Archive for March 2016

ISIS Takes the Capital of the European Union

March 23, 2016

ISIS Takes the Capital of the European Union, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, March 23, 2016

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The European Union was first brought into being to “safeguard” world peace. Today, the employees of the EU in Brussels were told to cower in fear in their government buildings while Islamic Jihadists once again terrorized this city whose population is already nearly a quarter Muslim.

Practicing Muslims outnumber practicing Christians in Brussels. After a search for Islamic terrorists had shut down the city, its Socialist mayor complained, “We will not live under the Islamic regime.”

But it’s too late for that. He already is. There are 300,000 Muslims in the capital of the European Union. It’s estimated that they will become the majority of the population in 14 years.

Brussels is the first outpost of ISIS in Europe. It is a doomed city that will be lost to Islam within our lifetimes. A Muslim terrorist attack in Brussels is as surprising as a car bombing in Baghdad.

Belgium’s home affairs minister announced last year that the government does not “have control of the situation in Molenbeek.” Jihadists rule in this Muslim neighborhood, which is just as much of an outpost of ISIS as anywhere in Syria or Iraq, just 12 minutes away from the European Parliament, 15 minutes away from the European Commission, 23 minutes away from NATO HQ and 22 minutes away from Brussels Airport; today’s target. ISIS doesn’t have to invade Brussels. It just has to take a short drive.

Last year during the European Parliament elections, Brussels became the site of the first terrorist attack by a returning ISIS fighter. The target was the Jewish Museum of Belgium. The Mayor of Brussels said that more diversity was the answer. Next year, Jihadists operating partly out of Brussels carried out a massacre of 130 people in Paris while shouting “Allahu Akbar” at each killing spree.

The dead included French, Belgians, Mexicans, Germans, Portuguese, Romanians and Chileans. The killers were all Muslims.

That is what diversity looks like now.

Over 500 Jihadis from Belgium are fighting with ISIS. There are nearly a hundred Jihadists back from the unholy wars in Syria living in Molenbeek in Brussels. They should be deported, but the EU would object.  And so instead, the European Union and all of Europe remain under siege by the Jihadist next door.

The “organized and living Europe” of the EU’s founding Schuman Declaration isn’t aiding “civilization.” The EU is neither organized nor living. Instead it’s killing Europe and civilization. The dream of uniting Europe isn’t just dead. It’s a virulent cancer that routes hordes of angry young Muslim men from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Somalia and Eritrea to loot, rape and murder their way across Europe.

At the heart of the EU’s rot in Brussels are No-Go Zones controlled by Jihadists. Despite all of Belgium’s gun laws, in Molenbeek, Jihadists buy and sell at the Great Bazaar of Kalashshnikovs. The bazaar is stocked and the terrorists move in and out of Brussels thanks to the open borders of the EU.

While the EU claims to control Europe, there is no safety, security or control even in its own capital.

Brussels’ Islam Party has elected two Muslim politicians on a platform of creating an Islamic State in Belgium.  Advocates for an Islamic State that would enforce Sharia law hold elected office in Belgium.

Even if the rest of the world only pays attention when the bombs go off and knives come out in Brussels.

When the European Union was created, the foreign-born population of Belgium consisted of some 300,000 people, most of them Italians and Greeks, in a country of over eight million. Today the foreign-born population stands at 1.4 million, much of it Muslim, with a large additional population of Muslim settlers born in Belgium. Belgium once colonized. Now it is being colonized.

The capital of the European Union will be one of the first cities in Europe to fall to the invaders.

We already know how the next part goes. The broken glass will be cleaned away. The bloody wounded will be removed out of sight. The dead will be buried. An Imam will be invited to the memorial service. Everyone will wear t-shirts printed with the latest terrorist tragedy meme. The cafes will reopen. The music will play again. Couples will forget and stroll the streets.

Bureaucrats will sit down in their glass towers and draw up plans for the future of the EU in a city that will be lost in a decade.  Then they will try to ignore all the heavily armed soldiers in the streets.

