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Paris attack - 1 suspect killed, 2 others in custody

Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 10:18 pm
by L.G. Morgan
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Masked terrorists toting AK-47s and shouting “Allahu akbar” carried out a commando-style raid on an Islam-mocking Paris newspaper Wednesday, methodically killing 12 people — including a Muslim cop they gunned down on the sidewalk as he pleaded for his life.

After a massive manhunt that carried well into evening, authorities tracked down the three terrorists, killing one and taking the other two into custody, NBC News reported, citing senior US officials.
Authorities identified the killers as brothers Saïd and Cherif Kouachi, 34 and 32, respectively, Franco-Algerians who returned from Syria this summer. The other suspect is Hamyd Mourad, 18.

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The bloodbath at the satirical paper Charlie Hebdo was precisely planned for a weekly editorial meeting at the paper’s office near the famed Bastille monument, the self-proclaimed “al-Qaeda” gunmen bursting in seeking out journalists by name who they planned to slaughter, witnesses and cops said.
The jihadis headed straight for the paper’s editorial director and cartoonist, Stephane Charbonnier — widely known by his pen name Charb — killing him and his police bodyguard at about 11:30 a.m. local time, said Christophe Crepin, a police spokesman.

Two of the men could be seen on a chilling video that shows them as they left the newspaper building, one shouting “Allah!” and firing his assault rifle at pursuing cops.
The black-masked jihadist wounded one officer, a 42-year-old Muslim policeman named Ahmed Merabet.
The video shows the two gunmen run across the street to stalk the prone officer — who held up his arms and begged for mercy.
“Do you want to kill me?” the pinned down cop said.
“OK, chief,” the masked terrorist replied before shooting him dead, The Times of London reported.
A witness described the cowardly execution.

“They knew exactly what they had to do and exactly where to shoot. While one kept watch and checked that the traffic was good for them, the other one delivered the final coup de grace,” he said.
“It was a butchery, a carnage,” said Rocco Contento, a police spokesman.
In a video clip on TV station iTELE, the men can be heard shouting: “We have killed Charlie Hebdo! We have avenged the Prophet Mohammed!”

In other developments:
Experts said the terrorists likely had sophisticated military training and possible combat experience, perhaps with the terror group ISIS on the battlefields of Syria and Iraq.
A somber French President Francois Hollande stirred citizens to come together to fight terrorism. “Let us unite, and we will win. Vive la France!” he said.
Soldiers in combat fatigues and armed with assault rifles stood guard in front of the Eiffel Tower, inside Montparnasse railway station and at houses of worship and media outlets across the country.
President Obama called the assault a “cowardly and evil attack” that “underscores that these terrorists fear freedom of speech and freedom of the press.”
More than 100,000 French citizens, including 60,000 in Paris, rallied in the streets, with many bearing signs reading “Je Suis Charlie” – “I am Charlie” – in a show of support. The US Embassy in France also changed its Twitter photo to show the phrase.
Also killed were three of the paper’s best-known cartoonists, Georges Wolinski, 80; Jean Cabut, 75, known as Cabu; and Bernard Verlhac, who drew under the name Tignous. Bernard Maris, 67, an economist and contributor was killed along with other staffers and a maintenance man who directed the attackers to the newspaper’s door.

Witnesses said the gunmen spoke perfect, unaccented French.
Cherif was part of an Iraqi jihadi network in Paris and was sentenced to three years in prison with 18 months suspended in relation to terror charges in May 2008.Mourad was believed to be from Reims, though his nationality was not immediately revealed. Two were believed to be the gunmen while the third was a getaway driver, authorities said.

A witness quoted by 20 Minutes daily newspaper said one of the assailants cried out: “Tell the media that it is al Qaeda in Yemen!” And a police official said the men had links to the Yemeni terrorist network.
Another 11 people were wounded in the carnage, which began when the masked gunmen killed the building’s maintenance man and confronted Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Corrine Rey.
“I had gone to pick up my daughter at day care, arriving in front of the building, where two masked and armed men brutally threatened us,” said Rey, who signs her work as “Coco.”
“They said they wanted to go up to the offices, so I tapped in the [securrity] code,” said Rey, who hid with her daughter under a desk.

