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IS abductors treated us with respect: Released Karnataka teacher

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Lakshmikant and Vijay Kumar, the two Indians who have been released.

Lakshmikant and Vijay Kumar, the two Indians who have been released.

Hyderabad: One of the two Indian teachers from Karnataka who was kidnapped in Libya, allegedly by Islamic State (IS) group and released subsequently, today said they were treated with respect by the abductors and not tortured in captivity.

Lakshmikant, from Raichur district in Karnataka, arrived at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA) here.

“…Nobody tortured us…they did not harm…they gave respect,” Lakshmikant told reporters here.

Four Indian teachers working at University of Sirte in Libya, including two from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, were kidnapped in Libya allegedly by the ISIS while returning to India from Tripoli on July 29.

The Indian government had on July 31 said it had secured the release of two of them – Lakshmikant and Vijay Kumar.

“Four of us were together (during captivity). They released me and Vijay Kumar. I have been told that Gopikrishna and Balram are safe. I am requesting them that they too are released,” Lakshmikant said.

Lakshmikant’s wife Prathiba, who was among the family members who received him at the airport, said, “We are very happy and proud of the Indian government. We thank each and everybody, media and family friends.”

Vijay Kumar’s family hails from Kolar district in Karnataka.

Gopikrishna, an assistant professor at University of Sirte in Libya, is a native of Tekkali in Srikakulam district of Andhra Pradesh, while Balram, an English Professor, also works at the same University and hails from Karimnagar district of Telangana.

(Agencies)

2 of 4 Indians detained in Islamic State-controlled territory in Libya released

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Lakshmikant and Vijay Kumar, the two Indians who have been released.

Lakshmikant and Vijay Kumar, the two Indians who have been released.

New Delhi: Two of the four Indians detained in the Libyan city of Sirte, an area under the control of the Islamic State, were freed on Friday evening.

External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said: “I am happy we have been able to secure the release of Lakshmikant and Vijay Kumar. Trying for other two.”

Three of those abducted are faculty members at the Sirte university and the fourth person works at a university branch in Jufra.

“They are back in the Sirte university,” official sources said.

According to sources, two of those released are from Raichur in Karnataka and state capital Bengaluru.

The Andhra Pradesh government urged Swaraj to expedite steps for safe return of all four. The remaining two hostages are from Hyderabad and Srikakulam.

Vikas Swarup, external affairs ministry spokesperson, said earlier in the day that all four were returning to India through Tripoli when they were detained on Thursday at a checkpoint about 50km from Sirte, hometown of former Libyan strongmen Muammar Gaddafi. Later, they were taken to the Sirte city.

The incident came a year after 39 Indians were kidnapped from Iraqi city of Mosul. They still remain in the custody of their captors.

Most of Sirte fell to IS in May and the university is not functioning since February, raising doubts that the Indians continued staying there as they were were yet to get their salary dues. All of them had been in Libya for more than a year.

There are 2,000 Indians at present in conflict-hit Libya, who stayed back despite many advisories urging them to leave the country.

Since most of the Indian mission staff to Libya is now based out of Tunis, it is proving to be difficult task for officials to track the developments inside the trouble-torn country.

Last July, a group of 65 Indian nurses were trapped in fighting which engulfed parts of Libya.

(Agencies)

Kuwait to hold mass funeral for mosque attack victims

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Day of mourning declared and suspects reportedly held a day after deaths of 27 people in bombing in Shia mosque.

Shia mosque attack

by Al Jazeera

Kuwait is to hold a mass funeral for the victims of a suicide bombing of a Shia mosque that killed 27 people and wounded 227 others.

Saturday was also a day of mourning in the Gulf Arab country following the attack on the Imam Sadiq mosque in the district of Sawaber, in the eastern part of Kuwait City.

The funeral will follow the arrests of several people suspected of involvement in Friday’s bombing.

The owner of the car that drove the bomber has been arrested and a search is under way for the driver, Kuwait’s state news agency reported on Saturday.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group claimed responsibility for the bombing, which was Kuwait’s worst attack in years and the first on a Shia mosque.

In a message posted on a Twitter account known to belong to the group, ISIL claimed the blast was the work of a bomber wearing an explosive vest.

The attack prompted the Kuwaiti cabinet to announce after an emergency meeting that all security agencies and police had been placed on alert to confront what it called “black terror”.

“The cabinet stresses that it will take whatever measures necessary to root out this scourge, and declares a relentless all-out confrontation with these terrorists,” it said in a statement.

Kuwait’s Emir Sabah al-Ahmad Al Sabah visited the mosque, located just a few buildings away from the country’s interior ministry, following the attack.

He said the bombing violated the sanctity of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan as well as Islamic law forbidding the shedding of the blood of innocents.

“National unity is a protective fence for the security of the nation,” Sabah said.