Islamic terrorism is not the ultimate threat. It is the real world intruding on the progressive fantasy.

16% of young Muslim men in Belgium are willing to say that they believe that terrorism is justified. But they are only the tip of the iceberg. Support for Sharia law hovers around the 60 percent mark. The former may bomb airports or shoot up museums, but it’s the latter who will destroy the country.

On the television screens, the politicians come and go talking of “youthful despair”. But the Muslim terrorists with their guns and bombs haven’t given up. It’s the Europeans who gave up.

This is not a crisis of “hopelessness”, “integration” or any of the other excuses that politicians use to explain Islamic terrorism without dropping the dreaded I-word that invokes the fearful charge of Islamophobia. The Greeks and Italians who used to do the dirty work in Belgium were not bombing subways and museums no matter how bad the “overcrowding” and “joblessness” might be.

This is not a social problem. It is a supremacist problem.

Muslim terrorism is not caused by despair, but by hope. A Muslim suicide bomber does not die out of hopelessness, but because he hopes to impose Islam and earn 72 virgins in paradise. He shouts “Allahu Akbar”, proclaiming the supremacy of his Islamic religion over Christianity, Judaism and all the rest, as he kills his victims because he believes that a different Europe is possible. An Islamic Europe.

The latest terror attack in Brussels has been called “an attack on all of Europe.” But it’s Brussels, with the insistence on open borders and open migrant policies, that is the real attack on all of Europe.

Muslim immigration is its outcome. Muslim terrorism is the outcome of Muslim immigration.

The European Union was born out of despair. Europeans lost confidence in their own nations. They opened their borders and sat on the beach while the migrant waves washed away their future.

Brussels is where Europe’s future died. It is the first real outpost of the Islamic State in Europe. It shows us Europe’s terrible future if the invasion does not end.

There are three visions in Brussels. The vision of an eternal European Union in a doomed city that will be lost sooner than Venice sinks beneath the waves. The Islamic vision of a Caliphate rising minutes away from the ponderous headquarters of the multinational European project and the vision of independent nations and peoples protecting their own borders from the invaders for the future of their children.

Take in the sight of broken glass and bloodied bodies, frightened families fleeing through the smoke, faces covered in ash, and remember that this is the outcome of the progressive vision for Europe.

This is reality intruding into the fantasies of immigration and integration where a new multicultural Europe shines forth as a beacon from Brussels to show us a better world. These people died so that you would know the truth. They were not the first and they will not be the last.

If we do not want to end up the same way, we must end Islamic immigration before it ends us.

Take Me Out to the Raul Game

March 23, 2016

Take Me Out to the Raul Game, Hope n’ Change, March 23, 2016

Take Me Out to the Raul GameHe really did this. Also, he did “the wave” with Raul Castro.

Yesterday was the sort of horrible news day in which all of the seemingly unrelated jigsaw pieces end up belonging to one big depressing picture.

In Belgium, a number of terrorist bombs killed dozens of innocents and wounded hundreds more, including Americans. To the surprise of absolutely no one who isn’t in the Obama administration, Isis is taking credit for the explosive deaths, giving further proof that Islam is overdue to either clean house or change their slogan to “The Religion of Pieces.”

Of course, with American casualties (including a U.S. serviceman and his family) did Barack Hussein Obama turn his laser-like focus to strong anti-terrorist rhetoric and actions? He did not. He simply threw a few seconds of “thoughts and prayers, blah, blah, blah, we’ll stand with Belgium, blah, blah, blah” into his previously scripted speech to the desperately poor people of Cuba. Seriously, it’s a miracle he didn’t actually say the words “insert city name here” into his generic Hallmark sentiments.

And his actual speech in Cuba was one that Isis would have found hugely agreeable. Confirming their every assertion of American evil and imperialism, the “New Camelot” president took a long, splashy leak on the grave of the “Old Camelot” president by bringing up the Bay of Pigs invasion.  He also declared “the blue waters beneath Air Force One once carried American battleships to this island — to liberate, but also to exert control over Cuba.” Hey, are we rotten bastards or what?!

