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Post by Admin on Jan 12, 2015 22:44:00 GMT
The Obama administration "should have sent someone with a higher profile" to Sunday's massive anti-terrorism rally in Paris, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday. That omission, however, in no way diminishes the support and help the United States has given France since the terrorist attacks of a week ago, Earnest said. "There is no doubt that the American people and this administration stand foursquare behind our allies in France as they face down this threat," he said. More than 3.7 million people — including 40 world leaders — participated in Sunday's rally to express solidarity in the wake of last week's terrorist attacks in France. It was a "remarkable display of unity by the French people," Earnest said, but no top-tier U.S. official was there. Obama himself would have liked to have attended under different circumstances, Earnest said, but security proved to be an "onerous and significant" factor. The infrastructure needed to protect the president might have prevented some average French people from attending the event, Earnest said. Security for most presidential trips takes months. The administration did not know about the rally until Friday, Earnest added: "We're talking about a march that came together with essentially 36 hours notice and a march that occurred outdoors with an obviously very large number of people who participated." Obama has spoken on the phone with French President Francois Hollande, and U.S. counter-terrorism officials are working with their French counterparts, Earnest said. Earnest declined to discuss the details of whether the administration considered sending Obama, Vice President Biden, or some other high-level official to the march. "We want to send a clear message, even in a symbolic context like this one, that the American people stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our allies in France," Earnest said. "And sending a high-level, highly visible senior administration official with a high profile to that march would have done that." The French government has not been critical of Obama's absence. Gerard Araud, the French ambassador to the United States, told MSNBC that his country appreciates the U.S. support, citing Obama's statements and his recent visit to the French embassy in Washington, D.C., to sign a condolence book. "From the French side," he said, there are "no hard feelings."
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Post by Admin on Jan 13, 2015 22:35:07 GMT
Newly-released CCTV footage appears to show the partner of Paris supermarket attacker Amedy Coulibaly arriving at an Istanbul airport in Turkey. The video purports to show Hayat Boumeddiene passing through passport control with another man on 2 January. She is thought to now be in Syria. Hayat Boumeddiene has been identified as a suspect by French police, although she left France before the attacks. The Turkish foreign minister said she arrived in Turkey on 2 January from Madrid, before continuing to Syria six days later. The security footage, published by Haberturk newspaper, was released by Turkish police. It appeared to show Hayat Boumeddiene and a man at Sabiha Gokcen Airport in Istanbul. Turkish officials told the BBC the man was Mehdi Sabri Belhouchine, a man of North African origin, and that he was not on a watch list. Officials believe he crossed into Syria with Hayat Boumeddiene. Hayat Boumeddiene's partner, Coulibaly, had killed four people at a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris on Friday before police stormed the building. He is also believed to have shot dead a policewoman the day before. Coulibaly had claimed that he co-ordinated his attack with brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, who attacked the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday, killing 12 people. All three gunmen were shot dead on Friday after police ended two separate sieges. French prosecutors said Hayat Boumeddiene had exchanged more than 500 phone calls with the wife of Cherif Kouachi in 2014. French police said they had also found a second flat in Paris which had been used as a hide-out by Coulibaly, and contained weapons.
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Post by Admin on Jan 14, 2015 22:38:41 GMT
A senior leader of al-Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen claimed responsibility Wednesday for last week's attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo that killed 12 people in Paris. The group released a video showing Nasr al-Ansi, a top commander of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula saying the attack was in direct retaliation for insulting the prophet Mohammed. The 11-minute video, released on Twitter, was briefly available on YouTube before being taken down. The office of the Director of National Intelligence confirmed the authenticity of the video. The intelligence community, though, has not validated the claim in the video that the group planned and organized the Paris attack, according to a government official who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to publicly discuss intelligence issues. The degree of the organization's involvement in the attack remains unclear. The brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, who launched the attack, claimed to be acting on behalf of al-Qaeda in Yemen. At least one of the men visited Yemen in 2011 and received $20,000 from the group, CBS reported. n the video, al-Ansi criticizes France for belonging to the "party of Satan" and says further "tragedies and terror" can be expected. Al-Ansi claims that Yemen's al-Qaeda branch "chose the target, laid out the plan and financed the operation." Al-Ansi calls the Kouachi brothers heroes. Kohlmann and other analysts questioned that claim, describing the attack as something between a "lone wolf" attack cooked up independently and a terrorist operation planned and directed by al-Qaeda or another jihadist group. "You would be hard-pressed to say they didn't provide some role," Kohlmann said, referring to the al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen. The operation suggested the attackers had at least some level of training in weapons and tactics, he said..
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Post by Admin on Jan 15, 2015 22:42:06 GMT
Two terror suspects were killed and another was in custody after a police raid Thursday on a cell planning a "major, imminent attack" in Belgium, a magistrate said. Those targeted in the raid had been under surveillance after recently returning to Belgium from Syria and were close to carrying out an attack on police buildings in the coming hours or days, Magistrate Eric Van der Sypt said at a news conference. The raid in the industrial town of Verviers, about 80 miles southeast of the capital of Brussels, came amid heightened concerns over terrorism in Europe and after last week's attacks in Paris. Van der Sypt said there was no known link to the Paris attacks that left 17 dead. The operation was part of a weeks-long investigation into extremists returning from Syria. The suspects were killed during in intense firefight with authorities on the upper level of a building near a train station in Verviers. No civilians or officers were injured, Van der Sypt said. Witnesses said they heard a series of explosions followed by rapid gunfire. "These were extremely well-armed men" with automatic weapons, Van der Sypt said. Belgium raised its terror alert to its second-highest level, and additional anti-terror raids were underway near Brussels and Verviers, Van der Sypt said. On Wednesday, Islamic State militants in a video threatened attacks on Belgium, the Brussels-based Belga news agency reported, according to AFP. A senior Belgian counterterrorism official told CNN the terror cell in Verviers had been instructed by the Islamic State to carry out attacks in Belgium and Europe in retaliation for U.S.-led airstrikes against the militants in Syria and Iraq.
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Post by Admin on Jan 16, 2015 22:44:27 GMT
President Barack Obama argued Friday that a resurgent fear of terrorism across Europe and the United States should not lead countries to overreact and shed privacy protections, even as British Prime Minister David Cameron pressed for more government access to encrypted communications used by U.S. companies. Obama and Cameron met at the White House just over a week after terror attacks in France left 17 people dead and stirred anxieties on both sides of the Atlantic. In the wake of the attacks, Cameron has redoubled efforts to get more access to online information, while the French government plans to present new anti-terrorism measures next week that would allow for more phone-tapping and other surveillance. "As technology develops, as the world moves on, we should try to avoid the safe havens that could otherwise be created for terrorists to talk to each other," Cameron said in a joint news conference with Obama. The response to the Paris attacks could reinvigorate the debate over balancing privacy and security, even as governments and companies still grapple with the backlash against surveillance that followed the 2013 disclosures from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. With some in France calling the attacks their country's Sept. 11, there are also fears that the government could respond with laws akin to the sweeping USA Patriot Act that the American Congress quickly approved after the 2001 attacks. Obama avoided taking a public position on Cameron's call for U.S.-based technology companies like Google, Facebook and Apple to give governments more access to encrypted communications. He urged caution, saying he did not believe the threat level was so great that the "pendulum needs to swing" toward more invasive security measures. Still, Obama agreed with his British counterpart that governments need to keep pace with rapidly evolving technology. He said that if having a phone number or email address of a potential terrorist isn't enough to disrupt a plot, "that's a problem."
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