Thanks for showing you live in a godless world, well done, the loco collective will be proud of that post.
Rome is history, who decides the moves the education system makes? I have pretty good idea.
Religion of Peace in action
- Thread starter Walter
- Start date
Rome is history, who decides the moves the education system makes? I have pretty good idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historism
Historism is a philosophical and historiographical theory, founded in 19th-century[1] Germany (as Historismus) and especially influential in 19th- and 20th-century Europe. In those times there was not a single natural, humanitarian or philosophical science that would not reflect, in one way or another, the historical type of thought (cf. comparative historical linguistics etc.).[1] It pronounces the historicity of humanity and its binding to tradition.
Historist historiography rejects historical teleology and bases its explanations of historical phenomena on sympathy and understanding (see Hermeneutics) for the events, acting persons, and historical periods. The historist approach takes to its extreme limits the common observation that human institutions (language, Art, religion, law, State) are subject to perpetual change.[2]
Historism is not to be confused with historicism,[3] nevertheless the English habits of using both words are very similar. (The term historism is sometimes reserved to identify the specific current called Historismus in the tradition of German philosophy and historiography.)[2]
Contents
Criticism
Because of the power held on the social sciences by logical positivism, historism or historicism is deemed unpopular.[4]
Karl Popper, one of the most distinguished critics of historicism, criticized historism, too. He differentiated between both phenomena as follows: The term historicism is used in his influential books The Poverty of Historicism and The Open Society and Its Enemies to describe “an approach to the social sciences which assumes that historical prediction is their primary aim, and which assumes that this aim is attainable by discovering the 'rhythms' or the 'patterns', the 'laws' or the 'trends' that underlie the evolution of history”.[5] Popper wrote with reference to Hegel's theory of history, which he criticized extensively. By historism on the contrary, he means the tendency to regard every argument or idea as completely accounted for by its historical context, as opposed to assessing it by its merits. Historism does not aim for the 'laws' of history, but premises the individuality of each historical situation.
On the basis of Popper's definitions, the historian Stefan Berger proposes as a proper word usage:
Historism is a philosophical and historiographical theory, founded in 19th-century[1] Germany (as Historismus) and especially influential in 19th- and 20th-century Europe. In those times there was not a single natural, humanitarian or philosophical science that would not reflect, in one way or another, the historical type of thought (cf. comparative historical linguistics etc.).[1] It pronounces the historicity of humanity and its binding to tradition.
Historist historiography rejects historical teleology and bases its explanations of historical phenomena on sympathy and understanding (see Hermeneutics) for the events, acting persons, and historical periods. The historist approach takes to its extreme limits the common observation that human institutions (language, Art, religion, law, State) are subject to perpetual change.[2]
Historism is not to be confused with historicism,[3] nevertheless the English habits of using both words are very similar. (The term historism is sometimes reserved to identify the specific current called Historismus in the tradition of German philosophy and historiography.)[2]
Contents
Criticism
Because of the power held on the social sciences by logical positivism, historism or historicism is deemed unpopular.[4]
Karl Popper, one of the most distinguished critics of historicism, criticized historism, too. He differentiated between both phenomena as follows: The term historicism is used in his influential books The Poverty of Historicism and The Open Society and Its Enemies to describe “an approach to the social sciences which assumes that historical prediction is their primary aim, and which assumes that this aim is attainable by discovering the 'rhythms' or the 'patterns', the 'laws' or the 'trends' that underlie the evolution of history”.[5] Popper wrote with reference to Hegel's theory of history, which he criticized extensively. By historism on the contrary, he means the tendency to regard every argument or idea as completely accounted for by its historical context, as opposed to assessing it by its merits. Historism does not aim for the 'laws' of history, but premises the individuality of each historical situation.
On the basis of Popper's definitions, the historian Stefan Berger proposes as a proper word usage:
I deliberately use the term ‘historism’ (and ‘historist’) rather than ‘historicism’ (and ‘historicist’). Whereas ‘historism’ (in German, Historismus), as represented by Leopold von Ranke, can be seen as an evolutionary, reformist concept which understands all political order as historically developed and grown, ‘historicism’ (Historizismus), as defined and rejected by Karl Popper, is based on the notion that history develops according to predetermined laws towards a particular end. The English language, by using only one term for those different concepts, tends to conflate the two. Hence I suggest using two separate terms in analogy to the German language.[6]
You are a realist. Nice to see.
You also have your facts correct.
Dumbed down sheeple people are so much easier to control and fleece.
Regards
DL
1Co:15:53-54:
For this corruptible must put on incorruption,
and this mortal must put on immortality.
So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption,
and this mortal shall have put on immortality,
then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written,
Death is swallowed up in victory.
Re:16:17-21:
And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air;
and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven,
from the throne,
saying,
It is done.
And there were voices,
and thunders,
and lightnings;
and there was a great earthquake,
such as was not since men were upon the earth,
so mighty an earthquake,
and so great.
And the great city was divided into three parts,
and the cities of the nations fell:
and great Babylon came in remembrance before God,
to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath.
And every island fled away,
and the mountains were not found.
And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven,
every stone about the weight of a talent:
and men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail;
for the plague thereof was exceeding great.
Zec:13:8-9:
And it shall come to pass,
that in all the land,
saith the LORD,
two parts therein shall be cut off and die;
but the third shall be left therein.
And I will bring the third part through the fire,
and will refine them as silver is refined,
and will try them as gold is tried:
they shall call on my name,
and I will hear them:
I will say,
It is my people:
and they shall say,
The LORD is my God.
Eze:37:11-17:
Then he said unto me,
Son of man,
these bones are the whole house of Israel:
behold,
they say,
Our bones are dried,
and our hope is lost:
we are cut off for our parts.
Therefore prophesy and say unto them,
Thus saith the Lord GOD;
Behold,
O my people,
I will open your graves,
and cause you to come up out of your graves,
and bring you into the land of Israel.
And ye shall know that I am the LORD,
when I have opened your graves,
O my people,
and brought you up out of your graves,
And shall put my spirit in you,
and ye shall live,
and I shall place you in your own land:
then shall ye know that I the LORD have spoken it,
and performed it,
saith the LORD.
The word of the LORD came again unto me,
saying,
Moreover,
thou son of man,
take thee one stick,
and write upon it,
For Judah,
and for the children of Israel his companions:
then take another stick,
and write upon it,
For Joseph,
the stick of Ephraim,
and for all the house of Israel his companions:
And join them one to another into one stick;
and they shall become one in thine hand.
Heb:10:16-17:
This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days,
saith the Lord,
I will put my laws into their hearts,
and in their minds will I write them;
And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.
I will be repenting my sins until the day the 7th trump sounds. You will reap the rewards of not having to do that as you have already been purged of all your sins, . . . haven't you Delilah?
For this corruptible must put on incorruption,
and this mortal must put on immortality.
So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption,
and this mortal shall have put on immortality,
then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written,
Death is swallowed up in victory.
Re:16:17-21:
And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air;
and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven,
from the throne,
saying,
It is done.
And there were voices,
and thunders,
and lightnings;
and there was a great earthquake,
such as was not since men were upon the earth,
so mighty an earthquake,
and so great.
And the great city was divided into three parts,
and the cities of the nations fell:
and great Babylon came in remembrance before God,
to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath.
And every island fled away,
and the mountains were not found.
And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven,
every stone about the weight of a talent:
and men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail;
for the plague thereof was exceeding great.
Zec:13:8-9:
And it shall come to pass,
that in all the land,
saith the LORD,
two parts therein shall be cut off and die;
but the third shall be left therein.
And I will bring the third part through the fire,
and will refine them as silver is refined,
and will try them as gold is tried:
they shall call on my name,
and I will hear them:
I will say,
It is my people:
and they shall say,
The LORD is my God.
Eze:37:11-17:
Then he said unto me,
Son of man,
these bones are the whole house of Israel:
behold,
they say,
Our bones are dried,
and our hope is lost:
we are cut off for our parts.
Therefore prophesy and say unto them,
Thus saith the Lord GOD;
Behold,
O my people,
I will open your graves,
and cause you to come up out of your graves,
and bring you into the land of Israel.
And ye shall know that I am the LORD,
when I have opened your graves,
O my people,
and brought you up out of your graves,
And shall put my spirit in you,
and ye shall live,
and I shall place you in your own land:
then shall ye know that I the LORD have spoken it,
and performed it,
saith the LORD.
The word of the LORD came again unto me,
saying,
Moreover,
thou son of man,
take thee one stick,
and write upon it,
For Judah,
and for the children of Israel his companions:
then take another stick,
and write upon it,
For Joseph,
the stick of Ephraim,
and for all the house of Israel his companions:
And join them one to another into one stick;
and they shall become one in thine hand.
Heb:10:16-17:
This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days,
saith the Lord,
I will put my laws into their hearts,
and in their minds will I write them;
And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.
I will be repenting my sins until the day the 7th trump sounds. You will reap the rewards of not having to do that as you have already been purged of all your sins, . . . haven't you Delilah?
Terror suspect linked to U.S. agent on $1 million bail facing extradition
Sam Pazzano Courts Bureau
Published:
April 30, 2019
Updated:
April 30, 2019 6:09 PM EDT
A Syrian businessman suspected of terrorism and linked romantically to an American federal agent is free on $1 million bail after he was committed to surrender to the U.S.
Nadal Diya, 46, the CEO of a Persian Gulf business providing support to oil companies, walked out of court Friday an hour after a judge committed him to surrender to face counterfeit passport charges in Texas.
Diya’s lawyer David Parry appealed Justice Gillian Roberts’ decision and his client was freed, but the lawyer must make submissions to the federal Minister of Justice to halt Diya’s extradition.
Federal prosecutors argued Diya’s a strong flight risk because he has significant funds and was granted a Dominican passport for a $100,000 donation.
Diya also demonstrated access to and ability to use fake passports, court heard.
Story continues below
He’s been on bail since Oct. 31.
Diya testified he “wishes to clear his name” and fight the charges, but had no connection to Canada and faces serious consequences if extradited to the U.S., court heard.
Diya met Leatrice Malika DeBruhl-Daniels, 45, in 2016 while she was stationed in the United Arab Emirates.
She worked for the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), which handles criminal, terrorism and intelligence investigations for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.
In 2016, Diya tried to obtain U.S. tourist visa.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) believed he was involved in illegally-exporting goods from the U.S. to Iran, court documents stated.