Obama also gave Cuba and the United States moral equivalency of the lowest kind by sneering that both were colonized by Europeans (those despicable infidels) and “Cuba, like the United States, was built in part by slaves brought here from Africa. Like the United States, the Cuban people can trace their heritage to both slaves and slave-owners.” A simplistic, inaccurate, and belittling view of our people, history, and culture which explains his clear distaste for white Americans.

But despite the degree to which we suck, Obama said that at least our nation can take credit for accepting a seemingly unending flood of immigrants.

Because that’s worked out so frigging well for Belgium.

Cuban Submissive CrisisOh, come one – you KNEW we were going to do something with this pathetic picture.

 

Police Report: 90 More Suicide Bombers Ready to Explode in Europe

March 23, 2016

Police Report: 90 More Suicide Bombers Ready to Explode in Europe

by Aaron Klein

23 Mar 2016

Source: Police Report: 90 More Suicide Bombers Ready to Explode in Europe

TEL AVIV – The mastermind of the November 2015 Paris attacks told an acquaintance that he was the commander of 90 “kamikazes-in-waiting” who infiltrated Europe to carry out terrorist attacks, according to information contained in a 55-page report compiled by French anti-terrorism officials.

The report was leaked to the New York Times, which published the startling details on Saturday. The report is newly relevant in light of the Islamic State’s Tuesday terror attacks in Brussels that killed at least 31 people and wounded at least 270 others.

The French report included details of a meeting between the Paris mastermind, Abdelhamid Abaaoud; his first cousin, 26-year-old Hasna Aitboulahcen; and a friend of Aitboulahcen’s.

The Times reported:

On Nov. 15, [Aitboulahcen] and a friend drove out to a remote spot along the freeway, where Mr. Abaaoud came out of the bushes and joined them, the report said, quoting the account of the friend.

According to the friend’s account to the police, Mr. Abaaoud regaled them with stories about how he had made it to Europe by inserting himself in the stream of migrants fleeing across the Mediterranean. He explained that he was among 90 terrorists who had made it back and who had gone to ground in the French countryside, the friend told the police.

“Abaaoud clearly presented himself as the commander of these 90 kamikazes-in-waiting, and that he had come directly to France in order to avoid the failures they had experienced in the past,” the police said the friend had told them.

The Times reported on the seeming ease with which the attackers in Paris were able to move between Belgium and France, and even between the Middle East and Europe. The newspaper attributed some of this to what the Times described as “the inability or unwillingness of countries to share intelligence about potential terrorists, for legal, practical, and territorial reasons.”

“We don’t share information,” Alain Chouet, a former head of French intelligence, told the Times. “We even didn’t agree on the translations of people’s names that are in Arabic or Cyrillic, so if someone comes into Europe through Estonia or Denmark, maybe that’s not how we register them in France or Spain.”

Regarding the jihadists’ ability to cross borders with impunity, the newspaper added:

They exploited weaknesses in Europe’s border controls to slip in and out undetected, and worked with a high-quality forger in Belgium to acquire false documents.

The Times further provided details of how the suicide bombers were able to blend in, disguising explosives beneath their clothes:

At the scene of one suicide bombing, at a McDonald’s restaurant about 250 yards from the French national soccer stadium, the police bagged the bomber’s severed arm. The autopsy showed that a piece of string with a flap of adhesive tape at one end, believed to be the detonation cord, was wrapped around the limb. Along with TATP residue, they found electrical wires, a 9-volt battery to drive the detonation, and pieces of metal, including bolts, that had been mounted on the suicide belt as projectiles. Seeking to blend in with the soccer fans, another bomber had been wearing a tracksuit with the logo of the German soccer team Bayern Munich. His severed leg was found still in the tracksuit and, next to him, again, a piece of white string.

Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.

