Recce Company officer said: “Since I was employed, I’ve killed over 50. Definitely, I do become proud because I’ve eliminated some problems.”
The officers said Kenya’s weak judicial system forces them to resort to assassinations, as the police have failed to produce strong enough evidence to prosecute terror suspects, with only one conviction recorded.
“If the law cannot work, there’s another option… Eliminate him,” said the GSU Recce Company officer.
Abubaker Shariff Ahmed was a controversial Muslim radical known as Makaburi. Despite being charged under Kenya’s terrorism laws, he was never convicted.
In April he was gunned down outside a Mombasa court. Human rights groups claim he was one of 21 Muslim radicals allegedly killed by police since 2012.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, the officers confirmed this for the first time.
“Makaburi was killed by the police,” said one officer. “That execution was planned in Nairobi by very top, high-ranking police officers and government officials.”
Al Jazeera exclusively obtained confidential police reports, which purport to show Makaburi had extensive links to Somali militant group al Shabaab and had planned and financed bombings in Kenya.
The officers claim the intelligence, which drives the government’s “elimination programme,” was supplied by Western security agencies.
The GSU Recce Company officer said: “Once they give us the information, they know what they have told us. It is ABCD: ‘Mr. Jack’ is involved in ‘such and such’ a kind of activity. Tomorrow he’s no longer there. We have worked. Definitely the report that you gave us has been ‘worked on’.”
A Kenyan National Police spokesperson refused to comment on the allegations.
According to the officers, Britain provides training, equipment and intelligence to the units,
Israel conducts more specific training, according to a GSU Radiation Unit officer: “We get some instructors from Israel,” he said. “How to eliminate. Actually it’s one of the training.”
Mark Ellis, the head of the International Bar Association, warned the alleged complicity of these countries could violate international law.
Ellis said: “It’s clear based on these interviews that there’s at least prima facie evidence to suggest that these third party countries are involved and therefore they all have responsibility to investigate.
“We should stop providing any type of assistance or training to police units in Kenya until there is a clear change… in how the Kenyan authorities deal with suspects.”
Britain and Israel denied involvement and the UK Foreign Office said it had “raised concerns” with Kenya over the “serious allegations.”
Inside Kenya’s Death Squads premieres on Monday, 8 December 2014 at 2000 GMT / 2200 CAT.
Posted in: News Posted: November 26, 2014 Michael Brown’s Church Burned To The Ground, Pastor Blames White Supremacists
Michael Brown’s church burned to the ground during the first night of the Ferguson riots. The Flood Christian Church pastor blames white supremacists for the fire that destroyed the house of worship. The Missouri church attended regularly by the Mike Brown family is located about three miles from downtown Ferguson, where more than one dozen buildings were leveled by intentional blazes after the Darren Wilson decision was read on Monday evening.
Pastor Carlton Lee said it was not Ferguson decision protesters but white supremacists who likely burned down the Flood Christian Church, where the Michael Brown family attended.
“I’m very vocal in regards to the Michael Brown case,” Pastor Lee told the media, adding that he has received 71 death threats.
The Flood Christian Church is reportedly the only, or one of the few, buildings destroyed by fire after the Ferguson decision. The Ferguson church is located in a “remote” section of Country Club Hills. As previously reported by the Inquisitr, Mike Brown’s stepfather, Louis Head, was captured on video in the moments following the public reading of the Ferguson decision. Lesley McSpadden’s husband shouted, “Burn this b***h down” multiple times in the now viral video.
Reverend Carlton Lee told NBC News that he feels his church was a target for white supremacists because he had repeatedly and publicly called for the arrest of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.
“The police called and told me the church was on fire. I was in complete disbelief. I didn’t think anyone would set a church on fire,” Reverend Lee said. “I feel like one of my children has died. I put my blood, my sweat, my tears into this church – getting the church built from the ground up. To see that is was taken down in a few minutes is really heartbreaking.”
