Belgium: Knife wielding Muslim terrorist shot and neutralized at Ghent railway station

Belgian police shot a Muslim terrorist armed with a knife and shouting allahu akbar, at the main railway station in the western city of Ghent on Tuesday. The terrorist was taken to hospital in a life threatening condition.

BREAKING – BELGIUM: Knife wielding Muslim terrorist shot by Police inside Ghent railway station while shouting 'allahu akbar'. Details to follow. pic.twitter.com/W7PSvwYaHN

— Behind The News (@Behind__News) January 23, 2018

Belgium reduced its national threat level on Monday, saying a terror attack had become less likely almost two years after Muslim terrorists murdered 32 people in Brussels.

The government reduced the threat level to two on a four-tier scale, indicating a medium risk. Authorities had been on alert at level three for the serious chance of a terror attack since the bombings on March 22, 2016.

Local police were not immediately available for comment on the incident in Ghent.

Details to follow

 

Operation Inherent Resolve: US-led precision strikes eliminate up to 150 ISIS terrorists in Syria

Some 145-150 ISIS terrorists were eliminated in a “precision strike” on a headquarters of the terror group in eastern Syria, the coalition announced Tuesday evening.

The strike hit an ISIS headquarters and command and control center near As Shafah, in the Euphrates River valley, about 20 kilometres from the Syria-Iraq border.

The “heavy concentration of ISIS terrorists appear to have been massing for movement,” the coalition stated in their published announcement.

“The strikes underscore our assertion that the fight to liberate Syria is far from over,” said Maj. Gen. James Jarrard, commanding general of the coalition’s special operations task force.

Coalition allies the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) assisted in “target observation prior to the strikes,” the statement confirmed.

“Our SDF partners are still making daily progress and sacrifices, and together we are still finding, targeting and killing ISIS terrorists intent on keeping their extremist hold on the region. We cannot take our focus off our mission, and we must not lose our momentum in taking these terrorists off the battlefield and preventing them from resurfacing somewhere else,” said Jarrard.

Earlier in the day, US Defence Secretary James Mattis criticized Turkey’s military offensive against Kurdish forces of the SDF in Afrin as a distraction from the war on terror.

“The violence in Afrin disrupts what was a relatively stable area of Syria. It distracts from international efforts to ensure the defeat of ISIS, and this could be exploited by ISIS and Al-Qaeda,” he said, urging everyone to remain focused on the war against ISIS.

US puts British and Belgian Muslim terrorists on its global terrorism list

The United States placed a Belgian citizen and a Briton ISIS executioner on its global terrorism list on Tuesday, a designation that allows the government to impose sanctions and freeze assets and property.

The State Department said Siddhartha Dhar left the United Kingdom to join ISIS in Syria, where he replaced executioner Mohammad Emwazi, also known as “Jihadi John.” The second Muslim terrorist, Abdelatif Gaini, is a Belgian-Moroccan citizen believed to be in the Middle East, the department said.

Siddhartha Dhar was a leading member of now-defunct terrorist organization Al-Muhajiroun.

In late 2014, Dhar left the United Kingdom to travel to Syria to join ISIS. He is considered to have replaced ISIS executioner Mohammad Emwazi, also known as “Jihadi John.”

Dhar is believed to be the masked leader who appeared in a January 2016 ISIS video of the execution of several prisoners ISIS accused of spying for the UK.

Abdelatif Gaini is a Belgian-Moroccan citizen believed to be an ISIS terrorist in the Middle East. Gaini is connected to UK-based ISIS sympathizers Mohamad Ali Ahmed and Humza Ali, who were convicted in the UK in 2016 of terrorism offenses.

Today’s action notifies the U.S. public and the international community that Dhar and Gaini have committed or pose a significant risk of committing acts of terrorism.

Terrorism designations expose and isolate organizations and individuals, and deny them access to the U.S. financial system. Moreover, designations can assist the law enforcement activities of U.S. agencies and other governments.

 

Senior Al-Qaeda terrorist call on Muslims ‘everywhere’ to murder Jews and Americans

A senior Al-Qaeda leader has called on Muslims ‘everywhere’ to rise up and murder Jews and Americans in response to US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Muslim terrorist Khalid Batarfi said President Trump’s move was ‘a declaration of a new Jewish-Crusader war’.

