EURABIA WATCH: NOVEMBER 10,2010
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.7882/pub_detail.asp
Eurabia Watch, November 10
Terrorism Arrests in France and Italy
ITALY: 16 People Arrested, Links to Terrorism
In Naples in southern Italy, states AKI News, 16 people who are mainly of North African origin were arrested yesterday (Tuesday, November 9), suspected of having links to a terrorist cell. The majority were Algerian, Moroccan or Tunisian. Two of those arrested were Italian, and one of these Italians is believed to have skills in forgery. As AKI states:
The arrests were made during a counter-terrorism operation, code named ‘Matmata, carried out by paramilitary Carabinieri police. Police recovered forged driving licences, identity cards and official stamps during raids on dozens of properties.
‘Matmata’ followed an earlier investigation, ‘Full Moon’, which uncovered a Salafite cell with operatives in Italy’s northern Lombardy and Veneto regions.
‘Full Moon’ led to the arrest of three Algerians and their conviction for terrorist offences.
Notes:
In 2005 and 2006, there were several cases in Europe, from Spain, Italy France and Germany, of Salafists being involved in forging documents. These included passport “factories.” Most of these cells who were involved in document-forging were from the GSPC (Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat), which is now known as Al-Qaeda in the Maghrib (AQIM). There was a strong link between France Italy and Spain.
In October, a French-Algerian Islamic militant was arrested in Italy who had links to a terrorist investigation going on in France. On October 2, a 28-year old French Algerian named Ryad Hannouni, was arrested in Naples, and was found to have bomb-making literature. He was thought by police to have arrived in Italy in September. He had previously fought as an insurgent on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border, it is believed. On Friday October 22, a Naples court granted permission for him to be extradited to France. Two men had been arrested in Marseille and one in Bordeaux, after their phone numbers were found in Hannouni’s possession.
FRANCE: 5 Arrested in Terror Network Probe
Five people have been arrested in and near Paris, who are also thought to have gone to the Pakistan/Afghanistan border to train/fight, and who are now suspected of involvement in a terror plot. Yesterday (Tuesday), two suspects were arrested at Charles de Gaulle airport near Paris, while the other three were arrested on Monday afternoon in the French capital.
According to Associated Press:
One of them was also being questioned about an alleged criminal plot to target the rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, the prominent moderate Dalil Boubakeur, the official said.The mosque said in September that armed guards had been assigned to Boubakeur because of an unspecified threat against him.
Those arrested are “interesting people in the context of the recently mentioned global threat” against France, the source said, adding they were suspected of having trained as militants in western Pakistan, near Afghanistan.
RTL radio reported that the five were arrested as they arrived by plane and that some of them were suspected of being connected to death threats a few weeks ago against Dalil Boubakeur, the head of Paris’ main mosque.
Dalil Boubakeur (pictured) has been under protection since the French National Assembly voted to approve a ban on burkas. Boubakeur is known to have opposed the face-covering of women. According to the Daily Mail, which covered the story in some depth this morning, Carala Bruni was also a target of assassination. Bruni us the model and singer who is married to the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy.
It should be noted that on Thursday last week (Nov 4), France’s Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux announced that two men had been arrested for their suspected links to terrorist groups.
France Germany and Britain have been on high alert since details of a proposed plot to attack these countries was revealed. The supplier of this information was Ahmed Siddiqui, a naturalized German of Afghan origin, who was arrested near Kabul in July this year. He was connected to a group of expatriate German nationals who were attending terror training camps in Waziristan, near the Pakistan/Afghan border.
It appears that now, France is discovering, like Germany, that it too has a network of potential terrorists who have connections to Pakistan.
Previous Family Security Matters articles detailing the background of the German individuals and their relation to the al-Qaeda related group in the Pakistan tribal regions, called the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, can be found here and here.
