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Amal Clooney Accuses a French Company, but Ignores the Crimes of the US and UK

By Steven Sahiounie | Strategic Culture Foundation | January 5, 2024

Amal Clooney, the international human rights lawyer, is representing victims of mass atrocities, including genocide and sexual violence, from the Iraqi Yazidi community who are seeking accountability for crimes perpetrated by ISIS.

The case alleges French conglomerate Lafarge SA conspired to provide material and funds to support ISIS terrorist campaigns against the Yazidis.

“Lafarge has admitted to a conspiracy that aided ISIS by providing millions of dollars in cash to ISIS, and is alleged to have provided ISIS with cement to construct underground tunnels and bunkers used to shelter ISIS members and hold hostages, including captured Yazidis,” a news release stated.

Clooney has focused on the French cement company which supported ISIS in Syria in order to remain in business during the war.

The crime committed by Lafarge is serious, but it is just one small incidence of western entities supporting terrorists in Syria following Radical Islam. Clooney is singling out a French company, and France is allied with both the U.S. and UK. While the crime affected hundreds of Yazidis, the same crime carried out by the U.S., UK and EU has affected millions of Syrian citizens.

The Free Syrian Army (FSA) forces were caught selling arms to the ISIS.

Weapons sent to terrorists in Syria from the U.S. directly allowed ISIS to obtain substantial amounts of sophisticated supplies which they used against civilians.

A study by Conflict Armament Research found that anti-tank weapons given to the ‘rebels’ in Syria by the U.S. ended up in the possession of the ISIS within two months of leaving the factory.

The U.S. provided extensive lethal and non-lethal aid to many terrorist groups fighting against the Syrian government. The CIA ran a covert program Timber Sycamore to arm, fund and train terrorists in Syria. U.S. President Trump shut the program down in 2017.

ISIS, Al Qaeda, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Jabhat al-Nusra and the FSA fighting in Syria all shared the same political platform: to remove the Syrian government in Damascus, and replace it with a Islamic governing system. In March 2011, the U.S. and NATO began a war in Syria for the purpose of regime change. It was not successful, and the same government in Damascus has remained. However, the U.S.-NATO war was very successful in destroying the country, ruining the economy, killing thousands and sending the largest Syrian migrant wave to Europe in history.

U.S. President Barak Obama praised the FSA as ‘moderate’ rebels fighting for freedom and democracy. But, early on the FSA demonstrated that they were fighting to kill Christians and non-Sunni Muslim minorities, and had no interest in lofty ideals of freedom and democracy. They wanted to over throw the Damascus government with the support of the Obama administration, and realize the dream of a Sunni Muslim governing system which was based on Islamic Law, not civil codes.

In April 2014, investigative journalist Seymour M. Hersh exposed the Obama-Clinton “Rat Line”, which was a CIA weapons highway into Syria, serving the terrorists fighting for Obama’s regime change goal. Weapons and ammunition was sent from Libya to Syria via southern Turkey, and the terrorists on the receiving end were affiliated with Al Qaeda, and later aligned with ISIS.

Hersh revealed a 2012 agreement by Obama, and supported by the UK spy agency, MI6, which was responsible for getting weapons from Libya into Syria.

In 2013, Clooney was appointed to a number of United Nations commissions, including as adviser to Special Envoy Kofi Annan on Syria. The U.S. and UK involvement in supporting the terrorists who would later fight alongside ISIS was not any secret.

In 2016, Obama signed into law a defense policy bill which led to U.S. weapons provided to ‘rebels’ ending up in the hands of terrorists following Radical Islam, who became brothers in arms on the Syrian battlefields.

The Yazidis have suffered greatly and should receive justice. Clooney has focused on this one small incidence of ISIS benefiting from a French business. Clooney has ignored that the U.S., UK and their western democratic allies supported, funded, trained and weaponized terrorists in Syria which directly benefitted ISIS.

Where is the international court case to serve justice for the hundreds of thousands of Syrians dead, maimed, raped, kidnapped and made homeless by the FSA and their allies Al Qaeda and ISIS?

Clooney chose an easy win with the case against Lafarge. Clooney said she hopes to get a financial award for the Yazidis from her case so they can rebuild their lives.

The U.S. has prevented the Syrian people from rebuilding any hospital, school or home because of the U.S. imposed sanctions which prevent importing any products for reconstruction. The U.S. sanctions against Syria prevent any wealthy Arab country, or investor, from developing any reconstruction project to benefit the Syrian civilians, such as the repair of the water infrastructure in Aleppo. Last summer, Aleppo suffered cholera because the water plant is in need of repair.

The Syrians have no court case pending, and have no hope of any recovery from their suffering caused by the U.S.-NATO attack on the Syrian people for regime change.

January 6, 2024 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Wars for Israel | , , , , | 1 Comment

Why a global anti-Hamas coalition pushed by Macron is a bad idea

By Rachel Marsden | RT | November 2, 2023

Last week, standing beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a visit to Jerusalem, French President Emmanuel Macron suggested recycling the global coalition of 86 nations against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) to focus on Hamas.

