Archive for month: October, 2014

Pakistani authhorities have vowed to tighten security along the border with Iran in a bid to halt terrorist attacks against Iranian guards.

The commitment was made during a meeting between security officials between the two states in the Iranian capital, Tehran on Wednesday.

At the meeting, the Pakistani delegation headed by Frontier Corps Inspector General Major General Ejaz Shahid, and the Iranian team led by Commander of Iran’s Border Police Brigadier General Qasem Rezaei discussed the recent border incidents and other issues pertaining to the two countries’ frontiers.

“Both chiefs of border forces…agreed to tighten security at the border besides sharing intelligence information to maintain peace and order at the border,” said Khan Wasay, a spokesman for Pakistan’s Frontier Corps (FC).

“Cooperation between the two countries in battling terrorists is indispensable,” Dawn online quoted the spokesman as saying.

Shahid was quoted by the spokesman as telling Iranian officials that “Pakistan wants durable relations with its neighbors and peace in the region.”

The meeting came days after Iran summoned Pakistani Ambassador to Tehran Noor Mohammad Jadmani over a series of terrorist incidents that killed several Iranian guards at the Pakistani border.

In the latest border clashes, two Iranian border police officers were killed and several border guards were injured in southeastern Iran on October 16 in an armed conflict with a group of bandits at Iran-Pakistan border.
 
Iran has repeatedly criticized its eastern neighbors for failing to rein in terrorists who cross the borders back into these countries after carrying out their attacks on Iranian soil.

On Saturday, the second-in-command of the Ground Forces of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Brigadier General Abdollah Araqi said Iran has evidence proving that terrorists have infiltrated into Iran from neighboring Pakistan.

On October 8, three Iranian police officers were killed when they, along with other patrol police forces, came under a night attack by armed bandits while on a mission in the city of Saravan in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan.

Another police officer was killed after an explosives-laden car taken to the police station by terrorists went off hours after the first incident.

Iranian security forces have apprehended a number of perpetrators behind the recent killings. There are reports that Pakistan’s controversial spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is escorting the terrorists to the border for operation inside Iran. 

DB/NN/KA

 

A federal jury in Washington, D.C., returned guilty verdicts against four Blackwater operatives charged with killing more than a dozen Iraqi civilians and wounding scores of others in Baghdad in 2007.

The jury found one guard, Nicholas Slatten, guilty of first-degree murder, while three other guards were found guilty of voluntary manslaughter: Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, and Dustin Heard. The jury is still deliberating on additional charges against the operatives, who faced a combined 33 counts, according to the Associated Press. A fifth Blackwater guard, Jeremy Ridgeway, had already pleaded guilty to lesser charges and cooperated with prosecutors in the case against his former colleagues. The trial lasted ten weeks and the jury has been in deliberations for 28 days.

The incident for which the men were tried was the single largest known massacre of Iraqi civilians at the hands of private U.S. security contractors. Known as “Baghdad’s bloody Sunday,” operatives from Blackwater gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians at a crowded intersection at Nisour Square on September 16, 2007. The company, founded by secretive right-wing Christian supremacist Erik Prince, had deep ties to the Bush Administration and served as a sort of neoconservative Praetorian Guard for a borderless war launched in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

While Barack Obama pledged to reign in mercenary forces when he was a senator, once he became president he continued to employ a massive shadow army of private contractors. Blackwater — despite numerous scandals, congressional investigations, FBI probes and documented killings of civilians in both Iraq and Afghanistan — remained a central part of the Obama administration’s global war machine throughout his first term in office.

Just as with the systematic torture at Abu Ghraib, it is only the low level foot-soldiers of Blackwater that are being held accountable. Prince and other top Blackwater executives continue to reap profits from the mercenary and private intelligence industries. Prince now has a new company, Frontier Services Group, which he founded with substantial investment from Chinese enterprises and which focuses on opportunities in Africa. Prince recently suggested that his forces at Blackwater could have confronted Ebola and ISIS. “If the administration cannot rally the political nerve or funding to send adequate active duty ground forces to answer the call, let the private sector finish the job,” he wrote.