Michael Brown Sr. was “just devastated again” about the burning of the Flood Christian Church, according to Reverend Lee. The Ferguson pastor said that he has known the Brown family for several years since officiating their wedding at his church. Just this past Sunday, Pastor Carlton Lee baptized Michael Brown Sr. his wife, Cal, and their children. The baptism was not performed at the Ferguson church which just burned. The religious ceremony was reportedly planned several months ago, and Michael Brown Jr. was slated to attend.
Reverend Lee says Michael Brown was a “fun loving guy to be around,” and referred to him as a “big jokester.” The Flood Christian Church pastor added, “Sunday, we do the baptism, Monday, the church is on fire. It just doesn’t add up. We rebuild. We do not stop.”
What do you think about the Michael Brown family church being burned to the ground? Was the Flood Christian Church a case of arson by Ferguson decision looters or white supremacists?
So, are Americans now also going to be harassed like Nigerians at airports around the world as well?
Currently the CDC in the US is looking for everyone who was in contact with this patient (live press briefing just finished on TV).
They're telling everyone not to worry, "ebola doesn't spread easily", etc. forgetting how Nigerians and Africans were demonised and portrayed as stupid and contagious for saying the same things.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed on Tuesday the first case of Ebola diagnosed in the United States.
"An individual traveling from Liberia has been diagnosed with Ebola in the United States," Thomas Frieden, director of the CDC, said in a conference call Tuesday afternoon.
State and federal health officials announcing the confirmed case repeatedly stressed the difficulties of contracting Ebola, which can be spread through bodily fluids or infected animals but not through the air or by water.
This person who is infected left Liberia on Sept. 19 and arrived in the U.S. the following day to visit family in this country. The person, who was not identified, had no symptoms at the time and began showing symptoms four days after arriving in the U.S.
"The bottom line here is that I have no doubt that we will control this importation, or this case of Ebola, so that it does not spread widely in this country," he said. "It is certainly possible that someone who had contact with this individual could develop Ebola in the coming weeks. But there is no doubt in my mind that we will stop it here."
This is the first time Ebola has been diagnosed in the U.S. and the first time someone was diagnosed with this particular strain outside of Africa, he said.
The patient with Ebola is being treated in intensive care, according to Edward Goodman, the hospital epidemiologist at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas
Health officials are going to work to identify everyone who may have been exposed to this patient, Frieden said. This group, described as a "handful" of people by Frieden, will be watched for three weeks to see if any symptoms emerge.
Frieden declined to say if the person with Ebola is a U.S. citizen.
"Remember, Ebola does not spread from someone who's not infectious," said Frieden, who has visited the West African region ravaged by Ebola. "It does not spread from someone who does not have a fever or other symptoms."
David Lakey, head of the Texas Department of Health Services, said the state's laboratory in Austin, Tex., was certified last month to do Ebola testing. That laboratory received a blood sample from the patient on Tuesday morning and confirmed it was Ebola shortly after 1 p.m., he said.
The Texas Department of Health Services said that the patient is at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.
(Reuters) - South African police are investigating two Nigerians and an Israeli citizen who tried to bring $9.3 million (5.7 million pounds) in cash into the country illegally, a spokesman said on Monday, in what might have been part of an arms deal.
The South African Revenue Service (SARS) seized the funds at Lanseria airport, northwest of Johannesburg, on Sept. 5. The funds are being held at the central bank as police investigate, SARS spokeswoman Marika Muller said.
"The passengers' luggage was searched after Customs officials detected irregularities. The money was detained as it was undisclosed/undeclared and above the prescribed legal limit," Muller said in a statement.
South Africa's City Press newspaper reported that bundles of unused $100 bills packed in three suitcase were transported in a small business jet from the Nigerian capital, Abuja.
The three passengers said they were using it to buy arms for the Nigerian security services, City Press said.
South African airport security spokesman Solomon Makgale confirmed a police investigation was underway but declined to give details.
