Tag Archives: Terrorism

Year-old Paris attack probe sights new suspect, but mastermind elusive

People mourning outside of Paris attacks

By Chine Labbé

PARIS (Reuters) – French investigators believe they have identified a Belgian militant in Syria as a coordinator of the deadly Islamic State (IS) attack on Paris, but a year on they are still struggling to pinpoint the mastermind.

Just ahead of the Nov. 13 anniversary of an assault that killed 130 people and injured hundreds, victims and relatives of the dead still seek answers. And the only living person believed to be part of the hit-team, now behind bars, refuses to talk.

A painstaking investigation led by an exceptionally large team of six judicial magistrates has inched forward in search of the “remote-controllers” – those who pulled the strings from abroad, at IS bases in Iraq and Syria or elsewhere.

A source close to the investigation told Reuters this week that a new name had been added to the web of militants involved as coordinators – Oussama Atar, a 32-year-old from a Brussels suburb, now believed to be in Syria.

“It’s a very strong suspicion,” said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We are wary of being definitive while the investigation is still under way.”

Atar was jailed in Iraq on arms-trafficking charges before ultimately joining IS ranks in Syria in 2012, and is suspected of playing a key coordination role in the Nov. 13 rampage, but not of being “mastermind in chief”, the source said.

In particular, Atar is suspected of having recruited two Iraqis who blew themselves up outside the Stade de France sports stadium north of the French capital as part of a broader series of assaults in the heart of Paris on Nov. 13 last year.

He is also suspected of being the person to whom other suicide bombers reported before blowing themselves up in further attacks in Belgium that killed 32 on March 22 this year.

SURVIVORS DISSATISFIED WITH PROBE

Atar, the latest addition to France’s suspects list, was identified in a group of photos shown to a militant arrested in Austria. But that advance means little for the survivors of the attacks, in which 90 of the 130 killed were shot or blown up by armed suicide bombers at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris.

“Even if there’s little chance of bringing the attack mastermind to justice, it would be nice to know his name,” said Emmanuel Domenach, who was at the Bataclan when it was attacked.

Sting, a veteran English pop star who has used his celebrity to champion social campaigns such as defense of forest tribes in South America, is scheduled to play on Saturday at the historic venue to mark its post-attack reopening.

Bernard Bajolet, head of France’s foreign intelligence service, told a parliamentary inquiry in May that the orchestrators of the Nov. 13 attack had been identified but declined to name names to protect his sources.

Investigators, however, have yet to make such an identification, another source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters, and do not know who Bajolet was referring to.

At one stage, it was assumed that the mastermind of the attacks was Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgo-Moroccan killed by elite French police in a spectacular assault on a flat close to Paris a few days after the Nov. 13 killings.

He was subsequently relegated by investigators to a coordinator role like Atar’s.

Three teams took part in the attack – suicide bombers at the Stade de France, gunmen who opened fire on cafes in Paris, and the squad that killed 90 at the Bataclan.

Salah Abdeslam, captured in Belgium after fleeing Paris on the night of the attack and later transferred back to France, is in solitary confinement in a jail on the edge of Paris, but refused to speak at court hearings. He is believed to be the sole survivor of the IS hit team.

The Nov. 13 attacks and subsequent assaults this year have shaken French society.

A state of emergency imposed after the Paris killings was about to be lifted when, on France’s July 14 national holiday, an IS devotee ploughed a truck into a crowd of revelers in the Riviera resort city of Nice, killing 86. About two weeks later, an Islamist slit a priest’s throat in a church in Normandy.

As armed soldiers continue to patrol the Paris landmarks where tourist numbers have thinned, Europe’s largest community of Muslims lives in greater fear of mistrustful neighbors.

Meanwhile the ruling Socialist party has torn itself apart over an abortive attempt to introduce a law stripping people convicted of terrorism of their nationality, and security and immigration promise to be major issues in next year’s presidential election.

(Additional reporting by Gerard Bon; writing by Brian Love; editing by Andrew Callus and Mark Heinrich)

Crucifixions and vice patrols show Islamic State maintains Mosul grip

Little girl carrying bottled water in Iraqi village

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Islamic State militants fighting to hold on to their Mosul stronghold have displayed the crucified bodies of five people they said gave information to “the enemy”, and are back on the city streets policing the length of men’s beards, residents say

The five bodies were put on display at a road junction, a clear message to the city’s remaining 1.5 million residents that the ultra-hardline Islamists are still in charge, despite losing territory to the east of the city.

