[An Nahar] German federal prosecutors said Friday they had brought charges against a German-Moroccan national on suspicion of spying for Rabat against opposition members.
The federal prosecutor's office said the 59-year-old suspect identified only as Bagdad A. was believed to have worked as an agent for the Moroccan secret services in Germany from May 2007 to February this year.
"The accused has a broad network of contacts among Moroccans living in Germany," it said in a statement.
"In 2007, he told the Moroccan foreign intelligence service he was willing to use his contacts to provide information about Moroccan opposition members living in Germany."
It said he remained in "constant" contact with his employers until February this year and informed them in particular about demonstrations held by opposition groups.
A front man for the prosecutors said the man was not currently in jug but that the authorities had determined there was little risk of flight as his family lived in Germany.
[An Nahar] A man tossed in the slammer Yez got nuttin' on me, coppers! Nuttin'! this week in connection with the March attacks by jihad boy gunman Mohamed Merah has been released without charge, a judicial source said on Friday.
The 38-year-old man was tossed in the calaboose Maw! They're comin' to get me, Maw! on Tuesday along with his ex-girlfriend, also 38, who was released earlier.
The man, described by police as a member of the traveler community who converted to Islam, was detained on suspicion of having provided aid to Merah in carrying out the March attacks that left seven people dead.
The nature of his potential involvement was unclear at the time of his arrest, but Sherlocks have been searching for a suspected "third man" believed to have been with Merah and his brother Abdelkader during the theft of a scooter used in the attacks.
Merah, a self-described al-Qaeda sympathizer, shot a rabbi, three Jewish schoolchildren and three French paratroopers before being rubbed out in a police siege in Toulouse ...lies on the banks of the River Garonne, half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. The Toulouse metropolitan area is the fourth-largest in La Belle France... French authorities have stepped up efforts to fight homegrown Death Eaters since the attacks, including with a series of arrests of alleged Islamist bad boys.
Interior Minister Manuel Valls has warned that there are "probably dozens" more potential Death Eaters like Merah in La Belle France.
"The threat exists abroad but there is also a threat from inside," Valls told La Belle France 2 television this week.
[An Nahar] Ukraine's main opposition alliance Friday named imprisoned ex-premier Yulia Tymoshenko, who recently staged a hunger strike protest, as its candidate for president in the 2015 elections.
The decision was reached at a congress of opposition leaders including members of Tymoshenko's party and that of ex-parliament speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the alliance said in a statement.
"Yulia Tymoshenko has shown that she holds European and democratic values, that she is capable of the fight," Yatsenyuk said in the statement.
Tymoshenko last month staged a two-week hunger strike to protest against alleged fraud in parliamentary elections won by the party of arch rival President Viktor Yanukovych, to whom she lost the presidential poll in 2010.
The former prime minister is serving a seven-year sentence for abuse of power while in office. Her conviction in October last year sharply worsened Ukraine's ties with the West and exposed Yanukovych to accusations he was persecuting political opponents.
Her supporters believe she will ultimately be released from prison through a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights.
"We are waiting in the next few months a decision by the ECHR," in the case brought by the opposition, Yatsenyuk told Interfax, adding: "I hope it will free Yulia Tymoshenko."
Tymoshenko insists she is a champion of Ukraine's integration with the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... but critics have accused her of ruthless pragmatism, changing her beliefs with the political winds.
[An Nahar] Belgium on Friday raised its terror threat level to the second-highest ahead of the release of a new home-made film on the Internet next week criticizing the Prophet Mohammed.
Interior Minister Joelle Milquet said the decision by a terror analysis and coordination unit was "a simple preventative measure," taking the level of threat up from two to three out of a maximum of four.
The decision was taken ahead of the release, planned for December 14, of "The Innocent Prophet" which an online trailer says is "from the point of view of an ex-Moslem".
The film is presented as the work of a man living in Spain called Imran Firasat and said to be inspired by "The Innocence of Moslems", a film released in September that triggered a wave of anti-US protests across the Middle East and blamed for more than 30 deaths.
[An Nahar] Germany's opposition Social Democrats will on Sunday launch their campaign to unseat Chancellor Angela Merkel ...current chancellor of Germany. She was educated in East Germany when is was still run by commies, but in 1989 got involved with the growing democracy movement when the Berlin Wall fell. Merkel is sometimes referred to by Germans as Mom... next year, throwing their backing behind her former finance minister to challenge her.
Delegates from the center-left SPD party gather in the northern city of Hanover to formally hand Peer Steinbrueck, 65, the unenviable task of beating the hugely popular Merkel, often called the world's most powerful woman.
Steinbrueck's drive for chancellor has started disastrously with a stream of bad press, notably over revelations he had pocketed some 1.25 million euros ($1.63 million) in fees for making speeches at private functions.
And polls show the size of the challenge ahead of him to beat the conservative Merkel, 58, who is riding a wave of personal and party support for her firm approach in the eurozone crisis.
[An Nahar] Two French Moslem groups have filed a lawsuit for inciting racial hatred and slander against a French satirical weekly that published cartoons of a naked Prophet Mohammed, the paper's lawyer said Friday.
Charlie Hebdo published the cartoons in September as often violent -- and sometimes deadly -- protests were taking place in several countries over a low-budget film made in the United States that insults the prophet.
The Algerian Democratic Rally for Peace and Progress (RDAP) and its offshoot the United Arab Organization (OAU), which both state that their goal is "the defense and support of Moslem and/or Arab people", are seeking damages of 780,000 euros ($1 million).
Their suit targets the publication, its director and two cartoonists.
Two other groups have already filed suits against Charlie Hebdo over the same series of cartoons. The most recent suits say they besmirched the honor of the prophet and of Moslems.
"Yet again, they are trying to scare us to prevent us continuing this French humoristic tradition regarding religion," said the weekly's lawyer Richard Malka.
In 2008, the then-director of Charlie Hebdo, Philippe Val, was cleared after French Moslem groups took him to court accusing him of having insulted Islam by publishing cartoons of the prophet.
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.
[An Nahar] German federal prosecutors said Friday they had brought charges against a German-Moroccan national on suspicion of spying for Rabat against opposition members.
[An Nahar] A man 
[An Nahar] Ukraine's main opposition alliance Friday named imprisoned ex-premier Yulia Tymoshenko, who recently staged a hunger strike protest, as its candidate for president in the 2015 elections.
[An Nahar] Belgium on Friday raised its terror threat level to the second-highest ahead of the release of a new home-made film on the Internet next week criticizing the Prophet Mohammed.
[An Nahar] Germany's opposition Social Democrats will on Sunday launch their campaign to unseat Chancellor 