Batarfi made the threats in an 18-minute video entitled ‘Our Duty Towards Our Jerusalem’, released by the terror group on Monday.

The Saudi Arabian terrorist also said every Muslim had a duty to ‘liberate’ Jerusalem, which is a holy city in Islam as well as Judaism and Christianity.

He said; ‘No Muslim has the right to cede Jerusalem no matter what happens. Only a traitor would give it up or hand it over.

‘Let them (Muslims) rise and attack the Jews and the Americans everywhere.’

In the video, Batarfi dismissed US allies’ protests as not genuine and ‘nothing but dust thrown in the eyes’.

‘The greatest responsibility lies upon the Muslims in America and the Western countries in the world,’ he said.

‘The Muslims inside Israel must kill every Jew, by running him over, or stabbing him, or by using against him any weapon, or by burning their homes.’

The State Department announced today that Khalid Batarfi has been added to the US government’s list of specially designated global terrorists. “This designation seeks to deny Batarfi the resources he needs to plan and carry out further terrorist attacks,” State said in a press release.

The terror group has abducted foreigners and claimed responsibility for the deadly 2015 attack in Paris on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, targeted for its cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

The United States has intensified its air attacks on AQAP since Trump took office in January.

Police recommend indictment of 3 Arab MKs for falsification, money laundering, fraud, among other offenses

Police submitted on Tuesday its recommendation to indict three Balad MKs—Hanin Zoabi, Jamal Zahalka and Juma Azbarga—for a series of criminal offenses.

The police have completed their investigation into the three parliamentarians, saying sufficient evidence has been collected to charge Zoabi, Zahalka and Azbarga with fraudulently obtaining benefits, falsification, money laundering, fraud and breach of trust, among others offenses.

The case will now be brought to the State Attorney’s Office for a decision on whether to indict the three.

The Israel Police’s Lahav 433 anti-fraud unit, in conjunction with the Economic Department in the State Attorney’s Office, investigated campaign donation reports from 2013 and 2015 submitted by Balad to the State Comptroller’s Office.

The three MKs are suspected of falsifying documents on a regular basis to hide from the State Comptroller the fact they were receiving millions of shekels in illegal donations.

Police seized falsified receipts and documents listing exaggerated party expenses to cover up the illicit donations, and dozens of officials in the party were questioned, including political activists and managers of local party offices from across the country.

The investigation was launched in the wake of a state comptroller report, which raised the suspicion millions of shekels allegedly donated to the party from different elements in Israel and abroad were allegedly fraudulently reported as coming from hundreds of donors in Israel.

Police searched suspects’ homes and offices, including different offices belonging to the party, seizing documents, assets and bank accounts.

A month after the investigation was made public, protesters demonstrated outside the Lahav 433 offices, claiming the investigation amounted to “political persecution meant to humiliate the party.”

First Paris attacks trial set over terrorist hideout

French judges will try this week the first case linked to the November 2015 terror attacks that left 130 people murdered, as 31-year-old Muslim terrorist Jawad Bendaoud accused of helping hide the ringleader of the terror cell, appears in court.

Starting Wednesday, the court will seek to determine whether he was a fellow conspirator in the most bloody attack on French soil since World War II — or simply a thuggish petty criminal unknowingly caught up in it.

The case will turn on what he knew about two Muslim terrorists he agreed to lodge in his grubby apartment on the Rue du Corbillon in the tough Saint-Denis area north of Paris days after the attacks.

One of them was Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a senior Islamic State jihadist who was the coordinator of the Paris attacks, while the other was an accomplice suicide bomber.

“I didn’t know they were terrorists,” Jawad shrugged on BFM television in a deadpan interview in the early hours of November 18 as anti-terror police surrounded his apartment.

“Someone asked me for a favour, I helped them out,” he said, wearing a leather jacket with his hair gelled back, in a clip that became a viral sensation.

Listeners wondered how he could be so naive — the capital was on lockdown at the time as police searched for jihadists on the run — and Bendaoud was arrested soon after he finished his nonchalant TV appearance.

