Turpal-Ali Atgeriyev, a former Chechen rebel commander and top official in the region's rebel government, died of complications from leukemia while serving a 15-year prison term for terrorism. Atgeriyev died Sunday of a leukemia-related brain hemorrhage at a prison hospital in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg, the Russian Justice Ministry said. No signs of violent death were found. However, a rebel spokesman accused the Russian government of foul play, saying a healthy Atgeriyev was killed by authorities. Well, he was hale and hearty except for the leukemia...
Atgeriyev was born in 1969, making him either 32 or 33 when he died. He fought in the 1994-1996 Chechnya war with Russia and was believed to be one of the masterminds — along with prominent rebel Salman Raduyev — behind a 1996 raid on the southern Russian town of Kizlyar in which 78 people were killed. Rebels took hundreds of hostages at a hospital and used some as human shields. After the war, Atgeriyev became deputy prime minister and head of security in Aslan Maskhadov's rebel government. However, when the conflict resumed in 1999, Maskhadov and other rebel leaders suspected him of cooperating with Russian authorities. He wasn't bloodthirsty enough, y'see...
In December, Atgeriyev was sentenced to 15 years in prison for terrorism and hostage-taking, while Raduyev was sentenced to life in prison. Still, many Chechens continued believing Atgeriyev made a deal with the Russian authorities allowing him to escape — perhaps by staging his death.
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08/22/2002 01:19 pm ||
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The Nigerian government is "totally opposed" to an Islamic court ruling sentencing a single mother to be stoned to death and will back the woman's appeal, the justice minister said Thursday. Government lawyers will assist Amina Lawal's legal team with the case that will test the authority of Islamic courts to hand down such sentences, Justice Minister Kanu Agabi said. An Islamic court in the northern town of Funtua on Monday rejected Lawal's appeal against the stoning sentence for having sex outside of marriage. Why bother having shariah if you can't kill people in the most painful and degrading manner?
The ruling provoked an international outcry. Governments and human rights organizations around the world urged President Olusegun Obasanjo's administration to intercede. "The government of this country is as opposed to this sentence as those nations," said Agabi, who is also attorney general. "We are totally opposed to it." I'm trying hard, but I can't seem to recall any other major religions that insist on their right to kill people...
Nigeria is deeply divided about the application of Islamic law, or Shariah, which calls for cutting off a hand to punish theft and death for adultery. Decisions by a dozen states in Nigeria's mainly Muslim north to adopt the strict Islamic code since 1999 sparked clashes with the region's Christian minority that killed hundreds. That's pretty typical where there are people with turbans living next door. Sure is a coincidence...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
08/22/2002 01:07 pm ||
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A suspected Basque terrorist escaped from a high-security Paris prison by switching places with his brother during a visit, prison officials said Thursday. Ismael Berasategui Escudero is a suspected member of the Basque separatist movement ETA. He was arrested May 14 in southern France. The brother who took his place in prison was held Thursday for questioning and could be investigated on charges of helping an escape. His name was not revealed. Simple enough. Keep the brother until the guy either comes back or one or the other dies of old age...
The switch at Sante prison took place Saturday but was only discovered Thursday, prison officials said. An investigation was under way into how the brothers escaped prison controls. Inmates at Sante get three visits of 45 minutes each a week. Their hands are stamped with invisible ink before entering the visiting room. After the visit, guards check the ink is still there and that visitors have none on them. Wonder if they're checking the guards' wallets?
"There is a natural physical resemblance between the two men, which was reinforced by their thought-out desire to slip our guard," the prison director, Alain Jego, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "It's hard to tell them part." Investigators suspect ETA may have directed the escape. And supplied the UV ink as well...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
08/22/2002 01:12 pm ||
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A Muslim cleric accused of inciting followers to kill "nonbelievers" was granted bail on Wednesday, after a judge ruled that prosecutors were too slow in passing along evidence to the defense. Prosecutors say Abdullah el-Faisal, 38, circulated cassettes of his sermons in which he called on Muslims to kill Hindus, Jews and non-Muslims. He was arrested in February and denied bail after a judge ruled there was a chance he would go into hiding. No way he's gonna do it now, eh?
Judge Peter Beaumont granted el-Faisal bail on condition that he surrender his passport, report to police every day and live at his home in east London. He was expected to be released from custody Thursday. And no TV, dammit! We're serious this time!
El-Faisal, a Jamaican-born convert to Islam who has preached across Britain, is charged with encouraging "others to murder persons unknown." El-Faisal denies the charge. His lawyers say he is a respected cleric whose quotations from scripture have been taken out of context. I liked the quotations from scripture: âYou have no choice but to hate [the Jews]. How do you fight the Jews? You kill the Jews.â
Prosecutors said police had translated several Arabic-language tapes of el-Faisal's speeches, including one in which he allegedly tells followers that Osama bin Laden had declared jihad, or holy war, against India. "You can go to India and if you see a Hindu walking down the road you can kill him and take his money," el-Faisal is alleged to have said. Muslims can do that sort of thing any time they want. All they need is a fatwah from somebody or other. If they don't have one, no problem; they can issue it themselves.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
08/22/2002 01:26 pm ||
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#1
The British placed over 2 million video cameras throughout their country when the IRA was bombing, rather that break the back of the terrorists by arresting on the basis of association and suspicion. In a counter-terror context, I would condone any arrest for facilitation of any kind of terror, including by means of direct moral support. I guess that would leave Fisk off the hook.