Thousands of Islamic State fighters have run Mosul, the largest city under their control in Iraq and neighboring Syria, since they conquered large parts of northern Iraq in 2014.

They are now battling a 100,000-strong coalition including Iraqi troops, security forces, Kurdish peshmerga and mainly Shi’ite paramilitary groups, which has almost surrounded the city and has broken into eastern neighborhoods.

Residents contacted by telephone late on Tuesday said many parts of the city were calmer than they had been for days, allowing people to venture out to seek food, even in areas which have seen heavy fighting over the last week.

“I went out in my car for the first time since the start of the clashes in the eastern districts,” said one Mosul resident. “I saw some of the Hisba elements of Daesh (Islamic State) checking people’s beards and clothes and looking for smokers”.

Islamic State’s Hisba force is a morality police unit which imposes the Sunni jihadists’ interpretation of Islamic behavior. It forbids smoking, says women should be veiled and wear gloves, and bans men from Western-style dress including jeans and logos.

Hisba units patrol the city in specially marked vehicles.

“It looks like they want to prove their presence after they disappeared for the last 10 days, especially on the eastern bank,” the resident said.

Mosul is divided into two halves by the Tigris river running through its center. The eastern half, where elite Iraqi troops have broken through Islamic State defenses, has a more mixed population than the western, overwhelmingly Sunni Arab side, where Islamic State fighters are believed to be strongest.

CRUCIFIED CORPSES

The militants are putting up a fierce defense after their leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, told them in a speech last week to remain loyal to their commanders and not to retreat in the “total war” with their enemies.

Iraqi military officials say they have sources inside the city, helping them identify Islamic State positions for targeting by the U.S.-led air coalition supporting the campaign, which is also backed by U.S. troops on the ground.

The gruesome public display of the bodies in east Mosul appeared to be a warning against other potential informers.

“I saw five corpses of young men which had been crucified at a road junction in east Mosul,” not far from districts which had seen heavy fighting, said another resident.

“The Daesh people hung the bodies out and said that these were agents passing news to the infidel forces and apostates,” he said referring to the Western allies backing the campaign and the Shi’ite-led government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

In another sign of a clampdown on contact with the outside world, one retired policeman said Islamic State officials were trying to inspect SIM cards to check on all communications.

“I went to get my pension as usual, but the man at the office refused to give it to me unless I handed over my SIM card,” the 65-year-old man, who gave his name as Abu Ali, said. “These are the instructions from Daesh,” the man told him.

Many residents close to the fighting have said the scale of the clashes has been terrifying, with the sound of gunfire, mortar bombardments and air strikes echoing through the streets.

In the Zuhour district, still controlled by Islamic State on Mosul’s eastern bank, witnesses said that cars carrying mortars roamed the streets on Tuesday, but were not seen being fired – unlike in the previous two days.

The relative quiet may reflect a reduction in fighting since Iraq’s special forces first broke into eastern Mosul a week ago. They faced fierce resistance, and have not sought to any major advance since then.

One witness said traffic had almost returned to normal in most parts of eastern Mosul and markets were operating, albeit not as busy as before the start of military operations.

(Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Turkey detains co-mayors of mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir

Turkey official

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish authorities on Tuesday detained the co-mayors of the mainly Kurdish southeast’s biggest city on charges they aided militants, part of a government crackdown after more than a year of violence in the region.

Gultan Kisanak, a former member of parliament before her election as mayor in Diyarbakir, and Firat Anli, her co-mayor, were taken into custody as part of an investigation into terrorism links, the local prosecutor said in a statement.

President Tayyip Erdogan has said the removal of elected officials and civil servants who are accused of links to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, is a key part of the fight against the armed group.

The two are accused of making speeches in support of the PKK and of greater political autonomy for Turkey’s estimated 16 million Kurds, the Diyarbakir prosecutor’s statement said.

They are also accused of using municipal vehicles to transport the bodies of dead militants and of inciting violent protests, it said.