“Hamas is a terrorist group, whose objective is the destruction of the state of Israel. This is also the case of ISIS, of Al-Qaeda, of all those associated with them, either by actions or by intentions,” Macron said, betraying a short and selective memory. The stated goal of IS wasn’t to eradicate Israel – it was to establish a caliphate in Syria and Iraq, then broaden it into Arab countries. IS was first and foremost a threat to the stability of Syria – the same country whose government the US and its Western allies actively hindered in its fight against terrorism by making a failed attempt at overthrowing President Bashar Assad through Pentagon and CIA-backed training and equipping of “Syrian rebel” jihadists. As for Al-Qaeda, Israel was even reportedly at one point helping treat wounded militants from the group who were fighting their common enemy, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, in Syria – in turn effectively hindering the fight against IS, as Syria and Hezbollah worked to destroy it.

The Global Coalition against Daesh (another name for IS), founded in 2014, explicitly excluded Russia, whose invitation by Damascus to help it eradicate the terrorist threat can be largely credited for Syria’s stabilization, and the fact that it’s rare to even hear any talk of IS anymore. Russia’s involvement in neutralizing the terrorist group, coupled with former US President Donald Trump’s refusal to continue funding Washington’s incursion into Syria, beyond hunkering down in the oil-rich Kurdish part, was the ultimate key to IS’ defeat. So with apparently little left for it to do now, Macron recommends that the coalition that mostly sat and watched – while Russia, Iran, and Syria did the heavy lifting – take on Hamas. Who does he think is going to do the work this time? Russia, which is still excluded from the coalition? Syria, which has recently taken incoming missile fire from Israel? Iran’s Hezbollah allies, who lost 1,000 men fighting IS in Syria – and whom Netanyahu has placed in the same basket as Hamas as an enemy of Israel? Good luck with that.

So with the most effective anti-IS fighters excluded from fighting Hamas, who’s left in Macron’s proposed coalition? There’s the Global South, including some African countries that just kicked out French troops for their own failed counterterrorism missions which had led to multiple coups and the flourishing of jihadism. It’s doubtful these nations will now be keen to embark on yet another counterterrorism mission alongside the same forces that they just expelled.

Then there are all those members of the international community who are quietly thinking what United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres dared to say aloud last week – that Hamas’ brutal attack on October 7, which left close to a thousand civilians and hundreds of military and security personnel dead, “did not happen in a vacuum.” He was, of course, hinting at Israel’s longstanding, UN-recognized oppression of civilians in Gaza. His statement begs yet another question: Is Hamas really a global threat? Or is it just Israel’s problem?

Anti-Israel unrest has reverberated outside of the immediate conflict zone, including in Western Europe and the US, but these protests have nothing to do with Hamas. Instead, citizens elsewhere in the world are merely reacting to perceived injustices, particularly in light of what they consider to be an overwhelmingly pro-Israel bias on the part of the Western establishment, which initially and drastically minimized concerns over the protection of Palestinian civilians. So any global action against Hamas seems futile.

The anti-IS coalition targeted the terror group’s propaganda, with its website stating that IS’ “use of social media tied to acts of terrorism is well-documented. In response, Coalition partners are working together to expose the falsehoods that lie at the heart” of its ideology. They’re free to do that, but why bother when there’s already open debate among those who have the opportunity to see reports from the ground and assess the situation for themselves? Governments can’t be trusted not to promote their own propaganda under the guise of combating it – all to secure an advantage for their preferred narrative.

Just consider the recent example of propaganda emitted by one of the self-styled gatekeepers of truth: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “Russia and Hamas are alike… their essence is the same,” she said. Nah, actually they aren’t the same at all. And not even Israel has been saying that, but still, “Vladimir Putin wants to wipe Ukraine from the map. Hamas, supported by Iran, wants to wipe Israel from the map,” von der Leyen explained. Besides the hot take on Putin’s intentions regarding Ukraine, that’s like saying that since Warren Buffet has a bank account, and I have a bank account, then I’m also a billionaire. This is exactly the kind of nonsense that Western anti-propaganda campaigns end up spewing.

The anti-IS coalition was made to tackle IS. If that’s no longer an issue, then just toss it in the trash. How many interventionist entities does the West need to spearhead, anyway? There are already more than enough vehicles and coordination mechanisms for intelligence sharing, propagandizing, and security operations. Besides, there’s no proof that better intelligence could have helped Israel when Egyptian and American officials have claimed that Netanyahu had warning of the impending Hamas attack. About the only thing that more useless Western-led bureaucracy would help is the West’s own hunger for more of it.

Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English.

November 2, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Islamophobia, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

US Provides Data of Syrian, Russian Military’s Movement to Jihadists – Russian Intel Head

Sputnik – 12.10.2023

MOSCOW – The United States is providing jihadists with data on the places of dislocation and movement routes of the Syrian and Russian military in Syria, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Director Sergei Naryshkin said on Thursday.

“Work is underway to destabilize the situation, including through the capabilities of ISIS [Islamic State, a terrorist group banned in Russia]. Information about places of dislocation and movement routes of the Syrian army and Russian military is being transmitted to the jihadists,” Naryshkin was quoted as saying by the SVR.

US President Joe Biden’s administration is aimed at disrupting the emerging positive dynamics around and inside Syria, Naryshkin added.

October 12, 2023 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Syrian army mobilizes in response to ISIS, US threat

The Cradle | August 14, 2023

The Syrian Army has reinforced its positions with soldiers and military equipment in the eastern countryside of Deir Ezzor in response to increased attacks by ISIS and a possible assault on Al-Bukamal by US occupation forces and their allies, Syria’s Al-Watan newspaper reported on 14 August.

