Islamic State says it beheads Russian officer in Syria: SITE

DUBAI (Reuters) – Islamic State has issued a video showing the beheading of what it described as a Russian intelligence officer captured in Syria, the U.S.-based SITE monitoring website reported on Tuesday.

The Russian Defence Ministry and the FSB security service were not immediately available for comment, but a Russian senator said that “there will be hell to pay” if the recording was proven to be authentic.

The 12-minute Russian-language video, released on the day Russia celebrated the anniversary of the 1945 victory over Nazi Germany with military parades, showed the man dressed in a black jump suit kneeling in a desert scene and urging other Russian agents to surrender.

“This idiot believed the promises of his state not to abandon him if he was captured,” a narrator says in the recording, before being beheaded by a bearded man dressed in combat fatigues.

The authenticity of the recording and the identity of the man could not immediately be verified, nor was it clear when the killing occurred.

Russian senator Viktor Ozerov, who heads the defense committee in Russia’s upper house of parliament, said the defense ministry would check the authenticity of the video.

“Even if it is a fake, it shouldn’t be left without attention,” Ozerov told Russia’s Interfax news agency. “If it happened, then there will be hell to pay.”

Russian forces are backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his war with rebels and militants seeking to oust him. The video showed scenes of what it described as the aftermath of Russian bombing raids in Syria.

The Russian defense ministry says about 30 Russian servicemen have been killed since the start of the Kremlin’s operation there in September 2015.

(Reporting by Sami Aboudi in Dubai and Alexander Winning in Moscow; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Brothers in arms: Iraqi armed groups grow as Islamic State shrinks

Iraqi fighters from Hashid Shaabi take part in a training at Makhmur camp in Iraq December

y John Davison

MOSUL, Iraq, April 3 (Reuters) – For Iraqi police officer Jassem and his brothers, the battle against Islamic State is personal. The militants captured and beheaded their father, a Shi’ite militiaman, in 2014; before that, the family lost another son fighting the jihadists.

“We were able to identify my dad’s body by the tattoo on his arm. The head wasn’t found. They had also drilled holes in his hands and cut fingers off,” 31-year-old Jassem told Reuters on the front line in Mosul as Iraqi forces battle with Islamic State in the city.

After the murder, Jassem’s youngest brother signed up with the army and another joined a Shi’ite paramilitary group. With a further brother already with the Counter-Terrorism Service, that meant their mother had all four of her surviving sons at war.

“Mum wasn’t happy,” said Jassem, not giving his full name because he works in intelligence. But his brothers still answered the call to arms. “They said Iraq was falling apart, and they wanted to protect it,” he said.

The family from southern Iraq – far from Mosul which lies near the country’s northern border – is just one of many where entire sets of brothers have taken up arms against Islamic State out of revenge, duty or just to earn money.

The U.S.-backed Iraqi forces are now set to drive the group from its stronghold of Mosul, taken in 2014 when the jihadists seized large areas of Iraq and Syria, proclaiming a caliphate. (Full Story)

But the fight has further militarised Iraqi society, pushing young men into the armed forces and, increasingly, sectarian and tribal militias. This has raised fears of new outbreaks of violence once the caliphate has crumbled.

Iraq’s top Shi’ite cleric issued a fatwa in 2014, calling on all men able to carry arms to fight Islamic State, which is known in Arabic by its opponents as Daesh.

On another Mosul front line, Counter-Terrorism Service commando Hamza Kadhem said that before Islamic State arrived, he was the only one of five brothers to have picked up a gun. “The others all joined after the fatwa,” he said.

They joined the Hashid Shaabi, or Popular Mobilisation Forces, a state-run umbrella that includes Shi’ite militias. Two are deployed west of Mosul, and another two near the Syrian border, where Shi’ite fighters have played a crucial role in cutting off Islamic State supply lines.

Before the call-up, they had worked as farmers in the southern Kut region, more than 500 km (300 miles) away.

As well as Shi’ites from the south, young men from around Mosul – where Sunni Muslims are in the majority – are also keen to fight.

They are now flooding to join Sunni tribal militias also under the Hashid, security officials and militia leaders say. Many residents told Reuters in recent weeks they want to join, or know relatives and friends who are trying to do so.

