Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Carlos the Jackal gets 3d life sentence

Following up on the prior post,

Carlos the Jackal, a notorious Venezuelan militant serving two life sentences, has been handed a third by a French court.

The self-styled revolutionary, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez and is now 67, was convicted of a 1974 grenade attack on a Paris shop.

Ramirez threw a grenade into the shopping area, killing two and injuring 34 others, the court found.

He denied the charges and called the trial, 43 years later, “absurd”.
Born into a wealthy Venezuelan family, Ramirez studied in Moscow before joining a militant group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He converted to Islam in 1975.
. . .

The self-professed “professional revolutionary” has been found guilty of four bomb attacks:

  • In March 1982, a bomb exploded on a train between Paris and Toulouse, killing five people and wounding 28
  • A month later a car bomb attack was mounted on an anti-Syrian newspaper in Paris, with one passer-by killed and 60 injured
  • On New Year’s Eve 1983, a bomb on a TGV fast train between Marseille and Paris killed three people and wounded 13
  • A bomb at a Marseille train station killed two
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France: ISIS member beheads Catholic priest in his own church UPDATED – and filmed it

While no one at the DNC mentioned ISIS in yesterday’s speeches, two Islamists stormed into the church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray near Rouen during mass shouting Allahu Akbar, and beheaded Fr. Jacques Hamel, age 84.

There are also reports that one of the attackers was a local resident who was under electronic tag surveillance having been jailed in France for trying to travel to Syria in 2015. His bail terms allowed him to be unsupervised between 8.30am and 12.30pm – the attack happened between 9am and 11am.

Ponder that for a moment.

Fr. Jacques Hamel, R.I.P.

The Daily Mail lists,

Today’s attack is the latest to hit Europe in what has been a year of bloodshed on the continent:

July 24:Festival suicide bombing – A failed Syrian asylum seeker set off an explosive device near an open-air music festival in the southern city of Ansbach that killed himself and wounded a dozen others.

The 27-year-old had spent time in a psychiatric facility, while the regional authorities said an there was ‘likely’ a jihadist motive for the attack.

However a spokesman for the interior ministry later said there was as yet ‘no credible evidence’ of a link to Islamic extremism.

July 24: Knife attack – A Syrian refugee was arrested after killing a Polish woman with a large kebab knife at a snack bar in the southwestern city of Reutlingen, in an incident police said did not bear the hallmarks of a ‘terrorist attack’ and was more likely a crime of passion.

Three people were also injured in the assault, which ended when the 21-year-old assailant was deliberately struck by a BMW driver, believed to be the snack bar owner’s son, trying to stop the man.

July 22: Munich mall mass shooting – David Ali Sonboly, 18, shot dead nine people at a Munich shopping mall before turning the gun on himself, having spent a year planning the rampage.

Police said that the German-Iranian was ‘obsessed’ with mass killers like Norwegian right-wing fanatic Anders Behring Breivik and had no links to the Islamic State group.

July 18: Train axe attack – A 17-year-old migrant wielding an axe and a knife went on a rampage on a regional train, seriously injuring four members of a tourist family from Hong Kong and a German passer-by.

ISIS group subsequently released a video purportedly featuring the assailant, named by media as Riaz Khan Ahmadzai, announcing he would carry out an ‘operation’ in Germany, and presenting himself as a ‘soldier of the caliphate’.

He is believed to have been Afghan or Pakistani.

July 14: Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel ploughed a truck into a crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day in the French Riviera city of Nice, killing 84 people and injuring over 300.

The Nice attack was the third major strike on France in 18 months and was claimed by ISIS.

March 22: Suicide attacks claimed by ISIS kill 32 people and wound more than 300 at the Brussels airport and Maelbeek metro station, near European Union offices. They appear to have been carried out by members of the same cell that committed attacks in Paris four months earlier.