Local sources reported that a huge military convoy of the Syrian army arrived yesterday evening in the desert of Al-Mayadeen on the Homs-Deir Ezzor Road. The convoy consisted of buses and troop vehicles, in addition to field artillery, mortars, and modern tanks.

According to Al-Watan, the Syrian army is preparing to repel a possible military assault that US forces and its proxy armed groups, including the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), may launch from the eastern bank of the Euphrates River toward the city of Al-Bukamal. The Syrian army expects US forces and their allies to try to capture Al-Bukamal, and thereby block the only remaining border crossing between Syria and Iraq under Syrian government control.

The military reinforcements arrived two days after an attack by ISIS militants on a military bus Thursday evening, which led to the killing of 33 Syrian soldiers in the Al-Mayadeen desert as they traveled to a base at the T2 pumping station southeast of Deir Ezzor.

The T2 pumping station was an ISIS stronghold until its capture by the Syrian army in 2017.

ISIS also launched an attack on a checkpoint of the Syrian army last Wednesday near the village of Maadan Ateeq, east of Raqqa, killing ten Syrian soldiers.

The Syrian military build-up in Deir Ezzor also comes as the Russian military targeted ISIS positions in the region from warships anchored off the Syrian coast. Russian forces fired highly destructive precision missiles in the early hours of yesterday, targeting the extremist organization in the deserts of Hama and Homs.

According to the UK-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (SOHR), Syria is witnessing the “most violent” escalation in ISIS activities since it was “eliminated geographically” in 2019.

According to the Syrian military, ISIS enjoys logistical support and training from US forces occupying the illegal Al-Tanf military base at the intersection of the borders between Syria, Jordan, and Iraq.

The US acknowledges training armed groups it calls the Free Syrian Army (FSA) inside the Al-Tanf base, while protecting a 55 km area around it.

Previous US support for ISIS was illustrated by a 2012 US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document that indicated a Salafist principality like the one established by ISIS in 2014 would emerge in western Iraq and eastern Syria. The document indicated that this would be a positive outcome in the view of the US and its regional partners as part of their covert war against the Syrian government, which began in 2011.

For years, ISIS was able to quickly acquire US and Saudi-supplied weapons allegedly sent to other extremist groups in Syria fighting under the Free Syrian Army (FSA) brand. In some cases, US and Saudi-supplied weapons purchased in eastern Europe reached ISIS within two months, according to a study by the UK-based Conflict Armament Research.

August 14, 2023 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , , | Leave a comment

Extremists who left Syria to fight in Ukraine realize journey ‘futile’: Expert

The Cradle | June 21, 2023

Egyptian researcher and political analyst Ahmad Sultan was quoted as saying on 21 June that many of the extremist militants who left Syria for the Ukrainian battlefield last year have realized that the fight against Russia is futile.

“The jihadists have realized that the situation in Ukraine is difficult for them, and that the arena there is not suitable for them, and that their fight against Russia is a lost battle,” Sultan said.

“Among the jihadists who returned [to Syria] recently is the leader Abdel Hakim al-Shishani … he is one of the most prominent leaders who left with their fighters from Idlib to Ukraine,” he added.

“Dozens of foreign jihadists, especially Chechens, led by Abdel Hakim al-Shishani, the leader of the Soldiers of the Caucasus group, left Idlib in northern Syria and relocated to the fronts against Russian forces in Ukraine,” Sultan went on to explain, adding that Shishani made his way back to Syria “recently.”

Shishani is a Chechen militant leader who was in charge of the Idlib-based group of foreign fighters, Soldiers of the Caucasus.

At the start of the year, Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar reported that after several months of disappearance, the well-known Chechen extremist appeared in Ukraine as part of Kiev’s ‘international legion.’ The Chechen commander appeared in a video posted by the official Twitter account of Ukraine’s defense intelligence.

According to Sultan, Shishani and his Soldiers of the Caucasus were stationed on the fronts near Bakhmut, the eastern Ukrainian city which just last month fell to Russian forces.

“The available data confirms that there are countries that facilitated the process of these fighters’ exit from Syria to Ukraine and that the process of transferring foreign fighters was planned by intelligence services affiliated with countries involved in the conflict inside Ukraine,” the Egyptian researcher continued.

According to Al-Akhbar’s January report, Turkish intelligence played a leading role in facilitating the transfer of militants from Syria to Ukraine.

Sultan adds that these cross-country transfers of militants were ignored by the US coalition operating in Syria, which he said “raises questions.”

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, hundreds of Syria-based militants belonging to ISIS, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), and other groups, have made their way to the eastern European country.

“The transfer of foreign fighters suggests that there is an attempt to recreate the scenario of the Afghan-Soviet war in Ukraine. There are fundamental differences between the two cases, but this did not prevent some countries from using the same tactics,” he concluded.

During the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, foreign militants joined the Afghan side under heavy backing from the US and Saudi Arabia.

US-backing for the ‘Mujahideen’ in Afghanistan throughout the 1980s resulted in the formation of what is today known as Al-Qaeda. This was admitted by Hilary Clinton in 2009.

June 21, 2023 Posted by | Russophobia | , , , , | 1 Comment

The Leaked Plan to Attack Russians in Syria Revealed

By Steven Sahiounie | Strategic Culture Foundation | May 1, 2023

The war in Ukraine was planned to extend to Syria. Leaked secret documents revealed the Ukrainian military were planning to attack Russian troops stationed in Syria in an effort to distract Russia and cause losses and casualties far from the battlefield in eastern Europe.

