Spanish, German police detain four suspected of trafficking drone parts to Hezbollah/node/2551916/world
Spanish, German police detain four suspected of trafficking drone parts to Hezbollah
The investigation was initiated in Spain, where police officers detected Spanish companies owned by Lebanese-born citizens trading in large quantities of parts and components for military drones. (File/AFP)
Spanish, German police detain four suspected of trafficking drone parts to Hezbollah
Several hundred or even a thousand drones could have been assembled by Hezbollah using the parts, according to Spanish police
The remains of drones flown by Hezbollah and found in Israel match the type of components seized by the police in Spain and Germany
Updated 18 July 2024
Reuters
MADRID: Police detained four suspects — three in Spain and one in Germany — as part of an investigation into the sale of drone parts to Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon, Spanish police said on Thursday.
The investigation was initiated in Spain, where police officers detected Spanish companies owned by Lebanese-born citizens trading in large quantities of parts and components for military drones able to carry explosives, the police said.
Based on an analysis of documents detailing trades of the components within Europe, several hundred or even a thousand drones could have been assembled by Hezbollah using the parts, the Spanish police said in a statement.
The light aircraft, which are hard to detect and stop, are loaded with explosives as heavy as several kilograms and sent into Israel, the police said.
The remains of drones flown by Hezbollah and found in Israel match the type of components seized by the police in Spain and Germany, the statement said.
Israel and Hezbollah have been exchanging fire since Hezbollah announced a “support front” with Palestinians shortly after its ally Hamas attacked southern Israeli border communities on Oct. 7, triggering Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.
The fighting in Lebanon has killed more than 100 civilians and more than 300 Hezbollah fighters, according to a Reuters tally, and led to levels of destruction in Lebanese border towns and villages not seen since the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war.
Biden awards the 2nd highest civilian award to leaders of the Jan. 6 committee and 18 others
Cheney, a Republican former Wyoming congresswoman, and Rep. Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, led the House committee that investigated the Trump-inspired insurrection
Biden last year honored people who were involved in defending the Capitol from a mob of angry Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, or who helped safeguard the will of American voters during the 2020 presidential election
Updated 03 January 2025
AP
WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden on Thursday awarded the second highest civilian medal to Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson, leaders of the congressional investigation into the Capitol riot who Donald Trump has said should be jailed for their roles in the inquiry.
Biden awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to 20 people in a ceremony in the East Room, including Americans who fought for marriage equality, a pioneer in treating wounded soldiers, and two of the president’s longtime friends, former Sens. Ted Kaufman, D-Delaware, and Chris Dodd, D-Connecticut.
“Together, you embody the central truth: We’re a great nation because we’re a good people,” he said. “Our democracy begins and ends with the duties of citizenship. That’s our work for the ages and it’s what all of you embody.”
Biden last year honored people who were involved in defending the Capitol from a mob of angry Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, or who helped safeguard the will of American voters during the 2020 presidential election, when Trump tried and failed to overturn the results.
Cheney, a Republican former Wyoming congresswoman, and Rep. Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, led the House committee that investigated the insurrection. The committee’s final report asserted that Trump criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the election he lost to Biden and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol. Thompson wrote that Trump “lit that fire.”
The audience erupted in loud cheers and stood when Cheney took the stage. Biden clasped her hand and gave her the medal. The announcer said she was being given it “for putting the American people over party.”
Cheney, who lost her seat in the GOP primary in August 2022, later said she would vote for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race and campaigned with the Democratic nominee, raising Trump’s ire. Biden has been considering whether to offer preemptive pardons to Cheney and others Trump has targeted.
Thompson, who also received a standing ovation, was recognized “for his lifelong dedication to safeguarding our Constitution.”
Trump, who won the 2024 election and will take office Jan. 20, still refuses to back away from his lies about the 2020 presidential race and has said he would pardon the rioters once he is back in the White House.
During an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the president-elect said that “Cheney did something that’s inexcusable, along with Thompson and the people on the un-select committee of political thugs and, you know, creeps,” claiming without evidence they “deleted and destroyed” testimony they collected.
