Algeria

Second Malaysian in Algeria hostage crisis confirmed dead

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Second Malaysian in Algeria hostage crisis confirmed dead

KUALA LUMPUR — The second Malaysian reported missing in the Algerian hostage crisis at the gas facility complex in In Amenas, Algeria, has been confirmed dead, according to Wisma Putra.

The Foreign Ministry said in a statement today that Tan Ping Wee was identified by the forensic team through his dental records as well as confirmation of his tattoo by his family.

Following the confirmation, Wisma Putra had immediately notified members of Tan’s family, said the statement.

The Malaysian Embassy in Algiers and the JGC Corp are in the midst of arranging for the remains of Tan Ping Wee and Chong Chung Ngen, who was identified earlier, to be flown home as soon as possible.

Wisma Putra had earlier said that three of the five Malaysians working at the gas facility complex in In Amenas, Patrick Purait Awang, Lau Seek Chiang and K. Ravi were safe.

Chiang and Ravi have since returned home while Patrick had voluntarily decided to remain in Algeria to assist in the search for his colleague.

During the incident which took place last week, a militant group held 130 Amenas OGPC staff from various countries, including five Malaysians.

The action was believed to be in retaliation against the Algerian government for allowing French fighter jets into its airspace to quell Muslim militants in Mali.

Meanwhile, Deputy Foreign Minister Senator A. Kohilan Pillay said the two bodies are expected to arrive in Malaysia by Monday, if all the necessary documentation and forensic process was cleared.

“We are waiting for a few procedures to go through and once completed the remains of the two will arrive in about two days,” he told Bernama when contacted.-BERNAMA-

Source: MOLE

Second Malaysian in Algeria hostage crisis confirmed dead

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Second Malaysian in Algeria hostage crisis confirmed dead

KUALA LUMPUR — The second Malaysian reported missing in the Algerian hostage crisis at the gas facility complex in In Amenas, Algeria, has been confirmed dead, according to Wisma Putra.

The Foreign Ministry said in a statement today that Tan Ping Wee was identified by the forensic team through his dental records as well as confirmation of his tattoo by his family.

Following the confirmation, Wisma Putra had immediately notified members of Tan’s family, said the statement.

The Malaysian Embassy in Algiers and the JGC Corp are in the midst of arranging for the remains of Tan Ping Wee and Chong Chung Ngen, who was identified earlier, to be flown home as soon as possible.

Wisma Putra had earlier said that three of the five Malaysians working at the gas facility complex in In Amenas, Patrick Purait Awang, Lau Seek Chiang and K. Ravi were safe.

Chiang and Ravi have since returned home while Patrick had voluntarily decided to remain in Algeria to assist in the search for his colleague.

During the incident which took place last week, a militant group held 130 Amenas OGPC staff from various countries, including five Malaysians.

The action was believed to be in retaliation against the Algerian government for allowing French fighter jets into its airspace to quell Muslim militants in Mali.

Meanwhile, Deputy Foreign Minister Senator A. Kohilan Pillay said the two bodies are expected to arrive in Malaysia by Monday, if all the necessary documentation and forensic process was cleared.

“We are waiting for a few procedures to go through and once completed the remains of the two will arrive in about two days,” he told Bernama when contacted.-BERNAMA-

Source: MOLE

Thirty-seven foreigners killed in Algerian gas plant siege

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Thirty-seven foreigners killed in Algerian gas plant siege

ALGIERS: Thirty-seven foreigners of eight nationalities, as well as an Algerian, were killed by hostage-takers in a well-planned attack on a remote gas plant, some of them brutally executed.

Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal said five other foreigners were still missing and that some of the hostages had been executed with a bullet to the head as the four-day crisis ended in a bloodbath on Saturday.

Most of the 32 militants who took hundreds of people hostage at the In Amenas gas complex in the Sahara on Wednesday had entered the country from neighbouring Mali, Sellal told a news conference here.

The premier gave the final grim figures after Algeria had warned other nations to prepare for a higher body count, amid fears as many as 50 captives may have died in the world’s deadliest hostage crisis in almost a decade.

“Thirty-seven foreigners of eight nationalities,” were killed during the siege, Sellal told reporters, with the death of an Algerian bringing the overall toll to 38.

He did not specify the nationalities of the foreigners, but other official sources have already confirmed that one Frenchman, one American, two Romanians, three Britons, six Filipinos and seven Japanese died in the siege.