Jack Teixeira, a young member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, was arrested by the FBI in the investigation of leaked classified military intelligence which were viewed on the Discord chat platform.

Among the documents were details of the planning and assessment of attacks on Russian military capabilities in Syria, to be carried out by the U.S. military partner there, the SDF.

The SDF control the northeast quarter of Syria and the troops are made up of about one-third Kurds and two-thirds Arab tribal members. The Kurdish semi-autonomous region in Syria was created by the U.S. alliance with the Communist administration of the Kurds under Ilham Ahmed and General Mazloum Abdi.

The area the U.S.-Kurdish alliance controls is not populated by a majority of Kurds, but the Kurds do represent a sizable ethnic population. Once they became financially and militarily supported by the U.S., the Kurds were able to carry out a program of ethnic cleansing which displaced the original inhabitants from their homes, lands and businesses.

The SDF working alongside the U.S. occupation forces in Syria were planned to be supplied with drones and other equipment to attack the Russian troops in Syria. The Russian airbase on the coast in Latakia was cited to be attacked as well as other areas.

The Ukrainian military intelligence had planned the attacks in Syria, using the U.S. allied paramilitary force the SDF, for the purpose of opening a second front in the war with Russia. The planning strategized that Russia would be distracted by attacks on its forces in Syria, and become weaker in their military capabilities.

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, a former TV comedienne, cancelled the operations while still in the planning stages.

The Russian military was invited into Syria in October 2015, when the terrorist group Jibhat al-Nusra was at its height and threatened to over-run the coastal region. After the Russian military arrived in Syria, the Russian forces alongside the Syrian Arab Army were successful in pushing the terrorists back. Today, the central government in Damascus controls almost all of Syria with the exception of the Kurdish region previously described, and the small province of Idlib in the north west which is under the occupation of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the current name of Jibhat al-Nusra. Mohammed al-Julani is in control of Idlib. He started off in Iraq with Al Qaeda, then was sent to Syria by the leader of ISIS, and finally is holding about 3 million civilian hostage in Idlib, while being supplied with humanitarian aid by the U.S., UN, EU and other charities.

The Russian presence in Syria today can be termed a peace-keeping mission. They still attack ISIS and terrorist positions, but most of their presence is in holding the peace between the Kurds and their sworn enemy, Turkey. If it was not for the Russian military presence in Syria, Turkey would have invaded even further into the Kurdish region, and there could have been massacres.

Russia has a working relationship with Syria, Iran and Turkey and has been negotiating for a peaceful settlement to the Syrian crisis.

Turkey had been a U.S. ally, but has felt betrayed by the U.S. support of the Kurdish paramilitary SDF, which consists of the core military group YPG, which is aligned with the PKK, a terrorist group responsible for about 30,000 deaths over decades.

Had the Ukrainian plan to attack Russians in Syria been carried out, the response could have been a joint Turkish-Russian military operation against the Kurds, which could have resulted in U.S. military deaths or injuries, and would likely have ended with the U.S. occupation forces withdrawal to Iraq.

If Zelensky hadn’t stopped the plans, Syria could have regained the north east quarter from the Kurds, and Turkey could have vanquished the SDF and YPG. That would then leave Idlib and the terrorists sitting on the border without their U.S. supporters. It could have resulted in Idlib’s terrorist occupiers fleeing under cover of darkness, and the 3 million hostages being set free after more than a decade of captivity.

Under the plan, the SDF asked for protection that they would not be revealed as the source of the planned attacks on the Russian military in Syria, and instead make it appear that the U.S. protected terrorists holding Idlib would be blamed.

Turkey has military troops occupying Idlib, and should the plan have been carried out, Russia could have attacked Idlib as the source of the planned attacks, and this would have been a direct confrontation between Turkey and Russia on Syria soil.

The U.S. may have ordered Zelenskyy to halt the planned attacks on Russians in Syria. Washington, DC. is insisting to remain occupying bases in Syria to prevent Syria from access to its energy resources, and thus preventing Syria from recovery from the U.S.-NATO attack on Syria beginning in 2011. The U.S. has failed in their plan to install an American puppet in Syria, but they were successful in making sure they have a compliant and easily manipulated leader in Ukraine.

May 1, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

Iran Praises Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Admitting US is the ‘Godfather of Daesh’

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 21.04.2023

Iran has spent years accusing the US of helping to create and nurture Daesh. In 2018, Revolutionary Guards Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani urged Iranian diplomats to go to the UN and “slap” the West “in the face” with evidence of US collusion with the terrorist group. Soleimani was later killed [assassinated] in a US missile strike in Baghdad in 2020.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani waded into the US presidential politics on Friday, offering praise for Democratic hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for confirming Tehran’s long-stated view that the Daesh/ISIS terror group was created by Washington.

“There was no doubt the US is the creator of #ISIS, but for those who deliberately closed their eyes to the truth, the statement of Robert F. Kennedy, the nephew of John F. Kennedy saying ‘WE created ISIS’ reaffirms the fact that the American regime is the godfather of Daesh/ISIS,” Kanaani tweeted.

The spokesman followed up the message with a Farsi-language tweet featuring a video excerpt from RFK Jr.’s speech in Boston, Massachusetts on Wednesday in which the politician pointed out how US intelligence agencies have repeatedly lied Americans into pointless foreign wars, destroyed nations and given rise to terrorism, including Daesh.

