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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
2/6/2015 3:47:44 PM
6 February 2015 Last updated at 13:16 GMT

British jihadist Imran Khawaja jailed for 12 years


Daniel Sandford reports on the jihadist who faked his death

A British jihadist who fled to Syria and joined a militant group with links to so-called Islamic State has been given a 12-year custodial sentence.

Imran Khawaja, from west London, spent six months in Syria, during which he was pictured posing with severed heads.

Khawaja, 27, was arrested in Dover last June after faking his death and trying to return to the UK undetected.

He admitted preparing for acts of terrorism, attending a camp, receiving training and possessing firearms.

Delivering his decision, judge Mr Justice Baker said Khawaja posed "a significant risk of serious harm" to the public. He will serve a minimum of eight years and also serve 5 years on licence.

Khawaja police shotKhawaja was a "willing and enthusiastic" participant in recruitment films, the judge said

His cousin, Tahir Bhatti, from Watford in Hertfordshire was jailed for 21 months. He will serve half of his sentence.

Bhatti had driven to Serbia to collect Khawaja and bring him back to the UK.

Asim Ali, from Ealing in west London - who provided his friend Khawaja with funds - was also given 21 months in prison.

Khawaja with weaponKhawaja was pictured with weapons and severed heads

At Woolwich Crown Court, Khawaja's counsel Henry Blaxland QC told the court his client had a very low IQ and had been "indoctrinated" in the months before he fled for Syria, in January 2014.

But Mr Justice Baker described Khawaja, who joined the Rayat al-Tawheed (RAT) insurgent group, as a "willing and enthusiastic" participant in recruitment films.

And he dismissed Khawaja's claim that he came home to see his family and regretted his actions.

Terrorist training

The judge said: "It is clear in the last few years you have been showing an increasing interest in Islamic jihadist material.

"You took part in the production of films designed to promote the Islamic State cause and encouraging UK Muslims to join you in jihad.

"Your interest was sufficiently profound for you to travel to Syria to train for jihad.

"I'm also satisfied, by the time you decided to return to the UK, you had completed your terrorist training."

Khawaja showed no emotion as he was led from the court.

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Analysis: BBC home affairs correspondent Dominic Casciani

Imran Khawaja's case is arguably the most serious Syria-related terrorism conviction to date.

Not only is there evidence that he engaged in what the prosecution called "armed activity", but he was part of a social media campaign aimed at recruiting others from Britain - a campaign in which he revelled in the deaths of others.

He could have received a life sentence - but while his extended term is long, it is a slightly shorter term than one given to two Birmingham men who were jailed last year.

Sentencing rules make clear that those who engage in the most serious forms of terrorism can receive terms that are designed to deter others from following them. Khawaja has the rest of his life to think about what he did - and he has told the court that he hopes other men do not make the same mistake.

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Messages from his family were read to the court on Thursday.

In them, he lied about when he was coming home from Syria, before confiding he was there to die a martyr.

The court saw a video of Khawaja posing with severed heads in the Middle East country.

Dozens of images of him posing with automatic weapons and tanks were also produced.

The court was also told of social media postings about his apparent death after a fake announcement was made on social media site Instagram.

Prosecutor Brian Altman said the postings provided cover for Khawaja's return to the UK on 3 June.

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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2/6/2015 4:22:01 PM

Merkel and Hollande to present Ukraine peace plan to Putin
German and French leaders to meet Russian president in Moscow in attempt to achieve diplomatic breakthrough


Vladimir Putin is to hear proposals for possible peace in Ukraine from the French and German leaders. Photograph: Alexander Nemenov//AFP/Getty Images

Angela Merkel and François Hollande are to meet Vladimir Putin to discuss a possible peace plan for Ukraine, as fears rise that failure to secure a breakthrough could trigger an escalation in a conflict that has already cost more than 5,000 lives.

