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Four arrested in Germany over 'plot against Muslims'

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Three men and a woman held for possession of explosives and for planning attacks on mosques and leading Muslim figures.

A report links the increase in anti-immigrant attacks to the rise of right-wing groups in the country [Reuters]

A report links the increase in anti-immigrant attacks to the rise of right-wing groups in the country [Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

German authorities have conducted raids across the country, seizing explosives and arresting four people accused of founding a right-wing group to attack mosques and housing for asylum seekers.

Police arrested three men and a woman accused of leading the group during raids by some 250 investigators on homes in Saxony and four other states, the federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

Prosecutors allege the four helped found the “Oldschool Society” (OSS) group and were planning to attack asylum-seeker housing, mosques and well-known members of the Islamic community in Germany.

The four arrested, identified only as Andreas H, 56, Markus W, 39, Denise Vanessa G, 22, and Olaf O, 47, in line with German privacy laws, are being held on terrorism charges and are also accused of having procured explosives.

The statement identified Andreas H and Markus W as the group’s president and vice president.

The North Rhine-Westphalia state interior ministry said Olaf O was from the western city of Bochum and had been under observation since November as “a leading member of the OSS”.

“According to current investigations, it was the group’s goal to conduct attacks in smaller groups inside Germany on well-known Salafists, mosques and asylum-seeker centres,” the statement said.

“For this purpose the four arrested procured explosives for possible terror attacks by the group.”

Inquiries made by the Associated Press news agency to an apparent cell phone number and email address for the group were not immediately returned.

Attack plans

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the Oldschool Society appeared to be a newly formed group.

Rhineland-Palatinate interior minister Roger Lewentz, at the same news conference, held up what appeared to be the group’s logo – a white skull on black background framed by bloody butcher’s cleavers with lightning bolts resembling the runes of the Nazi SS.

“The SS rune is in there – that’s not for nothing,” Lewentz said.

Prosecutors said they are still trying to determine whether the group had concrete attack plans and refused to comment beyond their written statement.

There have been conflicts in recent years between far right groups and the Muslim community in North Rhine-Westphalia that have escalated into violent street fights.

In 2013, authorities said they foiled a plot to assassinate a high-ranking member of a far-right party in the state.

Right-wing groups have been a renewed focus for German intelligence agencies after it came to light that a neo-Nazi group calling itself National Socialist Underground, or NSU, allegedly killed eight Turks, a Greek and a policewoman between 2000 and 2007. It is also believed to be behind two bombings and 15 bank robberies.

De Maiziere said statistics released Wednesday showed a sharp increase of 22.9 percent in violent crimes by right-wing extremists in 2014 to 1,029, three times the number in 2013.

Anti-Semitic attacks have also reportedly increased.

The report suggested the rise could be linked to months of non-violent anti-Islam protests by a group calling itself Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the West, or PEGIDA.

Report: 38 million people are internally displaced throughout the world, Iraq hardest hit

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A photo taken on April 5, 2015 shows an internally displaced Iraqi girl at a camp for internally displaced people (IDP) in the northern city of Sammara. (AFP/Mohammed Sawaf)

A photo taken on April 5, 2015 shows an internally displaced Iraqi girl at a camp for internally displaced people (IDP) in the northern city of Sammara. (AFP/Mohammed Sawaf)

by Press TV

A record 38 million people across the globe are displaced inside their own homelands due to conflicts and violence, with Iraq being the hardest-hit nation, a watchdog group reveals.

The Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) released the data in a report titled Global Overview 2015 on Wednesday.

The report said nearly one third of the internally displaced persons (IDPs), or 11 million people, were forced from their homes last year alone, with an average of 30,000 people fleeing every day.

The IDMC said the total number of those displaced around the globe in 2014 increased by 14 percent compared to the figure reported in the year before.

“These are the worst figures for forced displacement in a generation, signaling our complete failure to protect innocent civilians,” said Jan Egeland (pictured above), the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, which oversees the IDMC.

“This report should be a tremendous wake-up call,” said Egeland, adding, “We must break this trend where millions of men, women and children are becoming trapped in conflict zones around the world.”

