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US authorities investigate motive in Muslim students' killings

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Early investigation appears to point to parking dispute as motive, but Muslim victims’ family want “hate crime” probe.

Family members said the shooter had bothered the students in the past [Getty Images]

Family members said the shooter had bothered the students in the past [Getty Images]

by Al Jazeera

Authorities in the US state of North Carolina are trying to determine whether hate played a role in the shooting deaths of three Muslim students.

Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, was charged with three counts of first-degree murder on Wednesday in the fatal shootings of Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, his 21-year-old wife, Yusor Mohammad, and her sister, 19-year-old Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha.

Authorities said the preliminary investigation of the shooting in Chapel Hill, North Carolina showed that a long-simmering parking dispute was the motive, but family members insist it was a “hate crime”.

“This was not a dispute over a parking space, this was a hate crime,” Mohammad Abu-Salha, the father of the two slain women, told the News & Observer newspaper . “This man had picked on my daughter and her husband a couple of times before, and he talked with them with his gun in his belt. And they were uncomfortable with him, but they did not know he would go this far.”

Suzanne Barakat, sister of Barakat, appealed to authorities on behalf of her family, saying “we ask that the authorities investigate these senseless and heinous murders as a hate crime”.

Gerod King of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said that agents were in touch with the US attorney’s office in North Carolina that encompasses Chapel Hill and that investigators had not ruled out a hate crime.

“We understand the concerns about the possibility that this was hate-motivated, and we will exhaust every lead to determine if that is the case,” Chapel Hill police Chief Chris Blue said in an email to reporters.

The cautious wording of the police statement contrasted sharply with the anguished reaction among some American Muslims who viewed the homicides as an outgrowth of anti-Muslim opinions.

Outrage was voiced on social media with the hashtags #MuslimLivesMatter and #CallItTerrorism.

“Based on the brutal nature of this crime … the religious attire of two of the victims, and the rising anti-Muslim rhetoric in American society, we urge state and federal law enforcement authorities to quickly address speculation of a possible bias motive in this case,” Nihad Awad, of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement.

Vigils for the victims were being held on Wednesday night in North Carolina and elsewhere around the US.

Barakat and Mohammad were newlyweds who helped the homeless and raised funds to help Syrian refugees in Turkey this summer.

Abu-Salha was visiting them on Tuesday from Raleigh, where she was studying.

Imad Ahmad, who lived in the condo where his friends were killed until Barakat and Mohammad were married in December, said Hicks complained about once a month that the two men were parking in a visitor’s space as well as their assigned spot.

Both Hicks and his neighbours complained to the property managers, who apparently did not intervene.

“They told us to call the police if the guy came and harassed us again,” Ahmad said.

Hicks, who appeared briefly in court on Wednesday, is being held without bond. Police said Hicks turned himself in and was cooperating.

USA: Three Muslim students murdered at North Carolina campus

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Police captures suspect after three Muslim Americans are shot dead at University of North Carolina campus.

Friends and family, and online community condemning the murder shared victims' photos online following the incident [Facebook]

Friends and family, and online community condemning the murder shared victims’ photos online following the incident [Facebook]

by Al Jazeera

Three American students have been shot dead at a residential complex of University of North Carolina and a suspect has been arrested over the incident, according to the local police.

Chapel Hill police told local news outlets that Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, was arrested and charged with killing the three Muslim students. He is being held at the Durham County Jail.

Police said they responded to a report of gunshots at around 5:15pm on Tuesday, and found three people who were pronounced dead at the scene.

The victims were identified as 23-year-old Deah Shaddy Barakat, his 21-year-old wife Yusor Mohammad and 19-year-old Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, police said.

Police said the investigation was continuing.

Residents told local media that the complex was a peaceful place.

“It’s a very quiet community,” Bethany Boring, who lives in the complex, told television station WRAL.

“It’s a lot of graduate and professional students. You know, professionals’ families.”

Friends and family and the online community shared photos of the victims via social media after the incident.

The hashtag  went viral after the incident was reported, many of the tweets criticising the US and other Western media for not covering the shooting.

John Kiriakou: Blowing whistle on Bush-era torture 'was worth it'

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Whistleblower, who’s now serving remainder of 30-month sentence at home, told Democracy Now! that ‘entire torture program was approved by the president himself.’