The Brussels airport terrorists were not suicide bombers. A jammed gun averted a mega massacre

March 23, 2016

The Brussels airport terrorists were not suicide bombers. A jammed gun averted a mega massacre, DEBKAfile, March 23, 2016

TOPSHOT - A picture released on March 22, 2016 by the belgian federal police on demand of the Federal prosecutor shows a screengrab of the airport CCTV camera showing suspects of this morning's attacks at Brussels Airport, in Zaventem. Two explosions in the departure hall of Brussels Airport this morning took the lives of 14 people, 81 got injured. Government sources speak of a terrorist attack. The terrorist threat level has been heightened to four across the country. / AFP PHOTO / BELGIAN FEDERAL POLICE / - / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT "AFP PHOTO / BELGIAN FEDERAL POLICE" - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS -/AFP/Getty Images

Three Islamist bombers in action and their real faces

The evidence building up belies the claim by Belgian security authorities that the two brothers responsible for the Brussels outrage Tuesday, March 22, were suicide bombers. They were identified Wednesday, March 23, as Khalid and Ibrahim El Bakraoui, who were known to the police.

DEBKAfile’s counterterrorism sources find indications that the two men got away and are still alive. They did not use explosive belts for the bombings that claimed 14 lives, injured scores and totaled the Brussels airport departure hall. But, according to the findings at the main scene of the carnage near the American Airlines desk, they detonated bombs weighing several kilos from their luggage carts, or from the floor underneath.

The massive bomb blasts and metal shrapnel thrown out in the explosion caused injuries in the lower parts of their victims’ bodies, according to the descriptions in Brussels hospital websites and social media.

An explosive belt tied to a suicide killer would have caused chest and upper limb injuries.

The taxi driver who dropped the two terrorists off at the airport reported that they refused his help for unloading their suitcases, although they were very heavy. They most likely contained the deadly bombs.

Both brothers wore a black glove on each of their left hands, apparently to conceal  remote control buttons for the bombs in the carts they were pushing through the hall. But suicide bombers detonate their explosive belts by a built-in mechanism.

Despite the spreading shock effect of the airport attack, it is also becoming clear that the terrorists only accomplished the first part of their jihadist mission. The Islamic State, which approved the operation, had  envisaged a much bigger atrocity. This is attested to by the discovery of three bags containing identical kits of firearms and ammunition, a bomb belt, two AK-47 automatic rifles, magazines and hand grenades – all intact and unused. The police detonated them by controlled explosion.

Those kits were concealed in advance in apparent readiness to strike the emergency teams, the medics, the security forces and the other first responders when they arrived to tend the victims of the first attack. The kits were placed at strategic points, either by an advance team of terrorist operatives masquerading as airport personnel, or a staff employee.

When investigators examined the submachine guns, they found that someone had tried to fire one of them and it jammed. This might explain why the second half of the Brussels airport atrocity, the mega-massacre, was stalled.

By sheer chance, therefore, hundreds of Belgian security officers and emergency aid personnel were saved from being trapped from three directions in a ball of fire.

Belgian police and security units have been chasing desperately, with very few intelligence clues, for a broad network of at least 20 Islamists, who must have spent months setting up the complicated Brussels operations at the airport and Metro station.

The planning would have involved exhaustive reconnaissance, the precise study of the targeted locations, arms providers, logistics, finance, communications and prepared escape routes – before the bombers went in. The two brothers Khalid and Ibrahim El-Bakraoui – misrepresented as suicide bombers – must now be considered fugitives like their companion, the third man seen on airport CCTV in a white coat and hat.

He has also been identified as Najim Laachraoui, 25, the senior ISIS bombmaker in Europe, who almost certainly took a hand in the multiple Paris attacks last November. There were conflicting reports Wednesday afternoon about his capture by Brussels police.

Inside Account of Anti-Israel Assault at AIPAC

March 23, 2016

Inside Account of Anti-Israel Assault at AIPAC, PJ Media – Bill Whittle via You Tube, March 23, 2016

No More Hug-A-Terrorist

March 23, 2016

No More Hug-A-Terrorist, Gatestone InstituteRaheel Raza, March 23, 2016

(Please see also, Islamic Reformation and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. — DM)

♦ How hard is it to understand that radical Islamist jihadis have declared war on the West? In simple English this means: they will find you and kill you wherever and whenever they can.

