About 60 organisations call on US president to investigate into allegations of Azerbaijan’s collaboration with ISIS

April 10, 2016 By administrator

f5709277fe5ad4_5709277fe5b11.thumb About 60 Armenian American organisations have joined together to call upon President Barack Obama to stand up to Azerbaijan’s aggression against the Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR), as well as to promote peace and foster long-term regional stability, Asbarez reports.

“In view of the renewed hostilities by Azerbaijan, which undermine our nation’s regional interests, and taking into consideration President Aliyev’s open threats to continue and further expand aggression against Nagorno Karabakh, we express our full support for the courageous efforts of the people and governments of Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh to protect their citizens and encourage the U.S. government to support the self-defense of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic,” reads the statement addressed to the US President Barack Obama.

Further, the organisations call upon Obama to immediately stop all military aid to Azerbaijan and to work with Armenia and the Nagorno Karabakh Republic on the deployment of gunfire locator. They urge the US President to immediately send emergency relief aid to the NKR, as well as to investigate the allegations that Azerbaijan has engaged ISIS fighters and to evaluate the destruction inflicted by Azerbaijan’s aggression.

“We welcome this renewed opportunity to underscore the Armenian American community’s enduring solidarity with the Armenian homeland, and – amid this latest escalation of Azerbaijani aggression – to highlight our diaspora’s rock-solid commitment to the security, the strength, and independent status of the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh,” said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian.

Karabakh has grounds to believe Azerbaijan uses Islamic terrorists on the frontline

April 4, 2016 By administrator

41767 The Spokesman of the President of Nagorno Karabakh Republic David Babayan says, Stepanakert has grounds to believe that Azerbaijan has recruited mercenaries from the Turkish “Grey Wolves” organization and “Islamic State” terrorist organization.

STEPANAKERT, APRIL 4, ARTSAKHPRESS: “Although facts have yet to be finally confirmed, there are reliable grounds to believe that mercenaries have appeared in the Azerbaijani army. Generally this is typical to Azerbaijan, mercenaries have always been there. During the 1988-1994 war, many mercenaries from Afghanistan, “Grey Wolves”, Chechen mercenaries and Al Qaeda terrorists were recruited by Azerbaijan. And during the post-war years, until recently Al Qaeda terrorists were relaxing and recovering in Azerbaijan,” Babayan noted in an interview with “Armenpress”.

According to David Babayan, the brutal and violent executions of the civilians in Talish are the actions of these types of people.

Babayan says, the relations between the mercenaries and the Azerbaijani population of the bordering villages, are tense.

“The population of the bordering villages of Azerbaijan are in panic and have left their homes, while these mercenaries are looting their houses, and there are even reports of murder and rape cases in that region. This is enough ground to say that there are mercenaries and terrorists from “Grey Wolves” and “Islamic State” on the frontline”, Babayan said.

Artsakhpress.am

Russia presented Documents on Turkey-ISIS relations presented to the UN

April 2, 2016 By administrator

NEWS DESK – ANF

Russia presented documents on Turkey-ISIS relations to the UN Security Council. The documents shed light on the illegal transfer of arms and ammunitions from Turkey to the parts of Syria under ISIS occupation.

Vitaly Çurkin, Russia’s Permanent Representative at the UN, presented the documents on the illegal transfer of arms and ammunitions from Turkey to the parts of Syria under ISIS occupation. According to these documents, Turkey sent chemicals and explosives worth 2 million US dollars to Syria mainly through Reyhanlı, Azez, Qamişlo and Jarablus.

Below are some of the statements made in the documents presented to the UN Security Council:

“Turkey is the main arms and military technology dealer to ISIS. The Turkish Intelligence uses illegal organizations and orchestrates the smuggling of arms. Cars and humanitarian aid convoys are used for the smuggling.”

“Turkish intelligence agents provided militants from the Damascus Front with RPG-7 rocket propellers and 7,62 mm and 12,7 mm caliber arms in mid-August. The Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms sponsored the delivery of 55 tons of food supplies to ISIS militants on January 25. Beşar Foundation is the main sponsor of these deliveries.”

“As the most effective institution in the delivery of military equipments and arms, Beşar Foundation sent 50 convoys of supplies to Bayırbucak and Kızıltepe Turkmens. Although the foundation lists private individuals as its main donors, it receives funds from the Turkish Intelligence Agency. The foundation opens bank accounts inside and outside Turkey with the help of the government.”