CIA whisteblower John Kiriakou as depicted in artist Robert Shetterly's "Americans Who Tell the Truth" series. (Credit: Robert Shetterly)

CIA whisteblower John Kiriakou as depicted in artist Robert Shetterly’s “Americans Who Tell the Truth” series. (Credit: Robert Shetterly)

by Andrea Germanos, Common Dreams

Former CIA agent John Kiriakou said Monday that the Bush-era torture program “was approved by the president himself” and that the two years he spent behind bars for blowing the whistle on that program was worth it.

Kiriakou was sentenced to 30 months in prison in 2013 after pleading guilty to releasing the name of an officer implicated in a CIA torture program to the media and violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. He was released from federal prison last week and is serving out the remainder of his sentence at home.

He is the only government employee who has gone to jail in connection with the torture program—a fact attorney Jesselyn Radack has called “a miscarriage of justice” and which Kiriakou said makes him feel like he’s “in the Twilight Zone sometimes.”

In an interview with Democracy Now!, Kirikou said he was convinced about the reason for his imprisonment: “My case was about blowing the whistle on torture.”

He explained what led him to reveal in 2007 that “high-value detainee” Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded and tortured in numerous other ways. Kiriakou was part of the CIA team that captured Zubaydah in a house raid in Pakistan, but did not participate in his torture.

“I learned initially that he had been waterboarded in the summer of 2002, at the end of the summer of 2002. And as I said in the 2007 interview with Brian Ross, I believed what the CIA was telling us, that he was being waterboarded, it was working, and we were gathering important, actionable intelligence that was saving American lives,” Kiriakou told host Amy Goodman.

“It wasn’t until something like 2005 or 2006 that we realized that that just simply wasn’t true—he wasn’t producing any information—and that these techniques were horrific. It was in 2007, Amy, that I decided to go public. President Bush said at the time, categorically, ‘We do not torture prisoners. We are not waterboarding.’ And I knew that that was a lie. And he made it seem as though this was a rogue CIA officer who decided to pour water on people’s faces. And that simply wasn’t true.”

“Torture—the entire torture program was approved by the president himself, and it was a very carefully planned-out program. So to say that it was rogue, it was just a bald-faced lie to the American people,” Kiriakou said.

He added that the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture shows “how wrongheaded the CIA torture program was,” and because of this, some prosecutions need to be made.

“What about case officers who took the law into their own hands or who flouted the law and raped prisoners with broomsticks or carried out rectal hydration with hummus? Those were not approved interrogation techniques. Why aren’t those officers being prosecuted? I think, at the very least, that’s where we should start the prosecutions.”

That President Obama is not going to pursue prosecution of lawyers at the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department or CIA heads was understandable, he said, “But what about the CIA officers who directly violated the law, who carried out interrogations that resulted in death?” “Those people should not be above the law.” he said.

Despite the nearly two years in Loretto Prison, where he previously described people under medical care “die with terrifying frequency,” he told Democracy Now! he’d do it all again.

“What has happened since that 2007 ABC News interview is that torture has been banned in the United States. It is no longer a part of U.S. government policy. And I’m proud to have played a role in that. If that cost me 23 months of my life, well, you know what? It was worth it,” he concluded.

See more from his interview in the video below:

The anti-Islamic far-right is spreading in Europe—and going mainstream

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(Reuters/Hannibal Hanschke)

(Reuters/Hannibal Hanschke)

by Kabir Chibber, Quartz

In recent months, a street movement called Pegida—Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident—has emerged from nowhere in Germany, seeking to “protect Judeo-Christian culture” and halt to what it calls the spread of Islam. Though it denies being xenophobic or racist, its leader quit after being pictured dressed as Hitler. Pegida’s rallies have attracted tens of thousands of people in Germany.

And now the group is spreading abroad. Pegida held its first march in Vienna and is to hold its first British rally in the city of Newcastle on Feb. 28, with more planned in the UK. Britain already has anti-Islamic groups such as the English Defence League, a small but vocal force. Only this weekend, the EDL attracted as many as 1,000 people to a march against the building of a mosque.

Time will tell how popular Pegida will be outside of Germany—only a few hundred people showed up in Vienna—but its rising profile is a small part of the growing shift into the mainstream of far-right groups that would have once been shunned.