ISIL targeted Shia mosques in neighbouring Saudi Arabia on two consecutive Fridays in May.

Clouds of smoke

Video footage from the scene showed several bodies on the floor of the mosque amid debris and clouds of heavy smoke.

Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah al-Mubarak al-Sabah, a Kuwaiti government spokesperson, said that despite security forces having been equipped with the latest technology, attacks such as the one that occurred on Friday were very hard to stop.

“We will be investing in metal detectors and the like but even that can be overcome with the use of different types of technologies,” he told Al Jazeera.

Shia Muslims comprise between 15 and 30 percent of the predominantly Sunni Muslim state, where members of both communities are known to live side by side with little apparent friction.

Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Jamjoom, reporting from Kuwait City, said “the shock of yesterday’s attack will be something it will take a long time for Kuwaitis to get over”.

“This is a country where they say Sunni and Shia live harmoniously and they will continue to do so,” he said.

“In Kuwait, nobody could have anticipated this. That’s why the people are so worried.”

ISIL re-enters Syrian Kurdish town Kobane

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At least 12 killed in bomb blast in battleground border town, as fighting flares in several other key Syrian cities.

ISIL fighters attacked the battleground town from three sides [Getty Images]

ISIL fighters attacked the battleground town from three sides [Getty Images]

by Al Jazeera

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters have launched attacks on two fronts in northern Syria, re-entering the Kurdish town of Kobane and seizing parts of the city of Hasakah.

Dozens of ISIL fighters attacked Kobane on the border with Turkey, where at least 12 people were killed in a car bomb attack at the start of the offensive on Thursday morning.

ISIL fighters were wearing Kurdish and Free Syrian Army uniforms, the sources told Al Jazeera, as they attacked from three sides and took several positions inside the battleground town.

Al Jazeera’s Nisreen El Shamayleh, reporting from Amman, said several ISIL fighters “carried out suicide attacks; decimated themselves and caused a lot of casualties” after entering the city.

“There’s a lot of fighting going on there, that we understand is ongoing,” our correspondent said.

“Dozens of people have been trying to flee.”

The Kurdish group YPG asked civilians to stay home as it sent reinforcements to the town.

The fighting prompted Kurdish activists and Syrian state television to accuse Turkey of allowing ISIL to attack Kobane from its side of the border.

A Turkish foreign ministry spokesman later “strongly denied” that the ISIL fighters crossed into Syria from Turkey.

Kurdish forces in January had reclaimed Kobane from ISIL in a victory touted by Anwar Muslim, the prime minister of the self-declared Kurdish canton of Kobane, as “the beginning of the end for Daesh [ISIL]”.

Losing Kobane after more than four months of intense fighting was seen as a significant propaganda blow to ISIL after it had invested extensive military resources to capture the isolated border town.

“Daesh [ISIL] took most of the places it wanted in Syria and Iraq but could not capture Kobane,” Muslim told Al Jazeera at the time.

ISIL storms Hasakah

Meanwhile, ISIL launched an overnight offensive on the largely Kurdish city of Hasakah in northeast Syria where dozens of Syrian and ISIL fighters were reportedly killed, sources told Al Jazeera.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights group estimated that at least 30 Syrian soldiers and 20 ISIL fighters died in the raid.

Dozens of people fled Hasakah towards the northern countryside after the sudden offensive, Al Jazeera’s sources reported.

Fighting was ongoing on Thursday morning as ISIL stormed the city from its southern entrance in its attempt to take control of more territories in Hasakah.

A suicide bomber also blew up a car bomb at the city’s western entrance.

Fighting in Aleppo and Deraa

Meanwhile, after two years of fighting for Layramoun Square in Aleppo, rebels were saying on Thursday that they had seized the area from government forces.

They also took control of a surrounding government barracks northwest of the city, Al Jazeera’s sources said.

Syrian rebels and groups including the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front also attacked government-held areas of the southern city of Deraa overnight.

Rebels previously held Deraa’s eastern half while the Syrian government held western areas of the city.

Heavy fighting in Deraa is continuing, according to Al Jazeera’s sources.

ISIL prisoners beheaded

In a separate development, ISIL beheaded 12 men from rival Syrian rebel movements accused of fighting against them, in a video released on Thursday.

It is the latest in a long series of mass beheadings by ISIL, and comes two days after the group released a video showing it killing 16 people in neighbouring Iraq, drowning some of them in a cage.

Four men were killed with a rocket-propelled grenade fired at a car and seven by wrapping explosive cord around their necks and detonating it.

Three of those killed in the new video were from Jaysh al-Islam, one of the main rebel groups in the Damascus area, and a fourth from al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate and ISIL’s main rival in the country.

Sunni sheikhs pledge allegiance to ISIL in Iraq's Anbar

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Several sheikhs and tribal heads say only way to achieve peace in province is to join ISIL after meeting in Fallujah.