Islamic State ISIS hijacks Mosul University chemistry lab for bombs making

April 2, 2016 By administrator

Islamic State has been using a well-stocked university chemistry lab in Mosul, Iraq, for the past year to concoct a new generation of explosive devices and train militants to make them, according to US and Iraqi military officials and two people familiar with the university, The Wall Street Journal reported.
General Hatem Magsosi, Iraq’s top explosives officer, said the facilities at the University of Mosul have enhanced Islamic State’s ability to launch attacks in Iraq and to export bomb-making know-how when its fighters leave the so-called caliphate and return to their home countries.

The weaponry churned out includes peroxide-based chemical bombs and suicide-bomb vests like the ones used in the Brussels attacks and by at least some of the Paris attackers, according to the general and others in the Iraqi military, as well as an official from the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State.
Other bombs made include nitrate-based explosives and chemical weapons, Gen. Magsosi said.

“The University of Mosul is the best Daesh research center in the world,” the general said, using another name for Islamic State. “Trainees go to Raqqa, [Syria], then to Mosul university to use the existing facilities.”

Its current status isn’t clear, however. The U.S.-led coalition has targeted the campus with airstrikes more than once, most recently on March 19.

“We do know that Daesh has used some of those buildings for military purposes and we bombed them,” said Col. Steve Warren,spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq.

The Pentagon said March 19 it was targeting an Islamic State weapons-storage facility and headquarters, but gave no more detail.

Colonel Warren said the Mosul bomb-making labs are among the biggest that Islamic State has established. He said the university has a sprawling campus and the coalition would continue to target such facilities if they are identified.

Last week, the Pentagon said the U.S. military had killed a man they identified as one of Islamic State’s top military officials. It didn’t give any further information, but Gen. Magsosi said the man, known as Abu Eman, was the top expert at the Mosul bomb lab.

When Islamic State captured Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, in the summer of 2014, the university was one of the spoils. The university had a strong reputation around Iraq for its science departments, alumni say.
By March 2015, dozens of Islamic State engineers and scientists had set up a research hub in the chemistry lab, which was full of equipment and chemicals, according to the people with knowledge of the university.
Many of the regular staff, including professors specialized in organic, industrial and analytical chemistry, remained in the city at the time, but the new laboratories were staffed by Islamic State’s own men, according to one of those people.
At least since August, dozens of individuals—presumed to be foreigners because they didn’t speak Iraqi Arabic—were seen moving through the labs, the two people said. They said they were told specialized units had been set up there for chemical explosives and weapons research as well as suicide-bomb construction.
A separate group at the university’s technical college was dedicated to building suicide-bomb components, one of the two said.

During the same time frame, there has been a surge in Islamic State’s use of bombs that mix chemical precursors into an explosive powdery substance known as triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, both in Iraq and Europe.
It isn’t clear how many of these weapons, if any, can be traced to research or training conducted in Mosul.
General Magsosi says that his bomb-detection units called peroxide-based explosives the “Satan Recipe” because they are very hard to detect and they are usually so lethal.
It isn’t yet known whether the militants who carried out the Paris and Brussels attacks spent time at the Mosul facility during their time in Islamic State territory. Investigators say they suspect that at least one member of the network, Najim Laachraoui, made TATP-based explosives that were stuffed into suicide belts and suitcases and used in those attacks.

ISIS bans Christians, including Armenians from leaving Syria’s Raqqa

April 1, 2016 By administrator

209328 The handful of Christian families remaining in the Islamic State’s Syrian stronghold of Raqqa have been forbidden from fleeing the city, according to a tweet from a secret group that reports from inside the caliphate, Fox News says.

The activist group Raqqa is Being Silently Slaughtered said the black-clad terrorist army issued a decree that any Christians or Armenians still within city limits may not leave. It is believed that there are just more than 40 Christian families left in the city, and that they have been forced to register with the extremist group and to pay a “jizya,” or a minority tax in exchange for being unharmed.

“Any Christian living within Syria or Iraq is in a very dangerous and precarious position,” David Curry, president and CEO of Open Doors USA, a Christian advocacy organization, told Fox News. ‘We want to see the Christian church survive in the Middle East, especially in the areas occupied by the Islamic State.”

Raqqa first fell into rebel control in March 2013 after a battle between Al Qaeda-linked jihadi group Al Nusra and Syrian President Bashar Al Assad’s regime, becoming the first provincial capital under rebel control. ISIS has since used the city as a launching point to increase their caliphate.

According to Raqqa is Being Silently Slaughtered, there are about 43 Christian families left in the city, Fox News says. “The suffering of Christians began with ISIS control of Raqqa,” RIBSS said on its website,. “ISIS looks at Christians as infidels loyal to the West more than their loyalty to their homeland which they live.”