De Bruhl-Daniels contacted the State Department and DHS on Diya’s behalf but was told to “stay away” and that he faced arrest if he entered the U.S.
Dad who hid daughter from mistress guilty in passport fraud
Former Immigration Canada worker charged in passport frauds
Former official guilty of approving imposters’ passports
Suspended immigration consultant charged with fraud
Instead, she engaged in a romantic relationship with Diya, tipping him off he was under investigation.
Diya threw a lavish birthday party for Bruhl-Daniels and hired her son to work a couple of months for $3,000 and paid for her vacation in Greece.
De Bruhl-Daniels was busted Sept. 28 on obstruction charges but was freed and lives with her mother in Virginia.
She was suspended from duty.
Diya is accused of using a fraudulent Guatemalan passport in July 2014 —confiscated two months later by the Guatemalan Consul General in Houston.
In July 2014, Diya allegedly tried to use this bogus passport to set up a Texas-based business with a co-conspirator.
In August 2014, an FBI undercover employee and confidential source met with Diya and his partner.
The partner stated on the recorded conversation he obtained 11 fake Guatemalan passports, but was looking for a less-expensive supplier.
Diya requested a legitimate U.S. passport from the undercover cop, who wanted $150,000, court documents stated.
Toronto police arrested him at Pearson International Airport — his first time in Canada — in Sept. 2018 after a request from the U.S., enroute to Calgary from Dubai.
spazzano@postmedia.com
http://torontosun.com/news/crime/te...-s-agent-on-1-million-bail-facing-extradition
Sam Pazzano Courts Bureau
Published:
April 30, 2019
Updated:
April 30, 2019 6:09 PM EDT
A Syrian businessman suspected of terrorism and linked romantically to an American federal agent is free on $1 million bail after he was committed to surrender to the U.S.
Nadal Diya, 46, the CEO of a Persian Gulf business providing support to oil companies, walked out of court Friday an hour after a judge committed him to surrender to face counterfeit passport charges in Texas.
Diya’s lawyer David Parry appealed Justice Gillian Roberts’ decision and his client was freed, but the lawyer must make submissions to the federal Minister of Justice to halt Diya’s extradition.
Federal prosecutors argued Diya’s a strong flight risk because he has significant funds and was granted a Dominican passport for a $100,000 donation.
Diya also demonstrated access to and ability to use fake passports, court heard.
Story continues below
He’s been on bail since Oct. 31.
Diya testified he “wishes to clear his name” and fight the charges, but had no connection to Canada and faces serious consequences if extradited to the U.S., court heard.
Diya met Leatrice Malika DeBruhl-Daniels, 45, in 2016 while she was stationed in the United Arab Emirates.
She worked for the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), which handles criminal, terrorism and intelligence investigations for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.
In 2016, Diya tried to obtain U.S. tourist visa.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) believed he was involved in illegally-exporting goods from the U.S. to Iran, court documents stated.
De Bruhl-Daniels contacted the State Department and DHS on Diya’s behalf but was told to “stay away” and that he faced arrest if he entered the U.S.
Dad who hid daughter from mistress guilty in passport fraud
Former Immigration Canada worker charged in passport frauds
Former official guilty of approving imposters’ passports
Suspended immigration consultant charged with fraud
Instead, she engaged in a romantic relationship with Diya, tipping him off he was under investigation.
Diya threw a lavish birthday party for Bruhl-Daniels and hired her son to work a couple of months for $3,000 and paid for her vacation in Greece.
De Bruhl-Daniels was busted Sept. 28 on obstruction charges but was freed and lives with her mother in Virginia.
She was suspended from duty.
Diya is accused of using a fraudulent Guatemalan passport in July 2014 —confiscated two months later by the Guatemalan Consul General in Houston.
In July 2014, Diya allegedly tried to use this bogus passport to set up a Texas-based business with a co-conspirator.
In August 2014, an FBI undercover employee and confidential source met with Diya and his partner.
The partner stated on the recorded conversation he obtained 11 fake Guatemalan passports, but was looking for a less-expensive supplier.
Diya requested a legitimate U.S. passport from the undercover cop, who wanted $150,000, court documents stated.
Toronto police arrested him at Pearson International Airport — his first time in Canada — in Sept. 2018 after a request from the U.S., enroute to Calgary from Dubai.
spazzano@postmedia.com
http://torontosun.com/news/crime/te...-s-agent-on-1-million-bail-facing-extradition
Iran flogs, executes two accused teen rapists in secret
Brad Hunter
Published:
May 1, 2019
Updated:
May 1, 2019 4:21 PM EDT
Clip of an earlier Iran execution. AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
Two convicted teen rapists were flogged then executed in a clandestine death house in Iran.
Cousins Mehdi Sohrabifar and Amin Sedaghat, both 17, were executed in Adelabad prison on April 25, after spending two years behind bars.
But Amnesty International is claiming the pair — both arrested when they were 15-years-old — endured “unfair trials” that doomed them.
Amnesty said the pair were both brutally beaten while in police detention and were barred from speaking with their lawyer.
Cousins Mehdi Sohrabifar, top, and Amin Sedaghat were executed in Adelabad prison. They had first been flogged. Both were 17. AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
Making matters worse, the two teens, their families and their lawyers had no idea they would be executed until the deed was done.
Story continues below
On the day before they were executed, the boys’ families were allowed to visit them but there was no explanation.
International human rights laws typically frown on executing anyone under the age of 18 at the time crimes were committed.
“The Iranian authorities have once again proved that they are sickeningly prepared to put children to death, in flagrant disregard of international law,” Amnesty International spokesman Philip Luther told the Daily Mail.
“It seems they cruelly kept these two boys in the dark about their death sentences for two years, flogged them in the final moments of their lives and then carried out their executions in secret.”
He added: “We have identified a trend in which Iran’s authorities are carrying out executions of juvenile offenders in secret and without giving advance notice to the families, seemingly in a deliberate attempt to avoid global outrage.”
Iran has executed at least 97 people who were under the age of 18 at the time of their crimes between 1990 and 2018, Amnesty said.
http://torontosun.com/news/world/iran-flogs-executes-two-accused-teen-rapists-in-secret
Brad Hunter
Published:
May 1, 2019
Updated:
May 1, 2019 4:21 PM EDT
Clip of an earlier Iran execution. AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
Two convicted teen rapists were flogged then executed in a clandestine death house in Iran.
Cousins Mehdi Sohrabifar and Amin Sedaghat, both 17, were executed in Adelabad prison on April 25, after spending two years behind bars.
But Amnesty International is claiming the pair — both arrested when they were 15-years-old — endured “unfair trials” that doomed them.
Amnesty said the pair were both brutally beaten while in police detention and were barred from speaking with their lawyer.
Cousins Mehdi Sohrabifar, top, and Amin Sedaghat were executed in Adelabad prison. They had first been flogged. Both were 17. AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
Making matters worse, the two teens, their families and their lawyers had no idea they would be executed until the deed was done.
Story continues below
On the day before they were executed, the boys’ families were allowed to visit them but there was no explanation.
International human rights laws typically frown on executing anyone under the age of 18 at the time crimes were committed.
“The Iranian authorities have once again proved that they are sickeningly prepared to put children to death, in flagrant disregard of international law,” Amnesty International spokesman Philip Luther told the Daily Mail.
“It seems they cruelly kept these two boys in the dark about their death sentences for two years, flogged them in the final moments of their lives and then carried out their executions in secret.”
He added: “We have identified a trend in which Iran’s authorities are carrying out executions of juvenile offenders in secret and without giving advance notice to the families, seemingly in a deliberate attempt to avoid global outrage.”
Iran has executed at least 97 people who were under the age of 18 at the time of their crimes between 1990 and 2018, Amnesty said.
http://torontosun.com/news/world/iran-flogs-executes-two-accused-teen-rapists-in-secret
Pakistani Christian girls trafficked to China as brides
Associated Press
Published:
May 7, 2019
Updated:
May 7, 2019 4:07 PM EDT
GUJRANWALA, Pakistan — Muqadas Ashraf was just 16 when her parents married her off to a Chinese man who had come to Pakistan looking for a bride. Less than five months later, Muqadas is back in her home country, pregnant and seeking a divorce from a husband she says was abusive.
She is one of hundreds of poor Christian girls who have been trafficked to China in a market for brides that has swiftly grown in Pakistan since late last year, activists say. Brokers are aggressively seeking out girls for Chinese men, sometimes even cruising outside churches to ask for potential brides. They are being helped by Christian clerics paid to target impoverished parents in their congregation with promises of wealth in exchange for their daughters.
Parents receive several thousand dollars and are told that their new sons-in-law are wealthy Christian converts. The grooms turn out to be neither, according to several brides, their parents, an activist, pastors and government officials, all of whom spoke to The Associated Press. Once in China, the girls — most often married against their will — can find themselves isolated in remote rural regions, vulnerable to abuse, unable to communicate and reliant on a translation app even for a glass of water.
Mahek Liaqat, who married a Chinese national, shows her marriage certificate in Gujranwala, Pakistan. K.M. Chaudary / AP
“This is human smuggling,” said Ijaz Alam Augustine, the human rights and minorities minister in Pakistan’s Punjab province, in an interview with the AP. “Greed is really responsible for these marriages … I have met with some of these girls and they are very poor.”
Augustine accused the Chinese government and its embassy in Pakistan of turning a blind eye to the practice by unquestioningly issuing visas and documents. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied that, saying China has zero tolerance for illegal transnational marriage agencies.
Human Rights Watch called on China and Pakistan to take action to end bride trafficking, warning in an April 26 statement of “increasing evidence that Pakistani women and girls are at risk of sexual slavery in China.”
On Monday, Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency arrested eight Chinese nationals and four Pakistanis in raids in Punjab province in connection with trafficking, Geo TV reported. It said the raids followed an undercover operation that included attending an arranged marriage.
The Chinese embassy said last month that China is co-operating with Pakistan to crack down on unlawful matchmaking centres, saying “both Chinese and Pakistani youths are victims of these illegal agents.”
The Associated Press interviewed more than a dozen Christian Pakistani brides and would-be brides who fled before exchanging vows. All had similar accounts of a process involving brokers and members of the clergy, including describing houses where they were taken to see potential husbands and spend their wedding nights in Islamabad, the country’s capital, and Lahore, the capital of Punjab province.