♦ Time and again, many of us concerned Muslims have highlighted the dangers of political Islam/Islamism, which stems from one of three sources: the Muslim Brotherhood, Wahhabi/Salafism or Khomeinism.

♦ The West has been asleep at the wheel, waffling about how to address the issue with “sensitivity.” Calling out the truth should never be subject to political correctness.

♦ The world needs to take the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to task and challenge it about what it is doing to stem the tide of violence emanating from the Muslim world. The world needs to understand that ISIS is not trying to set up a Caliphate. OIC is the Caliphate.

The terrorist attacks at an airport and Metro station in Brussels has by now claimed at least 34 dead and 250 injured.

Shocking, sickening and appalling — but surprising? No.

How hard is it to understand that radical Islamist jihadis have declared war on the West? In simple English this means: they will find you and kill you wherever and whenever they can.

Why? Because the Islamists have pinpointed the West to be “Dar al Harb” (land of war), a concept that allows them to justify killing anyone on this land. You, me and everyone in between — from the USA across to Canada, the UK and Europe.

Just this year, there have been terrorist attacks all over the globe, including Paris, Turkey, San Bernardino, Israel, Toronto, Ivory Coast and yesterday in Belgium. Whether carried out by groups or so called “lone wolves,” these attacks are not isolated and have one thing in common.

They are all the result of a dangerous, violent and sick ideology. Time and again, many of us concerned Muslims have highlighted the dangers of political Islam/Islamism which stems from one of three sources: the Muslim Brotherhood, Wahhabi/Salafism or Khomeinism. This ideology has been on the rise for 35 years while the West has been asleep at the wheel, waffling about how to address the issue with “sensitivity.” Calling out the truth should never be subject to political correctness.

How are we Muslims dealing with this ongoing terror in the name of our faith? Social media tells us a lot. There are the usual deniers and apologists; there is a comparison that “while we show solidarity for Brussels, we must simultaneously remember every other country of the world,” hence watering down the impact of the horror and carnage that has just taken place in Belgium and showing a rancid face of inhumanity and deflection from the real issue.

Then the victim ideology kicks in and it’s all about the fear of a backlash. I say let’s speak out, take responsibility and deal with the backlash — it will be worse if we remain silent.

Added to this are people like the repulsive British politician, George Galloway, who says Europe is to blame for what has happened. No one wants to touch the real issue.

The real issue is that this violence will continue and get much worse unless all of us stand up and acknowledge the ugly virus within us and say no to armed jihad. All of us, in once voice, need to denounce and condemn armed jihad as a seventh-century construct, not applicable in this day and age.

How have media addressed the issue? They immediately brought in “experts” to analyze the motives of the attackers to smithereens. There is nothing left to analyze. It is simple: It is a war against us. Let us stop the talking heads and take some action.

Political correctness should not trump the truth.

To bring home this point: Following an attack on two Canadian military officers in Toronto on March 14, 2016, I was invited the next day by a local TV station to comment. At first, the media did not wish to publish the words spoken by the attacker: “Allah made me do it.” The next day, the news reported that the attacker had “mental health issues.” Again, no surprise here. Mental health issues are a good “fallback.” But I said on the news that if a person has the wherewithal to find a specific military location and attack two officers, he is capable of being a terrorist.

Once again, we failed to connect the dots. The CTV News clip of my interview never made it to the internet. Are they not able to handle the truth?

1522Following a terrorist attack on two Canadian military officers in Toronto last week (left), the media initially did not wish to publish the words spoken by the attacker: “Allah made me do it.” Following yesterday’s bombings in Brussels, the media immediately brought in “experts” to analyze the motives of the attackers. There is nothing left to analyze. It is simple: It is a war against us.

Our leadership, meanwhile, has developed a philosophy of “hug-a-terrorist” and deflecting the conversation into a politically correct Kumbaya mode.