Fox News. ISIS blocks Christians from leaving Syrian city of Raqqa, report says

Turkey looting trade Syrian Artifacts’ via ISIS ‘Department of document exposes antique (RT EXCLUSIVE)

March 31, 2016 By administrator

Artefct stolen by Turks Watch RT video

A new trove of documents, obtained by an RT Documentary crew who recently uncovered details of illicit ISIS oil business with Turkey, sheds light on jihadists’ lucrative trade of looted antiquities along their well-established oil and weapons transit routes.

There is no official accounting that would illustrate the true scale of looting being undertaken in Syria, a land once rich with cultural treasures. However, there is no doubt that since radical Islamists established a foothold in the region under raging civil war, pieces of the world’s global heritage have ended up in the hands of terrorists.

Along with oil smuggling, a lucrative trade in antiquities has become ISIS’s source of income to support its devastating operations, many of which leveled unique historic sites such as Palmyra. Artifacts, some worth thousands of dollars apiece, have been turning up in antique markets from eastern Europe to the US.

Following the exposure of the details of the ISIS oil business, RT has exclusively obtained additional evidence that sheds light on the jihadists’ black market of plundered treasures and its transit routes via Turkey.

According to a document that the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) turned over to an RT Documentary crew, the so-called Ministry of Natural Resources established by ISIS to hold grip of the oil operations has a separate “Department of Artifacts.”

“One of the new documents is a note that has the same letterhead of ISIS’s Ministry of Natural Resources as the oil bills of sale, which we discussed last time,” a reporter, whose name and face have been obscured for security reasons, explained. The letterhead, similar to those found on oil invoices that Kurdish soldiers seized from what used to be the homes of IS fighters, is visible in the upper-right corner of the newly obtained document.

The note, apparently addressed to checkpoint sentries, asks “brothers at the border” to allow a Turkish antiquity seller into Syria for the purposes of mutual profit. It reads:

“To the brother responsible for the border, Please assist the passage of brother Hussein Hania Sarira through your post along with the man from Turkey – the artifacts trader, for the purpose of working with us in the department of artifacts in the Ministry of Natural Resources. May Allah bless you, Loving brother Abu Uafa At-Tunisi.”

While filming in the town of Shaddadi, located in the Syrian province Hasakah, RT reporters came across archaeological pieces, fragments of various ceramic pots. Abandoned in a tunnel, which ISIS fighters fled through, they were discovered by the Kurdish YPG troops after they liberated Shaddadi from jihadists in the February 2016.

No one knows where those objects originally came from, but Kurdish fighters also found an old map in French, which could date as far back as colonial times. It indicates the excavation grounds.

Besides providing revealing insight into ISIS money-making, the note supports the previous suppositions that ISIS is selling artifacts via the same trade route, which, according to what RT’s crew was told, it used to bring across weapons and supplies, right under Ankara’s nose.

The fact of Turkey’s lax control and inaction has been recalled by a young fighter in an operational video that RT also obtained from the YPG. He was filmed after being captured by Kurdish troops at the border town of Tel Abyad, which was formerly a trade corridor between Turkey and ISIS.

“They sent me to serve in Tel Abyad on the Turkish border. Sometimes we even crossed the Turkish border and served there. We saw the Turkish army passing by, but there was never any kind of conflict between us,” militant Abu Ayub al-Ansari said.

‘Kurdish advance cut ISIS communication lines with Turkish security services’

The captured terrorist admitted that losing Tel Abyad had dealt a severe blow to Islamic State activities and its trade routes, as well as direct commutation lines with representatives of Turkish security services.

“When the Kurdish militia took over Tel Abyad, the connection was lost and foreign fighters could not get in,” the Islamist fighter testified. “The communication with the Turkish security services was broken, we could only communicate via civilians or spies.”

Turkish Terrorist “ISIS” driven out of Syria’s ancient Palmyra city

March 27, 2016 By administrator

Reuters

BEIRUT: Syrian government forces drove ISIS fighters out of Palmyra Sunday, the army said, inflicting a major defeat on the militants who seized the desert city last year and dynamited its ancient temples.

The army general command said in a statement that it had restored security and stability to the city in an operation it said showed that ISIS was beginning to retreat and collapse.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there were still clashes on the eastern edge of Palmyra, around the prison and inside the airport, but the bulk of the ISIS force had withdrawn and retreated east, leaving Palmyra under President Bashar Assad’s control.

