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Freed Lebanese soldiers return home

BEIRUT (AP) — Al-Qaida's affiliate in Syria released more than a dozen Lebanese soldiers and police it has held for more than a year on Tuesday as part of a Qatar-brokered deal in which Lebanon freed at least 11 prisoners, including a former wife of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The release caps Lebanon's lengthy ordeal over the fate of its soldiers while also providing the al-Qaida branch, known as the Nusra Front, with new leverage as a group that can be negotiated with.

"My happiness is beyond description," said a Lebanese policeman, one of the 16 released on Tuesday, shortly after he was brought to the point where the exchange took place in the eastern town of Arsal, near the Syrian border.

Families and friends of the abducted soldiers and policemen, who have held a months-long sit-in in downtown Beirut, broke into a dance and cheered as news of the release reached them. Families were showered with rose petals and friends passed around sweets to the media and visitors who showed up to offer congratulations.

Earlier in the day, masked Nusra Front fighters brought the captive troops in three pickup trucks to a meeting point on the edge of Arsal to be handed over to Lebanese authorities, who were waiting along with Red Cross vehicles and the 11 prisoners who were part of the exchange.

Militants waving black al-Qaida flags fanned out across the area, with several taking positions on the roof of a building overlooking the location. The deal went ahead after trucks carrying humanitarian aid entered Arsal as part of the deal.

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A Lebanese policeman who was captured by the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front in Arsal, gets greeted as h …

Later Tuesday, Qatar's Foreign Ministry acknowledged that it had brokered the deal, saying it had received requests from the Lebanese government to negotiate.

The Gulf nation, a strong supporter of insurgents fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad, relishes its role as a regional mediator and maintains channels to a broad range of parties, including Islamic militant groups like the Afghan Taliban.

"Qatar pressured Nusra Front to end this crisis in order to introduce the Nusra Front as a group that negotiates. This is linked to the Vienna talks," said Radwan Mortada, an expert on jihadi groups who writes for Lebanon's Al-Akhbar daily newspaper.

Murtada was referring to a peace plan agreed to last month by 17 nations meeting in Vienna that sets a Jan. 1 deadline for the start of negotiations between Assad's government and opposition groups.

The Nusra Front is not expected to take part in the talks as it is considered a terrorist organization by most countries, including the United States and Russia.

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Families of soldiers and policemen who were kidnapped by militants from the Islamic State group and …

Syria's main Western-backed opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, has called on the Nusra Front to disassociate itself from the global network founded by Osama bin Laden. Nusra Front, one of the most powerful factions in the country, has so far refused to cuts its links with al-Qaida or abandon its jihadi ideology.

Several previous attempts to secure a deal with the Nusra Front to release the captives had ended in failure. Frustrated relatives held protests, often blocking main roads with their bodies, to no avail.

Pan-Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera, along with the Lebanese local MTV station, broadcast the troops' release. The captives were seen sporting beards but appeared to be in good health.

A few hours later, the troops arrived at the government headquarters in Beirut, clean-shaven and wearing their military uniforms. They were received by top officials, including Prime Minister Tammam Salam, and were reunited with their families.

Suleiman Dirani, one of those held captive, thanked "our brothers" from the Nusra Front for what he said was good treatment. "We are leaving here as we came, we are all in good health," he said.

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A woman whose son was among policemen who were kidnapped by militants from the Islamic State group a …

At least 11 prisoners in Lebanese jails, including five women, were released as part of the deal, according to a senior Lebanese security official.

The group included Saja al-Dulaimi, the 26-year-old former wife of the leader of the Islamic State group, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. Al-Dulaimi was detained in Lebanon last year after she crossed into the country illegally with her current husband using forged identity cards.

Al-Jazeera said 13 prisoners were handed over to Nusra Front. It was not immediately clear whether that number included two prisoners held by the Syrian government. Local media had reported that the deal may include prisoners held in Syria.

Al-Dulaimi, who appeared in Lebanese court for a hearing last month, was seen along with her four children at the meeting point Tuesday.