“It is all fraud and cheating. All the promises they make are fake,” said Muqadas.
SUPPLY AND DEMAND
In China, demand for foreign brides has mounted, a legacy of the one-child policy that skewed the country’s gender balance toward males. Brides initially came largely from Vietnam, Laos and North Korea. Now men are looking further afield, said Mimi Vu, director of advocacy at Pacific Links, which helps trafficked Vietnamese women.
“It’s purely supply and demand,” she said. “It used to be, ‘Is she light-skinned?’ Now it’s like, ‘Is she female?”‘
Pakistan seems to have come onto marriage brokers’ radar late last year.
Saleem Iqbal, a Christian activist, said he first began to see significant numbers of marriage to Chinese men in October. Since then, an estimated 750 to 1,000 girls have been married off, he said.
Pakistan’s small Christian community, centred in Punjab province, makes a vulnerable target. Numbering some 2.5 million in the country’s overwhelmingly Muslim population of 200 million, Christians are among Pakistan’s most deeply impoverished. They also have little political or social support.
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Among all faiths in Pakistan, parents often decide a daughter’s marriage partner. The deeply patriarchal society sees girls as less desirable than boys and as a burden because the bride’s family must pay a dowry and the cost of the wedding when they marry. A new bride is often mistreated by her husband and in-laws if her dowry is considered inadequate.
By contrast, potential Chinese grooms offer parents money and pay all wedding expenses.
Some of the grooms are from among the tens of thousands of Chinese in Pakistan working on infrastructure projects under Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, a project that has further boosted ties between the two countries in recent years. Other grooms search directly from China through networks. They present themselves as Christian converts, but pastors complicit in the deals don’t ask for any documentation.
They pay on average US$3,500 to $5,000, including payments to parents, pastors and a broker, said Iqbal, who is also a journalist with a small Christian station, Isaac TV. Iqbal has gone to court to stop marriages and sheltered runaway brides, some as young as 13.
Muqadas’ mother Nasreen said she was promised about $5,000, which included the cost of the wedding and her daughter’s wedding dress. “But I have not seen anything yet,” she said.
“I really believed I was giving her a chance at a better life and also a better life for us,” Nasreen said.
PRIESTS AND BROKERS
Dozens of priests are paid by brokers to find brides for Chinese men, said Augustine, the provincial minorities minister, who is Christian. Many are from the small evangelical churches that have proliferated in Pakistan.
Gujranwala, a city north of Lahore, has been a particular target of brokers, with more than 100 local Christian women and girls married off to Chinese in recent months, according to Iqbal.
The city has several mainly Christian neighbourhoods, largely dirt poor with open sewers running along narrow slum streets. Tucked away in the alleys are numerous evangelical churches, small cement structures unrecognizable except for small crosses outside.
Pastor Munch Morris said he knows a group of pastors in his neighbourhood who work with a private Chinese marriage broker. Among them, he said, is a fellow pastor at his church who tells his flock, “God is happy because these Chinese boys convert to Christianity. They are helping the poor Christian girls.”
Morris opposes such marriages, calling them an insult. “We know these marriages are all for the sake of money.”
Rizwan Rashid, a parishioner at the city’s Roman Catholic St. John’s Church, said that two weeks earlier, a car pulled up to him outside the church gates. Two Pakistani men and a Chinese woman inside asked him if he knew of any girls who want to marry a Chinese man.
“They told me her life would be great,” he said. “Everything would be paid for by them.”
They were willing to pay him to help, but he said the church’s priest often warns his flock against such marriages, so he refused.
Brokers also troll brick kilns, where the poorest work essentially as slaves to pay off debts, and offer to pay off their workers’ debts in exchange for daughters as brides.
Pakistani and Chinese brokers work together in the trade. One prominent broker in Gujranwala is a Pakistani known only as Robinson. He refused to talk to the AP, but his wife Razia told the AP that they make arrangements through a Chinese marriage bureau in Islamabad.
Moqadas and another young woman from the same neighbourhood, Mahek Liaqat, said Robinson arranged their marriages, providing photos of potential grooms. Afterward, they each described being taken to the same, multi-story house in Islamabad, a sort of boarding house with bedrooms. There, each met her husband for the first time face-to-face and spent her wedding night.
Mahek, 19, said she stayed there with her husband for a month, during which she saw several other girls brought in. She attended several weddings performed in the basement.
Other brides told of meeting their husbands at a similar house in a posh neighbourhood of Lahore.
Simbal Akmal, 18, was taken there by her parents. Two other Christian girls were already there in a large sitting room, picking grooms. Three Chinese men were presented to Simbal, and her father demanded she choose one. She told him she didn’t want to marry, but he insisted, claiming “it was a matter of our honour,” she said.
“He had already promised I would marry one,” she said. “They just wanted money.”
She married, but immediately fled. She was joined by her sister, who refused her parents’ demands to marry a Chinese man. Both escaped to a refuge run by the activist, Iqbal.
IN CHINA
Muqadas said her husband had claimed to be a man of money, but when she arrived in China in early December, she found herself living “in a small house, just one room and a bedroom.”
She said he rarely let her out of the house on her own. He forced her to undergo a battery of medical tests that later she found were attempts to determine why she was not yet pregnant. On Christmas Eve, when she pressed him to take her to church, he slapped her and broke her phone, she said.
“I don’t have the words to tell you how difficult the last month there was,” said Muqadas. “He threatened me.”
Finally, he agreed to send her home after her family said they would go to the police.
Mahek said she hadn’t wanted to get married, but her parents insisted. Her Chinese husband was possessive and refused to let her leave the house. “He was just terrible,” she said.
In China, her husband, Li Tao, denied abusing Mahek. He said he was a Christian convert and worked for a state-owned Chinese company building roads and bridges when he met Mahek through a Pakistani matchmaker introduced by a Chinese friend.
He was taken by her at first sight, he said. “If you look at her and you see she’s right for you, that’s it, right?”
Li returned with Mahek last winter to his hometown of Chenlou, a village surrounded by wheat fields in coastal Jiangsu province. They moved into his mother’s home, a one-story courtyard house.
After Malek’s family reached out to their government for help to bring her back, the police showed up at Li’s home and said they were told he was illegally confining a woman in his home.
He said it was Mahek who refused to go outside.
“I wouldn’t force her into doing anything,” Li said. “She just had to learn to adapt to a new environment. I wasn’t asking her to change right away.” Still, he bought plane tickets to take her back to Pakistan.
Others, however, are unable to come back.
Mahek’s grandfather Idriis Masih said he contacted the parents of several other Pakistani girls whom Mahek had befriended through a phone app in China and who were desperate to return home. All the parents were poor and shrugged off his attempts to convince them to retrieve their daughters.
“She is married now. It is her life,” he said.
——
Kang reported from Linyi, China. Associated Press researcher Shanshan Wang in Beijing contributed to this report
http://torontosun.com/news/world/pakistani-christian-girls-trafficked-to-china-as-brides
Associated Press
Published:
May 7, 2019
Updated:
May 7, 2019 4:07 PM EDT
GUJRANWALA, Pakistan — Muqadas Ashraf was just 16 when her parents married her off to a Chinese man who had come to Pakistan looking for a bride. Less than five months later, Muqadas is back in her home country, pregnant and seeking a divorce from a husband she says was abusive.
She is one of hundreds of poor Christian girls who have been trafficked to China in a market for brides that has swiftly grown in Pakistan since late last year, activists say. Brokers are aggressively seeking out girls for Chinese men, sometimes even cruising outside churches to ask for potential brides. They are being helped by Christian clerics paid to target impoverished parents in their congregation with promises of wealth in exchange for their daughters.
Parents receive several thousand dollars and are told that their new sons-in-law are wealthy Christian converts. The grooms turn out to be neither, according to several brides, their parents, an activist, pastors and government officials, all of whom spoke to The Associated Press. Once in China, the girls — most often married against their will — can find themselves isolated in remote rural regions, vulnerable to abuse, unable to communicate and reliant on a translation app even for a glass of water.
Mahek Liaqat, who married a Chinese national, shows her marriage certificate in Gujranwala, Pakistan. K.M. Chaudary / AP
“This is human smuggling,” said Ijaz Alam Augustine, the human rights and minorities minister in Pakistan’s Punjab province, in an interview with the AP. “Greed is really responsible for these marriages … I have met with some of these girls and they are very poor.”
Augustine accused the Chinese government and its embassy in Pakistan of turning a blind eye to the practice by unquestioningly issuing visas and documents. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied that, saying China has zero tolerance for illegal transnational marriage agencies.
Human Rights Watch called on China and Pakistan to take action to end bride trafficking, warning in an April 26 statement of “increasing evidence that Pakistani women and girls are at risk of sexual slavery in China.”
On Monday, Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency arrested eight Chinese nationals and four Pakistanis in raids in Punjab province in connection with trafficking, Geo TV reported. It said the raids followed an undercover operation that included attending an arranged marriage.
The Chinese embassy said last month that China is co-operating with Pakistan to crack down on unlawful matchmaking centres, saying “both Chinese and Pakistani youths are victims of these illegal agents.”
The Associated Press interviewed more than a dozen Christian Pakistani brides and would-be brides who fled before exchanging vows. All had similar accounts of a process involving brokers and members of the clergy, including describing houses where they were taken to see potential husbands and spend their wedding nights in Islamabad, the country’s capital, and Lahore, the capital of Punjab province.
“It is all fraud and cheating. All the promises they make are fake,” said Muqadas.
SUPPLY AND DEMAND
In China, demand for foreign brides has mounted, a legacy of the one-child policy that skewed the country’s gender balance toward males. Brides initially came largely from Vietnam, Laos and North Korea. Now men are looking further afield, said Mimi Vu, director of advocacy at Pacific Links, which helps trafficked Vietnamese women.
“It’s purely supply and demand,” she said. “It used to be, ‘Is she light-skinned?’ Now it’s like, ‘Is she female?”‘
Pakistan seems to have come onto marriage brokers’ radar late last year.
Saleem Iqbal, a Christian activist, said he first began to see significant numbers of marriage to Chinese men in October. Since then, an estimated 750 to 1,000 girls have been married off, he said.
Pakistan’s small Christian community, centred in Punjab province, makes a vulnerable target. Numbering some 2.5 million in the country’s overwhelmingly Muslim population of 200 million, Christians are among Pakistan’s most deeply impoverished. They also have little political or social support.