On October 22, 2014, I wrote an open letter to Canadians on my blog. In this I made some clear suggestions about the dangers we face, and solutions. The backlash was fast and furious, not only from Muslims but from bleeding-heart white liberals — those who do not help our cause by promoting the victim ideology.

So, once again we are standing where we were many years ago, but worse off because hundreds more civilians have been slaughtered in the radical Islamist war against the West.

Countering this armed jihad is our responsibility because the problem emanates from the House of Islam and the lives of our next generations are at stake here.

There are solutions. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which has a membership of 57 Muslims states spread over four continents, is the second largest inter-governmental organization after the United Nations. The world needs to take the OIC to task and challenge it about what it has done or is doing to stem the tide of violence emanating from the Muslim world. The world needs to understand that ISIS is not trying to set up a Caliphate. The OIC is the Caliphate. Its members conveniently look away in face of blatant terrorism because their only focus is to dislodge Israel and condemn the West.

We cannot let the OIC speak for us. We face a simple choice: We can either speak out ourselves or wait for Mr. Trump to be elected and he will do it for us.

Raheel Raza is president of the Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow and founding member of the Muslim Reform Movement.

Op-Ed: After Brussels, is it time to deport Merkel?

March 23, 2016

Op-Ed: After Brussels, is it time to deport Merkel? Israel National News, Jack Engelhard, March 23, 2016

Authorities need look no further than Angela Merkel as the prime suspect for the latest carnage in Brussels.

More than anyone, it was Merkel who opened the floodgates to the migrants — armies of men without women posing as refugees from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan found trampling throughout Europe. When they are caught misbehaving, they smirk and say, “I am here as a guest of Angela Merkel,” and they are correct and nearly untouchable.

Merkel stands by her open borders policy, the safety of her people be damned.

Over the past 12 months, more then a million of them have already crossed into Germany alone; 300,000 have been given asylum.

Of Brussels at this hour, all Western Europe leadership is guilty with Merkel sharing the largest part of the blame. These are her pets.

“Don’t go out unless you have to” is the hot new message circulating throughout Europe now that the “refugees” have arrived. You could get raped.

You could also get killed, and that’s what happened when the citizens of Brussels dared to go out Tuesday morning during rush hour. Scores were slain and wounded from yet another Islamic terror attack and people all over want to know how to make this stop.

Stop the influx. How’s that for an idea that needs no Einstein? Deport them instead. Maybe starting with Merkel, who invited the stampede.

The Saudis and the princes from the other Gulf States have it neatly figured out.

(So does Trump who wants to stop it and saw it coming as did this must-read thriller.)

Those titled Arabs don’t want that crowd within 100 miles even though they are fellow Muslims. But they do not want that type entering their borders, bringing with them their license to rape, their rivalries and tribal feuds, hell no, so why not Europe, and Europe says, sure, why not? Bring them on!

How clueless!

This is how. Only a few days ago, there they sat around a big table in Brussels, the smooth rulers of the EU, congratulating themselves on the capture of the final “mastermind” behind the November attack in Paris that killed 130. The French president was there, the Belgium prime minister was there and all the rest together expressed joy to the world that Salah Abdeslam had been caught.

Merkel sent in her gratitude for the superb police work.

At the moment they were hi-fiving the one success, 10,000 more “refugees” streamed in, plenty of them likewise “masterminds.”

Can no one do the math?

We pass the point of absurdity when “open borders” imperils us all throughout the world. There is no stopping the mad dash across continents.

Nor can we stop the madness that afflicts the world’s leaders.

Merkel and the rest of you clueless rulers of Europe, your misguided liberal sympathies and migrant leniencies are killing us.

Hence, Obama has chimed in his condolences for the pain in Brussels. “The entire world must unite,” he said. Yeah, sure, thanks. Will do.

Now back to the game, Mr. President.

Employing European wisdom, he wants to bring more of them into the United States. Thanks again.

Likewise Hillary and Trudeau. First the condolences followed by “we must resist Islamophobia” and keep the influx coming.

Hillary demands that we bring in 65,000 of them. Trudeau is ahead of her. He’s already got them in Canada.