Britain is also coping with the rise of the anti-immigration UK Independence Party, whose leader has blamed immigrants for his being late to his own campaign events. In France, the Front National is a more organized and established version of much the same sentiment. In 2002, the Front National’s overtly-racist leader at the time, Jean-Marie Le Pen, shocked many by getting to the run-off in the presidential election, and the whole of the French establishment united against him. His daughter, Marine Le Pen, now runs the Front National, which was the most popular party in the last nationwide elections held in France and has become so prominent that she was invited to speak at the Oxford University student union last week (link in French)—her speech was delayed by three hours due to protests. She even gets to write editorials in the New York Times now.

Even Britain’s Prince Charles, who rarely speaks on political matters, is worried about the radicalization of Muslim youths within his future kingdom. The growing acceptance of far-right subject matter as part of political discourse in Europe may just be a sign of our more polarized times—similar things are happening on the far-left in Greece and Spain, for example.

But it could also mean that Europe will have to come to accept voices like Pegida in the mainstream for the foreseeable future. If nothing else, it is a test of the region’s tolerance for dissent. As Germany’s vice-chancellor Sigmar Gabriel suggests:

Whether you like it or not, people have a democratic right to be right-wing or nationalist. People also have a right to spread stupid ideas, such as the notion that Germany is being Islamicized.

British journalist caught lying about being abused at a Mosque

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Channel 4’s Cathy Newman Apologises After CCTV Footage Emerges Of Mosque Incident

by Jessica Elgot, The Huffington Post

Channel 4 presenter Cathy Newman has apologised after CCTV footage obtained by The Huffington Post UK appeared to contradict her claim that she was “ushered out of the door” of a London mosque on the weekend.

The South London Islamic Centre, where Newman claims she was turned away despite turning up wearing a headscarf, says surveillance video shows the reporter arriving at the mosque, being directed by a male congregant, but leaving alone through the courtyard.

Newman sparked a social media firestorm after tweeting she was “ushered onto the street” during ‘Visit My Mosque Day’ which the mosque said provoked threatening voicemails which it has reported to police.

Footage from inside the mosque of the Channel 4 presenter arriving

Footage from inside the mosque of the Channel 4 presenter arriving

The man in the striped jumper (circled) can be seen in a brief exchange with Newman inside the mosque but does not follow her

Cathy Newman leaving South London Islamic Centre alone

But the mosque, which initially apologised, claims Newman’s story is “not correct” and Newman has now apologised for any “misunderstanding”.

After Newman tweeted that she had been “ushered out of the door”, the story was covered by the national media, including the Guardian, Daily Mail, Independent andThe Huffington Post.

It later emerged Newman had actually gone to the wrong location, and her Channel 4 colleagues were waiting for her 15 minutes away at a mosque that was taking part in the open day.

The CCTV clips show the journalist entering the mosque and beginning to take off her shoes while having a very brief conversation with a congregant in the lobby. The man gestures several times to the left, pointing her in a specific direction. She puts her shoe back on, and leaves alone, walking through the courtyard. The entire encounter lasts just seconds.

The man the journalist spoke to inside, who has been identified by the mosque, claims he misunderstood Newman and directed her to the church next door. The man was not a member of the mosque’s management or religious leadership, and none of the Islamic centre’s committee claim to have seen Newman arrive or leave.

Watch the CCTV clip below

Although she briefly returns to the courtyard, and paces around outside the mosque on the street, she does not appear to speak to anyone else within the mosque’s property, only stopping to speak to a few passing members of the public, well outside the mosque’s confines.

“We can see [from the CCTV] that she arrived and that she came into the lobby by the shoe racks and started to take off one shoes,” Aslam Ijaz, the mosque’s chair of trustees and a founding member of Lambeth Interfaith, told HuffPost UK.

“The prayers had already started and you can see a couple people rushing past her but most people are already inside. The gentleman who you see in the video is obviously pointing in the direction of the church, which is what he thought she wanted to go to.”

Ijaz admitted there may have been a misunderstanding of the man’s stated intention in directing Newman to the church. “Maybe she misunderstood, but he is clearly trying to direct her,” he said. “You can see she turns to leave herself, she looks a little confused and then she comes back into the courtyard again, and you can see her twice coming back to outside the mosque and standing on the pavement.”

The timestamp on the video shown by the mosque to HuffPost UK appears to match Newman’s tweets on Sunday.