"They say that I was the wife of al-Baghdadi. I don't know, we have been divorced for six or seven years," she told Al-Jazeera upon her arrival.

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Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front fighters carry their weapons on the back of a pick-up truck during the r …

Asked what she plans to do after her release, al-Dulaimi, who had her face veiled, said she wanted to go live in Turkey.

She spoke from inside an SUV, holding in her arms her four-month-old son Youssef, who was born while she was in jail. Al-Baghdadi's daughter, seven-year-old Hajar, was also in the car.

The Nusra Front and the Islamic State group abducted 29 soldiers and policemen in Arsal last year when they briefly overran the town. Four have been killed in captivity while the Islamic State group has refused to negotiate over the nine captives it holds.

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Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.

CHICAGO (AP) — Rahm Emanuel sought for months to keep the public from seeing a video that shows a white police officer shooting a black teenager 16 times.

Now, a week after the video's release, the Chicago mayor has fired the police superintendent, created a task force for police accountability and expanded the use of body cameras.

But Emanuel's effort to keep the video secret and his long wait to take action at the police department has stirred deep skepticism among those protesting the teen's death. Many activists are especially incensed by the fact that the video first surfaced during a re-election campaign, when the mayor was seeking African-American votes.

"In our community, everyone is saying it (the video) was not released because of the election," said Corey Brooks, a prominent black minister.

The mayor's quest for a second term sustained a setback after he failed to win the February election. He desperately needed black support to prevail in an April runoff.

But Emanuel had angered black voters with his decision to close dozens of schools. And many African-Americans complained that the city was not doing enough to police the predominantly black West and South Sides.

Had it emerged earlier, the video "could have buried" Emanuel's chances for re-election, Columbia Law School professor Bernard E. Harcourt wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece published Monday.

Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy FiredPlay video

The mayor defended the decision to withhold the video from the public until the investigation was finished and the officer charged with murder. He said the move had nothing to do with his 2015 campaign.

"You don't compromise an ongoing investigation," he said Tuesday. "Yet it's clear you all want and the public deserves that information. They're two conflicting principles."

Asked by a reporter if Emanuel thought he would become a distraction himself and would consider resigning, the mayor responded, "You'll make that judgment. I think I'm doing my job."

Emanuel announced the dismissal of Superintendent Garry McCarthy, whose departure on Tuesday came just a week after the video was released.

The mayor praised McCarthy's leadership but called it an "undeniable fact" that the public's trust in the police had eroded.

"Now is the time for fresh eyes and new leadership," Emanuel said.

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Demonstrators protest the shooting of Laquan McDonald along the Magnificent Mile November 27, 2015 i …

Protesters have been calling for McCarthy's dismissal in response to the handling of the death of Laquan McDonald, a 17-year-old who was killed in October 2014.

Some aldermen, particularly members of the city council's black caucus, have also been seeking McCarthy's resignation, citing the city's crime rate and questions about the department's transparency.

The city released video of the shooting only after a judge ordered it to be made public. On the same day, officer Jason Van Dyke was charged.

The mayor also announced the creation of a task force on police accountability that will help develop an early warning system allowing the department to intervene with problem officers racking up complaints from the public.

Van Dyke was the subject of 18 civilian complaints over 14 years, including allegations that he used racial epithets and excessive force. Complaints against police are not uncommon, but the number filed against Van Dyke was high compared with other officers.

Emanuel's office announced Sunday that the police department would expand its use of officer body cameras from a single district to roughly a third of Chicago.

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In this Nov. 24, 2015 file photo, Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, right, speaks about …

Chief of Detectives John Escalante will oversee the department until a permanent replacement is named, Emanuel said.

Emanuel introduced McCarthy as his pick to lead the department in May 2011, replacing former FBI agent Jody Weis, who was unpopular with many rank-and-file officers who claimed Weis did not stand behind them.

The mayor credited McCarthy with modernizing the police force, getting illegal guns off the streets and pushing a community policing strategy that the mayor said had reduced overall crime rates to a record low.