It takes no prophet to know what’s coming for Canada and what’s next for the United States.

Don’t blame the terrorists, only. They are murderers but they know what they are doing.

The same cannot be said for the men and women who run our world.

Obama Admin Engaged in Secret Talks to Pay Iran

March 23, 2016

Obama Admin Engaged in Secret Talks to Pay Iran Nearly $2 Billion Officials admit delays in informing Congress, say more payments to come

BY:
March 23, 2016 5:00 am

Source: Obama Admin Engaged in Secret Talks to Pay Iran

The Obama administration has spent three years engaged in secret talks with Iran that resulted in the payment of nearly $2 billion in taxpayer funds to the Islamic Republic, with more payouts likely to come in the future, according to a recent letter issued by the State Department and obtained exclusively by the Washington Free Beacon.

The administration’s disclosure came in response to an inquiry launched in January by Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.), who was seeking further information about the Obama administration’s payment of $1.7 billion in taxpayer funds to Iran, which many viewed as a “ransom payment” for Iran’s release that month of several U.S. hostages.

The administration’s official response to Pompeo was sent earlier this week, just days after a Free Beacon report detailing a months-long State Department effort to stall the lawmaker’s inquiry.

“We apologize for the delay in responding,” Julia Frifield, an assistant secretary for legislative affairs, states in the letter’s opening.

Obama administration officials first began talks to settle a number of outstanding legal claims leveled against the United States by Iran in 2014. The administration predicts that more taxpayer-funded payments are likely to be granted to the Islamic Republic in the future, according to the letter.

Frifield in her letter goes on to defend the $1.7 billion payment to Iran and discloses that the administration is open to providing Tehran with more money if it is willing to settle these decades-old legal disputes with the United States.

“We are confident that this was a good settlement for the American taxpayer,” the State Department said.

Iran’s legal row with the United States surrounds the breakdown of a massive arms deal that was nixed in the aftermath of Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, which resulted in the capture of the U.S. embassy and American personnel stationed there.

Many of these claims remain unsettled and are still being litigated by the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal at the Hague.

The Obama administration has been working behind the scenes since at least 2014 to reach settlement agreements with Iran to avoid court decisions, according to the letter, which identifies at least two separate discussions held in June 2014 and January 2015.

The administration anticipates that more settlements will come, meaning that the United States will likely be forced to pay Iran via a taxpayer legal fund operated by the Treasury Department.

“The United States is continuing to vigorously litigate these claims at the Tribunal, but is also open to discussing further settlements of claims with Iran, as we have done throughout the life of the Tribunal, with the aim of resolving them in furtherance of U.S. interests,” the letter states.

Iran’s “fact-intensive claims involve over 1,000 separate contracts between Iran and the United States,” according to the letter, which explains that January’s $1.7 billion payment settled just one of many outstanding disputes.

The Obama administration fails to directly address Pompeo’s questions seeking to determine if the legal settlement was finalized as part of an incentive package meant to motivate Tehran to free imprisoned Americans.

“It would not be in the interest of the United States to discuss further details of the settlement of these claims in an unclassified letter due to the ongoing litigation at the Tribunal,” the State Department writes. “However, we would be prepared to provide a closed briefing on such issues if it would be useful to there.”

“When Iran releases American hostages, and then, on that same day, President Obama announces he is paying Iran $1.7 billion, Congress of course has to ask the hard questions,” said one source familiar with the investigation. “And when the Obama administration admits that over $1 billion in taxpayer money is going to the Iranian regime, Congress is obligated to respond. The State Department has ducked and dodged–providing a history lesson on international tribunals, focused on actions decades ago, instead of addressing dangerous misdeeds that were potentially just committed. That is suspicious.”

Under the specific terms of January’s settlement, Iran was to be paid a $400 million balance and an additional $1.3 billion in interest from a taxpayer fund maintained by the Treasury Department, a State Department official confirmed to the Free Beacon at the time.