Syrian state-run television broadcast from inside Palmyra Sunday morning, showing largely deserted streets and several badly damaged buildings.

It quoted a military source saying Syrian and Russian jets were targeting ISIS fighters as they fled, hitting dozens of vehicles on the roads leading east from the city.

For government forces, the recapture of Palmyra opens up much of Syria’s eastern desert stretching to the Iraqi border to the south and the ISIS heartland of Deir al-Zor and Raqqa to the east.

It follows a three-week campaign by the army and its allies on the ground, backed by intensive Russian airstrikes, aimed at driving ISIS back.

Russia’s intervention in September turned the tide of Syria’s five-year-old conflict in Assad’s favour. Despite Moscow’s announcement that it was pulling out most military forces two weeks ago, Russian jets and helicopters carried out dozens of strikes daily over Palmyra at the height of the clashes.

BIGGEST DEFEAT

Observatory director Rami Abdulrahman said 400 ISIS fighters died in the battle for Palmyra, which he described as the biggest single defeat for the group since it declared a caliphate in areas of Syria and Iraq under its control in 2014.

The loss of Palmyra comes three months after ISIS fighters were driven out of the city of Ramadi in neighboring Iraq, the first major victory for Iraq’s army since it collapsed in the face of an assault by the militants in June 2014.

ISIS has lost ground elsewhere, including the Iraqi city of Tikrit last year and the Syrian town of al-Shadadi in February. The United States said the fall of Shadadi was part of efforts to cut ISIS’ links between its two main power centers: the cities of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria.

The Observatory said around 180 government soldiers and allied fighters were also killed in the campaign to retake Palmyra, which is home to some of the most extensive ruins of the Roman empire.

ISIS militants dynamited several monuments last year, and Syrian television broadcast footage from inside Palmyra museum Sunday showing toppled and damaged statues, as well as several smashed display cases.

Syria’s antiquities chief said this week that other ancient landmarks were still standing and pledged to restore the damaged monuments.

“Palmyra has been liberated. This is the end of the destruction in Palmyra,” Mamoun Abdelkarim told Reuters Sunday. “How many times did we cry for Palmyra? How many times did we feel despair? But we did not lose hope.”

King Abdullah of Jordan reveals that Turkey is supporting terrorism

March 25, 2016 By administrator

King Abdullah speaks to military personnel at a joint training centre in Zarqa, north-east Jordan. Photograph: Khalil Mazraawi/AFP/Getty Images

(theguardian.com) He told those present: “The problem is bigger than Isil [Islamic State], this is a third world war, this is Christians, Jews working with Muslims against outlaws.”

The memo indicates that Abdullah also told US lawmakers:

• The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, “believes in a radical Islamic solution to the problems in the region” and the “fact that terrorists are going to Europe is part of Turkish policy, and Turkey keeps getting a slap on the hand, but they get off the hook”.

• Intelligence agencies want to keep terrorist websites “open so they can use them to track extremists” and Google had told the Jordanian monarch “they have 500 people working on this”.

• Israel “looks the other way” at the al-Qaida affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra on its border with Syria because “they regard them as an opposition to Hezbollah”.

The king raised particular concerns over al-Shabaab, the Islamist militant group in Somalia that has links with both Isis and al-Qaida.

“Jordan is looking at al-Shabaab because no one was really looking at the issue, and we cannot separate this issue, and the need to look at all the hotspots in the map,” he said, adding: “We have a rapid deployment force that will stand with the British and Kenya and is ready to go over the border [into Somalia].”

ISIS-linked Turkish militant blamed for Istanbul attack

March 20, 2016 By administrator

Agence France Presse

ISTANBUL: A Turkish militant with links to the ISIS carried out the suicide bombing that killed four foreigners on a major shopping street in Istanbul, Interior Minister Efken Ala said Sunday.

“The attacker has been formally identified. He is linked to the terrorist organisation Daesh (ISIS),” Ala told a press conference.

Ala named the bomber as Mehmet Ozturk from Gaziantep, a southeastern city on Turkey’s border with Syria.

Three Israelis and one Iranian were killed, and 39 people injured, when the bomber blew himself up Saturday on Istiklal Caddesi, a bustling pedestrian street and popular meeting spot in the heart of the city.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Most of those injured in the blast on the pavement, outside a local government building, were also foreigners.

By Sunday morning, 19 people were still being treated in hospital, eight of them in critical condition, the health ministry said.

Ozturk, who was born in 1992, was identified by DNA traces found at the scene, Dogan news agency reported.