“Many men are volunteering in the Hashid groups. They either want to fight terrorism or to get wages,” one security officer in the area said, declining to be named because he was not authorised to speak publicly. “It’s easier than joining state armed forces. You just put your name down.”

He said the number of those seeking to join could be in the thousands, on top of the several thousand that local community leaders estimate are already in the Sunni tribal militias.

This would not pose security problems because the Hashid ultimately answer to the government and have limited powers, the officer added.

MILITIAS SPREAD

Provincial government officials, however, say the rising number of recruits to paramilitary forces and the formation of new militias is dangerous because it raises the risk of factional clashes.

“These Hashid groups are subservient to the people who lead them, not to the state,” said Abdul Rahman al-Wagga, a council member for Nineveh, of which Mosul is the capital.

“So if a Hashid leader wants to impose himself in a certain region, and another sheikh or clan doesn’t like it, they might attack,” he told Reuters by phone. “I think after Daesh, these groups will not be reined in … Their agendas are party, political or regional, and won’t serve Nineveh, or Iraq.”

Ramzy Mardini, a fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank, said turning to armed forces, particularly militias, was inevitable in an atmosphere where local communities fear for their own safety.

“Not only has the war further militarised Iraqi society, but there appears to be no pressure from the top or willingness from below to disarm, demobilise, and reintegrate the militias that now occupy the diverse and former insurgent landscape,” he said.

As Iraqi government forces have moved deeper into Mosul city, the areas around it have increasingly come under the control of the expanding Hashid, who fly their flags at checkpoints and have set up offices in nearby towns.

Hashid officials say they are there to ensure Islamic State does not return, and that their local knowledge can make them more effective than federal police.

“Iraq’s security is our responsibility,” read a slogan painted on a building outside Mosul that is occupied by the new office of a Hashid group, and was formerly used by an Islamic State fighter and his family.

Most ordinary Iraqis, like the families of Jassem and Kadhem, do not want their sons to have to fight. But the young men see little choice after suffering at the hands of militants, and with few other ways to earn a living.

Former policeman Yassin Saleh, 47, sat in his wheelchair on a roadside outside Mosul last month after fleeing violence. “Two of my boys, who are 20 and 21, want to volunteer for the Hashid,” he said. “But I need them around to help me.”

Saleh lost both his legs to a car bomb planted by al Qaeda militants in 2008. Two months later, the fighters kidnapped and killed his eldest son.

“There will always be revenge. If people have killed someone’s dad or brother, they won’t just let it go,” he said. “But I can’t lose another son.”

(editing by David Stamp)

France buries priest murdered by Islamist militants

Picture of slain French priest

By Antony Paone

ROUEN, France (Reuters) – Mourners crammed into Rouen Cathedral on Tuesday for the funeral of the Roman Catholic priest knifed to death at his church altar, as France’s political leaders sought ways to defeat home-grown Islamist violence.

Father Jacques Hamel was leading morning mass in the nearby industrial town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray last Tuesday when the attackers stormed in, forced the 85-year-old to his knees and slit his throat while chanting in Arabic.

Amid tight security at the thirteenth century gothic cathedral in northern France, a procession of senior clergy followed pallbearers who carried Hamel’s coffin through the “Door of Mercy” and placed it on an ornate rug before the altar.

The priest’s sister, Roselyne Hamel, told the congregation how during his military service in Algeria her brother had refused an officer’s rank so as not give the order to kill, and how he once emerged the sole survivor in a desert shootout.

“He would often ask himself: ‘Why me?’ Today, Jacques, our brother, your brother, you have your answer: Our God of love and mercy chose you to be at the service of others,” she said.

The service was to be followed by a private burial.

Hamel’s murder by French citizens was the first Islamist attack on a church in western Europe and came just 12 days after a Tunisian who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State drove his truck through a crowd of Bastille Day revelers in the Riviera city of Nice, killing 84.

Islamist militants have killed more than 200 people in France since January 2015.

Facing strong criticism from right-wing opponents over its security record, the Socialist government has warned of a long war against militant Islam at home and abroad in places such as Iraq, Syria and Libya.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls has said the state must reinvent its relationship with the “Islam of France”. France’s Muslim minority, the European Union’s largest, makes up about 8 percent of the population.