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Among all faiths in Pakistan, parents often decide a daughter’s marriage partner. The deeply patriarchal society sees girls as less desirable than boys and as a burden because the bride’s family must pay a dowry and the cost of the wedding when they marry. A new bride is often mistreated by her husband and in-laws if her dowry is considered inadequate.
By contrast, potential Chinese grooms offer parents money and pay all wedding expenses.
Some of the grooms are from among the tens of thousands of Chinese in Pakistan working on infrastructure projects under Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, a project that has further boosted ties between the two countries in recent years. Other grooms search directly from China through networks. They present themselves as Christian converts, but pastors complicit in the deals don’t ask for any documentation.
They pay on average US$3,500 to $5,000, including payments to parents, pastors and a broker, said Iqbal, who is also a journalist with a small Christian station, Isaac TV. Iqbal has gone to court to stop marriages and sheltered runaway brides, some as young as 13.
Muqadas’ mother Nasreen said she was promised about $5,000, which included the cost of the wedding and her daughter’s wedding dress. “But I have not seen anything yet,” she said.
“I really believed I was giving her a chance at a better life and also a better life for us,” Nasreen said.
PRIESTS AND BROKERS
Dozens of priests are paid by brokers to find brides for Chinese men, said Augustine, the provincial minorities minister, who is Christian. Many are from the small evangelical churches that have proliferated in Pakistan.
Gujranwala, a city north of Lahore, has been a particular target of brokers, with more than 100 local Christian women and girls married off to Chinese in recent months, according to Iqbal.
The city has several mainly Christian neighbourhoods, largely dirt poor with open sewers running along narrow slum streets. Tucked away in the alleys are numerous evangelical churches, small cement structures unrecognizable except for small crosses outside.
Pastor Munch Morris said he knows a group of pastors in his neighbourhood who work with a private Chinese marriage broker. Among them, he said, is a fellow pastor at his church who tells his flock, “God is happy because these Chinese boys convert to Christianity. They are helping the poor Christian girls.”
Morris opposes such marriages, calling them an insult. “We know these marriages are all for the sake of money.”
Rizwan Rashid, a parishioner at the city’s Roman Catholic St. John’s Church, said that two weeks earlier, a car pulled up to him outside the church gates. Two Pakistani men and a Chinese woman inside asked him if he knew of any girls who want to marry a Chinese man.
“They told me her life would be great,” he said. “Everything would be paid for by them.”
They were willing to pay him to help, but he said the church’s priest often warns his flock against such marriages, so he refused.
Brokers also troll brick kilns, where the poorest work essentially as slaves to pay off debts, and offer to pay off their workers’ debts in exchange for daughters as brides.
Pakistani and Chinese brokers work together in the trade. One prominent broker in Gujranwala is a Pakistani known only as Robinson. He refused to talk to the AP, but his wife Razia told the AP that they make arrangements through a Chinese marriage bureau in Islamabad.
Moqadas and another young woman from the same neighbourhood, Mahek Liaqat, said Robinson arranged their marriages, providing photos of potential grooms. Afterward, they each described being taken to the same, multi-story house in Islamabad, a sort of boarding house with bedrooms. There, each met her husband for the first time face-to-face and spent her wedding night.
Mahek, 19, said she stayed there with her husband for a month, during which she saw several other girls brought in. She attended several weddings performed in the basement.
Other brides told of meeting their husbands at a similar house in a posh neighbourhood of Lahore.
Simbal Akmal, 18, was taken there by her parents. Two other Christian girls were already there in a large sitting room, picking grooms. Three Chinese men were presented to Simbal, and her father demanded she choose one. She told him she didn’t want to marry, but he insisted, claiming “it was a matter of our honour,” she said.
“He had already promised I would marry one,” she said. “They just wanted money.”
She married, but immediately fled. She was joined by her sister, who refused her parents’ demands to marry a Chinese man. Both escaped to a refuge run by the activist, Iqbal.
IN CHINA
Muqadas said her husband had claimed to be a man of money, but when she arrived in China in early December, she found herself living “in a small house, just one room and a bedroom.”
She said he rarely let her out of the house on her own. He forced her to undergo a battery of medical tests that later she found were attempts to determine why she was not yet pregnant. On Christmas Eve, when she pressed him to take her to church, he slapped her and broke her phone, she said.
“I don’t have the words to tell you how difficult the last month there was,” said Muqadas. “He threatened me.”
Finally, he agreed to send her home after her family said they would go to the police.
Mahek said she hadn’t wanted to get married, but her parents insisted. Her Chinese husband was possessive and refused to let her leave the house. “He was just terrible,” she said.
In China, her husband, Li Tao, denied abusing Mahek. He said he was a Christian convert and worked for a state-owned Chinese company building roads and bridges when he met Mahek through a Pakistani matchmaker introduced by a Chinese friend.
He was taken by her at first sight, he said. “If you look at her and you see she’s right for you, that’s it, right?”
Li returned with Mahek last winter to his hometown of Chenlou, a village surrounded by wheat fields in coastal Jiangsu province. They moved into his mother’s home, a one-story courtyard house.
After Malek’s family reached out to their government for help to bring her back, the police showed up at Li’s home and said they were told he was illegally confining a woman in his home.
He said it was Mahek who refused to go outside.
“I wouldn’t force her into doing anything,” Li said. “She just had to learn to adapt to a new environment. I wasn’t asking her to change right away.” Still, he bought plane tickets to take her back to Pakistan.
Others, however, are unable to come back.
Mahek’s grandfather Idriis Masih said he contacted the parents of several other Pakistani girls whom Mahek had befriended through a phone app in China and who were desperate to return home. All the parents were poor and shrugged off his attempts to convince them to retrieve their daughters.
“She is married now. It is her life,” he said.
——
Kang reported from Linyi, China. Associated Press researcher Shanshan Wang in Beijing contributed to this report
'American Taliban' John Walker Lindh to be released
Associated Press
Published:
May 22, 2019
Updated:
May 22, 2019 7:03 PM EDT
John Walker Lindh is seen in these two file photos.Alexandria Sheriff's Office via AP / AP Photo, File
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — John Walker Lindh, the young Californian who became known as the American Taliban after he was captured by U.S. forces in the invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, is set to go free after nearly two decades in prison.
But conditions imposed recently on Lindh’s release, slated for Thursday, make clear that authorities remain concerned about the threat he could pose once free.
Lindh, now 38, converted to Islam as a teenager after seeing the film Malcolm X and went overseas to study Arabic and the Qur’an. In November 2000, he went to Pakistan and from there made his way to Afghanistan. He joined the Taliban and was with them on Sept. 11, 2001, when al-Qaida terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The U.S. attacked Afghanistan after the country failed to turn over al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. Lindh was captured in a battle with Northern Alliance fighters in late 2001. He was present when a group of Taliban prisoners launched an attack that killed Johnny Micheal “Mike” Spann, a CIA officer who had been interrogating Lindh and other Taliban prisoners.
Television footage of a bearded, wounded Lindh captured among Taliban fighters created an international sensation, and he was brought to the U.S. to face charges of conspiring to kill Spann and providing support to terrorists. Eventually, he struck a plea bargain in which he admitted illegally providing support to the Taliban but denied a role in Spann’s death.
This file image taken Dec. 1, 2001, from television footage in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, shows John Walker Lindh, right, claiming to be an American Taliban volunteer. AP Video, File
Lindh received a 20-year prison sentence. He served roughly 17 years and five months, including two months when he was in military detention. Federal inmates who exhibit good behaviour typically serve 85% of their sentence.
His probation officer asked the court to impose additional restrictions on Lindh while he remains on supervised release for the next three years. Lindh initially opposed but eventually acquiesced to the restrictions, which include monitoring software on his internet devices; requiring that his online communications be conducted in English and that he undergo mental health counselling; and forbidding him from possessing or viewing extremist material, holding a passport of any kind or leaving the U.S.
Authorities never specified their rationale for seeking such restrictions. A hearing on the issue was cancelled after Lindh agreed to them.
The Bureau of Prisons said Lindh rejected an interview request submitted by The Associated Press, and his lawyer declined to comment. But there have been reports that Lindh’s behaviour in prison has created cause for concern. Foreign Policy magazine reported in 2017 that an investigation by the National Counterterrorism Center found that Lindh “continued to advocate for global jihad and to write and translate violent extremist texts.”
A former inmate who knew Lindh from the time they spent at the same federal prison said he never heard Lindh espouse support for al-Qaida or indicate a risk for violence, but he found Lindh to be anti-social and awkward around others, with an unyielding, black-and-white view of religion. The inmate spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he wanted to avoid further stigmatization from his time in Lindh’s prison unit.
Michael Jensen, a terrorism researcher at the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, said it’s clear the government has concerns about Lindh’s mindset.
“For three years he’s going to be watched like a hawk,” Jensen said.
He said Lindh represents an interesting test case, as he is on the leading edge of dozens of inmates who were convicted on terror-related offences in the aftermath of Sept. 11 and are eligible for release in the next five years. He said there’s little research to indicate the efficacy of de-radicalizing inmates with connections to radical Islam, but he said the research shows that recidivism rates for those connected to white supremacy and other forms of extremism are high.
Lindh has been housed in Terre Haute, Indiana, with other Muslim inmates convicted on terror-related charges. The rationale was to keep those inmates from radicalizing others in the general prison population, Jensen said. Those inside the unit were supposed to be limited in their ability to communicate with each other.
“But the reality is these guys still talk to each other,” he said.
Lindh, for his part, admitted his role and his wrongdoing in supporting the Taliban, but he and his family have bristled at any notion that he should be considered a terrorist. When he was sentenced, Lindh said he never would have joined the Taliban if he fully understood what they were about. He also issued a short essay condemning acts of violence in the name of Islam that kill or harm innocent civilians.
Lindh’s time in prison has provided only a few clues about his current outlook. He filed multiple lawsuits, which were largely successful, challenging prison rules he found discriminatory against Muslims. In the more recent lawsuits, he used the name Yahya Lindh. One lawsuit won the right to pray in groups at the prison in Terre Haute. A second lawsuit reversed a policy requiring strip searches for inmates receiving visitors, and a third won the right to wear prison pants above the ankle, which Lindh said is in accordance with Islamic principles.
In the strip-search lawsuit, Lindh offered a discussion of Islamic rules prohibiting exposure of the body. If he’s compelled to reveal himself, he said, he’s also compelled under his religion to fight the rules requiring him to sin.