The Saint-Denis native is “the one we laughed about having cried so much,” his lawyer Xavier Nogueras said.

Bendaoud will go on trial alongside one his friends, Mohamed Soumah, as well as the brother of Hasna Aitboulahcen, a woman killed in the jihadist hideout.

Bendaoud has a long criminal record and received an eight-year sentence for killing a man during a fight over a mobile phone. He was released in 2013.

Anti-terror police killed Abaaoud and his accomplice Chakib Akrouh, as well as Aitboulahcen, in a ferocious assault on their hideout that left the property riddled with bullet marks and structurally damaged.

Abaaoud and Akrouh, who were suspected of preparing a suicide attack on the La Defense business area of Paris, had been tracked to the apartment by the intelligence services.

A total of 130 people were murdered in the November 15, 2015 assaults by 10 heavily armed jihadists who attacked the national stadium, bars and restaurants as well as the Bataclan concert hall.

Only one of the Muslim terrorists survived, Salah Abdeslam, who was arrested in Belgium four months later. He has refused to cooperate with investigators and remains in solitary confinement.

He is to go on trial in Belgium on February 5 over a shootout with police that left several officers wounded but led to his capture.

Terror attack foiled in Samaria – 2 Muslim terrorists shot and neutralized

A Border Policeman neutralized two Muslim terrorists armed with knives at the Tapuach Junction Tuesday, thwarting their attack. The policeman was unharmed.

The two would-be terrorists, aged 15, arrived at the junction from the direction of Shechem and headed towards the bus stations at the junction.

A Border Policeman stationed at a nearby post noticed them and alerted the troops stationed at the junction.

The soldiers initiated the suspect arrest protocol, first calling on the suspects to stop.

When the two terrorists failed to respond, a Border Policeman fired some shots into the air, which prompted one of the terrorists to draw his knife and move on the soldiers.

In response, the soldier then shot at the terrorists’ lower bodies, neutralizing them.

Border Police said the terrorists were arrested, have received medical attention on site and were taken to receive further treatment.

L’Oreal Muslima model has been forced to step down after anti-Israel tweets uncovered

The first hijab-wearing model to appear in a L’Oreal hair care campaign has been forced to step down over a series of anti-Israel tweets.

She had been criticisied for a series of posts, including one that described Israel as an ‘illegal state’ and another branding the country as a ‘child murderer’.

The backdated tweets, which have now been deleted, came to light after Amena was cherry picked by L’Oreal to appear in the promo alongside the likes of pop star Cheryl.

 

In a statement posted on Twitter, Amena said: ‘I deeply regret the content of the tweets I made in 2014, and sincerely apologise for the upset and hurt that they have caused.

‘Championing diversity is one of my passions, I don’t discriminate against anyone. I have chosen to delete them as they do not represent the message of harmony that I stand for.’

She continued: ‘I recently took part in a campaign, which excited me because it celebrated inclusivity.

‘With deep regret, I’ve decided to step down from this campaign because the current conversations surrounding it detract from the positive and inclusive sentiment that it set out to deliver.’

Since being unveiled as one of the faces of a new L’Oreal campaign, Amena has been criticised for tweets she posted about Israel in 2014, which have since been deleted.

L’Oréal Paris UK’s new hijab-wearing Muslim model is an Islamist who hates Israel and has made numerous anti-Israel posts on Twitter, calling the nation “sinister,” “child murderers,” and claiming “defeat” awaits them. pic.twitter.com/6IBaSIfYBP

— Behind The News (@Behind__News) January 20, 2018

One read: ‘U repeatedly say “nobody is above the law”. Well, under international law, Israel is an illegal state. Yet u support them. EXPLAIN #AskDavid’.

Another says: ‘Israel = Pharoah. Both are child murderers. Insha’Allah, defeat also awaits the former; it’s only a matter of time. #HopeForGaza #SaveGaza’.

In a third post, Amena tweets Channel 4 presenter Jon Snow: ‘Your “children of Gaza” piece was incredibly moving. Israel is a sinister state & the one who suffer most are innocent children’.