AGB/AGB

The French government has prosecuted a pro-Palestinian activist for disregarding the official ban on anti-Israel rallies during its recent offensive on the Gaza Strip, Press TV reports.

France has put the spokesperson of the New Anti-Capitalist Party on trial for his attempts to organize an “illegal demonstration” against the Israeli regime.

Meanwhile, several demonstrators held a rally on Wednesday to protest against the government’s prosecution of the pro-Palestinian campaigner.

“To incriminate the spokesman of a political party who is also a strong supporter of unions… is totally unjustified and unacceptable. We would like to know why the government singled him out,” said Patrick Picard, a member of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT).

France was heavily criticized by rights groups after it officially banned demonstrations against the Israeli regime’s deadly attacks on the besieged Gaza Strip in summer. Thousands of people defied the French government’s decision, saying it was a glaring breach of their constitutional basic right to demonstrate.

“This government made two decisions this summer: to support the extreme-right regime of Benjamin Netanyahu, which was in the process of massacring people in Gaza and then, … it tried to weaken the Palestinian solidarity movement here in France by claiming it was anti-Semitic and violent which we totally reject,” stated the national secretary of Left Front Party (PG), Eric Coquerel.

The French government has recently intensified the trend of prosecuting social activists who disagree with the unpopular policies of President Francois Hollande.

Israel launched a 50-day war on the Gaza Strip in early July. About 2,140 Palestinians, mostly civilians, including women, children and elderly people, were killed in the Israeli onslaught. Around 11,000 others were injured.

FNR/AS/MHB

The United States put its air defense on alert and placed its embassy in Ottawa on lockdown following shooting incidents in Canada including one inside its parliament building.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) is taking “appropriate” measures to ensure quick reaction to “any incidents involving aviation in Canada,” said a US defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

On Wednesday, a gunman shot dead a Canadian soldier at a war memorial in Ottawa and was chased by police toward the Canadian parliament. Following a gun battle inside the building, the gunman was fatally shot by officers.

Witnesses said over 20 shots were fired inside the parliament building and at least three people were taken to hospital for treatment.

The Canadian soldier was identified as Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, a family source told CNN. Also, police identified Michael Zehaf-Bibeau as the suspected gunman.

In response to the Wednesday shootings, President Barack Obama said that Washington does not know yet whether the incident was a terrorist act. 

“Obviously we’re all shaken by it,” said Obama, noting it is “very important for us, I think, to recognize when it comes to dealing with terrorist activity — Canada and the United States have to be entirely in sync”.

Obama also spoke with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper over the phone and offered assistance Canada might need to deal with the situation.

According to the White House, Washington and Ottawa have had regular contacts over the likelihood of terrorist attacks in Canada by fighters who were trained by ISIL in the Middle East.

And ISIL terrorists were trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government. They now control large parts of Syria and Iraq.

AT/GJH

The Pentagon admitted on Wednesday that ISIL terrorists captured a bundle of US weapons airdropped in the Syrian border town of Kobani earlier this week.

The US military had dropped 28 bundles filled with grenades, mortar rounds and other supplies which were intended for Kurdish fighters.

Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, acknowledged on Wednesday that at least one bundle of ammunition and weapons ended up in the hands of ISIL militants.

“There’s always going to be some margin of error” when airdropping supplies, Warren added. “Wind can cause a parachute to move off its intended target.”

A YouTube video uploaded on Tuesday showed ISIL militants in possession of US weapons.

The video showed masked terrorists inspecting the military equipment which was airdropped in areas controlled by ISIL near Kobani.

The supplies include several boxes of hand grenades and RPGs, as parachutes used for the airdrops were clearly visible on the ground in the video.

The US Central Command said on Sunday it has airdropped weapons and ammunition, and medical supplies for the Kurdish forces defending Kobani.

According to the US military, the airdrops, which have been provided by Kurdish authorities in Iraq, were “intended to enable continued resistance against ISIL’s attempts to overtake Kobani.”

The US and its allies also say they are carrying out airstrikes against the Takfiris in Syria and Iraq in order to curb their advances in the region. The air raids have so far failed to halt the insurgents’ military gains.

GJH/GJH