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Syrian troops flush out rebels from prison
Associated PressBy ZEINA KARAM | Associated Press – 2 hrs 0 mins ago..

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This Tuesday, May 14, 2013 citizen journalism image provided by Aleppo Media Center AMC which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows the mother of a Syrian rebel cleaning a rifle, in Aleppo, Syria. Activists say Syrian rebels have detonated two car bombs outside the main prison in the northern city of Aleppo and are trying to storm the facility, where hundreds of regime opponents are believed to be held. (AP Photo/Aleppo Media Center AMC)
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Associated Press/Aleppo Media Center AMC – This Tuesday, May 14, 2013 citizen journalism image provided by Aleppo Media Center AMC which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, …more
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BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian government troops on Thursday flushed out rebels who had stormed a prison compound in the northern city of Aleppo in a bid to free hundreds of political prisoners inside.

The forced retreat was the latest setback for fighters seeking to topple President Bashar Assad, whose forces have been gaining ground in the country’s civil war.

In Washington, President Barack Obama and the Turkish prime minister projected a united front on Syria, despite sharp differences about how much the U.S. should intervene.

“There’s no magic formula for dealing with an extraordinarily violent and difficult situation like Syria,” Obama said at a joint news conference with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in which he pledged that the U.S. and Turkey would ramp up pressure to oust Assad from power.

Forces loyal to Assad have recently made advances in strategically important locations across the country, including in areas around the capital, Damascus, and in the country’s south, near the border with Jordan.

The troops have been bolstered by the world’s reluctance to take forceful action to intervene in the fighting, as well as the continued support from key allies, including Russia, Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

Assad has also benefited from the rapid rise of al-Qaida-linked extremists among the rebels, which has raised alarm in the West. Militant groups, including Jabhat al-Nusra, which is designated a terrorist group by the United States, have emerged as one of the most potent fighting forces in the uprising against Assad.

A video emerged Thursday showing a Nusra Front commander killing 11 regime soldiers execution-style for alleged crimes they committed against the Syrian people.

Rami Abdul-Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, whose group distributed the video, confirmed the killings took place late last year in eastern Deir el-Zour province and identified the Nusra commander as a Saudi known by the name Qusoura al-Jazrawi. He said the man was killed in March in battles with local gunmen in the tribal area.

The video shows the soldiers, blindfolded and kneeling in a row, as the masked commander shoots each one in the back of the head with what appears to be a pistol as other fighters shout “Allahu Akbar,” or “”God is great.”

“The Shariah court of Jabhat al-Nusra … has sentenced to death these apostate soldiers that committed massacres against our brothers and families in Syria,” the executioner says before firing at the men.

The video appeared authentic and consistent with AP reporting on the incident.

Thaer al-Deiri, an activist working with the Sham News Network in Deir el-Zour, said the execution-style killings occurred five months ago in a remote area in the western part of the province. It was not clear why the video only appeared Thursday, but al-Deiri said the Nusra Front apparently had released it.

Videos of executions and torture have become increasingly common in Syria’s conflict, in which more than 70,000 people have been killed. Thursday’s video follows a number of others purporting to show execution-style killings by rebels that have emerged in recent days in a war that largely plays out online due to the restrictions placed on journalists in Syria.

International rights groups have accused the rebels of routinely capturing and sometimes killing soldiers and suspected regime informers

Rebel abuses have increased in frequency and scale in recent months, according to a report by Amnesty International in March, which said the most common abuses on the rebel side are summary executions of those rebels suspected of being government soldiers.

The abuses by the Assad regime remain far more deadly, systematic and widespread, particularly attacks on civilians with imprecise battlefield weapons, including widely banned cluster bombs, rights group say.

On Thursday, the Obama administration added Jabhat al-Nusra leader Muhammad al-Jawlani to the U.S. terrorist backlist, along with four Syrian government ministers. Assets they have in the U.S. are blocked and Americans are prohibited from doing business with them.

Meanwhile, activists said the rebels were forced to retreat from the prison in Aleppo a day after they broke into the sprawling facility by setting off two simultaneous car bombs before dawn. By nightfall, the rebels had not dislodged regime forces or freed some 4,000 prisoners held inside.