Turkey appointed new administrators in two dozen Kurdish-run municipalities in September after removing their elected mayors over suspected links to militants. Those arrests triggered protests across the region.

Authorities were also searching the mayor’s office, security sources said. An aide to Kisanak said the mayor’s home was being searched by police but was unable to provide further details.

Police formed a security cordon around city hall in case the latest detentions stirred unrest, witnesses said.

Kisanak, 55, is a well-known Kurdish political figure and became Diyarbakir’s first female mayor in 2014. Earlier on Tuesday, she testified upon the invitation of lawmakers at a parliamentary commission in Ankara looking into a failed military coup on July 15.

It was not immediately clear whether her testimony was related to the detention order. Kisinak was detained upon her return to Diyarbakir at the airport, while Anli was detained at his home, sources said.

Erdogan accuses their opposition party, the Democratic Regions Party and its larger, sister party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party, which is the third-biggest grouping in parliament, of links with the PKK, which both parties deny.

The autonomy-seeking PKK took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984, and more than 40,000 people have died in the war.

The PKK abandoned a two-year ceasefire in July 2015 after peace talks had ground to a halt, and violence has escalated sharply since. Hundreds of soldiers and police officers, thousands of militants and about 400 civilians have been killed.

(Reporting by Gulsen Solaker and Ayla Jean Yackley; Editing by Alison Williams and James Dalgleish)

Islamic State claims attack on Pakistan police academy, 59 dead

Relatives of Police Cadets await news

By Gul Yusufzai

QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) – Middle East-based Islamic State on Tuesday said fighters loyal to their movement attacked a police training college in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, in a raid that officials said killed 59 people and wounded more than 100.

Pakistani authorities have blamed another militant group, Lashkar-e-Janghvi, for the late-night siege, though the Islamic State claim included photographs of three alleged attackers.

Hundreds of trainees were stationed at the facility when masked gunmen stormed the college on the outskirts of Quetta late on Monday. Some cadets were taken hostage during the raid, which lasted nearly five hours. Most of the dead were cadets.

“Militants came directly into our barrack. They just barged in and started firing point-blank. We started screaming and running around in the barrack,” one police cadet who survived told media.

Other cadets spoke of jumping out of windows and cowering under beds as masked gunmen hunted them down. Video footage from inside one of the barracks showed blackened walls and rows of charred beds.

Islamic State’s Amaq news agency published the claim of responsibility, saying three IS fighters “used machine guns and grenades, then blew up their explosive vests in the crowd”.

Mir Sarfaraz Bugti, home minister of the province of Baluchistan, whose capital is Quetta, said the gunmen attacked a dormitory in the training facility, while cadets rested and slept.

“Two attackers blew up themselves, while a third one was shot in the head by security men,” Bugti said. Earlier, officials had said there were five to six gunmen.

A Reuters photographer at the scene said authorities carried out the body of a teenaged boy who they said was one of the attackers and had been shot dead by security forces.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Army chief General Raheel Sharif both traveled to Quetta after the attack and participated in a special security meeting on Tuesday afternoon, the prime minister’s office said.

One of the top military commanders in Baluchistan, General Sher Afgun, told media that calls intercepted between the attackers and their handlers suggested they were from the sectarian Sunni militant group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ).

“We came to know from the communication intercepts that there were three militants who were getting instructions from Afghanistan,” Afgun told media, adding that the Al Alami faction of LeJ was behind the attack.

LeJ, whose roots are in the heartland Punjab province, has a history of carrying out sectarian attacks in Baluchistan, particularly against the minority Hazara Shias. Pakistan has previously accused LeJ of colluding with al Qaeda.

Authorities launched a crackdown against LeJ last year, particularly in Punjab province. In a major blow to the organization, Malik Ishaq, the group’s leader, was killed in July 2015 alongside 13 members of the central leadership in what police say was a failed escape attempt.

“Two, three days ago we had intelligence reports of a possible attack in Quetta city, that is why security was beefed up in Quetta, but they struck at the police training college,” Sanaullah Zehri, chief minister of Baluchistan, told the Geo TV channel.

ISLAMIC STATE

Pakistan has improved its security situation in recent years but Islamist groups continue to pose a threat and stage major attacks in the mainly Muslim nation of 190 million.