“My uncle came into office, two months later he was fighting his intelligence apparatus and his military because they wanted to invade – they wanted to do the Bay of Pigs. He was totally against it [but] he let them roll over them. And in the middle of the Bay of Pigs he realized they were lying to them and he realized that the function of the intelligence agencies had become to provide the military-industrial complex with a constant pipeline of war. And he came out during the middle of the night during the Bay of Pigs catastrophe and he said ‘I wanna take the CIA and shatter it into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds’,” RFK Jr. said.

“And George W. Bush had the same problem. George W. Bush says the worst mistake he made as president was listening to CIA director George Tenet telling him it was a ‘slam dunk’ that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. And so the neocons and the CIA got to go into Iraq and… do regime change. Now we’ve spent $8 trillion and what did we get for that $8 trillion? Nothing. Worse than nothing. Iraq is now much worse off than it was when we went in there. We killed more Iraqis than Saddam Hussein ever did. We may have killed a million Iraqis, nobody knows the number… We created ISIS. We drove two million refugees up into Europe, they destabilized democracy for a generation in Europe, they caused Brexit. This is the cost of the Iraq War,” the politician said.

RFK Jr. is not the first candidate for president to accuse the United States of “creating” the terrorist group. In 2016, then-Republican candidate Donald Trump repeatedly called then-President Barack Obama literally the “founder of ISIS,” and dubbed former Secretary of State “‘Crooked’ Hillary Clinton” the “cofounder.”

Iran has spent years blaming the United States for creating the regional instability which gave rise to Daesh, and has accused Washington of using its battle against the Sufi jihadist group as an excuse to justify its illegal occupation of Iraq and Syria. Some Iranian officials have gone further, accusing the US military of providing Daesh with weapons and funding and even facilitating the transportation of jihadist leaders aboard US military helicopters. Iran’s Syrian allies have made similar allegations. Pentagon officials have vociferously denied these claims.

April 22, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | 2 Comments

Large quantities of US weapons lost, stolen in Iraq, Syria: Report

The Cradle – March 31 2023

Hundreds of thousands of dollars in US artillery equipment, unspecified “weapons systems,” and specialized ammunition meant for US forces in Syria and Iraq have been stolen in recent years, The Intercept reported on 30 March.

According to criminal investigations files obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by The Intercept, at least four large-scale thefts and one loss of US equipment valued at some $200,000 have occurred in Iraq and Syria between 2020 and 2022. The lost items include 40mm high-explosive grenades stolen from US Special Forces.

The losses continue a previous pattern. The Intercept notes further that a 2020 audit by the Pentagon’s inspector general found that Special Operations Joint Task Force–Operation Inherent Resolve, the main unit that partners with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to illegally occupy northeast Iraq, did not properly account for $715.8 million of equipment purchased for the SDF.

The recent failure to prevent the theft of, and account for, US-supplied weapons is concerning because this previously played a key role in the rise of Al-Qaeda affiliated groups, including the Nusra Front and ISIS, in Iraq and Syria.

In the spring of 2015, an extremist coalition led by the Nusra Front successfully conquered Syria’s Idlib governorate, in large part thanks to US-manufactured and supplied TOW anti-tank missiles. The missiles were originally supplied to Free Syrian Army (FSA) groups working with closely with Nusra.

When Russia intervened in the Syria conflict to prevent the fall of the government to Al-Qaeda groups – including Nusra, ISIS, and Ahrar al-Sham – a few months later, in September 2015, US officials drastically escalated TOW missile shipments to FSA units working with these groups.

When journalist Sharmine Narwani asked why US-supplied weapons allegedly meant for FSA groups were showing up in the hands of the Nusra Front, CENTCOM spokesman Lieutenant Commander Kyle Raines responded: “We don’t ‘command and control’ these forces – we only ‘train and enable’ them. Who they say they’re allying with, that’s their business.”

ISIS was also a major beneficiary of US-supplied weapons. Conflict Armament Research (CAR), a UK-based organization that tracks the supply of weapons into conflict-affected areas, reported that “Unauthorised retransfer – the violation of agreements by which a supplier government prohibits the re-export of materiel by a recipient government without its prior consent – is a significant source of [ISIS] weapons and ammunition. The US and Saudi Arabia supplied most of this material without authorization, apparently to Syrian opposition forces.”

By way of example, CAR noted that it had recovered US-supplied anti-tank missiles used by ISIS in Ramadi in February 2016. CAR confirmed that the missiles had been exported from the United States in December 2015. This indicates that the weapons were diverted to ISIS “in a matter of days or weeks after their supply.”

March 31, 2023 Posted by | Deception, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

US continues to use terrorists in Syria – Russia

RT | March 20, 2023

The US is still working with Islamic State terrorists and other Islamist groups to carry out attacks against Bashar Assad’s government forces in Syria, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) chief, Sergey Naryshkin, has claimed.

According to an SVR report released on Monday, the US military’s Al-Tanf base in southern Syria is coordinating subversive activities, with the actions of terrorist groups being planned by representatives of the Central Command of the US Armed Forces as well as US intelligence officers.

The SVR stated that a special role has been assigned to the so-called Free Syrian Army, which consists of Kurdish and Arab detachments operating in the central and northeast parts of Syria. “Through them, the Americans and their British allies are working with the underground formations of Islamic State [IS, formerly ISIS] that still remain in remote areas of the country,” it was alleged.