November 13, 2015: Coordinated suicide attacks in Paris kill 130 people and wound more than 350 at the Bataclan concert hall, cafes and the national stadium. ISIS claims responsibility for the attacks.

Related: ISIS Slaughtering Christians “In Their Beds”

And, Few targets are softer than churches. Church attack nine years ago: Sunday horror: Church shootings in Colorado; gunman killed by armed female church security staffer

UPDATE
The Daily Mail confirms that the Islamist knifemen forced priest, 84, to kneel and filmed his death as they slit his throat

Two ISIS knifemen who stormed a church in Normandy forced an elderly priest to kneel before filming themselves butchering him and performing a ‘sermon in Arabic’ at the altar, a terrified witness has revealed.

Blogging on Latin America will resume shortly.

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Puerto Rico: Most of the #Orlando Islamist murderer’s victims were Puerto Ricans

Puerto Rico mourns, prepares to bury those killed at club. A U.S. territory reeling from the loss of those gunned down at a Florida nightclub is preparing to bury many of its own after authorities said nearly half of those killed were Puerto Rican

Officials said that while it’s still unclear how many of the 23 Puerto Ricans killed were born on the U.S. mainland or had moved there from the island, they expect many of them to be laid to rest in Puerto Rico in the coming days.

Five were from Ponce.

The murderer was an employee of a global security firm the DHS uses as subcontractor to provide security to federal buildings, had been questioned twice by the FBI, was licensed as a security guard, and his wife knew of his plans.

RECOMMENDED:
Pink Pistols.

UPDATE
Bob Owens does a Fact Check: An AR-15 Wasn’t Used In Orlando, And It Wouldn’t Have Mattered Anyway

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Three links on the Orlando massacre

1. Anyone arguing that the killer had “free access” to firearms is mistaken. The man an armed security officer for G4S, with a security officer firearms license

FBI Special Agent in Charge Ronald Hopper said today that the FBI had taken an interest in Mateen twice: first in 2013 after he made “inflammatory” comments to co-workers and then again the next year after he was linked to another U.S. radical who became a suicide bomber in Syria.

2. Terrorist’s father: “I don’t think he was radicalized”

Siddique Mateen also hosts a show on a US cable outlet, Afghan TV, aimed at Western audiences. On both platforms, Mateen has campaigned for the Taliban, and at times has promoted himself as the leader of a government in exile.

3. Richard Fernandez:

Historically it is state failure which drives civilian armament and not the other way around. Perhaps the clearest example of this trend is Lebanon where the inability of the central government to protect the sectarian communities has led each to protect itself. While America is not Lebanon, the same principles hold true: competence inspires confidence and there is precious little competence in the administration.

AND
Reminder: More Than 500 AR-15’s Were Smuggled in Eric Holder’s Fast and Furious Scheme

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Mexico: El Chapo vs. ISIS

In this week’s version of Aliens vs. Predators, El Chapo emailed from his hidey-hole to drop the gauntlet:

Report: ‘Chapo’ Guzmán threatens war on ISIS after terrorists destroy drug shipment

In an unconfirmed report, Chapo’s anger toward the radical jihadist group does not stem from some sense of altruism for the victims of the recent attacks in Paris or San Bernardino, but instead from concerns about his bottom line after ISIS destroyed several of his Sinaloa Cartel’s drug shipments that were being moved through the Middle East.

Guzmán allegedly sent a harshly-worded warning via email to ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, which was published by the website Cartel Blog, about messing with the cartel’s business.

“You [ISIS] are not soldiers,” Guzmán purportedly wrote. “You are nothing but lowly p**. Your god cannot save you from the true terror that my men will levy at you if you continue to impact my operation.”

The message continus: “My men will destroy you. The world is not yours to dictate. I pity the next son of a whore that tries to interfere with the business of the Sinaloa Cartel. I will have their heart and tongue torn from them. It looks like it’s on.”

A betting person would not wager on either side, but on the amounts of money it would take for both sides to reach a mutually convenient agreement.

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