Incidentally, yesterday, Robert Gates said during a visit to Kuala Lumpur that: “I would say the heart of Al-Qaeda remains … in the border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
BRITAIN: Islamic TV Station Advocated Marital Rape
According to the Daily Telegraph, the Islam Channel has been found to have breached broadcasting guidelines by the inspectorate called Ofcom. The channel was found to have advocated violence against women. Islam Channel broadcasts in the UK on Freesat and Sky. On one show, a presenter said in the context of sexual relations in marriage:
“it shouldn’t be such a big problem where the man feels he has to force himself upon the woman.”
In another show on Islam Channel , a presenter told a woman who had phoned in to ask if she had the (Islamic) right to hit back. The presenter had responded:
“In Islam we have no right to hit the woman in a way that damages her eye or damages her tooth or damages her face or makes her ugly. Maximum what you can do, you can see the pen over here, in my hand, this kind of a stick can be used just to make her feel that you are not happy with her.”
BELGIUM: Two Companies have been Selling Uranium to Iran
According to Le Monde (in French) this morning, two Belgian companies have ben found to be sending enriched uranium and zirconium to Iran. The information was revealed by a Flemish Green Party politician, Kristof Calvo, on October 9, but the news is only now being reported. The names of the two companies, both based in Flanders, have not been publicly disclosed. Belgium’s complex bureaucracy seems to have allowed a loophole for these companies to export these materials to Iran. Though they have uses in power-production, they both have vital roles in the production of nuclear weaponry.
NORWAY: Plans for Arctic Mosque Go Awry Over Saudi Funding
Saudi Arabia funds the building of mosques around the world, even though no other faiths are allowed to build their places of worship within the socially backward, but wealthy, kingdom. A plan to build a mosque in Tromsø in the remotest north of Norway has been put at risk by a government ruling, states Agence France-Presse, via Khaleej Times.
Ragnhild Imerslund, a foreign ministry spokeswoman, said: “It would be paradoxical and unnatural to approve financing coming from a country where religious freedom does not exist.”
The donor is a Saudi businessman named Hamad al-Gamas who had pledged 20 million Norwegian Kroner, or 3.4 million US dollars, to the mosque building project. A spokeswoman for the organization building the mosque said:
“The donor set out as a condition that the Norwegian authorities would provide written approval. In the absence of such approval, it is natural to suspend the project.”
AFP states that earlier this year, a similar plan to build a mosque in Oslo, the capital, was blocked by the Norwegian government, for the same reasons.
Notes:
Norway, like Russia, is part of the Council of Europe, but is not part of the European Union. By not being part of the EU, Norway is marginally less dhimmi than its neighbour Sweden, though Norway has still not found a way to deport the al-Qaeda supporting Mullah Krekar who has lived as an asylum seeker in Norway for 19 years. Even though he claimed to be a refugee, he had slipped back to Iraq to set up the |Kurdish terror group Ansar al-Islam.
Tromsø is within the Arctic Circle, and had a reputation of having the northernmost church in the world. For this reason, there is a touch of “imperialism” about attempts to place a mosque at the top of the world.
Similar “conquest” notions may have led to the construction of the other Arctic mosque, which can be found in Norilsk, an industrial town in the northern Russian region of Taymyr. The city of Norilsk is located over metal deposits and was built by gulag prisoners of Stalin, during the 1930s. Here, the Nurd Kamal mosque was constructed in 1998 by Mukhtad Bekmeyev, an ethnic Tatar and Norilsk native. There was a workforce of Muslims who attended the Nurd Kamal “Arctic Mosque,” but the population of Norilsk has been dwindling and mosque attendance has fallen off dramatically in recent years.
FRANCE: Stoned Congregation Update
On Monday, in our first edition of FSM Eurabia Watch, I discussed the attack by two teenagers upon a church in the Viguier district of Carcassonne. I am grateful to one of our Contriobuting Editors, Nidra Poller, who has sent me a translation of a follow-up article that was published in Midi Libre, a French newspaper. Her translation follows:
Paris 9 November 2010
This morning, 36 Iraqi Christians wounded in a savage attack on their church arrived in Paris on a special medical flight. The patients will be treated in French hospitals. Immigration minister Eric Besson has arranged for the victims and family members who accompany them to be granted temporary residence permits. Members of the French Chaldean Church welcomed their devastated brethren.