South African police are investigating two Nigerians and an Israeli citizen who tried to bring $9.3 million in cash into the country illegally, a spokesman said on Monday.
There were suspicions that the money could be meant for arms. The Nigerians, coming from Abuja, were not identified, according to a report by Reuters.
The plane, a Bombardier Challenger 600, had a Nigerian flight crew on board. It was piloted by Captain Tunde Ojongbede, according to City Press.
Adrian Lackay, spokesperson for the SA Revenue Service (Sars), confirmed that customs officers became suspicious when the passengers’ luggage was unloaded and put through the scanners just after 7pm. The officers then investigated and found three suitcases full of cash. The passengers apparently told officials they were acting on behalf of the Nigerian intelligence service.
They provided documentation confirming they had come to South Africa to buy weapons. It is not clear whether the Israeli passenger was an intelligence operative or an arms dealer.
The National Conventional Arms Control Committee, which has to approve the import and export of any weapons as well as issue permits for such transactions, was not aware of any applications in this case.
The South African Revenue Service (SARS) seized the funds at Lanseria airport, northwest of Johannesburg, on Sept. 5. The funds are being held at the central bank as police investigate, SARS spokeswoman Marika Muller said.
“The passengers’ luggage was searched after Customs officials detected irregularities. The money was detained as it was undisclosed/undeclared and above the prescribed legal limit,” Muller said in a statement.
South Africa’s City Press newspaper reported that bundles of unused $100 bills were packed in three suitcases.
The three passengers said they were using it to buy arms for the Nigerian security services, City Press said.
South African airport security spokesman Solomon Makgale confirmed a police investigation was underway but declined to give details.
The aircraft was temporarily impounded, but was allowed to return to Abuja on Monday morning.
According to unconfirmed reports, one of the passengers was arrested.
Further investigation revealed that the aircraft used to belong to the American healthcare company Kimberly-Clark. But company spokesperson Bob Brand said the firm had sold the plane years ago, and denied that it had anything to do with the incident.
According to the US Federal Aviation Administration aeroplane register, the Challenger, with the registration number N808HG, was reregistered in the name of Bank of Utah Trustee last year. The address in the register was given as Salt Lake City, US.
Aviation industry insiders claim similar “owners” have previously been involved in several controversial aircraft financing transactions for aircraft in Africa.
City Press has also established that the aircraft is used by an entity called Swat Inc in Abuja, but no details of such a company could be found.
Another plane used by Swat Inc, a Hawker Siddeley 125, also with an American registration number (N497AG), landed at Lanseria Airport last month. That plane and its passengers remained in the country for two days before returning to Abuja on August 13.
DAKAR (Reuters) - One of three African doctors infected with Ebola and treated with the experimental drug ZMapp has died in Monrovia, Liberian Information Minister Lewis Brown said on Monday.
Liberia, the West African country where Ebola is spreading fastest, received three doses of the rare treatment on August 13.
Initially, Liberia said the three doctors, Zukunis Ireland and Abraham Borbor from Liberia and Dr. Aroh Cosmos Izchukwu from Nigeria, were responding well to the treatment, raising optimism about the experimental therapy.
Asked to confirm the death of doctor Borbor, Brown said: "That is correct. He died yesterday."
Two U.S. aid workers who caught Ebola in Liberia were declared free of the virus and released from an Atlanta hospital last week after receiving the same treatment.
But a Spanish priest who received ZMapp died.
The drug's U.S.-based manufacturer, Mapp Biopharmaceutical, says limited supplies have already been exhausted and producing more will take time. There are other drugs in the pipeline but all are unproven and have yet to clear even the earliest stage of clinical trials.
The hemorrhagic fever has killed at least 1,427 people in the deadliest outbreak of the disease to date. In the week through to August 22, 297 new suspected, probable and confirmed cases of Ebola were reported in Liberia - the largest number of weekly cases since the epidemic began in March, according to a United Nations Children's Fund report.