“Honestly, they should go to jail,” he said.
Cheney and Thompson were “an embarrassment to this country” for their conduct on the committee, Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung asserted.
Biden also awarded the medal to attorney Mary Bonauto, who fought to legalize same-sex marriage, and Evan Wolfson, a leader of the marriage equality movement.
Other honorees included Frank Butler, who set new standards for using tourniquets on war injuries; Diane Carlson Evans, an Army nurse during the Vietnam War who founded the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation; and Eleanor Smeal, an activist who led women’s rights protests in the 1970s and fought for equal pay.
He bestowed the honor to photographer Bobby Sager, academics Thomas Vallely and Paula Wallace, and Frances Visco, the president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition.
Other former lawmakers honored included former Sen. Bill Bradley, D-N.J.; former Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, the first woman to represent Kansas; and former Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., who championed gun safety measures after her son and husband were shot to death.
After he presented the awards, he went back to the lectern to ask lawmakers in the room to stand, as well as John Kerry, a former US senator and Biden’s first climate envoy.
“Let’s remember, our work continues,” he said to the room after he thanked the families in attendance for the support they gave to the nominees. “We’ve got a lot more work to do to keep this going.”
Biden honored four people posthumously: Joseph Galloway, a former war correspondent who wrote about the first major battle in Vietnam in the book “We Were Soldiers Once … and Young“; civil rights advocate and attorney Louis Lorenzo Redding; former Delaware judge Collins Seitz; and Mitsuye Endo Tsutsumi, who was held with other Japanese Americans during World War II and challenged the detention.
The Presidential Citizens Medal was created by President Richard Nixon in 1969 and is the country’s second highest civilian honor after the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It recognizes people who “performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens.”
Investigators seek clues to New Orleans attacker’s path to radicalization
Jabbar’s profile atypical for Daesh recruits, says former FBI agent
Jabbar is a former US veteran who worked for a major corporation
Daesh uses online platforms for recruitment, experts say
Updated 03 January 2025
Reuters
WASHINGTON: As investigators learn more about the man who pledged allegiance to the Daesh group, or ISIS, and killed 14 people with a truck on New Year’s Day in New Orleans, a key question remains: How did a veteran and one-time employee of a major corporation become radicalized?
FBI Deputy Assistant Director Christopher Raia said on Thursday that videos made by Shamsud-Din Jabbar just before the attack showed the 42-year-old Texas native supported Daesh, claimed to have joined the militant group before last summer and believed in a “war between the believers and nonbelievers.”
While the FBI was looking into his “path to radicalization,” evidence collected since the attack showed that Jabbar was “100 percent inspired by ISIS,” said Raia.
Jabbar, who authorities said acted alone, was killed in a shootout with police.
His half-brother, Abdur Jabbar, said in an interview that Jabbar, who had worked for audit firm Deloitte, abandoned Islam in his 20s or 30s, but had recently renewed his faith.
Abdur Jabbar told Reuters in Beaumont, Texas, where Jabbar was born and raised, that he had no idea when his half-brother became radicalized.
Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent who investigated terrorism cases and is on an advisory council to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, said Jabbar did not fit the typical profile of those radicalized by Daesh.
Jabbar served for 10 years in the US Army and was in his 40s, Soufan noted, explaining that people who fall prey to Daesh recruitment are typically much younger.
“This is a guy who … went from being a patriot to being an Daesh terrorist,” said Soufan.
Attackers responsible for a range of deadly strikes have claimed a link to Daesh and other jihadist groups.
They included the lone survivor of the Islamist squad that killed 130 people across Paris in 2015, the man who killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Florida in 2016, and the man who drove a truck into a crowded bike path in 2017 in New York City, killing eight people.
Some attacks, like those in 2015 in Paris, were carried out by trained Daesh operatives. But investigators found no evidence of a direct role for the terrorist group in others.
Online recruitment
It is still unclear what contact Jabbar might have had with overseas extremist groups.
