torture

Federal Government Indicts CAIR Client

May 13th, 2012

by Ryan Mauro

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim Brotherhood front group parading as a civil rights organization, took up the case of a Muslim-American named Yonas Fikre (shown left) after he alleged that he was tortured in the United Arab Emirates on behalf of the FBI. He and his brother have now been charged with trying to secretly transfer $75,000 to Sudan and the United Arab Emirates. His CAIR attorney predictably accuses the FBI of just trying to punish him for refusing to become an informant.

Fikre’s story is that he was originally approached by the FBI to become an informant in April 2010 during a family visit to Sudan, a country that is a state sponsor of terrorism. Fikre says he refused and was told that he was now on the no-fly list and couldn’t come back home if he didn’t cooperate.

Then, during a visit to the United Arab Emirates in June 2011, he was detained by the authorities for three months and, he claims, brutally tortured. He said that the UAE authorities asked him the same questions as the FBI did previously and that his interrogator, for some reason, told him that he was acting on orders from the FBI. After he was released, he fled to Sweden and is seeking asylum.

Never one to miss an opportunity to portray the U.S. government as systematically abusing Muslims, CAIR jumped on the case, professing his innocence. CAIR said it was part of a “pattern of proxy detention” designed to strip Muslim-Americans of their rights. Now that Fikre and his brother have been formally charged, CAIR says that the FBI is punishing him for going public.

Now, here’s the side of the story that CAIR isn’t keen on mentioning.

Fikre was the youth basketball coach of Masjed-as-Saber, also known as the Islamic Society of Portland. According to the Investigative Project on Terrorism, “Since the mid-1990s, the Portland mosque has been a center of significant radical fundamentalist activities.”

The ICP’s imam, Shiekh Mohamed Abdirahman Kariye, fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980’s and is a founding director of Global Relief Foundation, a charity sanctioned by the federal government in December 2001 for financing Al-Qaeda. The federal government wiretapped conversations revealing that Kariye gave $2,000 to each of seven Portland Muslims to go to Afghanistan to fight U.S. forces alongside the Taliban. They traveled to China, hoping to reach the battlefield through Pakistan. One of those involved said that Kariye preached that Muslims are obligated to fight U.S. forces overseas.

Fikre’s mosque was also attended by Mohamed Osman Mohamud, the Somali who sought to set off a bomb during a Christmas-tree lighting ceremony in 2010, an event where 10,000 men, women and children would be gathered. A "casual acquaintance" of Mohamud who also attends the mosque, Michael Migliore, was also placed on the no-fly list after visiting the United Kingdom. Two other ICP attendees, Mustafa Elogbi and Jamal Tarhuni, were also placed on the list after going to Libya.

Considering all of this, what’s more likely? That the federal government actually has good reason to be suspicious about Fikre, or that FBI ordered the UAE to torture an innocent Muslim for not bending to its will, during which the interrogator admitted to acting on behalf of the FBI? As CAIR would have you believe, the government made up the charges to prosecute him with afterwards.

It’s all part of CAIR’s efforts to scare Muslims into thinking that CAIR is their hero, coming to save them from a predatory U.S. government and an “Islamophobic” society.

Ryan Mauro is RadicalIslam.org's National Security analyst and a fellow with the Clarion Fund. He is the founder of WorldThreats.com and a frequent security analyst for Fox News.

Wed, April 25, 2012 Palestinian Torture and Capital Offenses

Muhammad Abu Shahala is a former Palestinian intelligence officer who, after reportedly being tortured, admitted committing a capital offense. His “crime”? He sold his home to Jews.

by: 
Arnold Ahlert

Muhammad Abu Shahala is a former Palestinian intelligence officer who, after reportedly being tortured, admitted committing a capital offense. As a result he has been sentenced to death. His “crime”? He sold his home in Hebron on the West Bank to Jews. Under Palestinian law, all that awaits Shahala’s rendezvous with destiny is the approval of the sentence by Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas, left.

Who is trying to save him? Jewish officials, who are attempting to get the international community involved.

An open letter authored by David Wilder and Noam Arnon of the Jewish Community of Hebron addressed to U.N Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and other officials notes that “Mr. Muhammad Abu Shahala, a former intelligence agent for the Palestinian Authority, has been sentenced to death, following a hurried trial. His crime: selling property to Jews in Hebron.” The letter continues:

Mr. Abu Shahala reportedly confessed following torture sessions at the hands of his captors. The death sentence can be executed only following concurrence by Mahmoud Abbas, aka Abu Mazen, president of the PA. After he signs the death warrant, Abu Shahala may be killed.

It is appalling to think that property sales should be defined as a “capital crime” punishable by death. The very fact that such a “law” exists within the framework of the PA legal system points to a barbaric and perverse type of justice, reminiscent of practices implemented during the dark ages.

The letter then poses a pertinent question. “Is the Palestinian Authority a reincarnation of the Third Reich?” it asks.

Noted columnist Caroline Glick, right, provides an answer to that question. “The PA (Palestinian Authority) was established in May 1994,” Glick writes. “The first law it adopted defined selling land to Jews as a capital offense. Shortly thereafter scores of Arab land sellers began turning up dead in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria in both judicial and extrajudicial killings.”