The footage does not show anyone attempting to guide or “usher” Newman out of the mosque or “onto the street”, as she wrote in her tweets. “I was really surprised that she would say she was ushered out of the mosque, being a journalist I was surprised she would use that description, it was misrepresented. Now there’s this impression we don’t like women. She said something that was not correct,” Ijaz said. Later, Newman can be seen speaking to two people on the street outside the mosque, one a member of the public who the mosque has not identified and who does not enter the mosque. The other is a local cafe owner who claims he came over to ask if she needed assistance, and is seen gesturing her across the road. He claims he was giving Newman directions, the Hyderi Centre is a fifteen-minute walk away, or a bus ride from a stop across from the mosque. Although the time stamp of the CCTV indicates that Newman was still to send her tweets, neither man came from inside the mosque, making it impossible for them to “usher” Newman out, as she describes. She is last seen crossing the road, away from the mosque.

Cathy Newman outside the Streatham mosque

Ijaz later apologised to Newman for her experience, fearing she had been insulted by an uncouth congregant, but said he had not viewed the CCTV footage at the time. Since the story was picked up by national press, the mosque claims has received two threatening voicemails, which it has reported to the police, and a litany of online abuse, but Ijaz said he took particular affront at the accusation the mosque was anti-women. Newman told the Guardian she believed it must have been a men-only mosque, and was not made aware of this, but Ijaz said that is not the case. “We were the first mosque in the area to have a prayer section for women, both ladies and gentleman are welcome here and it wouldn’t be unusual at all to see a woman here,” he said. “I am known for my interfaith work, whenever there is an event with churches, temples, synagogues, I am there. We have open days here at the mosque, and ladies and gentleman are both invited to attend.”

Newman, who has made it clear in subsequent tweets that she wishes to draw a line under the incident, would not expand on why she claimed she had been ‘ushered out’ of the mosque, but told HuffPost UK: “As the primary purpose of Visit My Mosque day was to increase understanding of Islam, I was horrified to hear the Mosque I visited in error has had death threats.

“I’m sorry for any misunderstanding there has been. I would be happy to pay a private visit to South London Islamic Centre once again.”

“It’s not something I would expect from a journalist from Channel 4, it doesn’t make sense,” another congregant told HuffPost UK, adding that Islam as a religion prioritised hospitality.

When queried as to why the mosque had declined to take part in Visit My Mosque Day, Ijaz said: “We were only informed about this initiative [Visit My Mosque Day] on Friday and it’s too short notice for us. There wasn’t anyone to man it. Next time we have a gathering here, I would love to have Cathy here.”

Outside the mosque, which is indeed next to a church, there is a banner inviting visitors in to receive a free Koran. The mosque’s secretary, who said he was uncomfortable giving his name, told HuffPost UK that the mosque had up to 1,000 congregants on a Friday, and several hundred at other times. He added that although there were many regulars, it would not be unusual for worshippers to see visitors they did not recognise. “We often have school visits, teachers here, it wouldn’t have been something that would have fazed anyone.”

Yemen: Houthi rebels announce takeover of country

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Houthis issue “constitutional declaration” amid continuing unrest

Houthi rebels announced they were assuming country of Yemen on Friday. (Image: Google maps)

Houthi rebels announced they were assuming country of Yemen on Friday. (Image: Google maps)

by Andrea Germanos, Common Dreams

Unrest continues in Yemen on Friday as Shiite Houthi rebels announced a “constitutional declaration” and that they were assuming control of the country.

The group issued the statement in a televised address from the Sunni majority country’s capital of Sana’a.

A 551-member Transitional National Council would be formed to replace the parliament, and that body would appoint a 5-member council to assume the presidential role during a “transitional period,” according to their statement.

President Abed Mansour Hadi, Prime Minister Khaled Bahah, and members of the Yemeni cabinet resigned last month after the rebels had reportedly seized the presidential palace.

The Houthis’ announcement follows a Wednesday deadline set by the rebels for political parties to “to reach a solution and fill the vacuum.”

That power vacuum, however, did not appear to prevent U.S. drone strikeson the impoverished country.

From the New York Times:

“The revolutionary movement has always been quick, it won’t take that long,” said Ali al-Imad, a member of the Houthi political bureau. “It’s not important when, so much as it is that we now have a political road map.”