Before leaving for Moscow, the French president said securing a ceasefire for eastern Ukraine was just a first step and that a “comprehensive agreement” must be sought.

On Thursday, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, said Washington was weighing up whether to supply arms to the Ukrainian government.

Hollande and Merkel were expected to hold talks with Putin at 5pm Moscow time (2pm GMT), though there was significant uncertainty over what ideas they were bringing to the table. They undertook the hasty and unusual mission after Putin put forward his own plan and they responded with counter-proposals, amid an upsurge of fighting and growing European fears that a US decision to supply arms to Kiev could trigger an uncontrollable rise in violence.

Merkel and Hollande met the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, in Kiev on Thursday evening.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Pavlo Klimkin, said on Twitter that the leaders had discussed “steps so that the Minsk agreement can start working”. A ceasefire signed in Minsk in September froze the frontlines at their positions at the time, but never held.

Kerry sounded lukewarm about Merkel and Hollande’s visit. He said Putin had sent “a couple of ideas” to France and Germany, and the pair had come up with a response but he did not give details. Kerry also said the US wanted a diplomatic solution but was reviewing all options, including “the possibility of providing defensive systems to Ukraine”.

US officials are concerned that Putin will use European eagerness to stop the fighting to consolidate his hold onCrimea and eastern Ukraine and shrug off the obligations Russia undertook in Minsk to cut off the flow of arms and manpower to the pro-Moscow separatists.

Hollande, however, has insisted that the Franco-German proposals were based on a guarantee of Ukraine’s territorial integrity. He warned “the diplomatic option cannot be extended indefinitely”.

The chances of a breakthrough hinge on establishing a durable ceasefire and the prospect of that looked slim, according to senior officials and diplomats briefed on the initiative in Brussels.

Putin was said to be refusing to negotiate with Poroshenko, after making fresh proposals to Kiev 48 hours ago. While senior officials in Brussels said the “new initiatives” in the “Putin plan” were worth exploring, the little that was known suggested they would be very hard for Kiev to swallow.

Putin wants to redraw the “demarcation line” showing pro-Russian rebel-held territory, expanding it by around 500 sq km from that agreed last September in Minsk. Merkel has always insisted that the Minsk deal is the only basis for a settlement. While seizing a bigger chunk of eastern Ukraine, Putin also insisted that the “autonomous” areas beyond the control of the Ukrainian government nevertheless continue to benefit from central government budget funding.

This would mean that Kiev was paying for the partition of the country and financing what would probably become a frozen conflict perpetuating Russian and separatist control of the region.

“Putin wants to create a fait accompli and create a new demarcation line,” said a senior diplomat.

A senior official involved in the talks said that Putin’s offer was pointless and would not be accepted. But three senior figures in Brussels said that changes could be made to the Minsk accords depending on what Putin offered in return.

Merkel and Hollande were expected to warn Putin that in the absence of any diplomatic breakthrough, the pressure to supply arms to the Ukrainians could become irresistible and that talk of eventual admission of Ukraine to Nato would move up the agenda.

The Europeans are almost unanimously opposed to arming the Ukrainians, although Lithuania is already making deliveries.

“If we prepare the other side for war, there will be a war and Putin will win that war. That’s the majority view in Europe,” said the diplomat.

Ahead of a major international security conference in Munich on Friday, Wolfgang Ischinger, the veteran German diplomat who runs the meeting, warned that the Merkel-Hollande gambit was “probably a last chance”.

A senior British army officer has urged the British government to support the establishment of a conventional deterrent against Russian forces.

Gen Sir Richard Shirreff, who was the leading British commander in Nato until last March, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that a strong message needed to be sent to the Russian president, if mainland Europe was to avoid “total war”.

“Unless Nato speaks from a position of strength, we are gifting the advantage to Mr Putin,” Shirreff said. “Wars start as a result of weakness, not of strength. That dynamic once started gets worse if there is a sense of weakness on one side.”