US officials and other experts say Daesh conducts most of its recruiting in online chatrooms and over encrypted communications apps since losing the “caliphate” it overran in 2014 in Iraq and Syria to a US-led military coalition. Even as the coalition continues hitting the group’s remaining holdouts, Daesh has stepped up operations in Syria while its Afghanistan- and Africa-based affiliates have kept recruiting, expanding their networks and inspiring attacks.
US officials say Daesh has used the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Israel’s war in Gaza to boost its recruitment.
Nate Snyder, a former US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) counterterrorism official, said both international and US-based extremist groups follow a similar playbook to draw in new recruits.
The groups use social media to push their message and then move discussions to encrypted app such as Telegram, which could evolve into one-on-one conversations, Snyder said.
“Then people feel like they’re part of a community,” said Snyder, who left DHS in December and joined the race to chair the Democratic National Committee.
Recruits could either receive direct orders or self-radicalize to take action, Snyder said.
Individuals susceptible to recruitment “might have lost their jobs, might have had a mental health crisis, might have just concluded that however hard they’ve tried, they never belong,” said Edmund Fitton-Brown, a former British diplomat who led a UN team that monitors Daesh and Al-Qaeda.
The main appeal of Daesh is its determination to establish a Sunni Muslim “caliphate” ruled by Islamic law, unlike the Taliban, which “has sold out to Afghan nationalism,” or Al-Qaeda, members of which have cooperated with Iran’s Shiite Muslim-run government, he said.
“People that are carrying out those attacks may never in their lives have actually met somebody who is a member of Daesh,” said Fitton-Brown, a senior adviser to the Counter-Extremism Project, a policy and research organization. “But that doesn’t mean they can’t carry out an Daesh-inspired attack.” Crashing cars into crowds or staging stabbing rampages “are unsophisticated, very low-budget attacks (that) are almost impossible to defend against,” he continued. “If you are determined enough to kill unsuspecting public, you are going to be able to do it.”
US Army veteran accused of trying to join Hezbollah
Jack Danaher Molloy was arrested in Chicago last month and brought to Pennsylvania on Monday to face charges
Molloy traveled to Lebanon in August and attempted to join Hezbollah, which the US has designated as a “terrorist” group, says DOJ indictment
Updated 03 January 2025
AFP
WASHINGTON: A US Army veteran who allegedly went to Lebanon and Syria to try to join Hezbollah has been indicted for attempting to support a “terrorist” organization, the Justice Department said Thursday.
Jack Danaher Molloy, 24, a dual US-Irish national, was arrested in Chicago last month and brought to Pennsylvania on Monday to face charges, the department said in a statement.
According to the indictment, Molloy traveled to Lebanon in August and attempted to join Hezbollah, which Washington has designated as a “terrorist” group.
When his efforts were rebuffed, he went to Syria in an attempt to join the organization there.
Molloy returned to the United States and allegedly continued his attempts to join Hezbollah, communicating online with individuals in Lebanon.
According to the Justice Department, Molloy promoted violence against Jewish people on social media and said in a WhatsApp exchange with a family member that his “master plan was to join Hezbollah and kill Jews.”
Molloy faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of providing material support to a “terrorist” organization.
South Korea investigators in standoff to arrest impeached President Yoon
Updated 03 January 2025
AFP
SEOUL: South Korean investigators sought to arrest impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol at his residence Friday over a failed martial bid, but local media reported security forces were blocking their attempts.
Yoon, who has already been suspended from duty by lawmakers, would become the first sitting president in South Korean history to be arrested if the warrant is carried out.
The president, who issued a bungled declaration on December 3 that shook the vibrant East Asian democracy and briefly lurched it back to the dark days of military rule, faces imprisonment or, at worst, the death penalty.
“The execution of the arrest warrant for President Yoon Suk Yeol has begun,” said the Corruption Investigation Office (CIO), which is probing Yoon’s short-lived declaration of martial law, with its officials and police seen entering the president’s residence.