That settlement—along with additional settlements—was reached outside of the recently implemented nuclear deal and is separate from the $150 billion in unfrozen cash assets the United States is obligated to give to Iran under that agreement, the official said.

The $1.7 billion payment was announced just prior to the release of five U.S. prisoners who had been held in Iran, sparking accusations that the deal is tantamount to a ransom payment

Abdelsalem capture laid red herring for double terror attack in Brussels

March 23, 2016

Abdelsalem capture laid red herring for double terror attack in Brussels, DEBKAfile, March 22, 2016

BrusselsTerrorAirportKotere480t

The capture of the ISIS Paris master planner Salah Abdelsalem by Belgian anti-terror police, after four months on the run, was initially hailed as an enormous stroke of luck – that is until Tuesday, March 22. The high-profile Islamic State terrorist, who planned the triple attacks on a Paris stadium, bistro and concert hall, that left 130 people dead last November, had instructed jihadist bombers under his command to carry out deadly explosions at Brussels airport and subway on that day, while he was in custody.

He staged his capture as a trick to misdirect Belgian and French intelligence and anti-terror agencies and lull them into a state of false security.

Abdelsalem, 26, a French citizen of Moroccan origin, was the only survivor of the Paris attack five months ago. The other seven terrorists were killed, including his brother. He was finally run to ground on March 18 at his safe house in the Brussels district of Molenbeek, a notorious hotbed of jihads ideology, and taken in after a shootout with the police. The master terrorist had evaded capture by skipping across European borders, which proves little challenge for ISIS operatives on the move.

Three other suspects were also arrested in the Molenbeek raid.

French President Francois Hollande and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel took turns congratulating each other at a joint press conference which they called immediately after the Abdelselam capture. They were certain that his interrogation would yield valuable information about the arcane workings of the ISIS web across Europe and bring to light future terror plots in good time.

But DEBKAfile’s counterterrorism sources believe that Abdelsalem let himself be nabbed as part of a larger plot. Before he was captured, he had left instructions with a team of bombers for the attacks on Brussels international airport and the Maelbeek subway station near the European Union’s headquarters, with possibly more to come, on lines similar lines to the multiple assaults in Paris.

brussels_train_22.3.16

He relied on the French and Belgian leaders and their anti-terrorist advisers resting on their laurels, the while letting down their guard and missing the trap, before it snapped back in their faces four days later.

After the attacks, the Belgian prime minister realized that more terror might still be in store.

The Brussels twin terrorist hit was planned in detail. DEBKAfile’s counterterrorism sources report that the two explosions at Brussels airport were caused by suicide bombers. The discovery later of an unexploded bomb belt indicated a terror team of three (see picture).

What happened to the third bomber?

Belgian authorities are trying to disguise the fact that, while one explosion was caused by a suicide bomber in the departure hall, a second terrorist was able to reached the tarmac and detonate his bomb belt near the airliners.

They may have beaten security by using an airport staff employee to smuggle the three bomb belts into the targeted areas and conceal them, allowing the terrorists to come out clean from security checks. The third bomb belt may have been abandoned – either because the third terrorist failed to turn up, or he changed his mind at the last minute and and ran, after dropping it.

By Tuesday afternoon the death toll from the two attacks had climbed to 34 – 20 dead at the Metro station and 14 at Brussels airport, with scores of people injured, including reportedly two Israel passengers.

The scenes in the Belgian airport capital were chaotic. Terrified passengers fled in every direction in the absence of anyone in charge to provide information or guidance. Police tried to tell them to drop their hand luggage before escaping, but no one heeded them. Hundreds waited on the tarmac hopelessly for instructions until they were eventually bussed to a village outside the capital. They were stranded there, after all incoming and outgoing flights were cancelled and all public transport suspended.

Brussels, in a state of shock and confusion, found itself unwillingly dubbed the front line of Europe’s war on terror.

Message from BRUSSELS. I support Donald Trump!

March 22, 2016

Message from BRUSSELS. I support Donald Trump! via You Tube, March 13, 2016

(H/t The Last Refuge. The video was posted eight days before the Brussels attack.– DM)