Islamic State has sought to make inroads over the past year, hoping to exploit the country’s growing sectarian divisions.

Monday night’s assault on the police college was the deadliest in Pakistan since a suicide bomber killed 70 people in an attack on mourners gathered at a hospital in Quetta in August.

The August attack was claimed by IS, but also by a Pakistani Taliban faction, Jamaat-ur-Ahrar.

The military had dismissed previous Islamic State claims of responsibility and last month said it had crushed the Middle East-based group’s attempt to expand in Pakistan. It also dismissed previous IS claims of responsibility as ‘propaganda’.

A photograph of the three alleged attackers released by Islamic State showed one individual with a striking resemblance to the picture of a dead gunman taken by a policeman inside the college, and shared with Reuters.

Analysts say Islamic State clearly has a presence in Pakistan and there is growing evidence that some local groups are working with IS.

“The problem with this government is that it seems to be in a complete state of denial,” said Zahid Hussain, an Islamabad-based security analyst.

HIDING UNDER BEDS

Wounded cadets spoke of scurrying for cover after being woken by the sound of bullets.

“I was asleep, my friends were there as well, and we took cover under the beds,” one unidentified cadet told Geo TV. “My friends were shot, but I only received a (small) wound on my head.”

Another cadet said he did not have ammunition to fight back.

Officials said the attackers targeted the center’s hostel, where around 200 to 250 police recruits were resting. At least three explosions were reported at the scene by media.

Quetta has long been regarded as a base for the Afghan Taliban, whose leadership has regularly held meetings there.

Baluchistan is no stranger to violence, with separatist fighters launching regular attacks on security forces for nearly a decade and the military striking back.

Militants, particularly sectarian groups, have also launched a campaign of suicide bombings and assassinations of minority Shias.

Attacks are becoming rarer but security forces need to be more alert, Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan warned.

“Our problem is that when an attack happens, we are alert for a week after, ten days later, until 20 days pass, (but) then it goes back to business as usual,” he said.

“We need to be alert all the time.”

(Additional reporting by Syed Raza Hassan in KARACHI, and Mehreen Zahra-Malik, Kay Johnson, Asad Hashim in ISLAMABAD, and Mohamed el Sherif in CAIRO; Writing by Kay Johnson, Mehreen Zahra-Malik, Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Catherine Evans and Clarence Fernandez)

Islamic State steps up counter-attacks as Mosul offensive enters second week

Iraqi army soldiers

By Maher Chmaytelli and Stephen Kalin

BAGHDAD/BARTELLA, Iraq (Reuters) – Islamic State expanded its attacks on Monday against Iraqi army and Kurdish forces to relieve pressure on its militants confronting an offensive on Mosul, its last major urban stronghold in the country.

About 80 Islamic State-held villages and towns have been retaken in the first week of the offensive, bringing the Iraqi and Kurdish forces closer to the edge of the city itself – where the battle will be hardest fought.

The Mosul campaign, which aims to crush the Iraqi half of Islamic State’s declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria, may be the biggest battle yet in the 13 years of turmoil triggered by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, and could require a massive humanitarian relief operation.

Some 1.5 million residents remain in the city and worst-case forecasts see up to a million being uprooted, according to the United Nations. U.N. aid agencies said the fighting has so far forced about 6,000 to flee their homes.

In a series of counter-attacks on far-flung targets across Iraq since Friday, Islamic State fighters have hit Kirkuk, the north’s main oil city, the town of Rutba that controls the road from Baghdad to Jordan and Syria, and Sinjar, a region west of Mosul inhabited by the persecuted Yazidi minority.

Yazidi provincial chief Mahma Xelil said the Sinjar attack was the most violent in the area in the last year.

He said at least 15 militants were killed in the two-hour battle and a number of their vehicles were destroyed, while the peshmerga suffered two wounded.

Islamic State said two peshmerga vehicles were destroyed and all those on board were killed.

Islamic State committed some of its worst atrocities in Sinjar when it swept through the Yazidi region two years ago, killing men, kidnapping children and enslaving women. Kurdish fighters took back the region a year ago.