The Observatory said Syrian warplanes bombarded areas around the prison causing casualties among rebels. State news agency SANA denied opposition fighters entered the prison compound, saying regime troops had repelled the attack.

But activists said fighting near the prison continued with rebels firing locally-made rockets at regime forces inside the facility late Thursday.

Also Thursday, four people were killed and 25 others wounded by mortar shells that struck residential areas in the town of Jaramana near Damascus, the state-run news agency said.

In Washington, Erdogan was looking for stepped-up action on Syria as he met with Obama just days after a twin car bombing killed 51 people on the Turkish side of the two countries’ common border. Turkey blamed Syrian intelligence for the attacks.

The bombings Sunday in the border town of Reyhanli were the biggest incident of cross-border violence since the start of Syria’s bloody civil war, raising fears of Turkey being pulled deeper into a conflict that threatens to destabilize the region.

But the Obama administration remains reluctant to take the kind of action Turkey would like to see, including establishing a no-fly zone in Syria.

The only way to resolve the crisis is for Assad to hand over power to a transitional government, Obama said.

“We both agree that Assad needs to go,” the U.S. president said.

Associated Press writer Desmond Butler in Washington contributed to this report.

source: ht tp://news.yahoo.com/syrian-troops-flush-rebels-prison-222354801.html

Cuban foreign minister calls on US to close Guantanamo prison
A detainee is carried by military police after being interrogated by officials at Camp X-Ray at the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (File photo)

A detainee is carried by military police after being interrogated by officials at Camp X-Ray at the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (File photo)Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla

A detainee is carried by military police after being interrogated by officials at Camp X-Ray at the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (File photo)

Wed May 1, 2013 9:25PM GMT

Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla has called on the United States to close its infamous Guantanamo Bay prison and return the military base to Havana.

“We are deeply concerned about the legal limbo that supports the permanent and atrocious violation of human rights at the illegal naval base in Guantanamo, a Cuba territory that was usurped by the United States, a centre of torture and deaths of prisoners who are under custody,” Parrilla said in a speech to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Wednesday, AFP reported.

Parrilla made the comments a day after US President Barack Obama promised to make a new attempt to shut down the military prison.

The United States holds 166 men at the prison, with most of the captives being held without any charges or trial.

The 166 people had been detained in Guantanamo for 10 years, “without any guarantees, without being tried by a court or the right to legal defense,” the foreign minister pointed out.

“That prison and military base should be shut down and that territory should be returned to Cuba,” he said.

Parrilla also condemned the force-feeding of around 20 hunger strikers who, like the majority of the detainees in the prison, have been refusing food for weeks.

Around 130 prisoners are on a hunger strike to protest against prison conditions and their indefinite confinement.

On Tuesday, the United Nations said that the force-feeding of Guantanamo Bay prisoners was against international law and a violation of human rights.

“If it’s clearly against the will of the people who are being forcibly fed, then in a view of the World Medical Association and indeed our view, this would amount to cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment which is not permissible under international law,” UN spokesman on human rights Rupert Colville said.

On March 11, attorneys for more than a dozen of the prisoners said that the hunger strike was prompted by a series of searches that began on February 6, in which a number of personal items, including books, CDs, blankets, and legal mail, were confiscated.

The Guantanamo detention facility was initially established on January 11, 2002 by former US President George W. Bush to hold suspects captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Obama famously promised in early 2009 to close the military’s detention facility within 12 months, but four years on, the controversial prison remains open. He has put the blame on Congress for his failure to make good on his promise.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/05/01/301338/cuba-fm-urges-us-to-close-gitmo/

Cuban foreign minister calls on US to close Guantanamo prison
A detainee is carried by military police after being interrogated by officials at Camp X-Ray at the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (File photo)

A detainee is carried by military police after being interrogated by officials at Camp X-Ray at the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (File photo)Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla

A detainee is carried by military police after being interrogated by officials at Camp X-Ray at the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (File photo)

Wed May 1, 2013 9:25PM GMT

Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla has called on the United States to close its infamous Guantanamo Bay prison and return the military base to Havana.

“We are deeply concerned about the legal limbo that supports the permanent and atrocious violation of human rights at the illegal naval base in Guantanamo, a Cuba territory that was usurped by the United States, a centre of torture and deaths of prisoners who are under custody,” Parrilla said in a speech to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Wednesday, AFP reported.