In particular, McCarthy was a constant preacher on the need for tougher punishments for gun offenses. He hammered on the fact that many murder suspects had prior gun convictions, which McCarthy argued should have kept them off the streets.

But the police chief came under pressure because of homicides that included high-profile cases such as the slaying of Hadiya Pendleton.

Pendleton, an honor student, became a national symbol of gun violence when she was gunned down in 2013 as she talked with friends just a mile from President Barack Obama's South Side home. She died just days after returning from the president's inauguration.

Through a spokesman, McCarthy declined to comment Tuesday to The Associated Press.

The silent Chicago video shows McDonald walking down the middle of a four-lane street. He appears to veer away from two officers as they emerge from a vehicle, drawing their guns. Van Dyke opens fire from close range and continues firing after McDonald crumples to the ground.

Police have said McDonald was carrying a knife, and an autopsy revealed that he had the hallucinogenic drug PCP in his system. Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez has said the 3-inch blade recovered from the scene had been folded into the handle.

Defense attorney Dan Herbert has said the officer feared for his life, acted lawfully and that the video does not tell the whole story. Van Dyke was released from jail Monday after paying the required $150,000 of his $1.5 million bail.

Also Tuesday, relatives of another person fatally shot last year by Chicago police stepped up their pleas to have the squad car video made public. Emanuel spokeswoman Kelley Quinn said the city was "looking into" releasing it.

Police have said 25-year-old Ronald Johnson III was fatally shot by an officer on Oct. 12, 2014. At the time, authorities said he pointed a gun at police.

His mother, Dorothy Holmes, has said he was running away from officers. She and attorney Michael Oppenheimer have seen a copy of the video because of lawsuits they have filed.

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Associated Press writers Caryn Rousseau, Jason Keyser and Sophia Tareen contributed to this report.

A week after Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet near the Syria border, President Obama continued his effort to refocus the battle against the Islamic State, while deescalating tensions between Russia and Turkey.

Speaking at a news conference in Paris today, Obama said he is “confident” the United States and its allies will “continue building momentum” to defeat ISIS.

“I am confident that we can continue building momentum and adding resources to our effort to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL,” the president said, using the government’s acronym for ISIS, or the Islamic State.

The United States and its allies are also working to disrupt terror plots and to promote a political solution in Syria, he added.

The president lauded the French people for hosting a major international climate conference this week, calling it a “remarkable display of resolve” two weeks after the terror attacks that rocked Paris and left 130 people dead.

“The first place I visited when I arrived on Sunday night was the Bataclan so that I could pay my respects on behalf of the American people who share the French people’s resolve,” he said of the theater that terrorists attacked Nov. 13. “It was a powerful reminder of the awful human toll of those attacks.”

Leaders from around the globe set upon Paris for the highly publicized summit. But while they may have preferred to discuss carbon emissions, global terrorism dominated the headlines coming from Paris.

Obama held a bilateral meeting earlier today with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, urging the Turkish leader to "deescalate tensions" between Turkey and Russia.

“I want to be very clear: Turkey is a NATO ally. Along with our allies, the United States supports Turkey's right to defend itself, and its airspace and its territory, and we're very much committed to Turkey's security and its sovereignty,” Obama said after the meeting.

“We all have a common enemy and that is ISIL and I want to make sure that we focus on that threat and I want to make sure that we remain focused on the need to bring about some sort of political resolution in Syria."

Erdogan said Turkey is “willing to resort to diplomatic language” to resolve the tension between his country and Russia.

“We don’t want to invest in tensions. We want to avoid the tensions. We don’t want to get hurt and we don’t want no one to get hurt,” Erdogan said. “We want peace to prevail at all times and we want the peace which will prevail.”

The meeting came one day after Obama met with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Obama said "it is possible" Putin could shift Russia’s Syria strategy in the next few months – but predicted he won’t make a 180-degree turn on their strategy over the next several weeks, particularly until Russia recognizes the threat that ISIL poses to its country.