The attack on the Iraqi church took place during the «Toussaint» (day of the dead) memorial service. On that same day, during that same memorial service, the St. Jacques church in Carcassonne (southwest France) was attacked. The weapons were not as lethal—rocks and pine cones—but the target was apparently chosen for the same reason.
On November 5th the provincial daily Midi Libre relayed a statement delivered to the press by the Bishop of Carcassonne and Narbonne, Monsignor Alain Planet (pictured):
“The torrent of anti-Islamist hatred provoked by the incidents in Carcassonne is far more offensive to Christianity and to Christ himself than the foolish acts of some naughty kids. I do not intend to dramatize an incident motivated by problems of adolescence, poverty, decolonization and stupidity far more than any religious convictions.”
The bishop noted his assent to a declaration by the Egyptian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in the aftermath of the Baghdad” tragedy:” “The protection of places of worship and all the children of the monotheist religions is the mission of Muslims.” While acknowledging the need “to give voice to the emotions of a Catholic community brutally confronted with inexplicable violence » the bishop is equally determined to « denounce the cowardly preachers of hatred who exploit weak spirits .” He advises those who “ whatever their philosophical persuasion, orchestrate this common variety anti-Christianism, to ask themselves about the future of the monsters they generate. Catholics, disciples of Christ, do not intend to call for vengeance. They will respond by prayer and even greater charity.”
Monsignor Planet disapproves of the political exploitation of the incident expressed by certain Internet sites, which he denounces in no uncertain terms as « communitarianism and incitement to hatred.” The prefect, Anne-Marie Charvet, is scheduled to attend Sunday mass, celebrated by Monsignor Planet.
Meanwhile, according to Midi Libre, the police investigation is handicapped by the lack of material evidence. After the church had been vandalized it was cleaned from top to bottom before the police arrived on the scene.
Translation by Nidra Poller
GERMANY: Interview With Dutch Politician Geert Wilders
Yesterday, I mentioned on Eurabia Watch that Geert Wilders had given an interview to the German-language print edition of Der Spiegel. Now, the entire interview has gone online, on the English language edition. Read it all here, here, and here, but this is an extract:
SPIEGEL: You maintain that Dutch culture is better than the culture of Islamic countries. Why do you consciously seize upon comparisons that degrade other religions?
Wilders: Anyone who compares the traditions of Judaism, Christianity and humanism with those of Islam doesn’t have to be an Einstein to see the difference. Do you know of a country in the Middle East where Islamic culture prevails and where there is a genuine constitutional state and independent journalism? Where non-believers, women and gays can do what they want? In the West people have given their lives for the freedoms that we enjoy today.
SPIEGEL: You do not acknowledge that cultures and religions can be changed by people. Isn’t that exactly how it was with the Catholic Church?
Wilders: Yes, but how long did it take? I am not saying that I want to ban Islam. I want less Islam in Europe — because it doesn’t allow any room for debate. By contrast, take Judaism and the life in the yeshivas: That is where they debate how the Talmud should be interpreted. With the Koran, however, anyone who does not believe every word is an infidel. And the punishment for that is well known: death.
Finland: Learn Our Language or Don’t Claim Welfare!
With a hat top to Esther at the excellent Islam in Europe blog, news from Finland via YLE news. The Green League in Finland is urging immigrants to learn either Finnish or Swedish:
The Green League is calling for immigrants, especially those with refugee backgrounds, to learn Finnish or Swedish—or risk reductions in income support subsidies. The party says it is particularly alarmed by the poor language skills among stay-at-home immigrant mothers.
For the rest, see here.
Adrian Morgan
Family Security Matters Eurabia Watch will be appearing from now on as a regular feature on these pages.
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