Ebola can kill up to 90 percent of those infected though the fatality rate in the current epidemic is around 60 percent.
Sooner or later the Chinese will join in as well. The good news will be cheaper drug alternatives. The bad news will be Africans used as guinea pigs, treatment developed from local remedies Africans use and consume everyday but won't research, these remedies taken abroad to be repackaged and sold back to Africans at a tidy profit.
A team of Russian virologists, epidemiologists and bacteriologists is leaving for Africa to organize laboratory diagnosis of the Ebola virus in Guinea, where the outbreak of the deadly fever is spreading fast.
Russia’s consumer watchdog Rospotrbnadzor is dispatching a mobile laboratory to Guinea to help contain the Ebola hemorrhagic fever virus in response to a direct request from Guinea’s government.
The cargo jet to Guinea’s capital Conakry leaves from Moscow’s Ramenskoye airfield on Thursday evening. The team includes several dozen Russian epidemiologists, virologists and bacteriologists from medical centers in Novosibirsk and Saratov.
They will arrive in Guinea in about a week to operate the mobile laboratory, Aleksandr Semyonov, lab chief at the Pasteur Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology in Saint-Petersburg, told the RIA news agency.
“We’ve agreed with Guinea authorities that our experts will launch a field laboratory to help with in vitro diagnostics to fight Ebola fever,” Semyonov said, specifying that the installation will operate in a tent camp specially equipped with KAMAZ trucks.
Russia already has a vaccine against Ebola that has proved to be successful, Semyonov revealed.
“We’ll see what will happen next,” he added.
The latest Ebola epidemic has already claimed 1,229 lives, and 2,240 infected people remain quarantined in hospitals throughout Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra-Leone.
There is no internationally recognized vaccine against Ebola fever, although pharmaceutical companies from Canada, Japan and the US have announced development of potential vaccines.Russia’s Vector State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology based in Koltsovo, in the Novosibirsk region, developed Reaferon-Lipint several years ago.
This vaccine proved effective in dealing with Ebola virus during laboratory tests.
Now it is hoped it can be brought to Guinea to save the lives of those infected with the deadly virus.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization does not expect a reliable vaccine against Ebola fever to be developed before 2015.
Russian researches and their counterparts abroad hope to finalize work on a vaccine for the so far incurable Ebola virus shortly, Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets said Thursday.
She said a team of representatives of Russia’s sanitary and consumer rights supervision agency, Rospotrebnadzor, and the nation’s best virologists were leaving for Guinea Thursday “to join scientists from other countries who are developing a new preparation, which will help curb the new disease that has, unfortunately, been identified.
”She said that Rospotrebnadzor is opening a mobile epidemiological laboratory in Guinea.Golodets recalled that Russian virologists, including experts from the St Petersburg-based Pasteur Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, visited Guinea in mid-August.
They did there a preliminary assessment of the situation with the Ebola epidemic outbreak that has carried away more than 1,000 human lives and has left 1,848 people infected.
Golodets said along with it the specialists’ lives were not in danger.“We’re sending the top-rate professionals there,” she said. “All of them work with the most dangerous viruses. This is their profession and they realize the degree of their responsibility only too well and they’ll surely take all the precautions.”
As Golodets mentioned a possibility of the epidemic getting into Russia, she said this was scarcely in the cards - the epidemiological situation was stable and the authorities had taken all the preventive measures that were mandatory in this situation.
She said, among other things, control had been tightened over the passengers arriving from Africa.
“We’ve issued notifications to all the universities that have African students from the countries where cases of Ebola have been registered,” Golodets said. “We’re confident that a reliable system of control over the (epidemiological) situation in this country has been established and we trust its reliability.”
The cancellations of flights to the destinations stricken by the Ebola epidemic was off the agenda for the time being and the “troubleshooting” was still restricted to tighter control and supervision, as well as to assistance to the people manifesting possible symptoms of the disease, like high temperature.
