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Post by Admin on Aug 5, 2015 20:23:08 GMT
The radical preacher Anjem Choudary, some of whose followers have joined the Islamic State, was charged by the British authorities on Wednesday with inciting support for the organization. Mr. Choudary was charged alongside an associate, Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, with “inviting support” for the Islamic State between June 29, 2014, and March 6 of this year, the Metropolitan Police in London said. Both men were set to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday. The two men are accused of advocating on behalf of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, in “individual lectures which were subsequently published online,” said Sue Hemming, head of the counterterrorism division at the Crown Prosecution Service. “We have concluded that there is sufficient evidence and it is in the public interest to prosecute Anjem Choudary and Mohammed Rahman for inviting support for ISIL,” she said, without offering additional details. Mr. Choudary, 48, and Mr. Rahman, 32, both from East London, were arrested in September on suspicion of being members of the Islamic State, which is banned in Britain. Since then, they have been free on bail. Mr. Choudary is widely known in Britain for his extreme views. He has praised the attacks against the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, and the bombings in London on July 7, 2005. He helped found an Islamist organization, Al-Muhajiroun, now banned, with another cleric, Omar Bakri Muhammad, who has been barred from Britain for his extreme views. Mr. Bakri is facing terrorism charges in Lebanon. Mr. Choudary has also been involved with other Islamist organizations, including Islam4UK, a proscribed group. Some members who belonged to successor groups are known to have joined the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, and Mr. Choudary has said that he would like to live in the Muslim caliphate that the Islamic State says it wants to establish.
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Post by Admin on Aug 15, 2015 20:18:58 GMT
Abu Bakr-al Baghdadi, the leader of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS), had repeatedly raped American hostage Kayla Mueller during her 1.5 years in captivity, US intelligence officials told her family in June. "They told us that he married her, and we all understand what that means," the victim’s father, Carl Mueller, told The Associated Press. Ms. Mueller, whose death was reported in February, would have turned 27 on Friday. "Kayla did not marry this man,” added her mother, Marsha Mueller. “He took her to his room and he abused her and she came back crying." A 14-year old Yazidi girl captured by ISIS in Iraq last August revealed the American aid worker’s ordeal to US officials who later confirmed the reports. The young girl says she spent two months with Mueller in a house in the Syrian town of al-Shadadiya before escaping in October 2014, reports London’s Independent newspaper. ISIS militants held Mueller and the witness in a room with two other Yazidi teenagers and repeatedly abused all four girls. When al-Baghdadi was around, he would take Mueller to his room, the Yazidi teen said, and the hostage would then tell her fellow captives what he had done to her. Mueller tried to shield the girls from the terrorists’ abuse and violence, sometimes putting their lives before hers. When the Yazidi girl escaped with her sister, she asked the American to join them, US officials relayed. Yet Mueller refused out of fear that her foreign appearance would put them in danger. "Kayla tried to protect these young girls," her mother told AP. "She was like a mother figure to them."
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Post by Admin on Oct 4, 2015 19:51:22 GMT
An air strike, probably carried out by U.S.-led coalition forces, killed 19 staff and patients, including three children on Saturday, in a hospital run by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in the northern city of Kunduz, the aid group said. The U.S. military said it may have hit the hospital as it targeted Taliban insurgents who were directly firing on U.S. military personnel and an investigation into the incident had begun. U.N. Human Rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein led a chorus of condemnation, without saying who carried out the strike, noting that an assault on a hospital could amount to a war crime. "This event is utterly tragic, inexcusable, and possibly even criminal," he said. The medical charity said its staff phoned military officials at NATO in Kabul and Washington during the morning attack, but bombs continued to rain down for nearly an hour. "All indications currently point to the bombing being carried out by international Coalition forces," MSF said, demanding "a full and transparent account". MSF said it had given the location of the hospital to both Afghan and U.S. forces several times in the past few months, most recently this week, to avoid being caught in crossfire. At least three children, four adult patients and 12 MSF personnel died in the blasts, the aid group said. At least 37 people were wounded and many are still missing, it said.
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Post by Admin on Oct 7, 2015 19:51:00 GMT
A senior U.S. general on Tuesday said the air attack that killed 22 patients and medical staffers in northern Afghanistan was not intended to strike a hospital run by an international aid group, adding to an evolving Pentagon account of one of the deadliest American strikes on a civilian target in recent history. Gen. John F. Campbell, who commands U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, said the powerful U.S. gunship that struck a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders in the city of Kunduz acted in response to a request from Afghan troops facing a Taliban attack. But, Campbell told the Senate Armed Services Committee, the United States bore ultimate responsibility for authorizing strikes on a civilian compound. “A hospital was mistakenly struck,” he said. “We would never intentionally target a protected medical facility.”
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Post by Admin on Oct 12, 2015 20:07:34 GMT
According to the latest figures released by the Prime Ministry, 97 people have been killed and 246 injured, 48 of them critically, in Saturday morning’s deadly bombing in Ankara. A pair of suicide bombs went off about 20 meters (65 feet) apart at 10:04 a.m. local time (7:04 a.m. GMT) Saturday morning, just as people began gathering on Hipodrom Avenue in front of the Ankara Train Station for a “Labor, Peace, Democracy” anti-war rally. Footage of the incident was released soon after, showing a line of young men and women holding hands and dancing in revelry, followed by a large explosion going off behind them and engulfing the people.
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