WarSclerotic

France Police Raid Homes, Vow It’s ‘Just the Beginning’

BY: Reuters
November 16, 2015 9:42 am

Source: France Police Raid Homes, Vow It’s ‘Just the Beginning’ – Washington Free Beacon

By Chine Labbé and Crispian Balmer

PARIS (Reuters) – Police raided homes of suspected Islamist militants across France overnight following Friday’s Paris attacks, and a source close to the investigation said a Belgian national in Syria was the possible mastermind.

Prosecutors said one of the killers had been stopped and fingerprinted in Greece last month, fuelling speculation that Islamic State had taken advantage of the recent influx of refugees fleeing the Middle East to slip militants into Europe.

The carnage, which killed 129 people, has led to calls for the European Union to close its borders to asylum seekers.

Islamic State, which has claimed responsibility for the attacks in retaliation for French airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, warned in a video on Monday that any country hitting it would suffer the same fate, promising specifically to target Washington.

French warplanes bombed Islamic State training camps and a suspected arms depot in its Syrian stronghold Raqqa late on Sunday — its biggest such strike since it started assaults as part of a U.S.-led mission launched in 2014.

Much of France came to a standstill at midday for a minute’s silence to remember the dead. Metro trains in Paris stopped, pedestrians paused and office workers stood at their desks.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told reporters police had arrested 23 people and seized arms, including a rocket launcher and automatic weapons, in 168 raids overnight. Another 104 people were put under house arrest, he said.

“Let this be clear to everyone, this is just the beginning, these actions are going to continue,” Cazeneuve said.

The investigation into the coordinated Paris attacks, the worst atrocity in France since World War Two, led swiftly to Belgium after police discovered that two of the cars used by the militants had been rented in the Brussels region.

Dozens of Belgian police and armed commandos surrounded houses on Monday in the Brussels district of Molenbeek, which is home to many Muslim immigrants.

Police arrested seven suspects in Brussels over the weekend, five of whom have been released, and are hunting Salah Abdeslam, a 26-year-old Frenchman based in the Belgian capital, who is one of three brothers believed to have been involved in the plot.

A source close to the investigation said Belgian national Abdelhamid Abaaoud, currently in Syria, was suspected of having ordered the Paris operation. “He appears to be the brains behind several planned attacks in Europe,” the source told Reuters.

French prosecutors say they have identified five of the seven suicide attackers who died on Friday. Four were French, while the fifth man was stopped and fingerprinted in Greece in October and was possibly Syrian.

“We know that more attacks are being prepared, not just against France but also against other European countries,” Prime Minister Manuel Valls told RTL radio. “We are going to live with this terrorist threat for a long time.”

SYRIAN CONNECTION

France has declared three days of national mourning and President Francois Hollande will make a rare address to the joint upper and lower houses of parliament later in the day at the Palace of Versailles, just outside Paris.

Schools in Paris re-opened on Monday, and many museums were due to open their doors in the afternoon after a 48-hour shutdown, but some popular tourist sites, including Disneyland, remained closed.

French tourism-related stocks fell sharply on fears visitors might avoid Paris, one of the most visited cities in the world, but the country’s blue-chip CAC 40 index was steady, with no long-term economic impact seen.

Police have named two French attackers — Ismael Omar Mostefai, 29, from Chartres, southwest of Paris, and Samy Amimour, 28, from the Paris suburb of Drancy. A source close to the investigation named two other French assailants as Bilal Hadfi and Ibrahim Abdeslam.

A Turkish government official said Ankara had notified France twice in December 2014 and June 2015 about Mostefai, who entered Turkey in 2013 with no record of him leaving again. France only called back about him after Friday’s events.

“This is not a time to play the blame game, but we are compelled to share (this) information to shed light on (Mostefai’s) travel history,” the Turkish official said.

France now believes Mostefai was in Syria from 2013-2014.