Golodets said proper instructions had been issued to the personnel of airlines and particularly to cabin crews, who had been told to take steps proceeding from each specific case if passengers with Ebola virus symptoms were identified.
Bearing in mind this incident was supposed to include a convoy of vehicles travelling from a region of Nigeria under a strict state of emergency, full of military checkpoints...
Are the Chadians using better weapons than the Nigerian army as well? Boko haram guys were scared of Chadian forces and 'escaped via speed boats'??
Why didn't they put up their usual fight with powerful weapons? This is similar to their disastrous defeats at the hands of local Nigerian hunters and vigilantes.
Reports are emerging of the rescue by Chadian troops of some 85 Nigerian villagers abducted earlier this week by suspected Boko Haram militants.
A Nigerian security official told AFP that they had intercepted a convoy of buses transporting gunmen and the villagers in a routine security check.
Neither the Nigerian or Chadian militaries have confirmed the reports.
Boko Haram is accused of kidnapping hundreds of people in the north-east of Nigeria, and neighbouring Cameroon...
..."The convoy being led by six Boko Haram gunmen was stopped on the Chadian part of the border along Lake Chad for routine checks and the huge number of people in the convoy raised suspicion," the unnamed official said.
The six suspects were giving conflicting information on the hostages and their destination, he added.
Another official with the National Human Rights Commission in Maiduguri, capital of Borno state, said some militants had escaped on speedboats when they saw the convoy being stopped.
He said the rescued villagers, totalling 65 men and 22 women, were still in Chadian custody but that 30 people were still being held by the militants.
News of the raid on Doron Bag took days to emerge, due to the remote region's poor communication links...
Missouri Governor Declares State of Emergency in Ferguson and Orders Nightly Curfew After a week of unrest following the fatal shooting of a black teenager by a police officer, Gov. Jay Nixon of Missouri on Saturday declared a state of emergency in Ferguson and ordered a curfew.
“We will not allow a handful of looters to endanger the rest of this community,” Governor Nixon said at a news conference in Ferguson. “If we’re going to achieve justice, we must first have and maintain peace.”
Capt. Ronald S. Johnson, the state Highway Patrol commander whose officers have overseen public security in Ferguson since Thursday, said that the curfew would begin Saturday and would run from midnight to 5 a.m. He did not say how long the curfew would last.
The announcement of a curfew prompted cries of protests from some members of the public who attended the news conference. But Captain Johnson said the curfew would be put in place and enforced.
A 91-year-old Dutch man honoured by Israel for shielding a Jew from the Nazis has handed back his medal after six of his relatives were killed in a Gaza air strike.
Henk Zanoli returned his Righteous Among the Nations award to the Israeli ambassador in The Hague this week after an Israeli F-16 destroyed his great niece's Gaza home, killing all inside.
"It is with great sorrow that I am herewith returning the medal I received as an honour and a token of appreciation from the State of Israel for the efforts and risks taken by my mother and her family in saving the life of a Jewish boy during the German occupation," Zanoli said in a letter dated Monday.
According to Zanoli's letter addressed to the Israeli ambassador, the bomb dropped by the Israeli military on July 20 during its massive Gaza offensive, flattened a four-storey building at the Bureij Refugee Camp, killing all inside.
"The great-great grandchildren of my mother have lost their grandmother, three uncles, an aunt and a cousin at the hands of the Israeli military," Zanoli said in the letter, published by liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz and widely circulated in the Dutch media.
"It is particularly shocking and tragic that today, four generations on, our family is faced with the murder of our kin in Gaza. Murder carried out by the State of Israel," Zanoli said.
The Israeli Embassy in The Hague on Friday confirmed it was "familiar with the issue," but declined to comment or give details.
The nonagenarian was too frail to deliver the letter in person, but instead sent it, with the medal, to the Israeli embassy in The Hague -- the same place he received the accolade three years ago.
"For me to hold on to the honour granted by the State of Israel, under these circumstances, will be both an insult to the memory of my courageous mother who risked her life and that of her children fighting against suppression and for the preservation of human life as well as an insult to those in my family, four generations on."