Some have criticized Lindh’s pending release. In March, the legislature in Alabama, where Spann grew up, adopted a resolution calling it “an insult” to Spann’s “heroic legacy and his remaining family members.”
In addition, Republican Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby and Democratic New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan wrote a letter last week to the Bureau of Prisons expressing concern.
“We must consider the security and safety implications for our citizens and communities who will receive individuals like John Walker Lindh who continue to openly call for extremist violence,” they wrote.
On Monday, Spann’s father, Johnny Spann, wrote a letter requesting that Lindh be investigated before he’s released, citing the National Counterterrorism Center’s investigation as his rationale for concern.
http://torontosun.com/news/world/american-taliban-john-walker-lindh-to-be-released
Associated Press
Published:
May 22, 2019
Updated:
May 22, 2019 7:03 PM EDT
John Walker Lindh is seen in these two file photos.Alexandria Sheriff's Office via AP / AP Photo, File
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — John Walker Lindh, the young Californian who became known as the American Taliban after he was captured by U.S. forces in the invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, is set to go free after nearly two decades in prison.
But conditions imposed recently on Lindh’s release, slated for Thursday, make clear that authorities remain concerned about the threat he could pose once free.
Lindh, now 38, converted to Islam as a teenager after seeing the film Malcolm X and went overseas to study Arabic and the Qur’an. In November 2000, he went to Pakistan and from there made his way to Afghanistan. He joined the Taliban and was with them on Sept. 11, 2001, when al-Qaida terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The U.S. attacked Afghanistan after the country failed to turn over al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. Lindh was captured in a battle with Northern Alliance fighters in late 2001. He was present when a group of Taliban prisoners launched an attack that killed Johnny Micheal “Mike” Spann, a CIA officer who had been interrogating Lindh and other Taliban prisoners.
Television footage of a bearded, wounded Lindh captured among Taliban fighters created an international sensation, and he was brought to the U.S. to face charges of conspiring to kill Spann and providing support to terrorists. Eventually, he struck a plea bargain in which he admitted illegally providing support to the Taliban but denied a role in Spann’s death.
This file image taken Dec. 1, 2001, from television footage in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, shows John Walker Lindh, right, claiming to be an American Taliban volunteer. AP Video, File
Lindh received a 20-year prison sentence. He served roughly 17 years and five months, including two months when he was in military detention. Federal inmates who exhibit good behaviour typically serve 85% of their sentence.
His probation officer asked the court to impose additional restrictions on Lindh while he remains on supervised release for the next three years. Lindh initially opposed but eventually acquiesced to the restrictions, which include monitoring software on his internet devices; requiring that his online communications be conducted in English and that he undergo mental health counselling; and forbidding him from possessing or viewing extremist material, holding a passport of any kind or leaving the U.S.
Authorities never specified their rationale for seeking such restrictions. A hearing on the issue was cancelled after Lindh agreed to them.
The Bureau of Prisons said Lindh rejected an interview request submitted by The Associated Press, and his lawyer declined to comment. But there have been reports that Lindh’s behaviour in prison has created cause for concern. Foreign Policy magazine reported in 2017 that an investigation by the National Counterterrorism Center found that Lindh “continued to advocate for global jihad and to write and translate violent extremist texts.”
A former inmate who knew Lindh from the time they spent at the same federal prison said he never heard Lindh espouse support for al-Qaida or indicate a risk for violence, but he found Lindh to be anti-social and awkward around others, with an unyielding, black-and-white view of religion. The inmate spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he wanted to avoid further stigmatization from his time in Lindh’s prison unit.
Michael Jensen, a terrorism researcher at the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, said it’s clear the government has concerns about Lindh’s mindset.
“For three years he’s going to be watched like a hawk,” Jensen said.
He said Lindh represents an interesting test case, as he is on the leading edge of dozens of inmates who were convicted on terror-related offences in the aftermath of Sept. 11 and are eligible for release in the next five years. He said there’s little research to indicate the efficacy of de-radicalizing inmates with connections to radical Islam, but he said the research shows that recidivism rates for those connected to white supremacy and other forms of extremism are high.
Lindh has been housed in Terre Haute, Indiana, with other Muslim inmates convicted on terror-related charges. The rationale was to keep those inmates from radicalizing others in the general prison population, Jensen said. Those inside the unit were supposed to be limited in their ability to communicate with each other.
“But the reality is these guys still talk to each other,” he said.
Lindh, for his part, admitted his role and his wrongdoing in supporting the Taliban, but he and his family have bristled at any notion that he should be considered a terrorist. When he was sentenced, Lindh said he never would have joined the Taliban if he fully understood what they were about. He also issued a short essay condemning acts of violence in the name of Islam that kill or harm innocent civilians.
Lindh’s time in prison has provided only a few clues about his current outlook. He filed multiple lawsuits, which were largely successful, challenging prison rules he found discriminatory against Muslims. In the more recent lawsuits, he used the name Yahya Lindh. One lawsuit won the right to pray in groups at the prison in Terre Haute. A second lawsuit reversed a policy requiring strip searches for inmates receiving visitors, and a third won the right to wear prison pants above the ankle, which Lindh said is in accordance with Islamic principles.
In the strip-search lawsuit, Lindh offered a discussion of Islamic rules prohibiting exposure of the body. If he’s compelled to reveal himself, he said, he’s also compelled under his religion to fight the rules requiring him to sin.
Some have criticized Lindh’s pending release. In March, the legislature in Alabama, where Spann grew up, adopted a resolution calling it “an insult” to Spann’s “heroic legacy and his remaining family members.”
In addition, Republican Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby and Democratic New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan wrote a letter last week to the Bureau of Prisons expressing concern.
“We must consider the security and safety implications for our citizens and communities who will receive individuals like John Walker Lindh who continue to openly call for extremist violence,” they wrote.
On Monday, Spann’s father, Johnny Spann, wrote a letter requesting that Lindh be investigated before he’s released, citing the National Counterterrorism Center’s investigation as his rationale for concern.
http://torontosun.com/news/world/american-taliban-john-walker-lindh-to-be-released
'American Taliban' John Walker Lindh freed after 17 years in prison
Associated Press
Published:
May 23, 2019
Updated:
May 23, 2019 5:10 PM EDT
In this file image taken from video broadcast Dec. 19, 2001.CNN via AP, File
John Walker Lindh, the Californian who took up arms for the Taliban and was captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2001, got out of prison Thursday after more than 17 years, released under tight restrictions that reflected government fears he still harbours radical views.
U.S. President Donald Trump reacted by saying, “I don’t like it at all.”
“Here’s a man who has not given up his proclamation of terror,” he said.
Lindh, 38, left a federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, after getting time off for good behaviour from the 20-year sentence he received when he pleaded guilty to providing support to the Taliban.
It was not immediately clear where the man known as the “American Taliban” will live or what he will do. He turned down an interview request last week, and his attorney declined to comment Thursday.
In a Fox News interview, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo decried his early release as “unexplainable and unconscionable” and called for a review of prison system policies.
The president said he asked lawyers whether there was anything that could be done to block Lindh from getting out but was told no. Trump said the U.S. will closely monitor him.
Under restrictions imposed by a federal judge in Alexandria, Va., Lindh’s internet devices must have monitoring software; his online communications must be conducted in English; he must undergo mental health counselling; he is forbidden to possess or view extremist material; and he cannot hold a passport or leave the U.S.
John Walker Lindh is seen in these two file photos. Alexandria Sheriff's Office via AP / AP Photo, File
FBI counterterrorism officials work with federal prison authorities to determine what risk a soon-to-be-released inmate might pose.
Probation officers never explained why they sought the restrictions against Lindh. But in 2017, Foreign Policy magazine cited a National Counterterrorism Center report that said Lindh “continued to advocate for global jihad and to write and translate violent extremist texts.”
On Wednesday, NBC reported that Lindh, in a letter to a producer from Los Angeles-based affiliate KNBC, wrote in 2015 that the Islamic State group was “doing a spectacular job.”
Lindh converted to Islam as a teenager after seeing the movie “Malcolm X” and eventually made his way to Pakistan and Afghanistan and joined the Taliban. He met Osama bin Laden and was with the Taliban on Sept. 11, 2001, when al-Qaida terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Lindh was captured on the battlefield after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan following 9-11 and was initially charged with conspiring to kill Mike Spann, a CIA operative who died during an uprising of Taliban prisoners shortly after interrogating Lindh.
Lindh denied any role in Spann’s death. But he admitted carrying an assault rifle and two grenades.
Spann’s daughter Alison Spann, now a journalist in Mississippi, posted a letter on Twitter that she said she had sent to Trump. In it, she called Lindh’s early release “a slap in the face” to everyone killed on 9/11 and in the war on terror since then, along with “the millions of Muslims worldwide who don’t support radical extremists.”
I wrote this letter to @POTUS asking that the early release of John Walker Lindh be stopped. He’s going to be released on May 23, despite reports that he has continued to “advocate for global jihad.” This is not a reformed prisoner… pic.twitter.com/HVOryefVIE
— Alison Spann (@newsgirlalison) May 21, 2019
Republican Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby and Democratic New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan also expressed concern about Lindh’s release in a letter last week to the federal Bureau of Prisons.
“We must consider the security and safety implications for our citizens and communities who will receive individuals like John Walker Lindh who continue to openly call for extremist violence,” they wrote.
The bureau defended itself Thursday in a statement that said Lindh’s release followed federal laws and guidelines. It said it works closely with outside agencies “to reduce the risk terrorist offenders pose inside and outside of prisons,” and added that no radicalized inmate has returned to federal prison on terrorism-related charges.
This file image taken Dec. 1, 2001, from television footage in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, shows John Walker Lindh, right, claiming to be an American Taliban volunteer. AP Video, File
Moazzam Begg, a former detainee at Guantanamo who now serves as director of outreach for London-based CAGE, which supports the rights of those accused of terror-related crimes, said the criticism over Lindh’s early release is misguided. If anything, Begg said, Lindh was imprisoned too long.
He noted that many of the other Taliban fighters who were sent to Guantanamo as enemy combatants were released much earlier.
As for Lindh’s letter in support of the Islamic State, Begg noted that it was written four years ago and that Lindh might not have had full knowledge of the group’s atrocities from behind bars.
