Tag: militant
Join A Terrorist Group, Lose Your Citizenship

Join A Terrorist Group, Lose Your Citizenship

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

Governments around the world seeking to strengthen their defenses against terrorism are threatening to revoke the citizenship of those joining the Islamic State or other militant groups training in the Middle East for global jihad.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday became the latest leader to call for stripping those defecting to extremism of their passports. He joins French President Francois Hollande and leaders in Belgium, Norway, Australia, Britain and Canada in proposing sweeping changes to constitutional protections to prevent those radicalized from returning to wage attacks in their Western home states.

The calls for depriving militants of citizenship have multiplied after the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris and the Oct. 31 bombing of a Russian passenger jet over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula — both actions claimed by the Islamic State in retaliation for the multinational air campaign directed at the militants’ proclaimed caliphate in Syria and Iraq.

But those and other moves being proposed in reaction to the increasingly deadly strikes by the Islamic State and its affiliates are also stirring protest among civil rights advocates who see a danger to citizens’ constitutional rights and liberties as authorities bestow new powers on law enforcement to monitor, search and arrest those suspected of terrorist sympathies.

Netanyahu announced at a Sunday Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem that he had asked the Israeli attorney general to take steps to allow the government to rescind citizenship of those who join the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and Daash.

“Whoever joins ISIS will not be an Israeli citizen. And if he leaves the borders of the state, he will not return,” Netanyahu said. “I think this lesson is becoming increasingly clear throughout the international arena.”

His appeal coincided with release of the latest survey results by a prominent academic suggesting that at least 17 percent of Israeli Arabs sympathize with the aims and tactics of the Islamic State and other radical groups. University of Haifa professor Sammy Smooha, who has been tracking Israeli Arabs’ opinions since 1976, told the Jerusalem Post that he attributes the rising support for Islamist violence to the militants’ image as a powerful force that can stand up to Israeli authorities on their behalf and to the “negative assessment of their conditions in Israel.”

About one-fifth of Israeli Arabs espouse extreme views against Arab-Jewish coexistence in the country, Smooha said, adding that “there is a parallel minority of Jews that rejects coexistence and supports the state’s encouragement of Arabs to leave the country.”

While the Israeli government’s action is pre-emptive, as there have been no attacks on the country that are known to have been commissioned by the Islamic State, European states are already dealing with the reality of radicalized citizens returning from Syria and other jihadist venues.

The threat to deprive expatriate militants of citizenship is aimed at preventing those who have gone to Syria or other conflict areas and become radicalized from returning to their home countries to sow terrorism. In a graphic published Monday by Germany’s Deutsche Welle network, data contributed by the national security agencies of Germany, Britain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands show that of the 2,731 citizens of those countries known to have traveled abroad for terrorist training, at least 1,012 have returned to their European home states afterward.

Hollande joined the growing outcry to deprive defecting French militants of their citizenship three days after the suicide bombings and random assassinations claimed by Islamic State in the French capital that left at least 130 dead. He called during a rare joint session of Parliament for a constitutional amendment to allow the government to revoke the citizenship of “a person convicted for threatening the nations’ interest or for terrorist acts.”

The constitution currently allows revocation only of citizenship conferred through naturalization, not of French-born citizens. Several of the Paris attackers were French natives.

In Russia, where at least 2,000 citizens of the predominantly Muslim Caucasus area are believed to have gone to Syria to aid in the fight for Islamic State’s caliphate, the head of the upper house of parliament’s international affairs committee called Friday for legislation that would strip “Russian citizens joining terrorists” of their passports.

Australia’s Parliament is also poised to adopt tough new anti-terrorism laws. Under the pending legislation, a dual national automatically renounces citizenship by engaging in “terrorist conduct.” The same penalty applies to those suspected of traveling overseas to train or participate in terrorism or anyone convicted in Australia of terrorist crimes.

Canada had adopted controversial new counterterrorism laws under what is known as Bill C-51. It stops short of revoking citizenship for those accused of committing terrorism or joining violent groups, but critics say the new laws intrude on Canadians’ rights of free speech and assembly. Among those critics is University of Toronto law professor Kent Roach, who has been lobbying against the attempts in other world capitals to protect their own nations by revoking passports.

©2015 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech at the Jewish Federations of North America 2015 General Assembly in Washington November 10, 2015. REUTERS/Carlos Barria 

U.S. Intensifies Airstrikes Near Syrian City Of Kobani, But Is Not Working With Militia

U.S. Intensifies Airstrikes Near Syrian City Of Kobani, But Is Not Working With Militia