The Yazidis are a religious sect whose beliefs combine elements of several ancient Middle Eastern religions and who speak one of the Kurdish languages. They are considered infidels by the hardline Sunni Islamist militants.

REGIONAL INTERVENTION

The Iraqi force attacking Mosul is 30,000-strong, joined by U.S. special forces and under American, French and British air cover. The number of insurgents dug in the city is estimated at 5,000 to 6,000 by the Iraqi military.

The Mosul campaign has drawn in many regional players, highlighting how Iraq is being used as a platform for influence between rival parties – Sunni-ruled Turkey and its Gulf allies and Shi’ite Iran and its client Iraqi militias.

Turkey and Iraq’s Shi’ite-dominated central government are at loggerheads about the presence of Turkish troops at a camp in northern Iraq, without approval from Baghdad’s Shi’ite-led government.

Ankara fears that Shi’ite militias, which have been accused of abuses against Sunni civilians elsewhere, will be used in the Mosul offensive. Turkey’s own presence in Iraq has also helped inflame sectarian passions.

It was from Mosul’s Grand Mosque that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate over parts of Syria and Iraq in 2014. Within a year his group was in retreat in Iraq, having lost the Sunni cities of Tikrit, Ramadi and Falluja.

The Iraqi army last week dislodged the insurgents from the main Christian region east of Mosul and its elite unit, the Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) has pressed ahead with operations to clear more villages since Saturday.

CTS forces took three villages west of the Christian town of Bartella in an early morning attack on Monday and are now outside Bazwaia village, between five and seven km (three to four miles) east of Mosul, Lieutenant General Abdel Ghani al-Assadi told Reuters.

The region of Nineveh around Mosul is a mosaic of ethnic and religious groups – Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds, Yazidis, Christians, Sunnis, Shi’ites – with Sunni Arabs the overwhelming majority.

The army’s press office said a total of 78 villages and town have been recaptured between Oct. 17, when the Mosul operation started, and until Sunday evening.

More than 770 Islamic State fighters have been killed and 23 captured. One hundred and twenty-seven car bombs used in suicide attacks on advancing troops have been destroyed, according to an army statement.

Islamic State says it has killed hundreds of fighters from the attacking forces and blocked their progress.

The army is trying to advance from the south and the east while Kurdish peshmerga fighters are holding fronts in the east and north.

The distance from the frontlines to the built-up area of Mosul ranges from 40 kilometers (25 miles), in the south, to 5 kilometers at the closest, in the east.

After Islamic State’s attack on Friday in Kirkuk, the hardline Sunni militant group has launched other diversionary attacks in Sinjar and Rutba, 360 km west of Baghdad, where they killed at least seven policemen, according to security sources.

Federal police units arrived in Rutba overnight to back up the local forces, according to the sources who estimate that 16 insurgents have been killed so far. Islamic State said in an online statement that dozens of security force members and pro-government Sunni tribal forces had fled Rutba.

(Additional reporting by Saif Hameed; Editing by Dominic Evans)

Refugee from Iraq pleads guilty in U.S. to attempting to join Islamic State

By Alex Dobuzinskis

(Reuters) – An Iraqi-born man who entered the United States as a refugee pleaded guilty on Monday in Texas to attempting to volunteer to fight with Islamic State, federal prosecutors said.

Omar Faraj Saeed Al-Hardan, 24, pleaded guilty in a federal court in Houston to one count of attempting to provide material support, specifically himself, to the militant group, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the southern district of Texas said in a statement.

Al-Hardan, who most recently lived in Houston, faces up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced on Jan. 17, prosecutors said.

The case comes during a U.S. presidential race in which the question of admitting refugees from the Middle East, especially Syria, has become a point of contention between the two leading candidates.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has called for increasing the number of Syrian refugees admitted and said the United States can adequately screen them. Republican nominee Donald Trump has opposed their entry and called for “extreme vetting” of incoming Muslim immigrants.

In the Texas case, federal agents began investigating Al-Hardan in 2014 after he communicated with a California man who he believed was associated with the Syrian Islamist rebel group Al-Nusrah, prosecutors said in a statement.

Al-Hardan in 2014 and 2015, in discussions with a confidential informant, said he planned to travel overseas to support Islamic State, prosecutors said.