Survivors’ photos seen by AFP showed bodies riddled with bullets, some with their heads half blown away by the impact of the gunfire.

Five Norwegian nationals remain unaccounted for, while Malaysian authorities say they have had no news about two of their nationals.

Foreign leaders initially accused Algeria of keeping them in the dark when it rushed ahead with the assault and urged caution for the sake of the hostages but then focused criticism on the Islamist militants behind the attack.

“The terrorist attack was planned over the past two months,” Sellal said, adding the group’s leader was Mohamed el-Amine Bencheneb, an Algerian militant known to the country’s security services, who was killed in the siege.

A total of 29 militants were killed and three captured in the siege which ended in a final showdown between special forces and the remaining militants holed up in the sprawling In Amenas gas complex.

Eleven of the hostage-takers, who were demanding an end to French military intervention in Mali, were Tunisian and another three Algerian, with the rest Canadian, Egyptian, Malian, Nigerian and Mauritanian.

‘We’re looking for Christians’
Governments have been scrambling to track down missing citizens as more as more harrowing details emerged of the siege.

One Japanese survivor was quoted in the Daily Yomiuri newspaper as telling colleagues how the gunmen had dragged him from his barricaded room, handcuffed him and executed two hostages standing nearby.

“They were brutally executed,” said an Algerian who identified himself as Brahim, after escaping the ordeal, referring to some of the Japanese victims gunned down by the hostage-takers.

A Filipino survivor described how the militants used foreign hostages as human shields to stop Algerian troops aboard helicopters from strafing them with gunfire.

Joseph Balmaceda told reporters in Manila he was the only survivor out of nine hostages in a van that blew up on Thursday, apparently from C-4 explosives the militants had rigged to the vehicle.

“I was the only one who survived because I was sandwiched between two spare tyres. That is why I am still here and can talk to you,” said the visibly distressed father of four.

The alleged mastermind of the hostage-taking, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, said in a video posted online that it was carried out by 40 fighters from the Muslim world and European countries.

His Al-Qaeda-linked group “Signatories in Blood” threatened to stage attacks on nations involved in the French-led operation to evict Islamists from Algeria’s neighbour Mali, and said it had been open to negotiations.

“But the Algerian army did not respond… preferring to stage an attack which led to the elimination of the hostages,” it said in a message published by the Mauritanian news agency ANI.

Most hostages were freed on Thursday in the first Algerian rescue operation, which was initially viewed by foreign governments as hasty, before the focus of public condemnation turned on the jihadists.

The In Amenas plant is run by Britain’s BP, Norway’s Statoil and Sonatrach of Algeria.

An Algerian employee of BP who identified himself as Abdelkader said he was at a security post with colleagues on Wednesday morning when he saw a jeep with seven people inside smash through the barrier and screech to a halt.

One of the militants got out of the vehicle, demanded their mobile phones and ordered them not to move, before disabling the security cameras.

“He said: ‘You are Algerians and Muslims, you have nothing to fear. We’re looking for Christians, who kill our brothers in Mali and Afghanistan and plunder our resources’.”

Source: MOLE

West sees Algeria as solution, not problem

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West sees Algeria as solution, not problem

PARIS: International anger over the handling of a hostage crisis that left 37 foreigners dead subsided as quickly as it erupted because western powers see Algeria as part of the solution to the region’s problems, not the problem, analysts say.

Initial reaction over the storming of the In Amenas gas plant by the Algerian army ranged from incandescence in Japan to tetchy, implied criticism from Britain and, in milder form, the United States.

When they weren’t spluttering with indignation about not being consulted, officials in London and Washington were letting it be known that offers of special forces and technology that might have helped ensure a less blood-splattered denouement to the crisis had been rebuffed.

As the crisis unfolded tragically over the weekend, a sense of piqued irritation with what was perceived as the Algerians’ shoot first, ask questions later approach lingered.

But by Tuesday, everyone was singing from a different hymn sheet, one written by France, which knows better than most just how jealously its former colony defends its right to decide what happens on its own soil.

“I’d advise anyone thinking of criticising (Algeria) to think twice,” said French Interior Minister Manuel Valls, and it seems Paris’s allies were listening.

“This would have been a most demanding task for security forces anywhere in the world,” British Prime Minister David Cameron told parliament. “And we should acknowledge the resolve shown by the Algerians in undertaking it.”