Pro-Russia rebels and the Ukrainian authorities agreed on Friday to create a humanitarian corridor to remove civilians from the heart of fighting in eastern Ukraine, the Associated Press reported. Rebel leaders said they reached agreement with Ukrainian authorities to allow the evacuation of civilians from Debaltseve, a railway hub that has become the main target of a rebel offensive because of its strategic location. It was not immediately clear where the evacuees would go.

The ceasefire around Debaltseve held on Friday, as a convoy of several dozen buses drove from nearby Vuhelhirsk toward Debaltseve, where a shrinking population has been trapped in the crossfire and left without power, heating and running water for almost two weeks.

Zorian Shkiryak, an adviser to the Ukrainian interior minister, said on Facebook that “the green corridor has been confirmed”. Eduard Basurin, a rebel spokesman in Donetsk, said about 1,000 civilians were expected to be evacuated on Friday.


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
2/6/2015 5:10:27 PM

Yemen's Shiite rebels announce takeover of country

Associated Press

Houthi Shiite Yemenis hold their weapons during a rally to show support for their comrades in Sanaa, Yemen, Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2015. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed)

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SANAA, Yemen (AP) — Yemen's powerful Shiite rebels announced on Friday that they have taken over the country and dissolved parliament, a dramatic move that finalizes their months-long power grab.

The development also plunges the impoverished country deeper into turmoil and threatens to turn the crisis into a full-blown sectarian conflict, pitting the Iran-backed Houthi Shiites against Sunni tribesmen and secessionists in the south.

It could also play into the hands of Yemen's al-Qaida branch, the world's most dangerous offshoot of the terror group, and jeopardize the U.S. counter-terrorism operations in the country.

In a televised announcement from the Republican Palace in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa, the Houthi rebels said they are forming a five-member presidential council that will replace President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi for an interim two-year period.

The Houthis also said that "Revolutionary Committee" would be in charge of forming a new parliament with 551 members. The committee is the security and intelligence arm of the rebel group, led by Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, relative to the Houthis' leader, Abdel-Malek al-Houthi.

The statement in Sanaa, read by an unidentified announcer, claimed that it marked "a new era that will take Yemen to safe shores."

It comes after political parties failed to meet a Houthi-imposed deadline on Wednesday to agree on an acceptable way forward.

Houthis' rising dominance — which included a raid of the presidential palace and a siege of Hadi's residence — forced the president and all Cabinet members to submit their resignations in January.

The announcement did not give a timetable for elections and gave no indication on the fate of Hadi.


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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
2/6/2015 5:22:55 PM

Boko Haram attacks town in Niger after assault on Cameroon

Associated Press

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Boko Haram attacks expand beyond Nigeria

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NIAMEY, Niger (AP) — Islamic extremists from Nigeria attacked a town inside the neighboring country of Niger on Friday, marking the second foreign country attacked by Boko Haram this week. The attackers were later repelled by forces from Chad and Niger, witnesses said.

The incursion comes as Niger and several other African countries are planning to send troops to battle the Islamic extremists, seen as a growing threat not only to Nigeria but to the region of West and Central Africa. Chad and Cameroon in recent days already began using its military forces to attack Boko Haram.

It was not immediately clear if there were casualties in the early morning attack on Bosso, the Niger town bordering northeastern Nigeria. Soldiers from Niger and Chad rushed to the scene and engaged in an hour-long firefight in which Boko Haram retreated, leaving the streets deserted, said Abba Hassan, a pharmacist in Bosso.

"Niger and Chadian planes are conducting surveillance at the moment in town and troops on the ground are combing through the streets," Hassan told The Associated Press by phone.

French radio station RFI also carried news of the attack, citing local residents.

Niger's government spokesman and foreign affairs minister could not immediately be reached for comment. Niger's president was meeting with his Cabinet.

The area of Niger where the attack took place is where refugees already have arrived by the thousands seeking safety from Boko Haram violence in Nigeria.