Independent journalist Iona Craig, who was based in Yemen or four years until December, tweeted Friday that the Houthi’s action was essentially formalizing a coup:

The Houthis have been described in media reports as being backed by Iran, but Vijay Prashad, George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and Professor of International Studies at Trinity College, dismisses this claim. As Inter Press Service reported last month:

On the one side, [Prashad] said, the government of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh and then Hadi, suggested to the U.S. [the Houthis] were anti al-Qaeda.

But, on the other hand, they used the fact of al-Qaeda to go after their adversaries, including the Zaydis (Houthis).

“This double game was well known to the Americans. They went along with it. It is what allowed AQAP to take Jar and other regions of Yemen and hold them with some ease,” Prashad said.

He dismissed as “ridiculous” the allegation the Zaydis are “proxies of Iran”. He said they are a tribal confederacy that has faced the edge of the Saleh-Hadi sword.

Journalist and co-founder of the The Intercept Jeremy Scahill has stated that U.S.-backed former President Ali Abdullah Saleh “is sort of the not-so-hidden hand behind some of the power grab efforts of the Houthis.”

Meanwhile, a humanitarian crisis continues to grip the lives of many Yemenis.

Anti-poverty organization Oxfam warned last month that over half the population was in need of aid, and that millions of Yemenis did not have enough to eat or have clean drinking water or basic healthcare services.

“It is simply unacceptable that the real story of 16 million Yemenis in need of help keeps going unnoticed,” Grace Ommer, Oxfam’s Country Director in Yemen said. “Despite the challenges, we continue to deliver desperately needed aid to Yemenis in some of the poorest areas outside the capital. But if the international community continues to stand by and watch while Yemen risks going from a fragile to a failed state we will find it even harder to maintain this lifesaving support.”

Iran, U.S. hold nuclear talks in Munich

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kerry-zarif

by Press TV

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and US Secretary of State John Kerry have held fresh talks in the German city of Munich as a March deadline for a nuclear deal between Tehran and the P5+1 group approaches.

The two foreign ministers started their talks on Friday on the sidelines of Munich Security Conference.

Back in January, Zarif and Kerry held intense negotiations in the Swiss city of Geneva to help speed up the ongoing negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 group – the US, France, Britain, China, Russia and Germany – over Tehran’s peaceful nuclear work.

The Iranian minister is scheduled to attend a meeting attended by Kerry as well as his French and German counterparts, Laurent Fabius and Frank-Walter Steinmeier, on Sunday to discuss Iran’s nuclear program. European Union foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, is likely to participate in the meeting.

The Iranian minister is also to hold a one-on-one meeting with his German counterpart.

Since an interim deal was agreed in Geneva in November 2013, the negotiating sides have missed two self-imposed deadlines to ink a final agreement.

Iran and the P5+1 countries now seek to reach a high-level political agreement by March 1 and to confirm the full technical details of the accord by July 1.

The scale of Iran’s uranium enrichment and the timetable for the lifting of anti-Iran sanctions are seen as major sticking points in the talks.

Palestinians to become ICC member from April 1, UN confirms

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United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (Reuters / Enrique Castro-Mendivil)

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (Reuters / Enrique Castro-Mendivil)

by RT

Palestine will join the International Criminal Court on April 1, announced UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday. The Palestinians will be able to sue Israel for war crimes, a move the Israeli administration has consistently opposed for decades.

The UN treaty website says that due to the court’s procedures “the statute will enter into force for the State of Palestine on April 1, 2015.”

Along with the ICC application, the UN chief approved other sets of documents, enabling Palestine to join 16 international agreements, conventions and treaties.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signed the ICC application documents on the last day of 2014, following the UN Security Council’s resolution on December 30, which rejected Palestine’s official bid for statehood, a document vetoed by the US in support of Israel.

The Palestinian delegation submitted its ICC application on January 2.

Israel’s immediate reaction was negative.

“We will not let Israel Defence Forces (IDF) soldiers and officers be dragged to the International Criminal Court in The Hague,” Netanyahu said at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting, AFP reported.

Israeli Prime Minister and leader of the ruling rightwing Likud party, Benjamin Netanyahu (AFP Photo / Jack Guez)

The Israeli administration immediately applied financial pressure on the Palestinian Authority, freezing the transfer of half a billion shekels (over $127 million) in monthly tax revenues it collected on behalf of the Palestinians.