Parrilla made the comments a day after US President Barack Obama promised to make a new attempt to shut down the military prison.

The United States holds 166 men at the prison, with most of the captives being held without any charges or trial.

The 166 people had been detained in Guantanamo for 10 years, “without any guarantees, without being tried by a court or the right to legal defense,” the foreign minister pointed out.

“That prison and military base should be shut down and that territory should be returned to Cuba,” he said.

Parrilla also condemned the force-feeding of around 20 hunger strikers who, like the majority of the detainees in the prison, have been refusing food for weeks.

Around 130 prisoners are on a hunger strike to protest against prison conditions and their indefinite confinement.

On Tuesday, the United Nations said that the force-feeding of Guantanamo Bay prisoners was against international law and a violation of human rights.

“If it’s clearly against the will of the people who are being forcibly fed, then in a view of the World Medical Association and indeed our view, this would amount to cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment which is not permissible under international law,” UN spokesman on human rights Rupert Colville said.

On March 11, attorneys for more than a dozen of the prisoners said that the hunger strike was prompted by a series of searches that began on February 6, in which a number of personal items, including books, CDs, blankets, and legal mail, were confiscated.

The Guantanamo detention facility was initially established on January 11, 2002 by former US President George W. Bush to hold suspects captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Obama famously promised in early 2009 to close the military’s detention facility within 12 months, but four years on, the controversial prison remains open. He has put the blame on Congress for his failure to make good on his promise.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/05/01/301338/cuba-fm-urges-us-to-close-gitmo/

Cuban foreign minister calls on US to close Guantanamo prison
A detainee is carried by military police after being interrogated by officials at Camp X-Ray at the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (File photo)

A detainee is carried by military police after being interrogated by officials at Camp X-Ray at the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (File photo)Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla

A detainee is carried by military police after being interrogated by officials at Camp X-Ray at the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (File photo)

Wed May 1, 2013 9:25PM GMT

Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla has called on the United States to close its infamous Guantanamo Bay prison and return the military base to Havana.

“We are deeply concerned about the legal limbo that supports the permanent and atrocious violation of human rights at the illegal naval base in Guantanamo, a Cuba territory that was usurped by the United States, a centre of torture and deaths of prisoners who are under custody,” Parrilla said in a speech to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Wednesday, AFP reported.

Parrilla made the comments a day after US President Barack Obama promised to make a new attempt to shut down the military prison.

The United States holds 166 men at the prison, with most of the captives being held without any charges or trial.

The 166 people had been detained in Guantanamo for 10 years, “without any guarantees, without being tried by a court or the right to legal defense,” the foreign minister pointed out.

“That prison and military base should be shut down and that territory should be returned to Cuba,” he said.

Parrilla also condemned the force-feeding of around 20 hunger strikers who, like the majority of the detainees in the prison, have been refusing food for weeks.

Around 130 prisoners are on a hunger strike to protest against prison conditions and their indefinite confinement.

On Tuesday, the United Nations said that the force-feeding of Guantanamo Bay prisoners was against international law and a violation of human rights.

“If it’s clearly against the will of the people who are being forcibly fed, then in a view of the World Medical Association and indeed our view, this would amount to cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment which is not permissible under international law,” UN spokesman on human rights Rupert Colville said.

On March 11, attorneys for more than a dozen of the prisoners said that the hunger strike was prompted by a series of searches that began on February 6, in which a number of personal items, including books, CDs, blankets, and legal mail, were confiscated.

The Guantanamo detention facility was initially established on January 11, 2002 by former US President George W. Bush to hold suspects captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Obama famously promised in early 2009 to close the military’s detention facility within 12 months, but four years on, the controversial prison remains open. He has put the blame on Congress for his failure to make good on his promise.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/05/01/301338/cuba-fm-urges-us-to-close-gitmo/

Brussels:

Pope Benedict will go to jail for twenty five years for his role in Crimes against Humanity, and Vatican wealth and property is to be seized, according to today’s historic verdict of the International Common Law Court of Justice.

The Brussels-based Court handed down a unanimous guilty verdict from its Citizen Jurors and ordered the citizens’ arrest of thirty Defendants commencing March 4 in a Court Order issued to them today.