“ISIS was instructed to incite hostilities in the Syrian south-west (the provinces of Suwayda and Deraa), in the central part of the country (Homs) and east of the Euphrates River (Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor). For this, it is planned to form several detachments of radicals with a total number of about 300 people. After special training, they will be involved in attacks on military facilities in Syria and Iran,” the statement added.

The SVR claims that the US also intends to use terrorists in the region around the capital, Damascus, to conduct tasks such as kidnapping Russian and Iranian servicemen.

In addition to coordinating the actions of Islamist groups, Washington is providing terrorists with weapons, according to the SVR. Several dozen four-wheel-drive pickup trucks with heavy machine guns, as well as a number of rocket systems such as NLAW ATGMs, TOWs, and Igla MANPADS are set to be handed over to fighters in the near future, the report alleged.

Washington’s actions put it “on the same level” as Islamic terrorists and IS militants, and is a manifestation of state terrorism, the SVR argued.

In February, the SVR reported that the US was using Islamist extremists to plan terrorist attacks in Russia and former Soviet republics. Washington has been training as many as 60 terrorists at the Al-Tanf base to make improvised explosive devices and use them to target diplomats, public officials, law enforcement officers, and military personnel, the intelligence service claimed.

March 20, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , , | 1 Comment

Yemeni officials assess damage to ancient sites bombed by Saudi-led coalition

The Cradle | February 20, 2023

The head of Yemen’s General Authority for Antiquities, Manuscripts, and Museums, Dr. Obbad bin Ali Al-Hayyal, visited several historical and archeological sites in the provinces of Marib and Jawf on 18 February to assess the damages caused to them by the Saudi-led coalition airstrikes, SABA news agency reported.

Hayyal and his team visited the ancient city of Baraqish in Marib’s Mazjar district, the Rusf Temple in Al-Jawf, and several other archeological sites.

According to SABA, they received briefings from local authorities on the damages to ancient columns, inscriptions, and structures due to “Saudi and Emirati warplanes,” as well as the “looting and theft” of antiquities and artifacts by coalition forces from museums across the country.

During the visit, Hayyal stressed the importance of “integrating official and popular efforts” to protect these sites from ‘vandalism and looting.’

Since the start of the Saudi-led war against Yemen in 2015, coalition airstrikes have posed a significant threat to the country’s archeological sites and historical monuments.

In May 2015, coalition airstrikes struck the ancient Sabaean ruins of the Great Marib Dam, which date back to the seventh century BC.

That year, the Saudi-led coalition bombarded the ruins of the ancient city of Baraqish, several ancient temples, and an entire museum filled with countless precious artifacts – which was “reduced to piles of shattered stone,” according to a 2015 report by US media outlet The Intercept.

The Saudi-led bombing also decimated sections of the capital Sanaa’s Old City, which is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site and dates back 2,500 years.

Several ancient buildings and structures have since collapsed from weakened foundations. Until October 2019, over 237 archeological sites had been directly targeted by the coalition in what has been described as a systematic campaign aimed at deliberately erasing Yemeni culture and history.

Aside from bombing, several ancient sites and museums have been looted and stripped of valuable artifacts by UAE-backed mercenary groups, whose ranks are filled with ISIS and Al-Qaeda militants.

In 2019, a member of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council, Mohammad Ali al-Houthi, said about UAE-backed groups: “The mercenaries are antiquity thieves. Where did the antiquities of the Marib Museum go? … Where are the monuments from the rest of the museums in the occupied governorates? … The mercenaries are committing historical, social, and cultural crimes.”

Saudi Arabia is well-known for its destruction of heritage, particularly within its borders, where many of the ancient cities, towns, and sites dating back to the birth of Islam have been wiped out as part of a campaign motivated by the kingdom’s Wahhabi ideology.

February 20, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Homs attack: Iran says US complicit in Daesh crimes in Syria

Press TV – February 18, 2023

Iran has condemned Friday’s brutal attack by the Daesh terrorist group in the central Syrian province of Homs, saying the United States is complicit in the continuation of the acts of terror in the war-ravaged country.

“The current policies and approaches of the American regime indicate the continuation of this regime’s double standards in dealing with international issues, including the battle against terrorism,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani said on Saturday.

He reiterated the importance of providing the Syrian government with effective international support to help it fight the remnants of Daesh and other terrorist groups.

“The US government, as one of the founders and supporters of the Daesh terrorist group and a government that has an illegal military presence in a part of Syria’s territory, is complicit in the continuation of the crimes by this group and the continuation of insecurity in Syria,” Kan’ani said.

At least 53 citizens, who were truffle hunting, were killed in the Daesh attack on the southwest of the town of al-Sokhna in the desert east of the city of Homs on Friday, state television reported.

The victims included 46 civilians and seven soldiers, said Dr. Walid Odeh, director of the General Authority of Palmyra National Hospital.

The Friday attack was the deadliest attack by the outfit since January last year when the terrorists stormed a prison in the northeastern Syrian city of Hasakeh in a bid to free fellow Takfiris.

February 18, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , | 2 Comments

Why was British ISIS member ‘Jihadi George’ tried in a US court?