A report (see video below) by the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) contends that, before the creation of the PA, the decree had been in effect since before the creation of Israel in 1948. If CBN is correct, it reveals an inconvenient truth: the kind of irrational hatred that would make selling one’s home to a Jew an offense punishable by death pre-dated the creation of the Jewish State. Such a reality blasts a giant hole in the seemingly intractable belief among Western leaders that all of the region’s ongoing animosity is the result of Israel’s policies toward Palestinians — or that such animosity can be quelled by any “peace process.”

 

The dispute at hand goes back to 2007, when 20 Jewish families moved into the Hebron house claiming they had “bought it from its Palestinian owner.” At that time, the Palestinian owner, who remained unnamed in several stories about the dispute, claimed the house had been illegally seized. In a hearing in October of 2008, the settlers presented the court with an audio tape on which the owner admits he had sold the house to a realtor. The High Court of Justice was unmoved and ordered the eviction to proceed.

The ongoing dispute continued to fester until April 2, 2012, when the settlers were ordered to leave the house by the Israeli Civil Administration. Officials contended that the sale violated the public order in what has been declared a restricted military zone, tellingYnet News that the eviction order was issued “due to security concerns” and that such a sale “poses a threat to the stability of the area.”

They further contended that even if the house had been purchased legally, the contract still requires the authorization of the defense minister. On April 3, Prime Minister Netanyahu delayed the court-ordered eviction in order to give settlers time to prove their ownership. At that time it was first reported that the unidentified Palestinian seller was “a former PA security officer who lives in the Gaza Strip,” who had “been detained by the PA for months now, while the affair is being sorted out.” The article further noted that as a result of selling the house, “[H]e is expected to serve a prolonged prison sentence.”

On April 6th, the Jewish settlers were finally evicted, and the three-story building, shown left, has been sealed until an Israeli court can establish the legal owner. The settlers have remained camped in tents near the house since their expulsion.

None of this apparently matters to PA authorities. Abu Shahala remains on death row for the “crime” of selling real estate to Jews, even as the sale itself remains in dispute in an Israeli court. It remains to been seen if PA president Mahmoud Abbas will sign his death warrant, or whether any international pressure will be brought to bear in the case. The above letter was published ten days ago, suggesting international inertia at best–or calculated indifference at worst.

Yet it is telling that Mr. Shahla’s most ardent defenders are Jews, including, as Arutz Sheva reported on April 15th, “several Israeli Knesset Members and leaders in Judea and Samaria,” while those who would kill him are his fellow Palestinians. In 1957, former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir said, “Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”

That day has yet to arrive.

Arnold Ahlert is a former NY Post op-ed columnist. This article appeared originally in FrontPageMag.com

Sun, March 25, 2012 Rebels Cleanse Homs of 90% of Christians

Eyewitnesses say that Islamic rebel forces went house by house, demanding that the Christians leave immediately with only the clothes on their backs or be shot.

by RadicalIslam.org Staff

Reports out of Homs, Syria, reveal that the “Faruq Brigades,” armed men who have joined the rebel forces from al-Qaeda and various Wahhabi groups -- including mercenaries from Libya and Iraq -- have forcibly cleansed Homs of 90 percent of its Christians.

Syrian Orthodox Christian eyewitnesses say that the Islamic men went house by house, demanding that the Christians leave their homes immediately. Failure to obey they said would result in death by shooting, with pictures of their corpses sent to the Arabic news channel Al-Jazeera. The murders would be pegged on Assad forces.

All reports emphasized that those who were expelled were not allowed to take any of their possessions, even extra clothing. It is expected that a complete "cleansing" of all buildings owned by Christians will occur within a matter of days or weeks by the Faruq Brigade.

Sources say that immediately after they left their homes, the buildings were occupied by armed men who considered it "war-booty from the Christians" .

Last month rebel forces destroyed two churches with rocket fire, burning one and severely damaging the other. 

In a recently released report by the non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch, Syrian opposition forces have been accused of violence, abuse and torture. However, Human Rights Watch and other NGO monitors emphasize that the extent of abuse and torture by government forces far outweighs that of the rebels.

Speaking about the relationship between the rebels and the native Christians, the Vicar Apostolic of Aleppo, Mgr. Giuseppe Nazzaro said, "We have no sources to confirm this information directly, but we can say that the wall of silence built up by the press worldwide” and the Christian’s relationship with the Islamists is “breaking down.”

The Vicar specifically mentioned a number of recent attacks as proof. "Last Sunday, a car bomb exploded in Aleppo packed with TNT, in the vicinity of the school of the Franciscan fathers. By a miracle, a massacre of children was avoided … only because the [fathers], sensing danger, made the children leave 15 minutes before the usual time.”

“These are bad signs for religious minorities," he continued.

Syria’s Christians are estimated to make up close to 10% of the nation’s 23 million people.

Syrian President Bashar Assad, has generally been perceived as tolerant of religious minorities, as long as they are not engaged in political challenge to his totalitarian regime, and the Christians have been thought to be supportive of him. For the most part, the year-old rebellion has come from the nation’s Sunni Muslim majority. Assad and his pro-regime belong to the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

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