According to Peter Cross, who runs the Paris-based Middle East Tactical Studies (METS) consultancy, it was inevitable that France’s determination to do nothing to endanger Algeria’s tacit support for its military intervention in neighbouring Mali would prevail.

“It is logical that they would lean on countries like Japan,” Cross told AFP. “It is French soldiers who are on the ground in Mali, their money that’s being spent, their reputation that is on the line.”

Jon Marks, an associate fellow of Britain’s Chatham House think-tank, said the governments involved quickly woke up to the potentially huge ramifications of how narrowly they had avoided a much bigger disaster.

As the supplier of 25 per cent of Europe’s natural gas, Algeria has an importance that goes beyond its role as a bulwark against Islamist militants on and around its doorstep.

“There was definitely a collective calming down as governments took a step back and thought about the fallout from having so many dead in an extremely strategic source of energy for Europe,” Marks added.

“Governments are very uneasy about being over dependent on (gas) supplies from Russia and it can’t all come by boat from Qatar,” he said.

Everyone is going to have to deal with Algeria
As well as realising that alienating Algeria could potentially be self-defeating, western governments have also belatedly accepted that the strongarm tactics employed by the Algerians ensured an outcome that could have been a lot worse.

“It is a bit rich for outsiders, like Britain for example, to suggest the SAS could have done better when they would have had no knowledge of the terrain or the facility,” Cross argued.

Chatham House’s Marks agrees. “The reality is that there was a potentially catastrophic situation and a lot of people got out and the plant was not blown up.”

France has benefited already from Algeria’s decision to grant use of its airspace for bombing raids in Mali and its hopes of neutralising Islamist groups based in northern Mali could hinge on the degree of support it gets from Algiers in the coming months.

By tightening its border with Mali, Algeria could feasibly deny under siege Mali-based Islamists the kind of escape route that the Taliban and Al-Qaeda enjoyed by being able to slip out of Afghanistan into the tribal areas of Pakistan.

Military experts have also highlighted the extent to which groups like Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) need huge amounts of petrol to retain the mobility that makes them such a difficult target in northern Mali’s desert expanses.

If Algiers can cut off the supply of fuel at source, the war against AQIM and its allies could be won without a single shot being fired in anger, one theory goes.

That approach, which was discussed by Algeria, Libya and Tunisia in talks last month, remains to be proven, but the importance attached to Algeria’s unrivalled knowledge of the Islamist groups aspiring to create an Africa-wide emirate is not in question.

As Cross puts it: “Nobody knows the peoples of the Sahel better than (Algerian intelligence) the DRS. Even if there is no question of them getting involved publicly with what France is doing in Mali, intelligence cooperation is indispensable.

“This is not over. Goodness knows when it will be over and until it is, everyone is going to have to deal with Algeria.”

Source: MOLE

Toll from hostage bloodbath expected to worsen

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IN AMENAS: Algeria warned other nations to prepare Monday for a higher body count from a hostage bloodbath at a gas plant that was overrun in what France called an act of war by Islamist militants.

Algerian troops on Sunday reportedly found the bodies of 25 hostages and captured five kidnappers at the In Amenas gas plant, deep in the Sahara desert, a day after storming the remaining part of the complex still in militant hands.

Governments scrambled to track down missing citizens as more details emerged after the final showdown between special forces and extremists who had taken hundreds hostage, demanding an end to French military intervention in Mali.

Dozens of hostages appear to have died. Survivors' photos seen by AFP showed bodies riddled with bullets, some with their heads half blown away by the impact of the gunfire.

"They were brutally executed," said an Algerian who identified himself as Brahim, after escaping the ordeal, referring to Japanese victims gunned down by the hostage-takers.

Witnesses have said nine Japanese people connected to plant builder JGC were killed in the 72-hour ordeal. One Japanese man who survived gave a chilling account published Monday in the Daily Yomiuri newspaper.

The unidentified man was quoted as telling colleagues how the gunmen had dragged him from his barricaded room, handcuffed him and executed two hostages standing nearby.

"I was prepared to die," he said, before his captors abandoned him and other hostages who had been bundled into a vehicle that came under a hail of bullets. He then trudged for an hour through the desert to safety.

At least 23 foreigners and Algerians had been confirmed killed since the crisis erupted on Wednesday.

Ennahar television reported that the bodies of 25 hostages were found on Sunday by security forces combing through the plant, and that five hostage-takers had been captured alive.

Thirty-two kidnappers were also killed in the standoff, and the army freed 685 Algerian workers and 107 foreigners, the interior ministry said.