“They have invested for years now in keeping Assad in power," Obama said. "Their presence there is predicated on propping him up and so that’s going to take some time for them to change how they think about the issue.”

Observing that the Russians have been involved in Syria for “several weeks, over a month,” the president said the situation on the ground there "hasn’t changed significantly.”

The president repeated his belief that “there is not going to be a military resolution to the situation in Syria" and predicted Putin is not looking for an outcome in Syria where he would “simply get bogged down in an inconclusive and paralyzing civil conflict.”

Prior to the incident, Moscow ignored calls by Ankara to put an "immediate end" to its airstrikes on Turkmen rebel brigades operating along the border.

The tension culminated in Turkey's decision to down the Su-24 fighter jet, which had been bombing units of Liwa Jabal al-Turkman — an ethnic Turkish group backed by Turkey — at the time it was downed.

Russia insisted the plane had been bombing "terrorists" in the area.

Burned by the incident, Russia deployed an advanced S-400 surface-to-air missile system to the coastal province of Latakia and ordered that all Russian Su-24s be equipped with air-to-air missiles. Russian warplanes have continued pounding Turkmen rebels — the Turkish aid convoys along the border that supply them — with airstrikes.

These provocative moves are evidently meant as a message to deter Turkish jets from shooting down Russian planes in the future. But Russia has financial and geopolitical interests in keeping its retaliation asymmetrical — specifically, by bombing Turkish-backed rebel groups in Syria while refraining from engaging with Turkey in a military confrontation directly.

Researchers at the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University investigated the presence of American ISIS supporters on social media and found that "ISIS-related mobilization in the United States has been unprecedented."

US authorities are reportedly aware of 250 Americans who have attempted to travel to Islamic State territory — some successfully, others not — in Syria and Iraq. And there are 900 active investigations against ISIS supporters in all 50 states, according to the report.

Most ISIS sympathizers the center found are young — the average age is 26 — and 86% are male. More than half attempted to travel abroad, and 27% were involved in plots to carry out attacks in the US. Many were American-born and had no prior history of radical views.

Though much radicalization occurs online, the center also found evidence of face-to-face meetings of groups of like-minded people. About 40% of people studied were converts to Islam.

One person profiled in the report, a teenager named Nader Saadeh, lived in New Jersey and had a hand in radicalizing Munther Omar Saleh, another teenager from Queens, New York. He then pulled three others into his orbit, including his older brother, and the group started sharing ISIS propaganda.

The group planned to join ISIS until Saadeh was arrested by Jordanian authorities after traveling to Amman. The FBI arrested the remaining four of Saadeh's associates in the New York area.

There are also "keyboard warriors" who disseminate ISIS propaganda on Twitter and other social-media platforms while still living in the US.

The report provides examples of the content on some of these accounts:

(Center for Cyber and Homeland Security)

Making the fight against ISIS even more difficult for American authorities is the fact that ISIS sympathizers in the US don't have a common profile.

"Ranging from grown men who had flirted with jihadist militancy for over a decade to teenagers who have only recently converted to Islam, from the son of a Boston area police officer to a single mother of two young children, these individuals differ widely in race, age, social class, education, and family background," the report said. "Individuals with such diverse backgrounds are unlikely to be motivated by the same factors."

There is, however, one catalyst in particular that researchers found is common among many of those who become radicalized: the Syrian civil war.

The report said:

In many cases examined by our research team, an underlying sense of sympathy and compassion appeared to play an important role in initially motivating young Americans to become interested and invested in the Syrian conflict. Many were outraged by the appalling violence Bashar al Assad’s regime used to suppress the Syrian rebellion and the subsequent inaction on the part of the international community. Pictures and videos capturing the aftermath of civilian massacres perpetrated by the regime, displayed widely in both social and mainstream media, rocked the consciences of many—from those with an existing strong Sunni identity to those who were not Muslim—and led some to take the first steps to militancy.

This fits with what other experts have said in the past — that atrocities committed by the Syrian regime against its people are one of the main recruiting tools of ISIS.