The newspaper’s editor in chief, Gerard Biard, who was in London at the time, said, “I am shocked that people can have attacked a newspaper in France, a secular republic. A newspaper is not a weapon of war.”
But Charbonnier was famously quoted in 2012 after an earlier controversy saying, “I am not afraid of retaliation. I have no kids, no wife, no car, no credit. I prefer to die standing than living on my knees.”

http://nypost.com/2015/01/07/paris-atta ... dy-report/

Re: Paris attack - 1 suspect killed, 2 others in custody

Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 10:22 pm
by Mike Sullivan
Israel Disappointed by France's UN Palestinian State Vote

Officials in Jerusalem have expressed disappointment over the UK and France’s role in Monday’s UN Security Council vote which rejected a Jordanian-sponsored bid to end Israeli control over the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem, Israel’s NRG News reported on Wednesday.

While the US and Australia helped torpedo the 15-member council’s vote, in which only eight member states voted for the resolution, France voted in favor, while the United Kingdom abstained.

The decision was one vote short of the number needed to pass the resolution.

“The unfortunate fact that two of Israel’s allies – France and Britain – supported or abstained is a worrying sign,” Strategic Affairs and Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz said, adding, “this indicates an urgent need to increase the effectiveness of foreign policy and advocacy in the international arena.”

Officials in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said that the Palestinian vote was quashed as a result of Benjamin Netanyahu’s talks with the leaders of African countries who abstained, preventing the need for an American veto.

“In an effort to prevent a majority voting for the Palestinian bid at the Security Council, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday spoke with the President of Nigeria and the President of Rwanda; the two countries finally abstained, thus preventing the required majority for the Palestinians,” an official said.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that “the failure of the Palestinian bid at the Security Council should teach the Palestinians that provocations and attempts to force Israel into unilateral action will not lead them to any achievement – but rather just the opposite.”

Israel’s Middle East Adviser at the UN, Israel Nitzan, said in a statement at the UNSC that, “The Palestinians have found every possible opportunity to avoid direct negotiations. They have engaged in a never-ending string of political games and now they are parading into this Council with preposterous unilateral proposals.”

Nitzan declared: “I have news for the Palestinians – you cannot agitate and provoke your way to a state. I urge the Council to stop indulging the Palestinians and put an end to their march of folly.”

Lieberman added that the vote was “the second time in three years” in which a Palestinian statehood proposal was frustrated, noting that “the concerted effort to develop Israel’s diplomatic relations with countries in Africa and Eastern and Central Europe,” aided the final outcome.

Israel’s former ambassador to the UN, Dore Gold, observed, “In substance, the draft resolution also sought to prejudge the outcome of any future negotiations. How can you have a Security Council resolution that decides Israel’s future borders on the basis of the 1967 lines and in the same breath assert that you are going to have a negotiation over borders? What is there left to negotiate? UN Security Council Resolution 242, adopted in the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War, did not require Israel to fully withdraw from the territories it captured in a war of self-defense.”

Noted French-Jewish activist and artist Ron Agam told The Algemeiner that “France cannot even guarantee the security of its own Jews, [and] now they want to get involved with the security of the state of Israel by pushing and voting in favor of a debilitating pro-Palestinian resolution at the UN that will guarantee the destruction of the state of Israel sooner or later.”

“My advice to President Francois Hollande,” Agam concluded, is to “exercise your influence on the Arab world – and in particular your Qatari friends – to stop financing radical Islamic terrorism against Israel and the rest of the world.”

http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/12/31/is ... ote-video/

Re: Paris attack - 1 suspect killed, 2 others in custody

Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2015 12:36 am
by C.E. Whiteoak
Mike Sullivan, I think you've hit the nail squarely on the head. The Eternal Enemy has quite an arsenal of fools, tools and useful idiots to be employed when the resulting mayhem might alter the course of events.

Re: Paris attack - 1 suspect killed, 2 others in custody

Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2015 1:50 am
by Reinhard
Was this cop really shot in the head?
I see a puff of smoke - either from the weapon discharging, or the round hitting the pavement - but there's no blood.