"I fear that it (the death toll) may be revised upward," Algerian Communications Minister Mohamed Said told a radio station, ahead of a news conference at 1330 GMT on Monday by Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal.

French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian described the hostage-taking as an act of war because of the large number of hostages involved -- the biggest since the 2008 attack by Islamist extremists on the Indian city of Mumbai.

'We're looking for Christians'
The one-eyed mastermind of the hostage-taking, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, said in a video posted online that it was carried out by 40 fighters from the Muslim world and European countries.

His Al-Qaeda-linked group "Signatories in Blood" threatened to stage attacks on nations involved in the French-led operation to evict Islamists from Algeria's neighbour Mali, and said it had been open to negotiations.

"But the Algerian army did not respond... preferring to stage an attack which led to the elimination of the hostages," it said in a message published by the Mauritanian news agency ANI.

Most hostages were freed on Thursday in the first Algerian rescue operation, which was initially viewed by foreign governments as hasty, before the focus of public condemnation turned on the jihadists.

"The blame for this tragedy rests with the terrorists who carried it out, and the United States condemns their actions in the strongest possible terms," President Barack Obama said, with one American confirmed dead.

Prime Minister David Cameron said six Britons and one British resident were thought to have been killed in the hostage crisis, which he said was a stark reminder of the threat of global terrorism.

Among the other hostages killed were at least one Algerian, one Colombian and two Romanians. Those still unaccounted for include several Japanese nationals, five Norwegians, two Americans and two Malaysians.

The plant is run by Britain's BP, Norway's Statoil and Sonatrach of Algeria.

An Algerian employee of BP who identified himself as Abdelkader said he was at a security post on Wednesday with colleagues when he saw a jeep with seven people inside smash through the barrier and screech to a halt.

One of the militants demanded their mobile phones and ordered them not to move, before disabling the security cameras.

"He said: 'You are Algerians and Muslims, you have nothing to fear. We're looking for Christians, who kill our brothers in Mali and Afghanistan and plunder our resources'."

Witnesses agreed that the hostage-takers were well informed about the In Amenas complex, close to the Libyan border, and suspected inside help.

Fate of two Malaysians unknown in Algerian crisis

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Fate of two Malaysians unknown in Algerian crisis

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 19, 2013 (AFP) – The fate of two Malaysians believed to have been caught up in the ongoing hostage crisis at a gas complex in the Algerian desert remains unknown, the foreign ministry said Saturday.

It said that three other Malaysians who were working at the gas plant were safe. The embassy in Algeria “is still determining the fate” of the other two, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Al-Qaeda-linked gunmen stormed the gas plant in eastern Algeria on Wednesday. They have demanded an end to the French intervention in neighboring Mali, according to Mauritania’s ANI news agency.

The number of foreigners held at the plant is unclear.

The kidnappers have said they are still holding seven at the site deep in the Sahara desert near the border with Libya. An Algerian security official put their number at 10.

An Algerian security official said a dramatic military assault during the week to rescue those held had left dead 12 hostages and 18 kidnappers dead.

Source: MOLE

Brasilia architect Oscar Niemeyer dead at 104

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Brasilia architect Oscar Niemeyer dead at 104

RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec 5, 2012 (AFP) – Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, who designed much of the country’s futuristic capital Brasilia, died Wednesday, his doctors said. He was 104.

A pioneer in the use of reinforced concrete to produce soaring, curvaceous forms, Niemeyer has designed 600 works around the world and has some 20 other projects under way.

The Brazilian icon, who won architecture’s top award, the Pritzker Prize, in 1988, started his career in the 1930s and went on working well into the 21st century, after turning 100.

“I am not attracted by the angles or the hard and inflexible straight lines created by man,” Niemeyer once told the Spanish newspaper ABC.

“What attracts me is the free and sensual curve, the curve which I find in the mountains of my country, in the flow of its rivers, in the waves of the ocean, in the body of a woman.”

Niemeyer works can be found in countries as far-flung as Algeria, Italy, Israel, the United States and Cuba, whose longtime leader Fidel Castro was one of his personal friends.

In the 1940s, he worked on the headquarters in New York of the recently-created United Nations, an initiative which symbolized hopes for a new era of peace after the carnage of World War II.

On that and other early projects, Niemeyer teamed up with another pioneer of post-war buildings in concrete, the French-Swiss architect Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris, better known by his pseudonym of Le Corbusier.