“Nobody really knows what his views are right now in 2019,” he said.
In a statement, Begg said: “It is now time for him to be allowed to restart his life in peace and freedom.”
http://torontosun.com/news/world/american-taliban-john-walker-lindh-freed-after-17-years-in-prison
Associated Press
Published:
May 23, 2019
Updated:
May 23, 2019 5:10 PM EDT
In this file image taken from video broadcast Dec. 19, 2001.CNN via AP, File
John Walker Lindh, the Californian who took up arms for the Taliban and was captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2001, got out of prison Thursday after more than 17 years, released under tight restrictions that reflected government fears he still harbours radical views.
U.S. President Donald Trump reacted by saying, “I don’t like it at all.”
“Here’s a man who has not given up his proclamation of terror,” he said.
Lindh, 38, left a federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, after getting time off for good behaviour from the 20-year sentence he received when he pleaded guilty to providing support to the Taliban.
It was not immediately clear where the man known as the “American Taliban” will live or what he will do. He turned down an interview request last week, and his attorney declined to comment Thursday.
In a Fox News interview, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo decried his early release as “unexplainable and unconscionable” and called for a review of prison system policies.
The president said he asked lawyers whether there was anything that could be done to block Lindh from getting out but was told no. Trump said the U.S. will closely monitor him.
Under restrictions imposed by a federal judge in Alexandria, Va., Lindh’s internet devices must have monitoring software; his online communications must be conducted in English; he must undergo mental health counselling; he is forbidden to possess or view extremist material; and he cannot hold a passport or leave the U.S.
John Walker Lindh is seen in these two file photos. Alexandria Sheriff's Office via AP / AP Photo, File
FBI counterterrorism officials work with federal prison authorities to determine what risk a soon-to-be-released inmate might pose.
Probation officers never explained why they sought the restrictions against Lindh. But in 2017, Foreign Policy magazine cited a National Counterterrorism Center report that said Lindh “continued to advocate for global jihad and to write and translate violent extremist texts.”
On Wednesday, NBC reported that Lindh, in a letter to a producer from Los Angeles-based affiliate KNBC, wrote in 2015 that the Islamic State group was “doing a spectacular job.”
Lindh converted to Islam as a teenager after seeing the movie “Malcolm X” and eventually made his way to Pakistan and Afghanistan and joined the Taliban. He met Osama bin Laden and was with the Taliban on Sept. 11, 2001, when al-Qaida terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Lindh was captured on the battlefield after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan following 9-11 and was initially charged with conspiring to kill Mike Spann, a CIA operative who died during an uprising of Taliban prisoners shortly after interrogating Lindh.
Lindh denied any role in Spann’s death. But he admitted carrying an assault rifle and two grenades.
Spann’s daughter Alison Spann, now a journalist in Mississippi, posted a letter on Twitter that she said she had sent to Trump. In it, she called Lindh’s early release “a slap in the face” to everyone killed on 9/11 and in the war on terror since then, along with “the millions of Muslims worldwide who don’t support radical extremists.”
I wrote this letter to @POTUS asking that the early release of John Walker Lindh be stopped. He’s going to be released on May 23, despite reports that he has continued to “advocate for global jihad.” This is not a reformed prisoner… pic.twitter.com/HVOryefVIE
— Alison Spann (@newsgirlalison) May 21, 2019
Republican Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby and Democratic New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan also expressed concern about Lindh’s release in a letter last week to the federal Bureau of Prisons.
“We must consider the security and safety implications for our citizens and communities who will receive individuals like John Walker Lindh who continue to openly call for extremist violence,” they wrote.
The bureau defended itself Thursday in a statement that said Lindh’s release followed federal laws and guidelines. It said it works closely with outside agencies “to reduce the risk terrorist offenders pose inside and outside of prisons,” and added that no radicalized inmate has returned to federal prison on terrorism-related charges.
This file image taken Dec. 1, 2001, from television footage in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, shows John Walker Lindh, right, claiming to be an American Taliban volunteer. AP Video, File
Moazzam Begg, a former detainee at Guantanamo who now serves as director of outreach for London-based CAGE, which supports the rights of those accused of terror-related crimes, said the criticism over Lindh’s early release is misguided. If anything, Begg said, Lindh was imprisoned too long.
He noted that many of the other Taliban fighters who were sent to Guantanamo as enemy combatants were released much earlier.
As for Lindh’s letter in support of the Islamic State, Begg noted that it was written four years ago and that Lindh might not have had full knowledge of the group’s atrocities from behind bars.
“Nobody really knows what his views are right now in 2019,” he said.
In a statement, Begg said: “It is now time for him to be allowed to restart his life in peace and freedom.”
http://torontosun.com/news/world/american-taliban-john-walker-lindh-freed-after-17-years-in-prison
Daughter tweeted of 'torture' hours before she died in explosion at Kincora home
Kevin Martin
Published:
May 27, 2019
Updated:
May 27, 2019 11:33 PM EDT
Dorsa Dehdari, 22, was killed in a house fire in the northwest Calgary community of Kincora, which is now being investigated by homicide and arson detectives. Supplied photo
Two hours before she died in a fiery explosion police are investigating as a domestic homicide, a Calgary woman tweeted she wished her father was dead.
In the tweet, translated from Farsi for Postmedia by Shervin Ashraf, a court interpreter, Dorsa Dehdari said she was being “tortured” by her father, Heidar Dehdari.
“I wish it from bottom of my heart that my dad drops dead at once so he wouldn’t torture us anymore,” Dorsa, 22, wrote on her Twitter account @dorsad96.
“I don’t have nerve to tolerate it anymore.”
The tweet was posted at 11:55 a.m. on Saturday. At about 2 p.m., emergency crews found the bodies of Dorsa and, presumably, her father inside the home on Kincora Drive N.W. after an explosion and fire.
A memorial grows outside the home on Kincora Drive N.W. on Monday. Gavin Young/Postmedia
Dorsa’s 15-year-old sister, Dorna, was found badly injured outside the home. She is in hospital in critical condition.
A friend said Dorsa was a student at the University of Calgary and her younger sister attends Sir Winston Churchill High School.
Police said they are not looking for any suspects and friends of the sisters said the father died in the fire.
Dorsa’s Twitter feed also includes retweets about recent changes to abortion law in the U.S. One was from actress Alyssa Milano, who posted: “Not one uterus. NOT ONE UTERUS,” regarding Alabama’s new abortion law.
Another retweet, from U.S. writer Kashana Cauley said: “Kinda weird that all the pro-life movement does is kill women.”
On April 23, the girls’ mother Leila Dehdari filed for divorce, and on May 2, Heidar Dehdari was served the documents at the Kincora residence. The couple had been married for nearly 27 years, according to court documents.
In the documents, Leila Dehdari seeks primary care of their teenage daughter with the father “to have fair and liberal parenting time.”
Friends of a girl killed in an explosion in Kincora lay flowers at a memorial in front of the home. Darren Makowichuk / DARREN MAKOWICHUK/Postmedia
The mother also sought child support under the Federal Child Support Guidelines.
The documents do not mention any acrimony between the parents, who were married in Tehran on May 11, 1992.
But it does note both father and mother had the same birth surname.
“Please note the last name will be addressed within an affidavit for the record,” said a printed comment on one of the court documents, followed by the words “arrange marriage” in brackets.
The case was to be in court this Thursday for a disclosure application on behalf of the mother, seeking financial records, including tax returns, from the father.
Meanwhile, a cousin of the father’s, Mike Dehdari, said Monday night he had just talked to Heidar two days ago and “there was no indication” of any problems.
“I was shocked,” he said.
Over the weekend, friends of the two sisters told Postmedia that the siblings were very close to each other.
“People thought they were twins,” said Fariha Rahad, a close friend of Dorna’s.
Dorna had talked to their friend group about the strained relationship she had with her father, Rahad said, adding the sisters’ parents “did not have a good relationship in the house the last couple of years.”
Residents of the Kincora neighbourhood and friends of the sisters continued to visit the front yard of the family home on Monday, leaving flowers at a memorial.
KMartin@postmedia.com
On Twitter: @KMartinCourts
http://torontosun.com/news/crime/deadly-kincora-explosion-mother-had-recently-filed-for-divorce
Kevin Martin
Published:
May 27, 2019
Updated:
May 27, 2019 11:33 PM EDT
Dorsa Dehdari, 22, was killed in a house fire in the northwest Calgary community of Kincora, which is now being investigated by homicide and arson detectives. Supplied photo
Two hours before she died in a fiery explosion police are investigating as a domestic homicide, a Calgary woman tweeted she wished her father was dead.
In the tweet, translated from Farsi for Postmedia by Shervin Ashraf, a court interpreter, Dorsa Dehdari said she was being “tortured” by her father, Heidar Dehdari.
“I wish it from bottom of my heart that my dad drops dead at once so he wouldn’t torture us anymore,” Dorsa, 22, wrote on her Twitter account @dorsad96.
“I don’t have nerve to tolerate it anymore.”
The tweet was posted at 11:55 a.m. on Saturday. At about 2 p.m., emergency crews found the bodies of Dorsa and, presumably, her father inside the home on Kincora Drive N.W. after an explosion and fire.
A memorial grows outside the home on Kincora Drive N.W. on Monday. Gavin Young/Postmedia
Dorsa’s 15-year-old sister, Dorna, was found badly injured outside the home. She is in hospital in critical condition.
A friend said Dorsa was a student at the University of Calgary and her younger sister attends Sir Winston Churchill High School.
Police said they are not looking for any suspects and friends of the sisters said the father died in the fire.
Dorsa’s Twitter feed also includes retweets about recent changes to abortion law in the U.S. One was from actress Alyssa Milano, who posted: “Not one uterus. NOT ONE UTERUS,” regarding Alabama’s new abortion law.
Another retweet, from U.S. writer Kashana Cauley said: “Kinda weird that all the pro-life movement does is kill women.”
On April 23, the girls’ mother Leila Dehdari filed for divorce, and on May 2, Heidar Dehdari was served the documents at the Kincora residence. The couple had been married for nearly 27 years, according to court documents.
In the documents, Leila Dehdari seeks primary care of their teenage daughter with the father “to have fair and liberal parenting time.”
Friends of a girl killed in an explosion in Kincora lay flowers at a memorial in front of the home. Darren Makowichuk / DARREN MAKOWICHUK/Postmedia
The mother also sought child support under the Federal Child Support Guidelines.