The data also showed that a staggering 60 percent of the newly displaced people last year were in just five countries, namely Iraq, South Sudan, Syria, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The Iraqi people have been the hardest hit, with 2.2 million people forced to flee their homes to other parts of the country due to the violence by Daesh.

In Syria, some one million more people were forced from their homes last year, bringing the total number of the IDPs in the Middle Eastern countries to 7.6 million, or 40 percent of the population.

Ukraine also appeared in the IDMC’s report for the first time, with some 646,500 people internally displaced there in 2014 amid fighting between Kiev government troops and pro-Russia forces in the country’s eastern regions.

The watchdog group said the data also showed that there currently are nearly twice as many people who are internally displaced than refugees – those who flee their homeland – without giving an exact number of the refugees.

According to statistics from the United Nations, some 16.7 million people across the globe were living as refugees at the end of 2013.

'Forty migrants drown in Mediterranean': Save the Children

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Migrants wait to disembark from military ship "Bettica" following a rescue operation at sea on May 5, 2015 in the port of Salerno, southern Italy. (AFP/Mario Laporta)

Migrants wait to disembark from military ship “Bettica” following a rescue operation at sea on May 5, 2015 in the port of Salerno, southern Italy. (AFP/Mario Laporta)

by Al Bawaba

Forty migrants drowned off the coast of Italy when a boat trying to reach Europe either deflated or burst from the heat, survivors told the organization Save the Children.

According to Reuters, some of the 194 survivors told the activist group the deaths occurred on Sunday. The survivors came from several African countries including Gambia, Senegal, Ghana, Mali and the Ivory Coast. AFP said there were 137 people on board.

Human traffickers have increased their attempts to smuggle people out of conflict-torn countries to try to reach Europe as spring weather has calmed seas and provided good weather. The UN has estimated more than 1,700 migrants have died in the Mediterranean so far this year.

Targeting ISIS, US-led strike kills 52 civilians, including 7 children

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Edited U.S. Air Force image of two F-15E fighters after conducting airstrikes in Syria on Sept. 23, 2014. U.S. Central Command directed the operations. (Photo by Senior Airman Matthew Bruch/USAF via Stuart Rankin/cc/flickr)

Edited U.S. Air Force image of two F-15E fighters after conducting airstrikes in Syria on Sept. 23, 2014. U.S. Central Command directed the operations. (Photo by Senior Airman Matthew Bruch/USAF via Stuart Rankin/cc/flickr)

by Lauren McCauley, Common Dreams

A U.S. military strike on Friday targeting fighters with the Islamic State has killed 52 civilians, including 7 children and 9 women, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Saturday.

According to the human rights watchdog group, an additional 13 Syrian civilians are missing following the attack on a village in the northern province of Aleppo. The deaths mark the highest civilian loss from a single attack since the U.S.-led coalition began its war against the Islamic State, or ISIS, in September 2014.

“[We] condemn in the strongest terms this massacre committed by the U.S led coalition under the pretext of targeting the IS in the village, and we call the coalition countries to refer who committed this massacre to the courts, as we renew our calls to neutralize all civilians areas from military operations by all parties,” the group said in a statement.

Coalition airstrikes have killed an estimated 118 civilians. However, Reuters notes, the U.S.-led attack has “had little impact on the hardline Islamic State group, slowing its advances but failing to weaken it in areas it controls.”

“Washington and its allies say their aim is to support what they call moderate rebels fighting against both Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Isis,” Reuters continues. “But four years into Syria’s civil war, no side is close to victory. A third of the population has been made homeless and more than 220,000 people have been killed.”

USA: Gunmen killed at controversial exhibition featuring cartoon depictions of the Prophet Muhammad

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Two suspected gunmen shot dead outside an exhibition depicting the Prophet Muhammad in suburb of Dallas, Texas.

REUTERS/Mike Stone

REUTERS/Mike Stone

by Al Jazeera

Two gunmen have been shot dead outside a controversial exhibition featuring cartoon depictions of the Prophet Muhammad in Dallas in Texas, US authorities say.