He was “not on our wanted list,” Ala said, defending the authorities against accusations of repeated security failings following six major attacks since July that have killed over 200 people.

Another alleged ISIS member, Savas Yildiz, had been initially named by Turkish media as the suspected bomber.

The minister said five people had been arrested on suspicion of links to the attack. Dogan reported that Ozturk’s father and brother were among those held.

Israeli media said the three Israeli victims – Avraham Goldman, 69, Jonathan Shor, 40 and Simha Damari, 60 – were part of a group that was on a gastronomic tour of Turkey. Two of them also had U.S. citizenship.

The bodies of the three Israelis were to be flown home Sunday for burial aboard an Israeli military jet, Israeli military sources said.

Five injured Israelis were repatriated overnight, Israel’s emergency services said.

– Government accused of ‘incompetence’ –

The Istanbul blast came just six days after 35 people were killed in a suicide car bombing in a busy square in the capital Ankara, in an attack claimed by Kurdish rebels.

“Terrorism will not win!” the defiant front page headline of pro-government newspaper Sabah read on Sunday.

The main opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet said the latest strike was proof of the government’s “incompetence” in its handling of the security crisis.

Ankara had borne the brunt of the attacks until now, being hit three times in five months.

ISIS was held responsible for Turkey’s worst ever attack, which killed 103 people at an October rally in Ankara in support of the Kurdish minority – arch-enemies of ISIS across the border in Syria.

The only attack in Istanbul since the summer, also blamed on ISIS, targeted the tourist quarter of Sultanahmet. Twelve German tourists were killed in that blast.

– ‘Terrifying’ new reality –

On Sunday morning, Istiklal Caddesi street and nearby Taksim Square, the nerve center of the European side of Istanbul, were eerily quiet, reflecting Turks’ growing nervousness in the face of the seemingly indiscriminate nature of the terrorist threat.

“You never know here it can happen. It’s terrifying,” said Ismail, a chef from a nearby restaurant.

Flowers, candles and hand-made placards calling for people not to be cowed by terrorism were left at the spot where the bomber struck.

Prime Minister Ahmet promised a determined fight “until all forms of terrorism are eradicated.”

The US and Europe, NATO allies which have been critical recently of Turkey’s slide into authoritarianism under strongman President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, assured the country of their support.

Erdogan has been accused of neglecting the fight against ISIS to wage a relentless offensive against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) since a two-year-old truce between the state and the Kurdish rebels fell apart in July.

A Kurdish rebel group, the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), claimed responsibility for the March 13 suicide car bombing in Ankara, saying it was avenging the military’s actions in the battle-scarred towns of the mainly Kurdish southeast.

TAK, which also claimed a February attack targeting troops in Ankara that killed 29 people, has ties to the PKK, which took up arms against the state in pursuit of autonomy for the Kurdish minority in 1984.

The conflict has claimed some 40,000 lives so far.

Demirtas: Turkey’s Ruling Party is ‘Extension’ of ISIS

February 25, 2016 By administrator

ERBIL (Rudaw) – Selahettin Demirtas, co-chair of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), bitterly denounced the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) on Tuesday, alleging it is little more than an “extension of” the Islamic State group (ISIS).

Demirtas was deflecting claims by the Turkish government that the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), which is affiliated to Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) had attacked Turkey.

“What kind of an enmity against Kurds is this that they (AKP) await a bombing in some part of the country just to accuse the PYD?” he asked, while addressing his party’s deputies, the Hurriyet Daily News reported.

“Did the PYD throw a single stone at you from (Syria)?” he asked rhetorically. “I am not talking about bullets, but stones.”

Referring to AKP accusations that HDP is an extension of PKK, Demirtas said that the ruling party itself was a terrorist extension.

“Is there any better terror extension than you (AKP)? You are the extension of ISIS. And this is your hypocrisy. Our party keeps calling for peace as yours is doing all this and you expect us to remain silent,” he argued.

Turkey has been bombing the armed wing of the PYD, the Peoples Protection Units (YPG), in Syria in a bid to halt its offensive against armed groups in northwestern Syria.

Following the Ankara bombing which left 28 people dead last Wednesday, the Turks stepped up those cross-border artillery attacks.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is firmly backed by the AKP, has in the past dubbed both the HDP and the PYD as mere extensions of the PKK, which is banned in Turkey and is once again fighting a war against the Turkish state.

Demirtas condemned the government’s crackdown on the PKK in Cizre and the wider Kurdish-majority southeast and claimed their repressive actions have seen another 500 young people join the PKK.

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