The documents do not mention any acrimony between the parents, who were married in Tehran on May 11, 1992.
But it does note both father and mother had the same birth surname.
“Please note the last name will be addressed within an affidavit for the record,” said a printed comment on one of the court documents, followed by the words “arrange marriage” in brackets.
The case was to be in court this Thursday for a disclosure application on behalf of the mother, seeking financial records, including tax returns, from the father.
Meanwhile, a cousin of the father’s, Mike Dehdari, said Monday night he had just talked to Heidar two days ago and “there was no indication” of any problems.
“I was shocked,” he said.
Over the weekend, friends of the two sisters told Postmedia that the siblings were very close to each other.
“People thought they were twins,” said Fariha Rahad, a close friend of Dorna’s.
Dorna had talked to their friend group about the strained relationship she had with her father, Rahad said, adding the sisters’ parents “did not have a good relationship in the house the last couple of years.”
Residents of the Kincora neighbourhood and friends of the sisters continued to visit the front yard of the family home on Monday, leaving flowers at a memorial.
KMartin@postmedia.com
On Twitter: @KMartinCourts
http://torontosun.com/news/crime/deadly-kincora-explosion-mother-had-recently-filed-for-divorce
Three men sentenced to life in India for rape, murder of girl, 8
Reuters
Published:
June 10, 2019
Updated:
June 10, 2019 8:54 AM EDT
Media gather around a Punjab Police vehicle carrying the seven accused for the rape and murder of an eight-year-old nomadic girl in Kathua in Jammu and Kashmir, as verdict is expected to be delivered at the district court in Pathankot on June 10, 2019. NARINDER NANU/AFP/Getty Images
PATHANKOT — An Indian court on Monday sentenced three men to life imprisonment for the rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl in Jammu and Kashmir state last year, a lawyer for the defense said, in a case that sparked outrage across the country.
Three other men also convicted in the case were given a five-year prison sentence, lawyer Vinod Mahajan told reporters outside the courtroom in the northern town of Pathankot.
The girl, from a nomadic Muslim community that roams the forests of Kashmir, was drugged, held captive in a temple and sexually assaulted for a week before being strangled and battered to death with a stone in January 2018.
http://torontosun.com/news/world/three-men-sentenced-to-life-in-india-for-child-rape-murder
Reuters
Published:
June 10, 2019
Updated:
June 10, 2019 8:54 AM EDT
Media gather around a Punjab Police vehicle carrying the seven accused for the rape and murder of an eight-year-old nomadic girl in Kathua in Jammu and Kashmir, as verdict is expected to be delivered at the district court in Pathankot on June 10, 2019. NARINDER NANU/AFP/Getty Images
PATHANKOT — An Indian court on Monday sentenced three men to life imprisonment for the rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl in Jammu and Kashmir state last year, a lawyer for the defense said, in a case that sparked outrage across the country.
Three other men also convicted in the case were given a five-year prison sentence, lawyer Vinod Mahajan told reporters outside the courtroom in the northern town of Pathankot.
The girl, from a nomadic Muslim community that roams the forests of Kashmir, was drugged, held captive in a temple and sexually assaulted for a week before being strangled and battered to death with a stone in January 2018.
http://torontosun.com/news/world/three-men-sentenced-to-life-in-india-for-child-rape-murder
Iraqi-Canadian man sentenced for role in deadly attack on U.S. base
Reuters
Published:
June 19, 2019
Updated:
June 19, 2019 10:12 AM EDT
A woman bikes by the Federal District Court in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Dec. 15, 2015.Kena Betancur / AFP / Getty Images / Files
An Iraqi-Canadian man was sentenced to 26 years in prison by a federal judge in Brooklyn on Tuesday for his role in orchestrating the April 2009 truck bombing of a U.S. base in Mosul, Iraq, that killed five soldiers, officials said.
Two Iraqi police officers also died in the explosion.
Faruq Khalil Muhammad ‘Isa, 51, pleaded guilty in March 2018 to one count of conspiring to murder Americans. The charge carries a maximum sentence of life but prosecutors agreed to a sentence of 26 years under a plea deal, U.S. Justice Department officials said.
“Today’s sentence brings some measure of earthly justice to an individual involved in the deaths of five service members,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers said in a press release.
Artist drawing of Faruq Khalil Muhammad ‘Isa by Jennifer Poburano, Jan. 20, 2011. (DRAWING BY JENNIFER POBURANO/Postmedia)
“But it cannot begin to compensate for the evil he contributed to or alleviate the pain of those family members whose lives he changed forever,” he said.
Prosecutors have said that, while living in Canada, ‘Isa conspired with a group of militants that carried out a suicide truck bombing on April 10, 2009, at the United States’ Forward Operating Base Marez in Mosul.
The jihadists ‘Isa conspired with drove a truck loaded with explosives to the gate of the military base, officials said.
The blast left a 60-foot crater, officials said in the release.
‘Isa, who was born in Iraq and is an Iraqi and Canadian citizen, was arrested in Edmonton in 2011. He is also known as Sayfildin Tahir Sharif, officials said.
http://torontosun.com/news/world/iraqi-canadian-man-sentenced-for-role-in-deadly-attack-on-u-s-base
Reuters
Published:
June 19, 2019
Updated:
June 19, 2019 10:12 AM EDT
A woman bikes by the Federal District Court in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Dec. 15, 2015.Kena Betancur / AFP / Getty Images / Files
An Iraqi-Canadian man was sentenced to 26 years in prison by a federal judge in Brooklyn on Tuesday for his role in orchestrating the April 2009 truck bombing of a U.S. base in Mosul, Iraq, that killed five soldiers, officials said.
Two Iraqi police officers also died in the explosion.
Faruq Khalil Muhammad ‘Isa, 51, pleaded guilty in March 2018 to one count of conspiring to murder Americans. The charge carries a maximum sentence of life but prosecutors agreed to a sentence of 26 years under a plea deal, U.S. Justice Department officials said.
“Today’s sentence brings some measure of earthly justice to an individual involved in the deaths of five service members,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers said in a press release.
Artist drawing of Faruq Khalil Muhammad ‘Isa by Jennifer Poburano, Jan. 20, 2011. (DRAWING BY JENNIFER POBURANO/Postmedia)
“But it cannot begin to compensate for the evil he contributed to or alleviate the pain of those family members whose lives he changed forever,” he said.
Prosecutors have said that, while living in Canada, ‘Isa conspired with a group of militants that carried out a suicide truck bombing on April 10, 2009, at the United States’ Forward Operating Base Marez in Mosul.
The jihadists ‘Isa conspired with drove a truck loaded with explosives to the gate of the military base, officials said.
The blast left a 60-foot crater, officials said in the release.
‘Isa, who was born in Iraq and is an Iraqi and Canadian citizen, was arrested in Edmonton in 2011. He is also known as Sayfildin Tahir Sharif, officials said.
http://torontosun.com/news/world/iraqi-canadian-man-sentenced-for-role-in-deadly-attack-on-u-s-base
Last edited:
Canadian jihadi jailed 26 years for conspiring to murder U.S. soldiers
Graeme Gordon
Published:
June 19, 2019
Updated:
June 19, 2019 6:30 PM EDT
Faruq Khalil Muhammad 'Isa received 26 years in a U.S. prison for his role in planning a 2009 bombing in Iraq that killed five American soldiers. (U.S. Attorney`s Office.)
A U.S. federal judge sentenced an Iraqi-Canadian man to 26 years in prison for his role in planning a 2009 suicide bombing that killed five American soldiers, two Iraqis and injured 70 others.
Faruq Khalil Muhammad ‘Isa pleaded guilty to helping plan a suicide truck bombing where more than 900 kilograms of explosives were detonated outside an entrance of a major military base in Mosul, a northern city of Iraq*.
“These five families will never be whole again,” said Becky Johnson, the mother of 24-year-old Gary Lee Woods Jr., who died in the April 2009 bombing.
Gary Lee Woods Jr. was one of five American soldiers killed in a bomb attack in Mosul, a northern city of Iraq*. (YouTube)
According to the Daily Mail, Johnson said she was “appalled” by a plea deal that resulted in Tuesday’s sentence. Johnson argued prosecuters should’ve pushed for a life sentence.
Other parents of the murdered American soldiers were also displeased with the plea deal.
U.S. District Judge Roslynn Mauskopf explained that ‘Isa had a “comparatively limited role” in the bomb attack.
‘Isa, formerly of Edmonton, was a member of a multinational terrorist group that assisted would-be suicide bombers to get to Iraq.
In 2015, he was charged with conspiring to kill Americans abroad, murdering Americans abroad, and providing material support to terrorists. He was born in Iraq and moved to Toronto in 1993, becoming a Canadian citizen four years later.
“Today’s sentence brings some measure of earthly justice to an individual involved in the deaths of five service members,” said John Demers, assistant attorney general for National Security.
The five American soldiers killed in the suicide bombing were: Sgt. Bryan E. Hall, 32, of Elk Grove, Calif.; Staff-Sgt. Gary L. Woods, 24, of Lebanon Junction, Ky.; Cpl. Jason G. Pautsch, 20, of Davenport, Iowa; Sgt. Edward W. Forrest Jr., 25, of St. Louis, Mo.; and Pte. Bryce E. Gaultier, 22, of Cyprus, Calif.
U.S. airmen transfer coffin containing the body of Army corporal Jason G. Pautsch at Dover Air Force Base back in 2009. (Tim Shaffer/Reuters)
http://macleans.ca/opinion/how-terrorists-use-propaganda-to-recruit-lone-wolves
http://torontosun.com/news/crime/ca...6-years-for-conspiring-to-murder-u-s-soldiers
Graeme Gordon
Published:
June 19, 2019
Updated:
June 19, 2019 6:30 PM EDT
Faruq Khalil Muhammad 'Isa received 26 years in a U.S. prison for his role in planning a 2009 bombing in Iraq that killed five American soldiers. (U.S. Attorney`s Office.)
A U.S. federal judge sentenced an Iraqi-Canadian man to 26 years in prison for his role in planning a 2009 suicide bombing that killed five American soldiers, two Iraqis and injured 70 others.
Faruq Khalil Muhammad ‘Isa pleaded guilty to helping plan a suicide truck bombing where more than 900 kilograms of explosives were detonated outside an entrance of a major military base in Mosul, a northern city of Iraq*.