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(Yahoo News)

(Yahoo News)

In a Jan. 31 message, Boko Haram fighters vowed to seek revenge on Niger if they aided the growing military effort by several African nations against



















the terror group.

"Their government is leading them into a dark tunnel if it joins a coalition with Chad and Cameroon against us, that it will use their sons in a war in which they have nothing to gain but fighting against Allah and His messenger," said a transcript released by SITE intelligence monitoring service.

On Wednesday and Thursday, Boko Haram fighters attacked Fotokol, in Cameroon and about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Bosso, leaving nearly 100 people dead and some 500 wounded, according to Cameroonian officials. The extremists razed mosques and churches and used civilians as human shields before Cameroonian forces pushed them back across the border to Nigeria.

"Cameroonian soldiers assisted by Chadian forces have successfully chased hundreds of Boko Haram fighters out of the Cameroonian locality of Fotokol on the border with Nigeria," said Cameroon government spokesman Issa Tchiroma Bakary.

The cross-border assaults came after Boko Haram was bombed out of several Nigerian towns earlier this week by Nigerian and Chadian jets. Cameroon and Chad joined Nigeria in launching an air and ground offensive against the insurgents on at least two fronts this week.

More neighboring countries are mobilizing to help Nigeria fight Boko Haram. Regional leaders are meeting Friday for a second day in Cameroon's capital, Yaounde, to finalize plans for a coordinated military response to the terror group blamed for killing 10,000 people over the past year.

Last week, leaders of the African Union authorized a 7,500-strong force to fight Boko Haram, including pledges of troops from Nigeria and four neighboring countries, Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Benin. The United Nations have offered logistical support. The deployment of the multinational African force could be could be delayed by funding issues.

Boko Haram has increased the tempo and ferocity of its attacks just as Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation and its biggest oil producer, is preparing for presidential and legislative elections on Feb. 14.

Some 10,000 people were killed in Boko Haram violence last year compared to 2,000 in the first four years of Nigeria's Islamic uprising, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

___

Associated Press writers Krista Larson and Michelle Faul in Dakar, Senegal contributed to this report.





"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
2/6/2015 8:39:13 PM

In unison, Muslim clerics lash out against Islamic State

Associated Press

Jordanians attend the Muslim Friday prayers, surrounding posters of slain Jordanian pilot, Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh taped on a light pole, ahead of an anti-IS group rally in Amman, Jordan, Friday, Feb. 6, 2015. Several thousand people marched after Muslim Friday prayers in support of King Abdullah II's pledge of a tough military response to the killing of the pilot. Arabic on the posters reads, "Muath is the martyr of the right, Jordan's eagle, to heaven, the country's martyr." (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)


BAGHDAD (AP) — The immolation of a Jordanian pilot by the Islamic State group has brought a unified outcry Friday from top religious clerics across the Muslim world — including a prominent jihadi preacher — who insisted the militants have gone too far.

Abu Mohammed al-Maqdesi, considered a spiritual mentor for many al-Qaida militants, said the killing of Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh is "not acceptable in any religion." He spoke in an interview with Jordan's Roya TV a day after being released from more than three months in detention.

At Friday prayers in neighboring Iraq, where the militant group has seized territory in a third of the country, top Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani declared in a sermon that the "savage" act demonstrates the extremists know no boundaries and violate "Islamic values and humanity."

Religious groups, often at odds with one another over ideologies or politics, are increasingly speaking out in unison against the militants, who continue to enforce their rule in Iraq and Syria through massacres, kidnapping, forced marriages, stonings and other acts of brutality.

Iranian Shiite cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani claimed in his sermon that militant groups like the Islamic State are created by Western nations as a means for promoting "an ugly picture of Islam."

Earlier this week, Islamic State militants released a video of al-Kaseasbeh, a Muslim, being burned to death in a cage. While the beheading of hostages from the U.S., Britain and Japan brought condemnation from most religious sects within Islam, the gruesome images of the airman's slaying served as a unifying battle-cry for Muslims across the world.