ISIL-Anbar

by Al Jazeera

A number of Sunni tribal sheikhs and tribes in Iraq’s Anbar province have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.

The sheikhs and tribal leaders made the pledge in a statement read out by influential Sheikh Ahmed Dara al-Jumaili, after meeting in Fallujah on Wednesday.

Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan, reporting from Baghdad, said it was not yet clear if the tribes had been forced to pledge allegiance by ISIL fighters, who control Fallujah and most of Anbar province.

“If this is a willing move then that is very worrying for the Iraqi government,” Khan said.

“The statement they issued was very strong – it condemned the government.

“It said the only way that peace would come to Anbar province is if the tribes joined ISIL.”

Influential tribe 

Khan said the inclusion of the al-Jumaili tribe in the pledge was of particular concern for Iraqi authorities, given the tribe’s influence in Anbar province.

“The al-Jumailis command a number of fighters and they have a large amount of influence over other tribes [in Anbar],” he said.

The pledge comes after a number of Sunni leaders in Anbar province publicly criticised the involvement of Shia militias in the fight to retake areas of the province from ISIL, including the provincial capital Ramadi which fell last month.

While a number of Sunni tribes have joined with government forces and Shia militias, Khan reported that a number of tribal leaders have asked for government support to fight the armed group.

“They said ‘if you arm us, if you allow us to fight as Sunnis, we will be able to get rid of ISIL quite quickly’,” he said.

“The fact that a number of these tribes have come together … and pledged allegiance to ISIL shows the level of anger the Sunni tribes feel towards the government in Baghdad.”

37K-page charge sheet against pro-IS twitter account handler Mehdi Biswas

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shamiwitness

Bengaluru: The Central Crime Branch (CCB) of Bengaluru police has filed a charge sheet against Mehdi Masroor Biswas, 24, the suspected handler of pro-Islamic State Twitter account, @ShamiWitness.

The CCB’s investigation team filed the charge sheet before a special court here on Monday, more than five-and-a-half months after Biswas’s arrest. Police had arrested Biswas, who was then working as a manufacturing executive with ITC Foods, from his one-room rented flat near Jalahalli in Gangammanagudi police limits on December 13, 2014, after Britain’s Channel 4 broadcast an interview with him.

In the interview, Biswas is heard admitting to handling @ShamiWitness, an IS propagandist Twitter account, for the last few years. Biswas’s Twitter account had more than 17,000 followers at the time of his arrest.

“The charge sheet runs into 36,986 pages, including exhibits, and contains details of about 1.22 lakh tweets and 18,000 followers. We have charged him under various sections of appropriate Acts and are confident of proving the charges in the court of law,” Joint Commissioner of (Crime) M Chandrashekhar said.

The charges

The CCB claimed that Biswas was a “representative” of Islamic State (IS) chief, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and planned to “establish” the caliphate. He made a “mockery” of those opposed to Baghdadi and the IS. He described the militants killed in Jammu and Kashmir as “martyrs” and urged Indians to support the IS. In the interview to Channel 4, he even expressed a desire to join the IS. Tests have “proved” that the voice in the interview was Biswas’s. The CCB also collected evidence about his contacts with “terrorists who know the English language”.

Biswas created “fake” e-mail IDs between January 25, 2013, and December 11, 2014, used the available content on the Internet and generated 1,22,203 tweets, besides uploading 15, 446 pictures. He used the Twitter account as a platform to “expand the base of his operations and instil fear among non-Muslims”. He “shared” the details of bordering areas of the IS to help those willing to join the organisation.

Mehdi has been charged under IPC sections 505 (statements conducing to public mischief), 121 (waging or attempting to wage war, or abetting waging of war, against the government of India), 124 (a) (sedition) and 153 (a) (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc, and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony), section 66 (f) (cyber terrorism) of IT Act, 2000, and sections 13(1)(b) (advocating, abetting, advising or inciting any unlawful activity), 18 (b) recruiting of any person or persons for terrorist activity and 39 (support given to a terrorist organisation) of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Act, 2008.

ISIL claims responsibility for Saudi mosque attack

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At least 21 people killed after suicide bomber detonates explosives during Friday prayers in Qatif province.

Qatif

by Al Jazeera

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group has claimed in an online statement that it carried out a deadly suicide bomb attack at a mosque in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province of Qatif.

The statement said “the soldiers of the Caliphate” were behind Friday’s attack by a suicide bomber “who detonated an explosives belt” in the mosque in the Shia-majority city of Qatif.

The group identified the bomber as Abu Amer al-Najdi, and published a picture of him.

Earlier on Friday, the Saudi interior ministry said in a statement that a suicide bomber had set off an explosion during weekly prayers at a Shia mosque, leaving at least 21 dead.