URGENCY

Since the 1980s, successive governments have tried to nurture a liberal Islam that would better integrate the faith into French society.

Meanwhile, the Muslim community, riven by divisions and power politics, has struggled to oppose radical Salafist groups that have established their presence in some mosques and neighborhoods as well as on the Internet.

Valls wants to ban foreign funding for mosques and says all French imams should be trained in France. His interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said that a foundation that would enable the secular state to finance cultural centers linked to places of worship would be established by the end of the year.

“We must guard against being paternalistic but we must have the lucidity to recognize that there is an urgency to helping ‘Islam of France’ get rid of those that undermine it from within,” Valls told the weekly Journal du Dimanche.

Some Islamic leaders have expressed doubts over the government’s plans.

“It’s on the internet that radicalisation takes place, not in the mosques,” Moroccan-born Tareq Oubrou, a leading moderate imam from Bordeaux, told BFM TV. “We mustn’t kid ourselves.”

Cazeneuve, whose portfolio includes religious affairs, said on Monday that the Socialist government had shut down about 20 mosques and prayer halls in recent months and that more closures would follow based on intelligence in hand.

(Additional reporting and writing by Richard Lough in Paris; Editing by Andrew Callus and Robin Pomeroy)

ISIS Kills Ethiopian Christians In Libya

The White House has condemned ISIS after a release of a video showing the execution of Ethiopian Christians in Libya was released Sunday.

The video shows ISIS terrorists shooting and beheading the Christians.

“We express our condolences to the families of the victims and our support to the Ethiopian government and people as they grieve for their fellow citizens,” National Security Council spokesperson Bernadette Meehan said in a statement. “That these terrorists killed these men solely because of their faith lays bare the terrorists’ vicious, senseless brutality.”

The 29-minute video comes on the heels of Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani saying ISIS was behind a suicide attack that killed at least 35 people.  The attacks show ISIS is beginning to develop the ability to attack far outside their strongholds in Iraq and Syria.

The video also mirrors their previous killing of Coptic Christians in Egypt.

Ethiopia has been in the sights of Islamic terrorists because they are part of the African Union force that has driven the Islamic terrorists group al-Shabaab out of their neighbor Somalia.

ISIS Fed Remains Of Prisoner To His Mother

A British security guard who traveled to Iraq to defeat ISIS has told the British newspaper The Sun about an act of brutality that goes beyond anything seen so far by the terrorist group.

ISIS fighters in Mosul killed a Kurdish prisoner and then chopped up the body into little pieces.  The body was then placed into a rice dish and fed to the victim’s mother when she arrived to demand her son’s release.

“The ISIS men told her to sit down because she had traveled a long way and said she could have some food before they took her to meet her son,” Yasir Abdullah said. “They brought her cups of tea and fed her a meal of cooked meat, rice and soup. She thought they were kind.”

Abdulla also confirmed that ISIS is burning many of their prisoners alive, not just the Jordanian pilot whose brutal killing was shown on video.

“They dig a trench, put tree branches and leaves in there, set it alight and then throw prisoners on so they burn alive,” Abdulla said. “IS are very good at making people scared. If they make one person scared then that person will make another person scared and soon everyone is scared of IS.”

“ISIS are wrong,” he proclaimed. “They behead, burn and get those they are against to dig their own graves before they execute them. Nobody wants to get captured by ISIS; that would be the worst thing. If I was defending, I would fight to my last bullet and use that on myself.”

Boko Haram Beheads Two Spies; Calls Itself “Islamic State Africa”

Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram has released their first public video showing the beheading of two men they claim are “spies.”  

“This latest release shows Boko Haram is not a mere copycat of ISIS; rather, it is incorporating itself into the Islamic State,” said Veryan Khan, editorial director of Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium.

“Islamic state supporters are already starting to call Boko Haram the ‘Islamic State Africa.'”

The video shows a farmer being beaten by Islamic state terrorists and forced to “confess” he was “spying” for local police.  The video then shows the farmer and another man beheaded with their hands folded on their chests.