The verdict read in part,

“We the Citizen Jury find that the Defendants in this case are guilty of the two indictments, that is, they are guilty of committing or aiding and abetting Crimes against Humanity, and of being part of an ongoing Criminal Conspiracy”

The Jury ruled that each Defendant receive a mandatory twenty five year prison sentence without parole, and have all their personal assets seized.

The Court went on to declare in its Order No. 022513-001,

“The Defendants are ordered to surrender themselves voluntarily to Peace Officers and Agents authorized by this COURT, having been found Guilty as charged.

“The Defendants have seven days from the issuing of this ORDER, until March 4, 2103, to comply. After March 4, 2013, an International Arrest Warrant will be issued against these Defendants”.

The guilty parties include Elizabeth Windsor, Queen of England, Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, and the head officers of the Catholic, Anglican and United Church of Canada. (A complete copy of the Verdict, the Court Order and a list of the Defendants is enclosed on the accompanying you tube link).

The guilty verdict followed nearly a month of deliberations by more than thirty sworn Citizen Jurors of the 150 case exhibits produced by Court Prosecutors.

These exhibits detailed irrefutable proof of a massive criminal conspiracy by the Defendants’ institutions to commit and conceal Genocide on generations of children in so-called Indian residential schools across Canada.

None of the Defendants challenged or disputed a Public Summons issued to them last September; nor did they deny the charges made against them, or offer counter evidence to the Court.

“Their silence told me a lot. Why wouldn’t innocent people defend their own reputation when accused of such horrible things?” commented one Juror, based in England.

“These crimes were aimed at children, and were a cold and calculated plan to wipe out Indians who weren’t Christians. And the defendants clearly are still covering up this crime. So we felt we had to do more than slap their wrist. The whole reign of terror by state-backed churches that are above the law has to end, because children still suffer from it”.

The Court’s judgement declares the wealth and property of the churches responsible for the Canadian genocide to be forfeited and placed under public ownership, as reparations for the families of the more than 50,000 children who died in the residential schools.

To enforce its sentence, the Court has empowered citizens in Canada, the United States, England, Italy and a dozen other nations to act as its legal agents armed with warrants, and peacefully occupy and seize properties of the Roman Catholic, Anglican and United Church of Canada, which are the main agents in the deaths of these children.

“This sentence gives a legal foundation and legitimacy to the church occupations that have already begun by victims of church torture around the world” commented Kevin Annett, the chief adviser to the Prosecutor’s Office, who presented its case to the world. (see http://www.itccs.org, November 6 and January 30 postings)

“The verdict of the Court is clearly that these criminal church bodies are to be legally and practically disestablished, and their stolen wealth reclaimed by the people. Justice has finally begun to be be served. The dead can now rest more easily.”

Court officers are delivering the Order to all the Defendants this week, including to the Canadian Prime Minister, the Queen of England and to Joseph Ratzinger, the retiring Pope Benedict who is avoiding arrest within the Vatican after suddenly resigning two weeks ago.

The citizens’ arrests of these and other Defendants will commence on March 4 if they do not surrender themselves and their assets, as per the Court Order.

These actions will be filmed and posted at here in the coming week, along with further updates from the Court and its Citizen Agents.

Please see the accompanying you tube video.

Issued by the Central Office,

The International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State

25 February, 2013

Brussels

source »

“I don’t know whether the two women should have been sent to a prison,” Merkel said during public talks with the Russian president before the two retreated for closed-door talks. “I don’t know whether the same would have happened to them in Germany.

“It would have generated a debate about whether that should go on in a church, no question. But should you really have to spend two years in a labour camp for it?”

Putin retorted sharply by saying: “We hear what our partners say. But do they, being so far away, hear about what’s going on?”

“Mrs Chancellor spoke about the girls jailed for their performance in a church. Does she know that one of them had hanged a Jew in effigy and said that Moscow should be rid of such people?” Putin asked. “Neither we, nor you, can support people who assume an anti-Semitic position,” said Putin, who served as a KGB agent in East Germany in the 1980s. “I ask you to keep that in mind.”

Putin has repeatedly supported the sentence against Pussy Riot. Three of the band’s members – Maria Alyokhina, Nadia Tolokonnikova, and Yekaterina Samutsevich – were sentenced to two years in prison in August for singing an anti-Putin “punk prayer” inside a Moscow cathedral. Samutsevich was later given a suspended sentence and released.