Zanoli's family were outspoken opponents of the invading Nazis and his father was murdered in Mauthausen concentration camp. Zanoli's own brother-in-law was executed in the dunes outside The Hague for being in the Dutch Resistance.
The Righteous Among the Nations is an honour accorded by Israel to non-Jews who risked their lives to protect and save Jews during the Holocaust.
Almost 2,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed in Israel's withering offensive on the isolated Gaza Strip, aimed at ending militant rocket fire.
"The actions of your state in Gaza these days have already resulted in serious accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity," wrote Zanoli.
"As a retired lawyer, it would be no surprise to me that these accusations could lead to possible convictions if true and unpoliticized justice is able to have its course.
"What happened to our kin in Gaza will no doubt be brought to the table at such a time as well."
"After the horror of the Holocaust my family strongly supported the Jewish people also with regard to their aspirations to build a national home", wrote Mr Zanoli.
"Over more than six decades I have however slowly come to realize that the Zionist project had from its beginning a racist element in it in aspiring to build a state exclusively for Jews.
On Sunday July 20 an Israeli fighter jet dropped a bomb on the family home of Ismail Ziadah, the husband of Mr Zanoli's great-neice. According to Haaretz the strike killed the family matriarch, Muftiyah, 70, three of her sons, Jamil, Omar and Youssef, Jamil's wife, Bayan and their 12-year-old son, Shaaban.
"The great- great grandchildren of my mother have lost their grandmother, three uncles, an aunt and a cousin at the hands of the Israeli army", added Mr Zanoli.
MAIDUGURI, 11 August 2014 (IRIN) - Young men with machetes manning road blocks is usually a bad sign. In Nigeria’s northeastern city of Maiduguri, for years tormented by the Boko Haram insurgency, it actually signifies progress.
Rather than the military’s Joint Task Force (JTF), it is these volunteer vigilantes dubbed “Civilian JTF” that are largely credited with pacifying the city over the past year. Whereas the often blundering and brutal JTF regarded everyone in Maiduguri as a potential Salafist, the community-rooted volunteers - officially the Borno Youth Association for Peace and Justice -actually know who Boko Haram members are. They are the eyes and ears of the security forces watching for infiltration and, though the best of their weapons are antique single-shot “Dane” guns, or the odd shotgun, they are often the first responders to trouble.
“Before, the community was afraid. If you opened your mouth against Boko Haram, that night they would kill you. But Borno State youth are tired of it,” Civilian JTF secretary and second-in-command, Abba Tijjani Sadiq, told IRIN. “God lifted us up. No matter you come with a gun, we will pursue you. For now there are no Boko Haram in Maiduguri.”
Borno was the birthplace of Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati wal-Jihad (People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet's Teachings and Jihad), better known as Boko Haram. It was founded in 2002 by cleric Mohamed Yusuf and grew into a popular grassroots movement based on its strict adherence to conservative Islamic values and rejection of the political corruption and venality that has come to epitomize Nigeria. The execution of Yusuf and a number of his lieutenants in 2009 while in police custody won Boko Haram sympathy, but that popularity has soured as the death toll has soared in the shootings and bombings by the militants of their perceived enemies - the majority of them Muslims. The supposed support from the community was one reason the JTF meted out such indiscriminate punishment.
“The army took us as the enemy and vice-versa. We didn’t see them as here to protect us,” explained school headmaster Suleiman Aliyu. “[If there was a Boko Haram attack] they don’t come on time, they arrest whoever they see, or open fire, or burn shops and houses in revenge… The boys [Boko Haram] used to come and hide among us in the community. But later on we saw that couldn’t work. You hide them, then later on they can come into your house and kill your father. People were pressed to the wall, we needed to stand, to protect ourselves.”