The US joined the financial pressure on the Palestinian Authority on Monday, when the Obama administration announced a review of America’s annual $440 million aid package to the Palestinians. As AP pointed out, once the Palestinian Authority apply any case against Israel to the International Criminal Court, US financial help to Palestine will cease immediately under American law.

Joining the ICC will give the Palestinian Authority new and powerful leverage to make Israel more compliant regarding withdrawal from the occupied territories.

International Criminal Court’s building (ICC) in The Hague (AFP Photo / Vincent Jannink)

In anticipation of the ICC bid last week, Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour announced the Palestinians will prosecute Israel for crimes committed during the war in Gaza last summer. According to Mansour, Palestinians will also sue Israel for constructing settlements on the occupied Palestinian territory.

In late 2014, the Palestine stepped up its efforts to gain international recognition as a sovereign state. It came following the failure of the latest round of US-brokered peace talks with Israel, which was initiated after the bloody 50-day armed conflict in Gaza that left some 2,120 Palestinians and 68 Israelis dead.

Unlike before, this time around the aspirations of the Palestinians have found much wider international support, as many countries have openly spoken in favor of creating a sovereign Palestinian state.

One Al Jazeera journalist freed while two remain prisoners of Egyptian crackdown

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Supporters welcomed news of Peter Greste’s deportation but warned they ‘will not rest’ until colleagues Fahmy and Mohamed are also freed

After being jailed for 400 days by Egyptian authorities, journalist Peter Greste was deported to Australia on Sunday, February 1. (Photo via freepetergreste.org)

After being jailed for 400 days by Egyptian authorities, journalist Peter Greste was deported to Australia on Sunday, February 1. (Photo via freepetergreste.org)

by Lauren McCauley, Common Dreams

One of the three Al Jazeera journalists who had been held in Egypt for 400 days has been freed, sources reported Sunday.

Peter Greste, an Australian national, has reportedly boarded an Egypt Air flight and is being accompanied by his brother. However, Greste’s colleagues, Canadian-Egyptian Mohamed Fahmy and Egyptian Baher Mohamed, remain imprisoned for allegedly colluding with the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood in a case that has sparked international condemnation.

A recent presidential decree in Egypt stated that imprisoned foreign nationals may be deported to complete their sentence in their home country, which observers note is likely the reason behind Greste’s release.

Though the news of Greste’s deportation was widely celebrated, many connected to the case demanded the release of Fahmy and Mohamed, in addition to the numerous other wrongly convicted journalists currently detained as part of a sweeping crackdown against dissent in Egypt.

Al Jazeera Media Network released a statement saying that its campaign to free the journalists in Egypt will not end till all three have been released.

“We’re pleased for Peter and his family that they are to be reunited. It has been an incredible and unjustifiable ordeal for them, and they have coped with incredible dignity,” said Mostefa Souag, acting Director General of Al Jazeera Media Network. However, Souag added: “We will not rest until Baher and Mohamed also regain their freedom. The Egyptian authorities have it in their power to finish this properly today, and that is exactly what they must do.”

Al Anstey, managing director of Al Jazeera English, said he was relieved Greste was freed and on his way home to be reunited with his family, but also spoke of the need to free Baher and Mohamed.

“We’ve got to focus that Baher and Mohamed are still behind bars, and seven of their colleagues that were sentenced to ten years in absentia are still sentenced today,” Anstey said.

Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa, also welcomed the news of Greste’s release but added, “It is vital that in the celebratory fanfare surrounding his deportation the world does not forget the continuing ordeal of Baher Mohamed and Mohamed Fahmy who remain behind bars at Tora prison in Cairo.”

All three men, Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui said, “are facing trumped up charges and were forced to endure a farcical trial marred by irregularities. Continuing to detain Baher Mohamed and Mohamed Fahmy is completely unjust and unwarranted.”

Fahmy has also reportedly applied for deportation to Canada and his fiancée Marwa Omara told reporters she was “optimistic” about his chances. The case of Mohamed, however, is more complicated because he is an Egyptian national and therefore does not have the same options for release.

Mohamed’s brother Assem told the Guardian: “Baher will not be released. Until now only Peter … but as always what happens in Egypt it’s the Egyptians who pay.”

At least 12 journalists had been jailed in Egypt in 2014—double the number imprisoned the previous year—according to a December report by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

More than 16,000 people have been detained as part of a sweeping crackdown on dissent in Egypt, which has particularly targeted government opponents and critics, as well as media workers and human rights activists.