“It has been established that an individual detonated a bomb he was wearing under his clothes during Friday prayers at Ali Ibn Abi Taleb mosque in Kudeih in Qatif province,” the statement, which was carried by the official SPA news agency, said.

The ministry spokesman called the attack an act of terrorism, vowing that “Security authorities will spare no effort in the pursuit of all those involved in this terrorist crime”.

Pictures posted on social media purported to show the devastation, with dead bodies strewn across the floor and shattered glass covering the courtyard of the mosque.

Saudi Arabia’s Shia population is mostly based in two oasis districts of the Eastern Province, Qatif on the Gulf coast, and al-Ahsa, southwest of the provincial capital al-Khobar.

The community accounts for between 10 to 15 percent of the total population.

The attack was the first to target the Shia community in Saudi Arabia since November when gunmen killed at least eight people in an attack on a religious anniversary celebration, also in the east.

Hyping the Islamist Threat: Stenographers at Work Again: A response from JTSA

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Following is the text of the letter by Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association (JTSA) sent to Indian Express in response to the story, “First Islamic State ‘Module’”. An edited version of the letter was carried by the newspaper in the letters section today.

ISIS_EXpress

Dear Editors,

We are writing in response to the front-page sensational story about the busting of the “First Islamic State ‘Module’” in India (Indian Express, 6th May 2015). Except for the names of the accused and their alleged links to IS, it is a typical agency-fed story with vague details. Such are the ‘facts’ offered by this story: the accused visited Dubai in search of employment, but remained unsuccessful; that the accused joined an Islamic proselytizing and charitable group and was frustrated by its “quietism”. Even the story admits that these details are from a disclosure made to police, which is inadmissible under law.

The rest is of course filled in with inputs from friendly security agencies. If one were to run a simple google search on the line “they were planning strikes in India, highly placed police and intelligence sources said”, it would emerge as the single most used line in terror reporting. This, combined with the same unnamed sources revealing the dark and dangerous contents of the computers seized from the accused have now become the staple of so-called investigative reporting. It will no doubt be useful for getting extended police remands on the plea that forensic investigation is going on and the accused are required to be questioned.

The story speaks about “increasing numbers” of Indians joining the ranks of IS. Really? How many? Half a dozen? Ten? It’s a typical ruse to hype a threat. One can be sure that the reporters’ assertion about “fears more [IS modules] could be forming elsewhere” will be borne out by more arrests in the near future. Breathless reporting and commentary is bound to follow. We have seen in the past narratives about ‘terror organizations’ congealing in a similar manner, where IB dossiers and news reports feed into each other.

Years down the line, when the cases come to fruition, these investigative journalists will not bother to re-visit their own news story. We have seen this being played out in scores of so-called SIMI, HUJI, LeT cases around the country. In any case, guilt or innocence is not important, what matters is that “IS in India” becomes part of our commonsense. For some reason, Indian Mujahideen seems to have gone out of favour, and SIMI remains too mofussil for an international angle.

Its just disturbing that Indian Express should offer itself up for this.

Sd/-

Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association

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.”

New online magazine launched to “combat extremism”

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Haqiqah

by 5Pillars

A new online magazine has been launched with the aim of “reclaiming the internet” from extremists, the BBC reports.

Haqiqah has been created by British Muslim scholars who say they want to do more to educate young people about the reality of extremist movements.

They say it is a direct response to the threat of radicalisation from groups such as Islamic State. ISIS supporters have widely used social media to spread their message.

More than 100 imams gathered in London for the launch of the magazine, which has been started by the website Imams Online.

As yet it is unclear if the initiative is government-funded or not.

“Someone has to reclaim that territory from ISIS, and that can only be imams: religious leaders who guide and nourish their community,” according to Qari Asim, senior editor at imamsonline.com.

“But now that we live in a digital mobile world, some young people are not coming to the mosque so we must reach out to them – and this is the Muslims’ contribution to combat radicalisation on the net,” he said.

“We’re turning the tide,” says Shaukat Warraich, the chief editor of Imamsonline.com.

“Though we still have a way to go, we know that by taking efforts to support and mobilise the huge online Muslim population, we will eventually drown out the violent voices.”

He said that the speed and volume of communications by IS has taken everyone by surprise, with more than 100,000 pieces of information, tweets and Facebook posts coming out of Syria and Iraq every day.

Warraich said that imams had to move from the real world to have a greater presence online, where young Muslims go for much of their information.

The summit was attended by imams, including Sheikh Abdallah Bin Bayyah, president of the Forum for Promoting Peace, and Hamza Yusuf, a leading US imam and co-founder of California-based Zaytuna College.

The organisers say it brought together every group within Islam, from Deobandi, Sufi, Sunni, Shia and cultural groups, and included Somalis, Arabs, Pakistanis and converts to Islam from many nations.

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