He sees Borno’s insecurity as “a failure of government and ourselves” and celebrates the new-found “spirit of self-sufficiency” animating the civilian JTF. What began in just one of the city’s 14 wards in June last year has snowballed. “Everybody is a civilian JTF. Whenever we hear gunshots we pick up our axes and cutlasses [machetes] and go and see what’s wrong.”...
...The civilian JTF is stood up in all of Borno’s 27 Local Government Areas, but it is in the more remote border regions where Boko Haram is strongest, and the communities most at risk. Nevertheless it was over Maiduguri that a propaganda battle was waged at the end of July. Boko Haram boasted it would celebrate Eid el Fitr (the end of Ramadan) in the city’s prayer grounds. “We said, ‘No way’,” Sadiq recounted, and a huge security operation, including a movement ban on all vehicles, made for a subdued but safe holiday period...
...The civilian JTF claim they have 45,000 members, led by local businessmen and former civil servants like Sadiq. Their ranks reflect the spectrum of Maiduguri society, from Christians to the unemployed, to former Boko Haram. Aside from parade ground drilling, the state government has also introduced civics lessons for the young men, previously noted for their eagerness to lynch suspects. “We know we can’t take the law into our own hands,” said Sadiq. “Now we take [suspects] to the barracks, and the army kills them,” he grinned... ...Money has been an effective recruiting tool for Boko Haram. “Someone can come and give you a gun and [US$30] to kill someone. You don’t have anything in your pocket, you are easily recruited,” said Sadiq.
“It’s all about poverty”, and Borno is even worse off now as a result of the insurgency, which has shuttered businesses, driven up prices and closed the borders with Cameroon, Niger and Chad, squeezing the crucial livestock trade.
And then there are Nigeria’s upcoming elections in 2015.
Polls are always a violent affair, but this is a particularly tense ballot, with Jonathan facing extreme antipathy in the north. There is the possibility that his interests and Boko Haram’s may bizarrely coincide with the cancellation of voting in the most insecure areas of the region.
As elsewhere in the world, young men will be hired by the politicians as thugs and enforcers - and deals will be struck with vote influencers. It is a danger that Sadiq is aware of.
“When you bring politics into this, it will bring problems for us. The root of Boko Haram is politics,” he said, a reference to an agreement struck with former state governor Ali Modu Sheriff to introduce Shariah law in exchange for Yusuf’s political support, which went horribly wrong...
Riot police deployed smoke bombs and tear gas in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri tonight after crowds reportedly threw Molotov cocktails and rocks at police.Earlier in the day, reporters from the Huffington Post and Washington Post were arrested by police.
FERGUSON, Mo. -- Two reporters covering the shooting of an unarmed black teen by a white police officer in a St. Louis suburb say they were arrested at a McDonald's Wednesday evening in the commercial corridor where angry protests have occurred.
Wesley Lowery of The Washington Post and Ryan Reilly of The Huffington Post say they were working in the fast-food restaurant when SWAT officers came in to quickly clear the area. Both quickly tweeted about their arrests, detention and subsequent release without any charges.
Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson did not immediately return a cellphone message from The Associated Press seeking comment.
Earlier Wednesday, authorities urged people to confine their protests to daylight after three nights of tense confrontations, looting, tear gas and a second shooting nearby.
I saw the news of the guy that was gunned down by the police but didn't know it would get to this. But is that guy actually stealing something from the store? This reminds me of the great London riots some years back.
Yes, I remember the England riots. They tried to keep as quiet as possible in the international news as well.
Less than three hours after Robin Williams’ death was reported, President Barack Obama issued a warm tribute to the beloved actor. “Robin Williams was an airman, a doctor, a genie, a nanny, a president, a professor, a bangarang Peter Pan, and everything in between,” Obama’s statement read.
The sentiment may have comforted millions of fans in shock over the 63-year-old actor’s apparent suicide, but for many of those mourning the death of Mike Brown -- the black teenager who was gunned down by police in suburban St. Louis on Saturday -- Obama’s words added insult to injury.