Latest official figures estimate that 520 French nationals are in the Syrian and Iraqi war zones, including 116 women. Some 137 have died in the fighting, 250 have returned home and around 700 have plans to travel to join the jihadist factions.

The man stopped in Greece in October was carrying a Syrian passport in the name of Ahmad Al Mohammad. Police said they were still checking to see if the document was authentic, but said the dead man’s fingerprints matched those on record in Greece.

Greek officials said the passport holder had crossed from Turkey to the Greek islands last month and then registered for asylum in Serbia before heading north, following a route taken by hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers this year.

The news revived a furious row within the European Union on how to handle the flood of refugees. Senior Polish and Slovak officials poured cold water on an EU plan to relocate asylum seekers across the bloc, saying the violence underlined their concerns about taking in Muslim refugees.

Britain announced on Monday it would boost its intelligence agency staff by 15 percent and more than double spending on aviation security to defend against Islamist militants plotting attacks from Syria.

A source in Prime Minister David Cameron’s office said police had foiled one attack in Britain last month.

Valls said the French authorities would use every means at their disposal to counter the Islamist threat, adding that mosques harboring extremists would be shuttered and foreigners expelled if they “held unacceptable views against the republic”.

France is home to some five million Muslims, many descending from Algerian and Moroccan immigrants.

G20 Vows Enhanced Cooperation to Combat Terrorism Financing

16:44 16.11.2015(updated 18:12 16.11.2015)

Source: G20 Vows Enhanced Cooperation to Combat Terrorism Financing

See also:

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/g20-vows-more-intelligence-sharing-divisions-remain-on-syria/

The Group of Twenty (G20) said in a statement Monday that it would boost cooperation on combating financing of terrorism.

ANTALYA (Sputnik) — G20 announced it’s decision to step up cooperation on combating terrorism financing.

“We also remain committed to tackling the financing channels of terrorism, particularly by enhanced cooperation on exchange of information and freezing of terrorist assets, criminalization of terrorist financing and robust targeted financial sanction regimes related to terrorism and terrorist financing, included through swift implementation of Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards in all jurisdictions,” the group said in a statement.

Terrorism could not be associated with any religion, nationality or ethnic group, G20 leaders stressed.

“We reaffirm that terrorism cannot and should not be associated with any religion, nationality, civilization and ethnic group.”

The fight against terrorism is a major priority for all G20 countries and will be carried out “in full recognition of the UN’s central role.”

“The fight against terrorism is a major priority for all of our countries and we reiterate our resolve to work together to prevent and suppress terrorist acts through increased national solidarity and cooperation, in full recognition of the UN’s central role, and in accordance with UN Charter and obligations under the international law, including international human rights law, international refugee law and international humanitarian law,” the statement reads.

© Sputnik/ Alexei Druzhinin

Putin Discussed Anti-Terrorism Issues with Security Council Ahead of G20

The group strongly condemned the recent attacks in France’s capital Paris and Turkey’s capital Ankara, vowing closer cooperation on the fight against terrorism.According to the group, recent terrorist attacks across the world have shown the need to increase international cooperation on fighting such crimes.

The G20 group of major economies has also agreed to work together on strengthening aviation security, according to a joint statement published Monday.

“We will work together to strengthen global aviation security,” the statement reads.

Putin: ISIS financed from 40 countries, including G20 members

Published time: 16 Nov, 2015 14:29 Edited time: 16 Nov, 2015 15:10

Source: Putin: ISIS financed from 40 countries, including G20 members — RT News

See also:

https://warsclerotic.wordpress.com/2015/11/16/watch-obama-addresses-g20-on-islamic-state/

November 16, 2015. Russian President Vladimir Putin during a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Antalya, Turkey. © Michael Klimentyev / RIA Novosti

WATCH: Obama addresses G20 on Islamic State Islamic State said to threaten attack in Washington; Putin says Russia will turn its back on Assad if he fails to step down

By Elie Leshem

November 16, 2015, 1:53 pm

Source: WATCH: Obama addresses G20 on Islamic State | The Times of Israel

Hamas: First Judea and Samaria, then the rest of ‘Palestine’ Deputy Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh outlines what he sees as the goals of the current “intifada”.