The shooting was reported shortly before 7pm local time on Sunday outside the Curtis Culwell Center in the Dallas suburb of Garland.

The two armed suspects drove up to the front of the building in a car as the event, called the Muhammad Art Exhibit, was coming to an end, and began shooting at a security officer, the city said in a message posted online.

Garland police officers then exchanged fire with the gunmen and both suspects were shot dead, the city said.

The security guard was shot in the ankle in the gunfire, but his injuries were not considered serious and he has already been discharged from hospital.

A police bomb squad is reportedly at the scene and is inspecting the dead gunmen’s car.

A Garland police spokesman, Joe Harn, said there was a large police presence already at the scene, as police “had prepared for this event, in case something like this happened”.

Lockdown

Al Jazeera’s Heidi Zhou-Castro, who is near the scene of the shooting, said an area of about a kilometre radius around the incident had been locked down, following reports that a third suspect was seen near a shopping centre.

A New York-based group called the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) had claimed it was exercising their right of free expression in running the contest.

The judging was supposed to be on Sunday, with the winner from some reported 350 entries from around the country offered a $10,000 prize.

Zhou-Castro said the woman who led the AFDI group, Pamela Geller, was “known to make anti-Muslim statements”, and had gone to the courts several times to be able to place anti-Muslim advertisements around New York.

Following the shooting, Geller had tweeted from inside the cultural centre that the incident was “a war on free speech”, however her critics on Twitter said she had “been trying to provoke an incident like this for years”.

Islam forbids depictions of its prophet.

Controversial advertisement

In April, AFDI won a case in the US federal court that allowed it to display a controversial advertisement referring to Muslims killing Jews on New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority buses.

US District Judge John Koeltl in Manhattan said the AFDI ad, which had previously run in Chicago and San Francisco, was protected speech under the First Amendment of the US constitution.

Similar AFDI campaigns have also run elsewhere, including in Washington DC.

The ad portrayed a menacing man wearing a scarf around his head and face, included a quotation “Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah” was attributed to “Hamas MTV”, and then stated: “That’s His Jihad. What’s yours?”

Geert Wilders, the Dutch far-right politician who is well-known for his anti-Islam beliefs, was one of the main speakers during the event. Wilders shared on his Twitter account that he had just left the building before the shooting.

Wilders caused a scandal last March when speaking in The Hague he asked party supporters whether they wanted “fewer or more Moroccans in the city and in the Netherlands”.

“Fewer! Fewer!” the crowd shouted as a smiling Wilders answered: “Then we’re going to take care of that.”

ICC rejects Israel's claims of bias in war crimes investigation

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ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told reporters that the court will carry out an "unbiased" inquiry into the war crimes accusations. (AFP/File)

ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told reporters that the court will carry out an “unbiased” inquiry into the war crimes accusations. (AFP/File)

by Press TV

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has rejected Israel’s claims that the court may carry out a biased investigation into the Tel Aviv regime’s war crimes during its devastating military aggression against the Gaza Strip last summer.

ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told Israel’s Haaretz newspaper on Friday that The Hague-based court will launch an “unbiased” inquiry into the case. The court will consider evidence brought by Palestinians against Israel “independently and impartially without fear or favor,” Bensouda said, adding that her “office will be guided by a policy of investigating and prosecuting those most responsible for the commission of mass crimes.”

The Israeli regime launched a 50-day deadly war on Gaza last summer that ended in August 2014 with a truce. The aggression left about 2,200 Palestinians, including 577 children, dead and over 11,100 others injured.

In April, Palestinians formally joined the ICC, a membership that enabled them to bring war crimes charges against Israeli officials.

Tel Aviv reportedly claims that institutions like the ICC are biased against Israel and thus prone to unfairly target the regime. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the regime will allow the Israeli soldiers to appear at the ICC and face potential war crime charges.

Joining the ICC also opens up the possibility for Palestinians to challenge Tel Aviv’s illegal settlement expansion in the occupied territories besides taking the regime to task for its war crimes during the 2014 military aggression against the Gaza Strip.