I believe Boko Haram is more than just copying the Islamic State — their image is being ‘shaped’ at very least in the ISIS media wing,” he continued. “Immediately after Baghdadi declared the Islamic State Caliphate, Boko Haram’s leader Abubakar Shekau did the same. We then started seeing (in the videos) the Islamic State flags being painted onto Boko Haram’s most prized possessions, their AFVs and tanks, most recently on Feb. 20 during the ops within the Northeastern Nigeria border.”

Analysts say that Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, is insane and too extreme even for Boko Haram.  They say that Shekau mixes voodoo into his version of radical Islam.

Saudi Arabia Sentences Man To Death For Renouncing Islam

An Islamic court in Saudi Arabia has given a death sentence to a man who renounced his Muslim faith.

The man posted an online video of himself ripping up a Koran and then hitting it with a shoe as he said he was no longer a Muslim.

A witness in the court says the video was played showing “’In the video he cursed God, Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and his daughter Fatimah and ripped a copy of the Holy Qur’an and hit it with a shoe.”  The death sentence was then immediately handed down.

Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally in the fight against ISIS, follows the Wahhabi Sunni Muslim school and gives clerics control over the justice system.  Renouncing Islam brings a death sentence along with other crimes like blasphemy and criticism of senior Muslim clerics.

Executions in Saudi Arabia are usually public beheadings.

ISIS Video Shows Massacre Of 21 Christians

ISIS released a video on Sunday of terrorists loyal to ISIS beheading 21 Coptic Christians.

The Libyan terrorists marched the Christians down a beach, lined up them up and then beheaded each of them.

“Safety for you crusaders is something you can only wish for,” a knife-wielding militant says on camera.  “We will conquer Rome, by Allah’s permission.”

The terrorists identify themselves as the Tripoli Province of the Islamic State.  The terrorists have claimed to be holding the 21 Christians for weeks.

The Egyptian government declared a seven-day mourning period for the slain Christians.  President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi offered his condolences to “the victims of terrorism” according to a Presidential statement.

Egyptians have fled to surrounding nations to find work in the wake of the 2011 Islamist uprising in Egypt.

ISIS Beheads Japanese Christian Who Tried To Save Friend

Kenji Goto, 47, was slaughtered by the Islamic extremist group ISIS in a video released to social media over the weekend.  Goto told reporters last year he felt compelled by the Lord to do all he could to help rescue Haruna Yukawa after he was abducted by the terrorists in Aleppo last year.

Goto said he found the Lord in 1997 and had dedicated his life to following the Lord’s call.  He said he wanted to minister to Yukawa, who had faced a difficult life including bankruptcy and his wife’s suicide attempt and battle with cancer.

Goto went to Syria and made his way to Raqqa, the headquarters of the terrorist group, in an attempt to negotiate for his friend’s freedom.

“I need to go there at least once and see my fixers (freelance journalist connections) and ask them what the current situation is,” he told Reuters. “I need to talk to them face to face. I think that’s necessary.”

Goto believed that because Japan was not part of the coalition against the group, he likely would have a greater chance of success.

The Japanese Prime Minister, Shinto Abe, made bold statements after the killing.  In a departure from the country’s post-World War II pattern of pacifism, he said Japan would do all they could to work with the international community to bring the killers to justice.

ISIS Releases New Beheading Video

Islamic terrorist group ISIS has released another video showing a beheading and issuing threats to President Obama.

The video was found by the Middle East Media Research Institute on Tuesday and shows three ISIS terrorists behind a kneeling Kurdish fighter.

“Know, oh Obama, that will reach America,” says one of the fighters, clad in black and wearing a balaclava, in a translation from Arabic provided by MEMRI. “Know also that we will cut off your head in the White House, and transform America into a Muslim Province.”

The terrorists then threaten European governments with more violence.

“And this is my message to France and to its sister, Belgium,” he said. “We advise you that we will come to you with car bombs and explosive charges, and will cut off your heads.”

The video fades to black as the beheading begins.

The group also released a second video that bears the voice of a Japanese hostage saying he has less than 24 hours to live.  The terrorists are calling for the release of a jailed woman in Jordan in exchange for the man’s life.