Archive for October 30th, 2008
Morocco: Al-Qaeda is forcing inmates to accept its rule or else!!
This is especially the case in prisons around Casablanca, where the majority of al-Qaida insurgents have been held, the Med Basin Newsline reported Tuesday, citing the city’s Okasha prison, where al-Qaida-aligned inmates were reported to have taken over an entire ward.
Sources told the news agency that opponents there were intimidated or assaulted until they were transferred or accepted al-Qaida’s rule, which includes strict adherence to Sharia law. Some who have opposed the Islamic militants — most of whom were convicted for terrorism offenses — have been strangled to death, the sources said.
via Report: Al-Qaida rules Morocco prison – UPI.com
UPDATED: read also Attacks on Spanish enclave continue.
Around 40 African migrants took advantage of flood damage at the border to cross into Spain’s North African enclave of Melilla from Morocco on Monday, police and local government officials said.
Just consider that Moroccan king has given several amnesties to jailed terrorists who had not been condemned for killing people. And then the state of Moroccan prisons. Hmm, what a marvellous perspective.
Two well-loved Catholic priests murdered in Russia
Catholics in Russia learned today that two priests, Frs. Otto Messmer and Victor Betancourt, both Jesuits, were beaten to death at their apartment in Moscow.
According to the website of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Russia, the two priests’ bodies were discovered at around 9:00 p.m. on October 28 at the Moscow apartment owned by the Jesuits.
The Jesuit Conference reports that a fellow Jesuit discovered the priests after he went on their apartment to check on them. Upon finding their bodies, he contacted the police.
The police determined that though the priests were found in the same apartment, the murders took place on different days. Father Victor Betancourt Ruiz (42) from Ecuador was killed on October 25, and Father Otto Messmer (47), who was the Provincial of the Jesuits in Russia was murdered two days later after returning home from a trip abroad. The motive for the murders is yet to be determined.
Canada: Former Government Worker Convicted on 5 Terrorism Charges
A former computer programmer for the Department of Foreign Affairs of Canada was convicted on five terrorism-related charges on Wednesday. Justice Douglas J. A. Rutherford of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled that the programmer, Mohammad Momin Khawaja, had given money and support to a terrorist group that planned bombings in England. A British court found five people linked with Mr. Khawaja guilty last year of taking part in the bombing plot, which was not carried out; they were sentenced to life in prison. The Canadian judge said prosecutors had failed to prove that Mr. Khawaja knew about the British group’s plans to bomb British targets, but he found Mr. Khawaja guilty of having created a remote bomb detonator that the defendant called the “hifidigimonster.” The defense said that Mr. Khawaja thought the plotters planned to use the device in Afghanistan or Iraq.
More here.
“There is ample evidence apart from the support and preparation for violent jihad with the mujahedeen in Afghanistan or elsewhere, establishing that Momin Khawaja knew he was dealing with a group whose objects and purposes included activity that meets the (Criminal) Code definition of terrorist activity,” the judge wrote in his 24,000-word decision.
“His most tangible and visible facilitation of that activity was his work in developing the Hi-Fi Digimonster, the remote trigger for an IED. He agreed to build about 30 of them. On the evidence, it is unclear what he knew or anticipated as to where they would be used, or that Khawaja even cared where they would be used. His emir or leader asked him to provide them and he agreed.”