For the last two days, Brown’s supporters have been calling on the president to issue a statement condemning the 18-year-old’s killing, which sparked a wave of unrest and looting in Ferguson, Missouri, on Sunday, amid a social media campaign calling for justice. Brown, a recent high school graduate, was scheduled to begin college on Monday.
Although many details surrounding his death are still unknown, police confirmed that he was unarmed when he was shot and killed during an altercation on the streets of Ferguson.
Brown’s killing followed two other recent incidents of African-American men being killed by police. On Sunday, Brown supporters launched a White Housepetition calling on Obama to issue a statement on all three killings and demand congressional action.
Late Monday afternoon, when the president made brief remarks about new developments in Iraq, some had hoped he would take the time to weigh in on Brown’s death. But the president did not veer from the topic at hand. For many Twitter users, Obama’s quickly issued statement on Williams’ death on Monday made his continued silence on Brown that much more frustrating.
Updated Tuesday, 4:50 p.m.: The White House issued the following statement on the shooting death of Mike Brown: “The death of Michael Brown is heartbreaking, and Michelle and I send our deepest condolences to his family and his community at this very difficult time. As Attorney General Holder has indicated, the Department of Justice is investigating the situation along with local officials, and they will continue to direct resources to the case as needed. I know the events of the past few days have prompted strong passions, but as details unfold, I urge everyone in Ferguson, Missouri, and across the country, to remember this young man through reflection and understanding. We should comfort each other and talk with one another in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds. Along with our prayers, that’s what Michael and his family, and our broader American community, deserve.”
An American town is ablaze after a police shooting of an unarmed black teenager in Missouri sparked fury in the community, with reports of looting and riots emerging following a candlelit vigil. Michael Brown, 18, was shot multiple times by police in the town of Ferguson after a confrontation.
It's seems that another side-effect of the ebola virus infection is that it cause foreign media groups to forget where exactly Nigeria is.
There was a recent uproar over CNN's blunder. Now the BBC has also become infected with its online report on ebola on Nigeria on August 8, 2014, depicting an image of someone holding an information leaflet in French and then the picture caption claiming it was a health official in Abidjan, Nigeria.
Hmm, this meeting was held as a result of 5 similar meetings with Africans organised by the Chinese. The only difference being, unlike the Chinese leader, how many of these African countries has the American president actually ever visited?
Sheikh Dahiru Usman Bauchi, renown Islamic Scholar who last week survived a suicide attack on his motorcade in Kaduna, has advised President Jonathan to take steps to stop “some desperate politicians” who want to use religion to win 2015 election at all costs.
Sheikh Dahiru gave the advice in a special audio message emailed to newsmen from Mecca where he usually travels to at the end of every Ramadan fast.
The Sheikh said there are diehards among both Muslims and Christians who are desperate to ensure that their own man wins the election.
Sheikh Dahiru said he and followers of Tijjaniyya sect have no personal enemies even though they have doctrinal differences with the Izala sect. He said a faction of the Izala led by Sheikh Bala Lau is peaceful and peace loving and don’t throw bombs around. But he said the other faction cannot be trusted and they are the ones that want to make sure a Muslim emerges as President in 2015.
He also said the diehards among the Christians are the ones throwing bombs and killing Muslims in Borno, Yobe, Adamawa, Taraba and other places. He added that their aim is to weaken Muslims in order to get easy ride for someone from their faith to win the 2015 general election.
He said President Jonathan knows these desperate Christians.
“Jonathan should watch them; halt their activities if he wants Nigeria to live in peace and harmony,” he said.
“We will seek for God’s intervention over their evil intention so that our country will live in peace.”
Sheikh Dahiru commended the cordial relationship existing between Christians like General Gowon, Barrister Solomon Dalung and Reverend Yohanna and their followers with Muslims, and prayed for peace and stability in the country.
Politics › Gambia - Coup Attempt By Insurgents From US, Germany & UK by abdnMe(op): 1:07pm On Jan 02, 2015