“Beatles” ISIS member was tried in the US was to conceal his previous links to British intelligence and his role in their regime-change efforts in Syria

By William Van Wagenen | The Cradle | February 2, 2023

In January 2023, reports emerged that Alexanda Kotey, known as “Jihadi George” and one of the four British ISIS members collectively known as the “Beatles,” had disappeared from the custody of the US Bureau of Prisons (BOP).

In 2022, Kotey was convicted in a US court and sentenced to life in prison for the abduction and detention of multiple western hostages in Syria between 2012 and 2015, including journalists James Foley, John Cantlie, and Steven Sotloff, and aid workers Kayla Jean Mueller, Peter Kassig, David Haines, and Alan Henning, most of whom were later executed by ISIS.

A BOP spokesperson refused to provide details of Kotey’s whereabouts or why he had been moved, stating only that there are “several reasons” why an inmate may be referred to as “not in BOP custody,” including for “court hearings, medical treatment or for other reasons. We do not provide specific information on the status of inmates who are not in the custody of the BOP for safety, security, or privacy reasons.”

Kotey’s links with British intelligence

The refusal of BOP officials to provide details of Kotey’s whereabouts raises fears that Kotey may be able to escape facing justice for his crimes. This is due to Kotey’s previous links to British intelligence, which sought to use UK-based Islamist extremists such as Kotey as proxies in the 2011 US-led regime-change war against the Syrian government.

Kotey’s links to British intelligence are evidenced by the convoluted effort to prosecute him after his 2018 detention by the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Although Kotey held UK citizenship like three of his alleged victims, Haines, Henning, and Cantlie, British officials insisted that Kotey and fellow Beatle Elshafee Elsheikh be tried in US rather than UK courts.

A review of events surrounding Kotey’s case reveals that prosecuting the West Londoner in the US was necessary to avoid revealing his and fellow Beatles’ links to British intelligence.

Laying the foundations for ISIS

Kotey traveled to Syria in August 2012 with fellow Beatle Muhammad Emzawi, known as “Jihadi John,” as part of a “terror-funnel” established by British intelligence. Upon arrival in Syria, Kotey and Emzawi immediately joined an armed group fighting against the Syrian government known as Katibat al-Muhajireen.

In November 2012, Emzawi participated in the abduction of American journalist James Foley and British journalist John Cantlie near the town of Binnish in northwestern Syria.

Kotey, Emzawi, and Elsheikh then served as prison guards for Foley, Cantlie, and other western hostages. Many members of Katibat al-Muhajireen – including the trio – then helped lay the foundation for the rise of ISIS by joining the terror group when it was established in April 2013.

Foley was brutally murdered by Emzawi in August 2014. In a video recording of the murder, a black-clad and masked Emzawi beheaded Foley, who was kneeling in the desert sand in an orange Guantanamo-style prisoner’s jumpsuit. Sotloff, Haines, Hennig, and Kassig were murdered subsequently, while Cantlie’s whereabouts are still unknown.

Terrorism researcher Raffaello Pantucci reports that Kotey and Elsheikh, “were longstanding figures of concern to the security services. Involved in a West London network that has long fed young British men to jihadi battlefields and created terrorist cells back in the UK.”

The Times reports that according to court papers filed in Kotey’s case, he first tried to travel to Syria with three other Britons via the Channel tunnel in February 2012 but was denied entry at the Turkish border and deported.

A month later, Kotey tried again but failed to reach Syria by flying from Barcelona. He returned to London through St Pancras station, where police arrested him for carrying a “lock-blade knife.”

The Times reported further that, “In August 2012 Kotey tried for a third time to make it to Syria by travelling overland across Europe with Emwazi. He has disclosed that the pair were detained at least twice during the two-month journey, although it is unclear in which countries. Each time, it seems, they were allowed to continue on their way.”

A spokesman for the SDF claimed that Kotey entered Turkey in 2012 “even though the Turkish intelligence had his jihadi record. He gained two months’ residence in Turkey and then he was allowed to go to Syria and he entered Syrian soil through the border crossing at Bab al Hawa.”

After years of fighting for Katibat al-Muhajireen and then ISIS, Kotey and Elsheikh were detained by the SDF in 2018 as the Caliphate faced defeat by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies on the one hand, and US and SDF forces on the other, during the race to control Syria’s northeastern oil and grain producing regions. Emzawi had already been killed in a US airstrike in 2015.

Trial in the US instead of UK

By the time of Kotey’s detention in 2018, British police had long been collecting evidence of Kotey’s terrorist activities. As a result, the Guardian reported that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had charged Kotey with five counts of murder and eight counts of hostage-taking in February 2016, and issued warrants for his arrest.

However, once Kotey was in SDF custody, British officials took extraordinary legal measures to ensure he would not be brought back to the UK for trial, insisting instead that Kotey be tried in a US court.

The British Home Office then revoked Kotey’s British citizenship, making it more difficult to prosecute him in the UK. According to Ken Macdonald, a former UK director of public prosecutions, stripping Kotey of his citizenship appeared to be an attempt by the government “to duck responsibility for bringing this Briton to justice.”

The Guardian reports that UK Security Minister Ben Wallace claimed to parliament in July 2018 that the UK did not have enough evidence to try Kotey and a US trial was the only option. However, a legal source with knowledge of the case claimed that the “British families of those murdered by ‘the Beatles’ were misled by UK government officials” and told that “if these men are not sent to the US, we won’t be able to prosecute them.”