He also said he had taught himself to make remote detonators and showed off a circuit board he built as a transmitter, prosecutors said.

Al-Hardan entered the United States as an Iraqi refugee in late 2009, about two years before the start of a civil war in Syria, after spending time in refugee camps in Jordan and Iraq, prosecutors said. He was later granted legal permanent residence.

The arrest of Al-Hardan gained national media attention in January, with Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, a conservative Republican, citing it as an indication of why Texas was seeking to block the resettlement of Syrian refugees.

Islamic State, which controls tracts of land in Iraq and Syria, has claimed credit for a surge in global attacks this summer, even as it has been hammered by U.S.-led coalition air strikes. On Monday, Iraqi forces launched a U.S.-backed offensive to drive Islamic State from the city of Mosul.

President Barack Obama has said refugees are properly screened and vetted.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Suicide bombers hit Shi’ite gatherings in Baghdad, at least 11 dead: police

Member of Si

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Suicide bombers attacked two Shi’ite Muslim processions in Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 11 people and wounding more than 40, police and medical sources said.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the blasts at the Shi’ite events commemorating the slaying of Prophet Mohammad’s grandson Hussein.

A bomber detonated his explosive vest in the middle of one Shi’ite procession in the Amil district of southern Baghdad, killing six and wounding 25, the sources said.

A similar attack hit a procession in the eastern Mashtal district, killing five and wounding 18, the sources added.

(Reporting by Karem Raheem and Ahmed Rasheed; Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Senate rejects Obama veto of Saudi Sept 11 bill

A man lays a flower on a monument engraved with names of victims of the September 11th attacks, during a memorial event marking the 15th anniversary

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate overwhelmingly rejected on Wednesday President Barack Obama’s veto of legislation allowing relatives of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia’s government.

As voting continued, the count was 87-0 against the veto. The measure next goes to the House of Representatives, which is due to vote later on Wednesday. If two-thirds of House members also support the “Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act,” it would be the first veto override of Obama’s eight-year presidency.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle, Editing by Franklin Paul)

India begins campaign at United Nations to isolate Pakistan

India's Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj addresses the United Nations General Assembly in New York

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – India began a campaign to isolate Pakistan at the United Nations on Monday, telling the 193-member General Assembly it was time to identify nations who nurture, peddle and export terrorism and isolate them if they don’t join the global fight.

India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said the arrest of Pakistani Bahadur Ali was “living proof of Pakistan’s complicity in crossborder terror.” India has said Ali confessed that he was trained by the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant group.

“But when confronted with such evidence, Pakistan remains in denial. It persists in the belief that such attacks will enable it to obtain the territory it covets,” she said on the final day of the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations.

“My firm advice to Pakistan is: abandon this dream. Let me state unequivocally that Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India and will always remain so,” Swaraj said.

India accuses Pakistan of having a role in a Sept. 18 raid on an Indian army base in Kashmir, one of the deadliest attacks in the Himalayan region that has been divided since 1947 and lies at the heart of the nuclear-armed neighbors’ rivalry. Pakistan denies any role in the attack.

“We need to forget our prejudices and join hands together to script an effective strategy against terror,” Swaraj said. “And if any nation refuses to join this global strategy, then we must isolate it.”

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi vowed on Saturday to mount a global campaign to isolate Pakistan. Last month U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged Pakistan to join other nations in fighting terrorism.

India has long accused Pakistan of backing militant groups operating in disputed Kashmir as well as of sending fighters to other parts of the country to carry out acts of violence. Pakistan denies the allegations.

Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif last week told the U.N. General Assembly India had put unacceptable conditions on dialogue.

“What pre-conditions?” Swaraj said on Monday. “We took the initiative to resolve issues not on the basis of conditions, but on the basis of friendship.”

Pakistan’s U.N. Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi dismissed Swaraj’s statement on Monday as “a litany of falsehoods and baseless allegations.”

“For the Indian Foreign Minister to claim that her country has imposed no preconditions for talks with Pakistan is another flight from reality. India suspended talks more than a year ago, and has refused to resume these despite repeated offers from Pakistan,” Lodhi said.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by David Gregorio)

Investigators try to determine if accused New York bomber had help

robot retrieving unexploded bomb

By David Ingram and Nate Raymond

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. authorities on Wednesday were looking into whether an Afghan-born American citizen charged with carrying out bombings in New York and New Jersey acted alone or had help as the city’s top federal public defender sought access to the suspect.