In 1956, Niemeyer was appointed chief architect on the project to provide Brazil with a modern new capital city in the heart of the Amazon basin jungle — an achievement that was to make him one of the world’s best-known architects.

One of his most spectacular works was a contemporary art museum created in 1996 — when Niemeyer was already 89 years old. Located in Niteroi, a town near Rio, it includes an upturned dish shape poised over the ocean on rocky cliffs.

“Architecture is done by governments for the rich,” Niemeyer, a lifetime communist, once said.

“Poor people don’t get to take part, but they can be brought to a halt in front of a building which is so different that it sparks a moment of surprise and emotion.”

Niemeyer created some 400 buildings in all, including the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park, London, the Penang State Mosque in Malaysia, and the headquarters of the French Communist Party in Paris.

The latter building was designed during a period of exile in France, where the architect fled in the 1960s when a military dictatorship seized power in Brazil.

“There are too many injustices. But commitment to the Communist Party provides hope, solidarity, and the realization that it is possible to struggle together for a better world,” he told the French Communist daily l’Humanite in 2006.

Niemeyer was born on December 15, 1907 in Rio de Janeiro into a middle-class family of German, Portuguese and Arab ancestry. He studied at the city’s Fine Arts Academy, becoming an engineer-architect in 1936. One of his first jobs was on the Brazilian pavilion at the World Fair of 1939 in New York.

In 1928, he married Annita Baldo, with whom he had one daughter. The marriage lasted 76 years until Annita’s death in late 2004. His only daughter, Anna Maria Niemeyer, died of emphysema in 2009 at the age of 82.

Niemeyer had been hospitalized several times in recent years, including for a 2009 surgery on his gall bladder and to have a tumor removed from his colon.

The architect, who died just shy of what would have been his 105th birthday on December 15, was hospitalised on November 2 suffering from dehydration after coming down with the flu. It was the latest in a series of lengthening hospital stays.

He remained busy to the very end of his life.

Earlier this year, Niemeyer supervised the renovation of the iconic Sambadrome, the “temple of Samba” which he designed 30 years ago and where the raucous parades of Rio’s Carnival are held each year.

Source: MOLE

UN sanctions Al-Qaeda linked Mali Islamists

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UN sanctions Al-Qaeda linked Mali Islamists

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 5, 2012 (AFP) – The UN Security Council on Wednesday ordered sanctions against an Al-Qaeda linked Islamist group in a new sign of the tougher line being taken with militants who have taken over much of the Mali.

The Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) was added to the UN’s list of Al-Qaeda groups and individuals hit with a global assets freeze and travel ban.

The move comes as the UN Security Council debates authorising an international military operation in Mali against the Islamists.

The MUJAO, a splinter group of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), has battled with Tuareg rebels for control of northern Mali and, with AQIM, is holding at least 13 foreigners hostage. AQIM has been listed for sanctions since 2001.

The MUJAO first appeared after the kidnapping of three humanitarian workers at a Western Sahara refugee camp in October 2011. It is also known to operate in Mauritania and other Sahel countries and in Algeria.

“It grew considerably in its first 12 months of operation,” said a Security Council statement setting out the reasons for the listing.

“MUJAO’s leaders are known to be drug traffickers, involved in the drug trade in the Sahel,” the statement added.

The group has said it is holding seven Algerian diplomats taken from the northern Mali town of Gao and has attacked police stations in Algeria this year.

The UN statement said the group had seized heavy machine guns, rocket propelled grenades, explosives and other military equipment from Mali military arsenals since moving into the country.

Mali on Wednesday appealed to the Security Council to urgently approve an international force against the Islamist militants.

France hopes that a Security Council resolution authorising international military action will be passed this month.

“My delegation wants to stress the urgency of deploying this international force,” Traore Rokiatou Guikine, Mali’s minister for African integration, told a Security Council meeting on the crisis.

“The daily suffering of the occupied Malian people is well known: there are floggings, amputation of limbs, summary executions, children forced to become soldiers, rapes, stoning, looting and the destruction of cultural and historic sites,” she said.

If the force is approved, UN officials say an operation to reclaim northern Mali could be launched next September.

Source: MOLE

Foreigners join fight against Syria regime

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But rather than adopt the revolt’s calls for democracy and the fall of a dictatorial regime, such jihadists believe the minority Alawite sect — an offshoot of Shiite Islam to which Assad’s family belongs — are apostates and need to be fought and overthrown.

