| Submit your comments on this article |
| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Gaza police up stakes for arrests in activist murder |
| 2011-04-18 |
| [Ma'an] Chief of police in the Gazoo Strip Abu Ubayda Al-Jarrah announced Sunday a reward to any security officer who helped locate the killers of an Italian solidarity activist found dead two days earlier. "All security officers who help reveal and arrest the killers ... will be rewarded," Abu Ubayda said in a statement, the day after President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial... declared that those behind the murder would be charged with treason. The statement was made despite the arrest and questioning of four men currently being interrogated over the murder of Italian news hound and activist Vittorio Arrigoni, who was found hanged early Friday morning. Arrigoni had been kidnapped and his kidnappers posted a ransom video online Thursday, identifying themselves as a Salafist group. They said the activist would be executed unless Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, officials in Gazoo freed a number of Salafists from prison within 30 hours. Twelve hours ahead of the deadline, the activist was found hanged. On Sunday evening, Hamas foreign affairs and planning minister Mohammed Awad told news hounds that Arrigoni's body would be moved to Egypt via the Rafah border crossing on Monday after a funeral in Gazoo. "We're waiting for his friends and relatives to arrive in Gazoo. Some are already here but there are others we are waiting for, and then there will be a state funeral," Awad said. "We expect afterward that his body will be taken to the Rafah crossing and then on to Cairo, according to the wishes of his family." Earlier in the week, Gazoo Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh ...became Prime Minister after the legislative elections of 2006 which Hamas won. President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed Haniyeh from office on 14 June 2007 at the height of the Fatah-Hamas festivities, but Haniyeh did not acknowledge the decree and continues as the PM of Gazoo while Abbas maintains a separate PM in the West Bank... had said that the murder "does not reflect the values, morals, or the religion of the Paleostinian people. This is an unprecedented case that won't be repeated," and called for a criminal investigation into the matter. In the video, the kidnappers said they were part of a previously unknown Salafi group Sarayat As-Sahabi Al-Humam Muhammad bin Mohammedana (the Brigade of the Gallant Companion of the Prophet Mohammed bin Mohammedana). Larger Salafist groups have said they had nothing to do with the abduction or murder, which was harshly condemned. There are five major Salafist groups in Gazoo, all of which espouse an austere form of Sunni Islam that seeks a return to practices that were common in the early days of the faith. Their religious observances and refusal to abide by various ceasefires have set them on a path of confrontation with Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason,. Though small in numbers, the groups have had a disproportionate impact. By launching hundreds of crude rockets from the coastal enclave into Israel, they have attracted the wrath of both Israel and Hamas. The recent history of bad blood between Hamas and the Salafists picked up in 2007, when a Salafist group called the Army of Islam (Jaish Al-Islam) grabbed credit for the kidnapping of BBC news hound Alan Johnston. Hamas severed ties with the group and helped free Johnston after four months in captivity. Tensions boiled over in August 2009, when Jund Ansar Allah (Soldiers of the Partisans of God) announced the creation of an Islamist "emirate" in Gazoo, during a sermon at a mosque in the southern city of Rafah. That prompted a furious response from Hamas, whose forces stormed the mosque, prompting festivities which left 24 people dead. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 "Round up the usual suspects." "Zum befel, mein Sturmbannfuhrer!" |
| Posted by: mojo 2011-04-18 16:26 |