Police have arrested six Islamic militants from an al-Qaida-linked group for allegedly planning to blow up a power plant and attack a Christian hospital in eastern Punjab province. Ijaz Shafi Dogar, a deputy superintendent of police, said a judge had agreed to a request to hold the men, whom he said belonged to Jaish-e-Mohammed. "We are questioning six associates of an outlawed group, including one of their top leaders, for planning attacks on churches, the Lal Pir Thermal Power Plant and a Christian hospital in Punjab," Dogar told The Associated Press. The Lal Pir plant is owned by the AES Corp., of Arlington, Va., one of the world's largest power companies. The problem there is that when you see one cockroach, you know your cabinetry and the cracks in your floor are all chock full of them...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
08/22/2002 12:56 pm ||
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A remote-controlled bomb tore through a police bus in northeastern India on Wednesday, killing five policemen and injuring 10. The attack was blamed the rebel United Liberation Front of Asom. District Magistrate K.C. Samaria said the group triggered the bomb as the bus full of policemen passed by in the village of Maladhara, in the state of Assam. No one claimed responsibility for the attack. Samaria said the area is a ULFA stronghold. The ULFA operates from bases inside neighboring Bhutan and has frequently struck in Assam. The attack took place near an area where rebels gunned down 15 civilians last week. Poor India. When the loons in the west aren't killing people, the loons in the east kick in...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
08/22/2002 01:12 pm ||
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In the village of Saida in the northern West Bank, a 55-year-old Palestinian woman was killed and her son was wounded Thursday when a bomb exploded at the chicken farm where they were working, Palestinian security officials said. The farm belonged to an Islamic Jihad fugitive, Ahmed Yassin, 30, the officials said. The fugitive is not related to the Hamas leader by the same name. That hen'd been sitting on that thing since March. A pity the lady was nearby when it hatched...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
08/22/2002 12:57 pm ||
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Israeli troops arrested the Hamas leader in the town of Qalqiliya, Mohammed Wajeh Quoa, 41, Palestinian officials said. Quoa had been arrested repeatedly by Israel in the past and in 1992 was deported to south Lebanon for one year, along with 400 other Islamic militant activists. The arrest came a day after Israeli security officials announced the capture of a five-member Hamas cell, including four Arab residents of Jerusalem. Cell members are suspected of detonating a series of bombs, including the July 31 blast in the student cafeteria of Jerusalem's Hebrew University. Presumably the two incidents are related and they're going to jug him for one long term this time, instead of repeated short ones...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
08/22/2002 12:57 pm ||
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The Popular front for the Liberation of Palestine on Wednesday vowed to avenge the assassination by undercover Israeli agents of Muhammd Sa'adat, the younger brother of imprisoned PFLP leader Ahmed Sa'adat. "We will respond to this clear provocation, they (Israel) know that," said Rabah Muhanna, a PFLP official in the Gaza Strip. Another PFLP official in Ramallah, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said his groups will wreak a painful retaliation for the killing of Sa'adat. Yeah. Yeah. You heard read it here first. That's only because everybody else was too bored to predict it...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
08/22/2002 01:35 pm ||
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An estranged comrade of Abu Nidal said in remarks released Thursday the Palestinian guerrilla who died of an apparent suicide in Baghdad had earlier admitted his group was behind the 1988 Lockerbie plane bombing. Atef Abu Bakr, once a politburo member of Abu Nidal's Fatah-Revolutionary Council, made the charge in comments to the London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayat due to be published on Friday. "Abu Nidal said during an inner-circle meeting of the leadership of the Revolutionary Council, 'I will tell you something very important and serious, the reports which link the Lockerbie act to others are false reports. We are behind what happened,"' Abu Bakr was quoted by the newspaper as saying. If anyone leaked what he had said, "I will kill him even if he is in the arms of his wife." "In the arms of his wife"? Arabs do that? Oh. I guess they do. That's how we get little exploders...
The New York-bound Pan Am plane blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988, killing 259 mostly American passengers and crew, and 11 residents of Lockerbie. Following the attack, Abu Bakr was quoted as extending condolences to victims on behalf of Abu Nidal's group, which at the time some media speculated could be to blame. A special Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands convicted former Libyan agent Abdel Basset al-Megrahi in the bombing and sentenced him in January 2001 to life in prison. Abu Nidal set up his headquarters in the Libyan capital Tripoli in 1987. He was put under house arrest when Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi came under pressure to crack down on militants after the Lockerbie bombing. Could be a true story, though these groups have a record of forming long lines to grab the credit for whatever atrocity's just been committed. Guess as long as the "technical experts" were right there, Muammar just went ahead and made use of them. Must have cheesed them when he turned around and dumped them when the heat came on...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
08/22/2002 04:02 pm ||
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An Islamist group linked to al-Qaida beheaded two kidnapped Jehovah's Witnesses and dumped their heads in a public market in the southern Philippines, an army spokesman said today. Brigadier General Romeo Tolentino, army commander on the southern island of Jolo, said the heads of the two male hostages were found in bags with notes denouncing them as "infidels". The bags were left at food stands about 100 metres apart at the main market in Jolo. The attached notes called for jihad. Guess the bastards got their quota of infidels for the season. Jehovah's Witnesses sure are a dangerous lot...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
08/22/2002 12:56 pm ||
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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.