The Telegraph reported in 2018 that according to a leaked letter from British Home Secretary Sajid Javid, the Metropolitan Police and FBI had been investigating Kotey’s activities in Syria for the past four years, “collecting more than 600 witness statements in a criminal inquiry involving 14 other countries,” and that there was “intelligence” implicating Kotey in the “kidnap and murder” of two Britons and three Americans.

Britain’s support of terrorists in Syria

UK officials were correct, however, in saying to the victims’ families that if Kotey and Elsheikh were not sent to the US, they could not be prosecuted. This was because British intelligence had been directly supporting Katibat al-Muhajireen, the armed group Kotey, Elsheikh, and Emzawi initially fought for during the time they participated in the abduction and captivity of numerous western hostages.

Two previous efforts to convict British citizens on terrorism charges for their involvement with Katibat al-Muhajireen had fallen apart for this specific reason, illustrating British intelligence support for the armed group.

The first was the 2015 terror trial of Swedish citizen Bherlin Gildo, who according to the Daily Mail fought for Katibat al-Muhajireen and later for the official al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, the Nusra Front.

The Guardian reports that after Gildo abandoned the conflict, he was detained while transiting through Heathrow Airport. He was accused by British authorities of attending a terrorist training camp and receiving weapons training between 31 August, 2012, and 1 March, 2013, as well as possessing information likely to be useful to a terrorist.

However, the terror trial collapsed “after fears of deep embarrassment” to the British security services. This was because, as Gildo’s lawyer explained, “British intelligence agencies were supporting the same Syrian opposition groups as he [Gildo] was.”

Another example is former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg, who was also tried on terror charges for assisting Katibat al-Muhajireen. Begg traveled to Syria several times in 2012 and provided physical training to foreign fighters from the group in Aleppo, as reported by Foreign Policy. Begg made his latest trip to Syria in December 2012.

As a result, Begg was detained by UK authorities in 2014 and accused of attending a terrorist training camp. The Guardian reported, however, that Begg was freed after British intelligence officials from MI5, “belatedly gave police and prosecutors a series of documents that detailed the agency’s extensive contacts with him before and after his trips to Syria,” and which showed that MI5 told Begg he could continue his work for the so-called opposition in Syria “unhindered.”

It was therefore clear that any terror trial of Kotey and Elsheikh in the UK would collapse for the same reasons as the previous cases, leaving UK officials no choice but to have them tried in the US instead.

In the letter leaked to the Telegraph, former Home Secretary Sajid Javid explained that “the UK does not currently intend to request, nor actively encourage, the transfer of Kotey and El-sheikh to the UK to support future UK-based prosecution.” Showing that he was under pressure as a result of this decision, Javid wrote further to the letter’s addressee, “I do understand your frustration on this subject.”

The Telegraph notes further that, “despite repeated ministerial assurances that British jihadists traveling to Syria would be held to account in British courts, the Home Secretary’s letter discloses concerns that laws in this country may not be robust enough to ensure successful prosecution. He believes American terrorism laws are more effective.”

In other words, British law was not robust enough to convict someone on terrorism charges for fighting with a terrorist group the UK intelligence services themselves supported.

The capital punishment loophole

Despite claims that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute Kotey in the UK, any successful conviction in the US would have relied on evidence collected by UK prosecutors, which would have to be shared with their US counterparts.

This was problematic, however, because US officials had not provided assurances that Kotey would not face the death penalty if convicted. Because the death penalty is banned in the UK, it was contrary to long standing UK policy to provide evidence that could contribute to a death sentence.

Home Secretary Javid nevertheless approved providing evidence against Kotey and Elsheikh to US prosecutors after the pair were transferred from SDF to US custody.

House of Lords member Alex Carlile, a former reviewer of terrorism legislation, described Javid’s willingness to approve this as “a dramatic change of policy by a minister, secretly, without any discussion in parliament,” and that “Britain has always said that it will pass information and intelligence, in appropriate cases, provided there is no death penalty. That is a decades-old policy and it is not for the home secretary to change that policy.”

This led Elsheikh’s mother to sue the British government, fearing that if her son and Kotey were convicted in a US court, they would be executed. The case eventually went to the British Supreme Court, which according to the New York Times, “unanimously ruled that the British home secretary’s decision to transfer personal data to law enforcement authorities abroad for use in capital criminal proceedings without any safeguards violated a data protection law passed in 2018.”

As a result, US Attorney General William Barr belatedly gave the assurance in August 2020 that Kotey and Elsheikh would not face the death penalty, allowing the sharing of evidence and the prosecution to move forward.

A testimony of the west’s support of ISIS

In 2022, Kotey and Elsheikh were finally convicted and sentenced to life in prison. At the time, the Washington Post explained that the successful prosecution of Elsheikh and Kotey had been unlikely, given that at time of their capture, it was “unclear whether an American trial would happen at all. A federal prosecution was met with opposition at the highest levels of government on two continents.”

While the reason for Kotey’s recent disappearance from US Bureau of Prisons custody is unclear, the insistence of UK officials to have him and fellow Beatle Elsheikh prosecuted in a US rather than UK court, and the reluctance of both governments to try the two ISIS militants at all, indicates that British planners wished to hide their previous support for extremists who helped lay the foundation for ISIS.

While ISIS is widely understood to have emerged in Iraq, evidence continues to emerge showing that officials in London and Washington played the crucial role in the rise of the notorious terror group as part of a broader effort to topple the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad.

February 3, 2023 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | 1 Comment

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