The Russian president appeared to be referring to a September 2008 performance by the radical art group Voina, of which Tolokonnikova and Samutsevich were once a part. The group staged a mock hanging of five men in a Moscow supermarket as commentary on the city’s repressive social policies.

“In the light of day, in the lighting department, three migrant workers and two homosexuals, one of whom was also a Jew, were killed by hanging,” a description of the performance reads. Moscow has been criticised for failing to protect its many migrant workers from ex-Soviet states, who face regular violence, and has banned gay pride parades for 100 years. Video of the performance shows Tolokonnikova and Samutsevich in the group.

Merkel is the first western leader to visit Putin since his contentious return to the presidency earlier this year. The Russian leader’s reputation has plummeted abroad amid a growing crackdown on opposition groups.

The German parliament has urged Merkel to take a tougher stance with Russia. Speaking to the press following talks with Putin, Merkel said she had raised concerns over a series of new laws. Critics have called out new harsh laws on treason, nongovernmental organisations and the internet.

Merkel and Putin have long had a contentious relationship, unlike Putin’s chummy ties with former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who joined Nord Stream, a Gazprom-led pipeline project, upon leaving office in 2005.

Merkel appeared to urge Putin to take criticism more lightly: “If I were offended every time I was criticised, I wouldn’t last three days as chancellor”.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/16/vladimir-putin-angela-merkel-pussy-riot

Posted GMT 11-14-2012 16:55:27

AMARILLO, Texas (AP) — A former Texas college student accused of trying to make a bomb and possibly target a former U.S. president with the goal of jihad was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison.

Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari was sentenced in Amarillo, where jurors convicted him in June of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. Prosecutors say he had collected bomb-making material and researched possible targets, including the Dallas home of former President George W. Bush.

Aldawsari, 22, stood silently as the verdict was read. His hair long and wearing a full beard, the former student from Saudi Arabia appeared to have lost a lot of weight.

He came to the U.S. legally in 2008 to study chemical engineering at Texas Tech University. He was arrested in Lubbock in February 2011, after federal agents secretly searched his apartment and found explosive chemicals, wiring, a hazmat suit and clocks, along with videos showing how to make the chemical explosive TNP.

Investigators say Aldawsari’s goal was to carry out jihad, though his attorneys claimed he was a harmless failure who never came close to attacking anyone.

FBI bomb experts have said the amounts of chemicals in the case would have yielded almost 15 pounds of explosive — about the same amount used per bomb in the 2005 London subway attacks. He also tried to order phenol, a chemical that can be used to make explosives.

Court records show that his emails and journal contained the explosive’s recipe.

Prosecutors said other targets he researched included nuclear power plants and the homes of three former soldiers who were stationed at Abu Ghraib prison.

During his trial, Aldawsari’s attorneys acknowledged that their client had intent, but they argued that he never took the “substantial step” needed to convict him.

Aldawsari wrote in his journal that he had been planning a terror attack in the U.S. for years, even before he came to the country on a scholarship, and that it was “time for jihad,” or holy war, according to court documents. He bemoaned the plight of Muslims and said he was influenced by Osama bin Laden’s speeches.

Authorities said Aldawsari purchased bottles of sulfuric and nitric acids — chemicals that can be combined with phenol to create TNP.

Investigators say they were tipped to his online purchases by chemical company Carolina Biological Supply and shipping company Con-way Freight on Feb. 1, 2011. The chemical company reported a $ 435 suspicious purchase to the FBI, while the shipping company notified Lubbock police and the FBI because it appeared the order wasn’t intended for commercial use.

Court records show that Aldawsari had successfully ordered 30 liters of nitric acid and three gallons of concentrated sulfuric acid in December 2010.

At his trial, prosecutors played recordings of a frustrated Aldawsari complaining to the supply company when his order was held up. He had allegedly told the company he wanted the phenol for research to develop a cleaning solution.

Aldawsari had transferred from Texas Tech in early 2011 to nearby South Plains College, where he was studying business. A Saudi industrial company was paying his tuition and living expenses in the U.S. The judge moved his trial to Amarillo, about 120 north of Lubbock.