By W.J. Hennigan, Tribune Washington Bureau

For a second day, U.S. and Arab allies pounded Islamic State strongholds near Kobani, a Syrian border city on the brink of falling to the militants.
Warplanes belonging to the U.S. and the United Arab Emirates carried out six strikes Tuesday and Wednesday near the besieged town. The attacks were in addition to five strikes that took place the day before.
But U.S. officials cautioned that airstrikes were of limited effectiveness in defending the town.
The Islamic State militants are “not going to go away tomorrow, and Kobani may fall,” Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said Wednesday on CNN. “We can’t predict whether it will or it won’t. There will be other towns that they will threaten and there will be other towns that they take. It’s going to take a little bit of time.”
Kobani, also known as Ayn al-Arab, has been facing an onslaught from three sides since last month, forcing some 130,000 mostly Kurdish Syrians to flee to neighboring Turkey.
The area has been one of the most active fronts in Syria in recent days. The secular Kurdish militia, known as the Popular Protection Units, are defending the town against militants of the Islamic State, a radical Sunni militia.
Kirby said that although the U.S. military carried out 11 airstrikes in the region over the last two days, it is not in communication with the Kurdish militia in Kobani.
“We don’t have a willing, capable, effective partner on the ground inside Syria,” he said. “It’s just a fact. I can’t change that.”
Despite the lack of communication, the military is confident that airstrikes are hitting Islamic State strongholds in the region, Kirby said.
“We’re very careful and very discriminate about what we hit from the air, and again, we believe we have been effective,” he said. “We know we’re hitting what we’re aiming at.”
Taking Kobani would mark a symbolic victory for the Islamic State, also known by the acronyms ISIS or ISIL, who control a vast swath of land across northern Syria and northern and western Iraq from its declared capital of Raqqa in Syria.
Turkish lawmakers recently authorized the country’s army, one of the region’s strongest, to push into neighboring Syria and Iraq to fight the militants. But the army has not moved in on Kobani, whose Kurdish defenders are allied with Turkey’s longtime nemesis, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.
Islamic State militants, advancing along several fronts in northern Syria, have reportedly overrun more than two dozen mostly Kurdish villages, prompting terrified Kobani residents to abandon their homes out of fear of ethnic cleansing.
Pro-Kurdish protests broke out Monday throughout Turkey in response to the militants’ advance on Kobani. The events turned deadly Wednesday as four people died in demonstrations, bringing to the total death toll to 18, according to Turkey’s Anatolian News Agency.
“Many people died at these incidents,” Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus was quoted as saying to press during a visit to Macedonia, referring to the protests. “Those who pushed Turkey into such chaos, what problem do they plan to solve with that method?”
At the United Nations, the world body’s special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, called on the international community to defend Kobani.
“The world, all of us, will regret deeply if ISIS is able to take over a city which has defended itself with courage but is close to not being able to do so,” de Mistura said in a statement. “We need to act now.”
The U.S. began bombing Islamic State targets near the city on Sept. 27, but carried out only eight airstrikes before this week.
The six strikes near Kobani that took place Tuesday and Wednesday destroyed four Islamic State armed vehicles, two artillery pieces and an armored personnel carrier, according to U.S. Central Command. There were three other strikes against the militants elsewhere in Syria.
Separately, officials said that American, British and Dutch forces used fighter jets and armed drones to conduct five airstrikes against the Islamic State in neighboring Iraq, where the U.S.-led campaign against the militants began on Aug. 8.

AFP Photo/Aris Messinis

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FBI Asks For Tips On IS Group Volunteers

FBI Asks For Tips On IS Group Volunteers

Washington (AFP) — The FBI on Tuesday appealed for help tracking people planning to join the Islamic State group in combat, including an English-speaking militant with a “North American accent.”

“We need the public’s assistance in identifying U.S. persons going to fight overseas with terrorist groups or who are returning home from fighting overseas,” Michael Steinbach, assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, said in a statement on the agency’s website.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation posted forms online for the public to submit potential tips, at www.fbi.gov/ISILtips, and released a segment from a 55-minute propaganda video in hopes someone might recognize the English-speaking IS militant.

“No piece of information is too small,” Steinbach said.

In the video, the masked man — dressed in desert camouflage and waving a pistol — stands in front of purported prisoners as they dig their own graves and then later presides over their executions.

In the clip released by the FBI, the faces of the alleged prisoners are obscured and their killing is not shown.

The individual in the video has what appears to be “a North American accent,” it said.

About a dozen Americans are fighting with the IS group, according to the FBI.

U.S. authorities on Saturday arrested a 19-year-old man at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago who they alleged was heading to the Middle East to fight with the IS group.

Mohammed Hamzah Khan was charged with one count of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, the Justice Department said.

AFP Photo

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As Iraqi Militants Launch New Attacks, Maliki Rejects Unity Government

As Iraqi Militants Launch New Attacks, Maliki Rejects Unity Government

By Shashank Bengali, Los Angeles Times

BAGHDAD — Embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Wednesday sharply rejected calls to form a national unity government, striking a defiant tone in the face of U.S. pressure to share more political power as a rebellion by Sunni Muslim insurgents threatens his grip on the country.

Maliki’s rivals have urged a “national salvation government” that would demonstrate solidarity against the uprising led by an al-Qaida splinter group. But in a weekly address, Maliki, a member of Iraq’s Shiite Muslim majority, dismissed the idea as “an attempt to eliminate the democratic experiment and to neglect the constitution.”

Even as he spoke, insurgents were launching attacks on a major air base at Balad, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, a former U.S. military installation that currently houses a range of Iraqi military hardware including surveillance planes and pickup trucks equipped with machine guns.

Officials in Iraq’s western Anbar province, which is largely in the hands of the Sunni militants, said Syrian warplanes bombed two sites near the Iraq-Syria border, ostensibly targeting border crossings that the Islamist militants had seized in recent days.

Iraqi state media had earlier attributed the air strikes to U.S. drones, which the Pentagon denied. The involvement by Syria, if confirmed, illustrates how the sectarian feud in Iraq could drag in the wider Middle East.

Maliki’s government, dominated by the Shiite majority, has come under growing pressure to cede more authority to minority Sunnis and Kurds. President Obama declared last week that if Maliki doesn’t form an inclusive national government, Iraq risks sliding back into civil warfare.

A senior U.S. intelligence official who briefed reporters on Tuesday said the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the al-Qaida offshoot leading the insurgent movement, “continues to threaten the air base … as it moves south toward Baghdad.”

Ninety U.S. troops — the first of up to 300 advisers ordered to Iraq by Obama — have arrived in Baghdad, where they were beginning to establish a joint operations center with Iraqi forces to help counter the Sunni insurgency. Four additional teams totaling about 50 people were expected to reach Iraq in the coming days, Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters in Washington.

©afp.com / Ahmad Al-Rubaye