CIO investigators including senior prosecutor Lee Dae-hwan were let through heavy security barricades to enter the residence to attempt to execute their warrant to detain Yoon, AFP reporters saw.
But they were “blocked by a military unit inside” after entering, the Yonhap news agency reported.
They later “moved past” that unit to “confront security service” members inside the residence.
It had been unclear whether the Presidential Security Service, which still protects Yoon as the country’s sitting head of state, would comply with investigators’ warrants.
Members of his security team have previously blocked attempted police raids of the presidential residence, but it was not immediately clear which units had blocked investigators Friday.
Yoon’s legal team decried the attempt to execute the arrest warrant, vowing to take further legal action against the move.
“The execution of a warrant that is illegal and invalid is indeed not lawful,” Yoon’s lawyer Yoon Kap-keun said.
Dozens of police buses and hundreds of uniformed police lined the street outside the compound in central Seoul, AFP reporters saw.
Some 2,700 police and 135 police buses have been deployed to the area to prevent clashes, Yonhap reported, after Yoon’s supporters faced off with anti-Yoon demonstrators Thursday.
Yoon has been holed up inside the residence since a court approved the warrant to detain him earlier this week, vowing to “fight” authorities seeking to question him over his failed martial law bid.
South Korean media have reported that CIO officials want to arrest Yoon and take him to their office in Gwacheon near Seoul for questioning.
After that, he can be held for up to 48 hours on the existing warrant. Investigators need to apply for another arrest warrant to keep him in custody.
After staging chaotic protests Thursday, a handful of Yoon’s die-hard supporters, which include far-right YouTube personalities and evangelical Christian preachers, had camped outside his compound all night — some holding all-night prayer sessions.
“Illegal warrant is invalid” they chanted early Friday, as police and media gathered outside the residence.
“Yoon Suk Yeol, Yoon Suk Yeol,” they yelled, waving red glow sticks.
Pro-Yoon protester Rhee Kang-san told AFP many were “rooting for the president” to survive the arrest attempt.
“We are sending him our wishes. Many of our colleagues stayed overnight to show their support. We will continue to do the same today, no matter what happens later,” he said.
Yoon’s lawyer confirmed to AFP Thursday that the impeached leader remained inside the presidential compound.
Yoon’s legal team had already filed for an injunction to a constitutional court to block the warrant, calling the arrest order “an unlawful and invalid act,” and also submitted an objection to the Seoul court that ordered it.
But the head of the CIO, Oh Dong-woon, has warned that anyone trying to block authorities from arresting Yoon could themselves face prosecution.
Along with the summons, a Seoul court issued a search warrant for his official residence and other locations, a CIO official told AFP.
South Korean officials have previously failed to execute similar arrest warrants for lawmakers — in 2000 and 2004 — due to party members and supporters blocking police for the seven days the warrants were valid.
Brazil examining black boxes from crashed Russia-bound plane
Updated 03 January 2025
AFP
BRASILIA: Brazil has started examining the black box recorders from a Brazilian-made jetliner that crashed in Kazakhstan, killing 38 of the 67 people aboard, the air force said Thursday.
The Azerbaijan Airlines plane, an Embraer 190, crash-landed on Christmas Day as it flew to the Chechen capital Grozny in southern Russia.
The Brazilian air force said in a statement that the data from the recorders would be extracted and analyzed as soon as possible.
These devices captured cockpit dialogue and flight data from the plane. They are being examined by the Aeronautical Accidents Investigation and Prevention Center, a unit of the Brazilian air force.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has demanded that Moscow admit it mistakenly fired on the plane as it tried to make a scheduled landing at the Grozny airport.
Russia has not confirmed that one of its air-defense missiles hit the plane, though President Vladimir Putin told Aliyev in a phone call that the systems were active at the time and that he was sorry the incident took place in Russian airspace.
Russia said Grozny was being attacked by Ukrainian drones when the airliner approached to make its landing through thick fog.
Investigators from Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Russia have traveled to Brazil for the investigation, officials said.
The Brazilian air force said Kazakhstan is in charge of releasing the results of the black box analysis.
