'Several' Dutch nationals are involved in a jihad in foreign countries, the acting head of the AIVD security services has said, without giving further details. Over the past years, several dozen Dutch men have gone to or attempted to visit countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia and several of them are still active, Jan-Kees Goet said.
This weekend VPRO radio quoted a UN report which said one Dutch Somali is active with al-Shabaab in Somalia.
Continued on Page 47
Britain has rallied Germany, France and five other countries behind calls for a "substantial" cut to a Brussels budget demand for an increase of 11 per cent to EU spending.
David Cameron, the Prime Minister, signed up the French, Germans, Finns and the Dutch in December over six months before the European Commission published its plans for financing between 2014 and 2020 in June.
Yesterday his four allies renewed their support as Austria, Italy and Sweden also joined the battle to bring Brussels budgets into line with national spending cuts and austerity.
The statement agreed by the eight countries insisted that "European public spending cannot be exempt" from "considerable national efforts" to reduce budgets, austerity measures that often demanded by the EU itself to counter Europe's debt crisis.
The Treasury has estimated that the EU budget demand would cost the British taxpayer an extra £1.4 billion a year, totalling £9.8 billion or £626 for every British family over the MFF's seven year period.
But the statement to reduce the commission's demand for an increase falls short of British demands for a freeze, meaning real term cuts, to future EU spending.
"There are different countries represented around the table. Our position on a real terms freeze hasn't altered," admitted Mr Lidington.
Janusz Lewandowski, the EU budget commissioner, noted that the call from eight-nation cuts coalition "was without figures". "Our proposal is a real contribution to jobs and growth," he said.
Hmmm, higher taxes for jobs ... where else have I heard that message recently?
[An Nahar] Four terror suspects placed in durance vile in Sweden at the weekend have ties to the Somali Islamist movement Shebab and were plotting an attack using bombs and firearms, a newspaper reported Monday.
Neither Sweden's intelligence agency nor the police have confirmed the report, and have released few details about the arrests.
"Police suspect the men were about to carry out a terrorist attack with firearms and bombs," Gothenburg regional daily GT said in its online edition.
"Police sources have told GT the suspects are linked to the terror network Shebab," the paper said, without disclosing its sources.
An elite counter-terrorism unit and police placed in durance vile four people in Gothenburg, Sweden's second city, and evacuated hundreds of people from a building in the city hosting an art fair "after concluding that there was a threat that could endanger lives or health or cause serious damage," officials said Sunday.
Police then searched the building thoroughly, breaking open seven lockers, the paper said.
It is not known why the venue was seen as a target, and art fair organizers have not been given an explanation, GT said.
The paper speculated that a Swedish artist who has received death threats from Shebab for depicting the Prophet Mohammed as a dog had planned to attend the event but did not in the end.
Lars Vilks has faced numerous death threats and a suspected liquidation plot since his drawing of the Mohammedan prophet with the body of a dog was first published by a Swedish regional newspaper in 2007, illustrating an editorial on the importance of freedom of expression.
#2
They have until today to charge or release them, something tells me they have been released. The Swedish system is one hell of a system to be registered on, though. Good luck, guys, shame about sticking out like a sore thumb.
#3
Is the Swedish prison system as nice as Norway's? The way Social Security is going and talk of government confiscation of retirement savings, I may be looking elsewhere to retire.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