At the Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey, seized by the rebel Free Syrian Army last week, dozens of men claiming to have travelled from several Arab and Muslim countries gather.

Some say they are from Algeria, others claim to be from Morocco, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. A few say they are from even farther away, including insurgent hotbeds such as Chechnya and Somalia.

From the start of the 16-month uprising — which has grown from a peaceful revolt into an armed insurgency — the Syrian regime has claimed rebels were hosting Al-Qaeda fighters, and that the revolt was a foreign conspiracy.

It is unclear just how many foreign jihadist fighters have taken advantage of a growing gap in regime forces’ control of the territory to enter the country.

What is clear is that Syria’s rebels do not want to admit that the jihadist phenomenon exists.

In the central province of Hama, a rebel who identifies himself as Abu Ammar says he commands a 1,200-strong battalion.

“We will never let Al-Qaeda take root here — we’ll kill them if they try,” he says. “The revolution belongs to the Syrians.”

But eyewitness accounts suggest those fighters are coming whether he likes it or not, some of them likely to have been spurred by militant websites urging Islamists to join the uprising.

One website, the World Jihad Network, features a call published by the Iraqi Banner of Right and Jihad in June 2012 to volunteer for jihad in Syria.

Another carries a statement by Abu Bakr al-Husseini, identified as emir of the Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella organisation for Al-Qaeda and proxy groups.

“I do not forget to pay tribute to our brothers in the blessed, beloved Syria,” says Husseini, adding that the Islamic state does not recognise artificial boundaries or frontiers.

Shiite heretics

The Lebanese militant group Fatah al-Islam — which is linked to Al-Qaeda — claimed responsibility in June for an attack on a military vehicle in the northern Aleppo countryside near the city of Aazaz.

“Thirty Alawite troops were killed in the Aleppo countryside,” a statement from the group dated June 18 read, describing members of the Alawite sect as Shiite heretics.

In late April, Fatah al-Islam’s leader Abdel Ghani Jawhar — one of Lebanon’s most wanted men — was killed in Syria.

Jawhar was wanted by Lebanese authorities for the 2007 killing of 14 Lebanese soldiers in the northern port city of Tripoli.

Some believe that more jihadists will join the uprising as the fighting becomes more violent.

On one Internet forum, a statement by the Ansar al-Sham group says the world needs to know that… Syria has started to attract young Arab men… who are ready to enter Syrian territory and join the revolutionaries and the fighters.

The statement adds that no one has the right to blame the Syrians for the fact that Syria has become a theatre for international jihad.

The Ansar al-Sham statement also threatens attacks outside Syria.

“They have the right to target international interests the world over, belonging to whoever directly or indirectly supports the ruling gang in Syria.”

“Hundreds of Libyan heroes” are also fighting against the “Nusayris” — a derogatory term used to describe Alawites — claims another Internet forum, Honein.

The forum shows a photograph of men wearing military clothing, and another of two protesters holding up a poster with a logo that reads “the Revolutionaries of (Libya’s) Tripoli Brigade.”

Not far from the Turkish border, in a village near the northern city of Aleppo, some 80 fighters have found a new home in what was once an administrative building.

Among them are Syrians, Turks, a Ukrainian, and two or three Chechens.

Well-organised and committed, the fighters prepare for battle as they engage in shooting drills in a nearby football stadium.

'Turkish Delights' for Malaysia Spring

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‘Turkish Delights’ for Malaysia Spring

Erdogan and Anwar share a distinctive similarity – both are good liars.

While Erdogan lies to the Arab world that his country will stand firm in liberating the Palestinians, Anwar too lies about the truth why he was sacked by Dr Mahathir. His claims to Turkish Today’s Zaman that he was sent to jail for criticising his boss then, was a mere lie. I don’t think Erdogan and most of the Turks buy that story.

And for Anwar to subscribe to Erdogan’s Arab Spring is his Malaysia Spring quest is nothing but a political propaganda. Unless if he approves the mass murder and insurgency that took place in Libya, Oman, Syria, Algeria and a few Arab nations since two years ago!

If such an insurgency movement is what Anwar prefers, he is a the most dangerous man to Malaysia and its citizens. But I think Anwar and his supporters like it. They already set a precedent on January 9 when a few home made bombs were detonated outside the Kuala Lumpur High Court.

Was that the beginning of the opposition’s uprising?

Read more HERE.

Source: MOLE

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