In January, the ICC opened a preliminary examination into Israel’s war crimes against Palestinians. Israeli Prime Minister, however, denounced ICC’s decision as “absurd,” claiming that the move runs against the international law.

Disease outbreak threatens Nepal's earthquake survivors

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Medical workers try to prevent spread of disease in quake’s aftermath, with clean water and toilets in short supply.

Disease Nepal earthquake

by Al Jazeera

Survivors of Nepal’s major earthquake are facing the threat of a disease outbreak due to a severe shortage of clean water and toilets.

Al Jazeera’s Subina Shrestha, reporting from the village of Dukuchap in Lalitpur area, said on Friday that locals were suffering from diarrhoea, stomach cramps and other diseases that could turn into epidemics if the cause of the problem was not stopped in time.

“The water is thick and smelly, but we have to drink it,” Kalpana Tamang, a Dukuchap village resident, told Al Jazeera.

Dr Kishore Rana, a major general in the Nepalese army, said that in a number of villages the health centres and hospitals have been ruined and the areas depended on mobile medical teams – often foreigners.

“Our plan is for other medical teams that can come here and stay here for a longer duration – three to six months,” he said.

“We’ll be sending these teams to the areas were health posts and hospitals have been destroyed.”

Shrestha reported that “even at the best of times, the health system in Nepal has been rather poor”.

“For this village of Dukchap, the only health post is half an hour further up and the only thing they have is paracetamol.”

Essential medicines

The World Health Organization (WHO) said that a quick assessment of Nepal’s worst-hit districts has found some hospitals damaged or destroyed, but most were coping well with no extra staff or beds required.

According to the WHO, there was a need for essential medicines, equipment and materials.

The organisation said it was focused on preventing the possible spread of diarrhoeal diseases among at least 2.8 million displaced people, especially those living in 16 makeshift camps in the capital, Kathmandu.

The death toll from Saturday’s earthquake has reached more than 6,200 people. Almost 14,000 have been injured and thousands are still missing.

Many of the monuments and temples in Kathmandu Valley, which was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979, for seven distinct locations, were destroyed in the earthquake.

Search and rescue teams continue their operation, clearing debris from crushed buildings and the centuries-old temples as well as getting aid to remote locations.

The government has announced it will give every family, which has had a member killed in the earthquake, about $1,000 in compensation.

Baltimore set for 'victory rally' as officers charged

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Thousands expected to attend march, celebrating charges against six police officers over custodial death of a black man.

(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

by Al Jazeera

A march planned by activists to protest the death of a black man in police custody is now being dubbed as a “victory rally” after criminal charges were slapped against the officers involved.

The march on Saturday follows a decision by Baltimore’s top prosecutor to file criminal charges against the six police officers involved in Freddie Gray’s death.

The officers turned themselves in at the city jail on Friday afternoon. All were later released on bonds of between $250,000 and $350,000.

Maryland State Attorney Marilyn Mosby said on Friday that Gray’s arrest was illegal and unjustified, and that his neck was broken because he was handcuffed, shackled and placed head-first into a police van.

Mosby’s announcement triggered celebrations across the same Baltimore streets that were hit with unrest just four days earlier, when Gray’s funeral led to riots and looting.

People danced in the streets, chanting “Freddie” to celebrate the charges. Some were later arrested by police, however, for refusing to disperse after a curfew went into effect at 10pm for the fourth night.

The thousands of protesters who are expected to attend over the weekend will now do so to celebrate the decision by Mosby to charge the officers with felonies ranging from assault to murder.

Gray’s death from spinal injuries a week after his April 12 arrest became a rallying cry against brutality and social inequality in the city.

Swift decision

The swift decision by Mosby, who has been in the position only since January, to charge the six officers caught many by surprise in a city hit on Monday night by its worst civil unrest in decades.

The police had no reason to stop or chase after Gray, Mosby said. “They falsely accused him of having an illegal switchblade when in fact it was a legal pocketknife.”

The officer who drove the police vehicle in which Gray was taken after his arrest was charged with second-degree murder, which could put him in prison for 30 years if convicted.