Police in New York City said they had not yet been permitted by doctors to speak to Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28, who was arrested on Monday after being wounded in a gunfight with police in Linden, New Jersey.

Rahami has been charged with wounding 31 people in a bombing in New York on Saturday that authorities called a “terrorist act.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation released a photo of two men who found a second, unexploded pressure cooker device they say Rahami left in a piece of luggage in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood on Saturday night.

The two men, who took the bag but left the improvised bomb on the street are not suspects, officials said, but investigators want to interview them as witnesses.

“As far as whether he’s a lone actor, that’s still the path we are following, but we are keeping all the options open,” William Sweeney, the FBI’s assistant director in New York, told reporters.

Rahami is also charged with planting a bomb that exploded in Seaside Park, New Jersey, but did not injure anyone and planting explosive devices in his hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey, which did not detonate. He faces charges from federal prosecutors in both states.

Federal prosecutors portray Rahami, who came to the United States at age 7 and became a naturalized citizen, as embracing militant Islamic views, begging for martyrdom and expressing outrage at the U.S. “slaughter” of Muslim fighters in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Palestine.

Investigators were also probing Rahami’s history of travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and looking for evidence that he may have picked up radical views or trained in bomb-making.

Both government and pro-Taliban sources in Pakistan on Wednesday said they had no knowledge of Rahami having met with prominent people connected to the Taliban or other religious groups.

Prosecutors plan to move Rahami to New York from the New Jersey hospital where he is being treated as soon as his medical condition allows, said Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan.

DEFENSE LAWYER DEMANDS COURT APPEARANCE

Rahami’s wife met with U.S. law enforcement officials while in the United Arab Emirates and voluntarily gave a statement, a law enforcement official said on Wednesday. She was not in custody.

A New Jersey U.S. congressman previously said Rahami had emailed his office in 2014 for help in getting her a visa to enter the United States from Pakistan when she was pregnant.

Rahami’s defense attorney, David Patton, on Wednesday demanded that his first court appearance to be scheduled as soon as possible, even if it occurs in his hospital bed, saying that the defendant had a constitutional right to a lawyer and a court appearance within two days of his arrest.

New York Police Commissioner James O’Neill told a news conference that investigators had not yet received doctors’ clearance to interview Rahami, adding, “That may happen in the next 24 hours, pending the doctors’ approval.”

Federal prosecutors in New York noted that while they had filed charges against Rahami, he remained in the custody of state officials in New Jersey, who initially arrested him after Monday’s gunfight. They said that makes Patton’s request for access premature.

Patton, in a subsequent filing, shot back that such delays were unacceptable.

“Mr. Rahami was arrested more than 48 hours ago. His bail in New Jersey was set without any appointment of counsel or court appearance. He still has not been provided counsel. He does not have a scheduled court appearance in New Jersey until next week,” Patton said.

The attacks in New York and New Jersey were the latest in a series in the United States inspired by Islamic militant groups including al Qaeda and Islamic State. A pair of ethnic Chechen brothers killed three people and injured more than 260 at the 2013 Boston Marathon with homemade pressure-cooker bombs similar to those used in this weekend’s attacks.

Rahami, in other parts of a journal that prosecutors said he was carrying when he was arrested, praised “Brother” Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader slain in a 2011 U.S. raid in Pakistan; Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Muslim cleric and leading al Qaeda propagandist who was killed in a 2011 U.S. drone strike in Yemen; and Nidal Hasan, the U.S. Army psychiatrist who shot dead 13 people and wounded 32 at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009.

Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, house Homeland Security Committee chairman, told CNN that Rahami’s writings in a journal showed that his actions had been inspired by Islamic State as “his guidance came from the lead ISIS spokesman.”

“What that tells me as a counterterrorism expert that now we can definitively say this was an ISIS-inspired terrorist attack.”

(Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu and Julia Edwards in Washington and Mehreen Zahra-Malik in Quetta, Pakistan; Writing by Scott Malone and Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Will Dunham and Alan Crosby)