Jordan joined a U.S.-led military coalition against the militants in September, but said it would intensify its airstrikes in response to the killing of its air force pilot. On Thursday, dozens of fighter jets struck Islamic State weapons depots and training sites, Jordan's military said.

Outrage escalated in the capital of Amman following Friday prayers, with demonstrators unfurling a large Jordanian flag and holding up banners supporting King Abdullah II's pledge for a tough military response to avenge al-Kaseasbeh's death.

"We all stand united with the Hashemite leadership in facing terrorism," one banner read.

It is unusual to see such a unified response from religious institutions, because moderate camps often represent drastically different views to those of hard-line minority groups. The recent attacks on journalists at the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, for instance, brought a range of responses in the Muslim world, with many condemning the death of innocent people but disagreeing on whether the publication crossed the line in its caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

The Sept. 11 attacks in the United States spurred a hint of celebration and praise from anti-American radical groups, including al-Qaida, the group behind the hijackings, but condemnation from moderate Islamic factions. Now, even al-Qaida has grown more outspoken against the Islamic State group, which originally was an al-Qaida offshoot in Iraq. That criticism has left the IS extremists in an increasingly isolated position.

Even clerics aligned with the Islamic State group are said to be speaking out against the pilot's killing. Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said extremists dismissed one of its religious officials in Aleppo province after he objected to how the Jordanian pilot was put to death.

The religious official, a Saudi cleric known as Abu Musab al-Jazrawi, said during a meeting that such killings contradict the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, Abdurrahman said. Other clerics in the meeting in the northern town of Bab began a verbal attack against the Saudi cleric, who was later sacked and referred to a religious court, he said. The incident could not be confirmed independently.

Many Facebook users in Bosnia posted pictures Friday of the Jordanian king in his military uniform, hailing his pledge to take a "severe response" for the pilot's death. The head of Bosnia's Islamic community, Husein Kavazovic, denounced the militant group, saying "there is no 'but' in condemning those crimes." At least 150 Bosnians have reportedly joined the Islamic State group, and Kavazovic called on his government to strip them of their citizenship.

Al-Maqdesi criticized the militants for declaring a caliphate, or an Islamic state, last year in the areas under their control. Al-Maqdesi said such a state run according to Islamic law is meant to unite Muslims, but the extremists have been divisive.

Grand Imam Ahmed al-Tayeb, head of the world's most prestigious seat of Sunni Islam learning, Cairo's Al-Azhar Mosque, said earlier this week that the IS militants deserve the Quranic punishment of death, crucifixion or chopping off their arms for being enemies of God and the Prophet Muhammad.

"Islam prohibits the taking of an innocent life," al-Tayeb said. By burning the pilot to death, he added, the militants violated Islam's prohibition on the immolation or mutilation of bodies — even during wartime.

Iraq's top Sunni mufti, Sheik Mahdi al-Sumaidaie, said the crime against al-Kaseasbeh is "unprecedented," adding that "the Prophet Muhammad said that only God can punish with fire."

Pakistani Sunni cleric Munir Ahmed, in his sermon in Islamabad, also dismissed any theological basis for the crime, saying the "gruesome" death of the Jordanian pilot "is the most horrible act of cruelty." It's a punishment that "Allah has kept for its own authority and no human is authorized to do it," Ahmed said.

___

Associated Press writers Mohammed Daraghmeh and Karin Laub in Amman, Jordan; Bassem Mroue in Beirut; Ahmed Sami in Baghdad; Nasser Karimi in Tehran; Aida Cerkez in Sarajevo; Zarar Khan in Islamabad; and Maggie Michael and Hamza Hendawi in Cairo contributed to this report.


Muslim clerics: IS militants have gone too far


A spiritual mentor for al-Qaida fighters say the execution of a Jordanian pilot is "not acceptable" in any religion.
Unified outcry

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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