Japanese journalist Kenji Goto's wife devastated after apparent ISIS beheading

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Goto left for Syria in late October just a weeks after birth of his youngest daughter

ISIS militants said they had beheaded a second Japanese hostage, journalist Kenji Goto, prompting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to vow to step up humanitarian aid to the group's opponents in the Middle East and help bring his killers to justice. The words on the screen (top left) read, "Goto was murdered" (Yuya Shino/Reuters)

ISIS militants said they had beheaded a second Japanese hostage, journalist Kenji Goto, prompting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to vow to step up humanitarian aid to the group’s opponents in the Middle East and help bring his killers to justice. The words on the screen (top left) read, “Goto was murdered” (Yuya Shino/Reuters)

by Associated Press

The wife of slain Japanese hostage Kenji Goto said Monday she was devastated but proud of her husband, who was beheaded by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) extremists.

In a statement issued through the British-based journalist group Rory Peck Trust, Rinko Jogo requested privacy for her family as they deal with their loss, and thanked those who had supported them.

“I remain extremely proud of my husband, who reported the plight of people in conflict areas like Iraq, Somalia and Syria,” she said.

“It was his passion to highlight the effects on ordinary people, especially through the eyes of children, and to inform the rest of us of the tragedies of war,” she said.

Goto left for Syria in late October just a few weeks after the birth of the couple’s youngest daughter. Soon after, he was captured by the militants.

Appalled and saddened by news of Goto’s following the release of a video showing his killing, purportedly by ISIS, Japan has ordered heightened security precautions at airports and at Japanese facilities overseas, such as embassies and schools, government spokesman Yoshihide Suga said.

Until now, Japan had not become directly embroiled in the fight against the militants.

No increased terrorist risk: Abe

In parliamentary debate Monday, opposition lawmakers challenged Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s effort to raise Japan’s diplomatic profile through non-military support for countries fighting ISIS, which control about a third of both Syria and Iraq.

Citing previous cases, including a 1995 sarin gas attack in Tokyo’s subways, Abe said he did not see an increased terrorist risk following savage threats in the purported ISIS video, which vowed to target Japanese and make the knife Goto’s killer was wielding Japan’s “nightmare.”

Japan will persevere in providing humanitarian aid to countries fighting the Islamic State extremists, said Abe, who explained that bowing to terrorist intimidation would prevent Japan from providing medical assistance and other aid it views as necessary for helping to restore stability in the region.

The failure to save Goto raised fears for the life of a Jordanian fighter pilot also held by the Islamic State militants.

Jordan renewed an offer Sunday to swap an al-Qaeda prisoner for the pilot, Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh, who was seized after his F-16 crashed near ISIS’s de facto capital, Raqqa, Syria, in December.

Jordan, Japan, reportedly negotiated with militants

Government spokesman Mohammed al-Momani told The Associated Press that “we are still ready to hand over” prisoner Sajida al-Rishawi, who faces death by hanging for her role in triple hotel bombings in Jordan in 2005. Al-Rishawi has close family ties to the Iraq branch of al-Qaeda, a precursor of ISIS.

With no updates for days, al-Kaseasbeh’s family appealed to the government for information on his situation. But for Goto’s family and friends, the beheading shattered any hopes for his rescue.

Jogo, Goto’s wife, said she had received several emails from unknown people claiming to be her husband’s captors. But the hostage crisis became a national issue after the militants issued a demand for $200 million in ransom, to be paid within 72 hours, on Jan. 20.

Later, the militants’ demand shifted to seeking the release of al-Rishawi, who survived the 2005 attack that killed 60 people when her explosive belt failed to detonate in the worst terror attack in Jordan’s history.

Jordan and Japan reportedly conducted indirect negotiations with the militants through Iraqi tribal leaders, but late on Friday the Japanese envoy sent to Amman to work on the hostage crisis reported a deadlock in those efforts.

The UN Security Council issued a statement Sunday demanding “the immediate, safe and unconditional release of all those who are kept hostage” by the Islamic State group. Council members underlined the need to bring those responsible for Goto’s “heinous and cowardly murder” to justice and stressed that the Islamic State group “must be defeated and that the intolerance, violence and hatred it espouses must be stamped out.”

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