Source: Hamas: First Judea and Samaria, then the rest – Middle East – News – Arutz Sheva

Hamas plans to “liberate” Judea and Samaria first, and then the rest of “Palestine”, the group’s deputy leader Ismail Haniyeh declared on Sunday.

Speaking to the Palestine newspaper, Haniyeh outlined his desired strategy for the destruction of Israel through the “Al-Quds Intifada”, which is what Hamas is calling the current terror wave against Israel.

First and foremost, he called for a conference in Gaza of the interim leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in order to protect and develop the intifada.

The intifada is the best way to achieve statehood, claimed Haniyeh, and in order to achieve that, leadership that is coordinated on the field must be established, and an agreement on the goals of the intifada must be reached.

Those goals, according to Haniyeh, are: The “liberation” of Gaza, Judea and Samaria, Jerusalem and the terrorist prisoners being held in Israel, and then a plan on how to liberate the rest of “Palestine”.

He further said that he sees obstacles standing in the way of the establishment of a unified leadership due to the Palestinian Authority’s security coordination with Israel, which attempts to stifle the intifada.

Haniyeh reiterated that Hamas will not recognize Israel and will not agree to an alternative homeland.

The mastermind is an executioner from Belgium. Hundreds of police raid Brussels building. Shots fired. Muslims running scared. Jews again think about Aliyah.

By: Tzvi Ben-Gedalyahu Published:

November 16th, 2015

Source: The Jewish Press » » Belgium and France Declare War on ISIS

Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the evil mastermind who issued orders from Syria for Fridays night’s massacres in Paris.

Hundreds of Belgian police raided a Brussels neighborhood Monday morning in search of Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists and arrested the “eighth” man involved in the attacks but who did not blow himself up.

He was identified as Saleh Abdeslam.

The mastermind behind the gruesome killings of at least 132 people is Abdelhamid Abaaoud, 26, who is in Syria. He also is suspected of being behind plots to attack a high-speed train and a Paris church.

France has discovered that ISIS is entrenched in the country far more than ever could be imagined. Security officials discovered a rocket launcher Monday night in Lyons, France while searching for 19-year-old terrorist Salah Abdeslam, who was born in Belgium and is a French national.

He reportedly was stopped during or after Friday night’s attacks but was released.

France said it is considering a ground offensive against ISIS as hundreds of police carried out 168 raids overnight and took 104 people into custody, including relatives of some of the suicide terrorists.

The French and Belgian reaction to what has been described here as “France’s 9/11” is fierce and is leaving President Barack Obama on the defense against Republican critics who are afraid that lack of a more vigorous offense is leaving the United States next in line.

The backlash in France and Belgian has sacred Muslims who are not part of the Islamic radical movement. Those who showed up at a rally in memory of the victims of Friday’s night barbaric murders were cursed, and even the bleeding heart Swedish government is putting a clamp on its open borders.

One French Muslim woman was quoted as saying she wishes she were a Jew so she would not be viewed suspiciously, but French Jews don’t feel any safer that they are not Muslims. Israeli once again is preparing for another wave of Aliyah from France.

Millions of Muslims have flooded all of Europe, and liberals are beginning to ask the inevitable question if it is too late to prevent the continent from becoming Islamic.

The lack of aggressive action was highlighted by the revelation that one of the ISIS suicide bombers Friday night, Ismael Omar Mostefai, who had been arrested seven times for larceny and had been targeted as radical Islamist.

Signs of planned attacks on Paris were evident three days before the attacks. Four ISIS-linked social media accounts posted messages with images of weapons, the Eiffel Tower and good wishes for the attacks, Fox News reported.

Moreover, Iraqi officials warned coalition countries of imminent ISIS attacks at least one day before the suicide bombers struck.