“These five families will never be whole again,” said Becky Johnson, the mother of 24-year-old Gary Lee Woods Jr., who died in the April 2009 bombing.
Gary Lee Woods Jr. was one of five American soldiers killed in a bomb attack in Mosul, a northern city of Iraq*. (YouTube)
According to the Daily Mail, Johnson said she was “appalled” by a plea deal that resulted in Tuesday’s sentence. Johnson argued prosecuters should’ve pushed for a life sentence.
Other parents of the murdered American soldiers were also displeased with the plea deal.
U.S. District Judge Roslynn Mauskopf explained that ‘Isa had a “comparatively limited role” in the bomb attack.
‘Isa, formerly of Edmonton, was a member of a multinational terrorist group that assisted would-be suicide bombers to get to Iraq.
In 2015, he was charged with conspiring to kill Americans abroad, murdering Americans abroad, and providing material support to terrorists. He was born in Iraq and moved to Toronto in 1993, becoming a Canadian citizen four years later.
“Today’s sentence brings some measure of earthly justice to an individual involved in the deaths of five service members,” said John Demers, assistant attorney general for National Security.
The five American soldiers killed in the suicide bombing were: Sgt. Bryan E. Hall, 32, of Elk Grove, Calif.; Staff-Sgt. Gary L. Woods, 24, of Lebanon Junction, Ky.; Cpl. Jason G. Pautsch, 20, of Davenport, Iowa; Sgt. Edward W. Forrest Jr., 25, of St. Louis, Mo.; and Pte. Bryce E. Gaultier, 22, of Cyprus, Calif.
U.S. airmen transfer coffin containing the body of Army corporal Jason G. Pautsch at Dover Air Force Base back in 2009. (Tim Shaffer/Reuters)
http://macleans.ca/opinion/how-terrorists-use-propaganda-to-recruit-lone-wolves
http://torontosun.com/news/crime/ca...6-years-for-conspiring-to-murder-u-s-soldiers
Syrian Refugee Accused Of Plotting Attack On Pa. Church
https://www.oann.com/syrian-refugee-accused-of-plotting-attack-on-pa-church/
Cut his balls off.
https://www.oann.com/syrian-refugee-accused-of-plotting-attack-on-pa-church/
Cut his balls off.
MANDEL: Mentally-ill attacker who targeted Canadian soldiers a terrorist — Crown
Michele Mandel
Published:
June 20, 2019
Updated:
June 20, 2019 9:18 PM EDT
Ayanle Hassan Ali.
A man with schizophrenia who attacked soldiers at a North York recruitment centre in 2016 is mentally ill, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a mentally ill terrorist.
Federal prosecutors will go to the Ontario Court of Appeal next week to argue Ayanle Hassan Ali should be retried after a judge found that the anti-terrorism section of the Criminal Code enacted after 9/11 isn’t designed to capture a “lone wolf” involved in terror activity and acquitted him on nine terrorism charges.
“Lone-wolf terrorists are a serious problem in Canada and abroad and their recent ‘successes’ may inspire others,” prosecutors argue in their factum filed with the appeal court ahead of Monday’s hearing. “The trial judge’s interpretation impedes the ability to arrest and charge the lone wolf.”
Ayanle Hassan Ali arrives in a police car at a Toronto courthouse on March 15, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
Regardless of the outcome of the appeal, little would change for Ali, who’s currently being held in the secure forensic unit at Hamilton’s St. Joseph’s Healthcare for treatment. The Crown agrees he’s mentally ill and should be found NCR on the terror charges. The difference, though, is that he would now be labelled a terrorist.
“The trial judge’s approach would erase the distinction between lone wolf terrorists and ordinary criminals,” prosecutors said. “A lone actor who commits an act of serious violence for a religious or ideological purpose, intending to intimidate the public, should be stigmatized with a Section 83 terrorism conviction.”
The attack lasted less than a minute.
On Mar. 14, 2016, Ali forced his way into the Yonge St. recruiting centre intent on becoming a jihadi martyr. “I have a licence to kill, I have a green light to kill,” Ali had written in his diary. “One soldier is all it takes, just one.”
He punched the first soldier repeatedly in the head, took a large kitchen knife from his folder and lunged at him, leaving a three-inch gash in the corporal’s arm.
When a sergeant rushed out of her office, Ali gave chase and narrowly missed slicing the back of her neck. He then tried to slash and stab at another sergeant, who in the chaos, had slipped on spilled coffee and fallen to the ground.
With his first blow, the blade hit the floor. Ali then continued stabbing him in the head and torso, but luckily, was now using the wrong end of his weapon.
After he was disarmed and restrained, Ali “appeared to be laughing, smiling, and giggling, and on something.” Others describe him as “not present” and “lost in the clouds.”
He told a paramedic Allah sent him “to kill people.” He told forensic psychiatrists who later examined him that soldiers were a “legitimate target.”
Ali was charged with three counts of attempted murder, three counts of assault with a weapon, two counts of assault causing bodily harm and one count of carrying a weapon — all “for the benefit of, at the direction of or in association with a terrorist group.”
MANDEL: Toronto van attack accused won’t have to face his peers
MANDEL: Extradition of med student accused of sextortion upheld on appeal
MANDEL: Boxing legend George Chuvalo’s wife wins first round in ugly family battle
Last year, Justice Ian MacDonnell acquitted him on all terror charges and not criminally responsible for the lesser included offences of attempted murder, assault and weapons offences. “The intention of Parliament in enacting (the relevant terror legislation) was not to capture the kind of lone-wolf criminal behaviour engaged in by the defendant,” MacDonnell said.
Ali’s lawyers argue that the trial judge got it right and the Crown’s appeal argument is absurd and should be dismissed. “From both a common sense and legal perspective, this was a just result. Mr. Ali is mentally ill — not a terrorist,” they wrote in their factum.
This isn’t the only decision regarding Ali under appeal by the Crown.
Federal prosecutors are also contesting a decision by the Ontario Review Board last July that would eventually allow Ali to go unaccompanied to Mohawk College across the street from the psychiatric hospital.
His psychiatrist described Ali as a “kind, careful, considerate, soft spoken person” but conceded his “risk includes his potential to act out on political or radical ideas and that there is no treatment for that.”
Funny, but isn’t that the definition of a terrorist?
mmandel@postmedia.com
http://torontosun.com/news/local-ne...eted-canadian-soldiers-a-terrorist-says-crown
Michele Mandel
Published:
June 20, 2019
Updated:
June 20, 2019 9:18 PM EDT
Ayanle Hassan Ali.
A man with schizophrenia who attacked soldiers at a North York recruitment centre in 2016 is mentally ill, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a mentally ill terrorist.
Federal prosecutors will go to the Ontario Court of Appeal next week to argue Ayanle Hassan Ali should be retried after a judge found that the anti-terrorism section of the Criminal Code enacted after 9/11 isn’t designed to capture a “lone wolf” involved in terror activity and acquitted him on nine terrorism charges.
“Lone-wolf terrorists are a serious problem in Canada and abroad and their recent ‘successes’ may inspire others,” prosecutors argue in their factum filed with the appeal court ahead of Monday’s hearing. “The trial judge’s interpretation impedes the ability to arrest and charge the lone wolf.”
Ayanle Hassan Ali arrives in a police car at a Toronto courthouse on March 15, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
Regardless of the outcome of the appeal, little would change for Ali, who’s currently being held in the secure forensic unit at Hamilton’s St. Joseph’s Healthcare for treatment. The Crown agrees he’s mentally ill and should be found NCR on the terror charges. The difference, though, is that he would now be labelled a terrorist.
“The trial judge’s approach would erase the distinction between lone wolf terrorists and ordinary criminals,” prosecutors said. “A lone actor who commits an act of serious violence for a religious or ideological purpose, intending to intimidate the public, should be stigmatized with a Section 83 terrorism conviction.”
The attack lasted less than a minute.
On Mar. 14, 2016, Ali forced his way into the Yonge St. recruiting centre intent on becoming a jihadi martyr. “I have a licence to kill, I have a green light to kill,” Ali had written in his diary. “One soldier is all it takes, just one.”
He punched the first soldier repeatedly in the head, took a large kitchen knife from his folder and lunged at him, leaving a three-inch gash in the corporal’s arm.
When a sergeant rushed out of her office, Ali gave chase and narrowly missed slicing the back of her neck. He then tried to slash and stab at another sergeant, who in the chaos, had slipped on spilled coffee and fallen to the ground.
With his first blow, the blade hit the floor. Ali then continued stabbing him in the head and torso, but luckily, was now using the wrong end of his weapon.
After he was disarmed and restrained, Ali “appeared to be laughing, smiling, and giggling, and on something.” Others describe him as “not present” and “lost in the clouds.”
He told a paramedic Allah sent him “to kill people.” He told forensic psychiatrists who later examined him that soldiers were a “legitimate target.”
Ali was charged with three counts of attempted murder, three counts of assault with a weapon, two counts of assault causing bodily harm and one count of carrying a weapon — all “for the benefit of, at the direction of or in association with a terrorist group.”
MANDEL: Toronto van attack accused won’t have to face his peers
MANDEL: Extradition of med student accused of sextortion upheld on appeal
MANDEL: Boxing legend George Chuvalo’s wife wins first round in ugly family battle
Last year, Justice Ian MacDonnell acquitted him on all terror charges and not criminally responsible for the lesser included offences of attempted murder, assault and weapons offences. “The intention of Parliament in enacting (the relevant terror legislation) was not to capture the kind of lone-wolf criminal behaviour engaged in by the defendant,” MacDonnell said.
Ali’s lawyers argue that the trial judge got it right and the Crown’s appeal argument is absurd and should be dismissed. “From both a common sense and legal perspective, this was a just result. Mr. Ali is mentally ill — not a terrorist,” they wrote in their factum.
This isn’t the only decision regarding Ali under appeal by the Crown.
Federal prosecutors are also contesting a decision by the Ontario Review Board last July that would eventually allow Ali to go unaccompanied to Mohawk College across the street from the psychiatric hospital.
His psychiatrist described Ali as a “kind, careful, considerate, soft spoken person” but conceded his “risk includes his potential to act out on political or radical ideas and that there is no treatment for that.”
Funny, but isn’t that the definition of a terrorist?
mmandel@postmedia.com
http://torontosun.com/news/local-ne...eted-canadian-soldiers-a-terrorist-says-crown