Mosby, who rejected the police union’s call for a special prosecutor, earned praise from protesters and Gray’s family.

“We are satisfied with today’s charges,” Gray’s stepfather, Richard Shipley, told a news conference. “These charges are an important step in getting justice for Freddie.”

But a lawyer hired by the union insisted the officers did nothing wrong. Attorney Michael Davey said that Mosby has committed “an egregious rush to judgment”.

“We have grave concerns about the fairness and integrity of the prosecution of our officers,” Davey said.

7.1 Magnitude Earthquake Rocks Papua New Guinea

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The epicenter was located south-west of Rabaul, which was destroyed in 1994 after the Mount Tavurvur volcano erupted.

An alert has been issued after a major quake hit off the coast of Papua New Guinea Friday. Photo: Reuters

An alert has been issued after a major quake hit off the coast of Papua New Guinea Friday. Photo: Reuters

by teleSUR

On Friday, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake was registered off the coast of the Pacific Island of Papua New Guinea, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) reported.

Authorities have not reported any damages or casualties as of yet.

The epicenter of the earthquake was located 128 km south-south-west of Rabaul, a town on East New Britain Island which was also struck by a 6.9 quake Thursday. The town, located at the foot of the Mount Tavurvur volcano, was destroyed in a 1994 eruption.

Papua New Guinea is located in the Pacific ring of fire, the most active seismic region in the World. An earthquake in 1994 left more than 2,000 people in the country dead after a Tsunami devastated the island.

Germany accused of spying on France and engaging in industrial espionage on behalf of NSA

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germany-accused-of-eavesdropping-on-top-french-officials-and-engaging-in-industrial-espionage-on-behalf-of-the-nsa

by Melodie Bouchaud, Vice

Remember German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s outrage at having her cell phone tapped by the NSA, after whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked the evidence? She accused the NSA of being “like the Stasi.”

Now, it’s been revealed that Germany’s foreign intelligence agency BND spied on senior French and European officials on behalf of the US’s National Security Agency (NSA), according to the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ).

SZ reports that the BND used its satellite tracking station in Bavaria — which famously resembles a field of oversized golf balls — to eavesdrop on members of the French foreign affairs ministry, the office of the French presidency, and the European Commission.

But leaked reports that surfaced in the German media this week indicate that the NSA also relied on Germany to conduct industrial espionage on a number of European firms, as early as 2008. According to the BBC, Washington was checking for violations of trade agreements.

Germany first started sharing data with the US in 2002 under Frank-Walter Steinmeier, then chief of staff to former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. The aim of the 2002 Memorandum of Agreement between Germany and the US was to strengthen cooperation on intelligence in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks and to combat global terrorism.

Asked to spy on companies like European aerospace and defense corporation EADS or helicopter manufacturer Eurocopter, BND employees apparently didn’t take long to figure out they were engaging in industrial espionage rather than the war on terror.

According to German news weekly Der Spiegel, BND employees alerted German higher-ups as early as 2008, and again in 2010, that the NSA’s intelligence requests exceeded the counterterrorism mandate of the original agreement.

Der Spiegel claims that, of the 690,000 phone numbers and 7.8 million IP addresses cleared for surveillance, 40,000 fell outside of the counterterrorism remit of the German-American intelligence pact. The US was not “solely interested in terrorism,” wrote the German weekly, but “used [Germany’s] technological resources to spy on western European companies and firms.”

German media has reported that the government turned a blind eye to NSA spying so that it might continue to receive US counterterrorism information.

On Wednesday, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere — who was responsible for the BND at the time — denied the government had lied to the German parliament about supposedly known breaches to the agreement. De Maiziere, who has been accused of lying by the German media, was pictured Wednesday on the cover of German tabloid newspaper Bild with an elongated Pinocchio nose.

The spying allegations are particularly embarrassing for Merkel, who commented at the time it was revealed that her cell phone was tapped that “spying between friends is simply unacceptable.” She’s been branded hypocritical, particularly in light of Germany’s political collaboration with France, which is also known as the “Franco-German Friendship.” Merkelhas vowed to “bring everything out into the open.”

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