Saudi Diplomat Meets Infamous Terrorist before Death

[Did Saudi diplomat give Majed the kiss of death?]

 

 

 

TEHRAN (FNA)- A Saudi diplomat has met Majed al-Majed, the mastermind of the November 19 bombing attack on the Iranian embassy in Lebanon, before his death, Lebanese media reported on Sunday.

The Lebanese al-Jadid TV channel reported that a Saudi embassy attaché in Beirut met Majed at the hospital where he was kept for dialysis 24 hours before his death.

The TV channel didn’t reveal any further details about the meeting.

On Tuesday, the Lebanese security forces said they have arrested Majed al-Majed, the Saudi ringleader of Abdullah Izzam Brigade which has claimed responsibility for the November 19 bombings in front of Tehran’s embassy in Beirut, which left 23 dead, including cultural attaché Ebrahim Ansari.

On Saturday, a Lebanese army General, who spoke on the conditions of anonymity in line with regulations, said Al-Majed died in custody in Lebanon. The General said Al-Majed died on Saturday after suffering kidney failure.

Political analysts believe that the supporters and financers of Abdullah Izzam terrorist group have killed Majed for the fear of the possible revelations he could make against the Saudi Takfiri groups.

Also, other observers say that the Lebanese security forces had started interrogation of Majed before his death, but refrained from disclosing any information upon Riyadh’s request.

Al-Majed, a Saudi citizen was detained in Lebanon late last month and had been held at a secret location. According to Islamist websites, al-Majed was announced as leader of the Brigades in 2012.

The Abdullah Azzam Brigades was formed in 2009 and is believed to have branches in both the Arabian Peninsula and Lebanon, but may have been active as early as 2004.

On Thursday, Lebanese sources disclosed that Majed had taken orders from Saudi Spy Chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan.

Lebanese information sources said that they have found information linking Majed al-Majed, the Saudi commander of the al-Qaeda affiliated group Abdullah Azzam Brigades who claimed responsibility for the attack to the Saudi spy chief.

A few hours later on Thursday, the Iranian embassy in Beirut requested access to the investigation into the double suicide bombing.

“The (caretaker) Foreign Ministry received a memo from Iranian authorities in which they asked to stay informed about the investigation with al-Majed, considering that the explosion took place on an Iranian soil,” caretaker Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour told LBCI television.

For its part, the Lebanese news site Naharnet reported that Iran’s Ambassador to Lebanon Qazanfar Roknabadi announced that an Iranian intelligence delegation participated in inspecting the scene of the explosion near the embassy in Beirut’s Southern suburbs.

“Both Lebanese and Iranian authorities agreed that Iran will take part in the investigation,” the Iranian ambassador said.

In 2009, Lebanon sentenced Majed in absentia to life in prison for belonging to a different extremist group, the Al-Qaeda-inspired Fatah al-Islam.

Earlier today, senior parliamentary officials in Tehran disclosed that Saudi Arabia had offered to pay $3bln to the Lebanese government in return for the extradition of Al-Majed, the suspected head of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades – Ziad al-Jarrah Battalion, that claimed responsibility for the November attack on the Iranian embassy in Beirut which killed 23 people.

“The Saudi government has considered $3bln for the extradition of the individual behind the Iranian embassy blast in Lebanon, indicating that the remarks he might make are vitally important for the Saudi government,” Vice-Chairman of the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Mansour Haqiqatpour told FNA on Saturday.

“Saudi Arabia has demanded Lebanon to extradite Majed in return for $3bln,” he reiterated.

Haqiqatpour also underlined that Tehran is entitled to file a lawsuit at the UN against Saudi Arabia because the mid November attack was conducted on the Iranian embassy in Beirut.

US/Saudis Attempt To Build A Kinder, Gentler “Al-Qaeda” To Battle Against Big “Bad Al-Qaeda”

[The new kid on the Syrian bloc, “Army of the Mujahideen,” is another offshoot of Abu Musab Zarqawi’s “Al-Qaeda In Iraq,” as was the second incarnation of the “Abdallah Azzam Brigades.”  Army of Mujahideen is another Sunni Iraqi terrorist outfit.  This one fought a blood-feud with Zarqawi’s Al-Qaeda in Iraq, before he was removed from power and eventually killed.  The Iraqi Muj group was associated with the Ikhwan, Muslim Brotherhood.  The feud fought was over Zarqawi’s brutal murders of Sunni officials and policemen, breaking-out into the open over the murder of Anbar tribal leader Sheikh Naser Abdul Karim al-Miklif in Feb. 2006.  The fact that they have relocated to Syria to continue that feud is unimpressive.  All of this is just the latest slant on Bandar’s war against Bashar, which is now moving into Lebanon.]

New Syria rebel alliance declares war on al-Qaeda’s ISIL

 

Photo: Fighters of the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Tel Abyad. Syrian rebels’ uneasy co-existence with the hardline IsiL has turned to outright hostility. Photograph: Reuters  

A newly formed Syrian Islamist rebel alliance has declared war on the powerful al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and joined other opposition groups in battling the extremists. For its part, Syria’s main opposition National Coalition says it backs the rebel fight against al-Qaeda.

“We, the Army of the Mujahideen, pledge to defend ourselves and our honor, wealth and lands, and to fight ISIL, which has violated the rule of God, until it announces its dissolution,” said the new alliance of eight groups, in a statement published on Facebook Friday.

As the statement was issued, it fought in fierce clashes with the ISIL in the Aleppo and Idlib provinces of northern Syria.

The Islamic Front, the largest rebel alliance, which is made up of several powerful Islamist groups, and the Syrian Revolutionaries Front, another major rebel bloc, also battled ISIL on Friday, Agence France-Presse reported.

On Saturday, rebels battling jihadists in northern Syria killed or captured scores of the militants loyal to an al-Qaeda affiliate in two days of fighting, a watchdog said.

“At least 36 members and supporters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have been killed since Friday in Idlib and more than 100 have been captured by rebels” in Idlib and Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

“The Syrian Opposition Coalition fully supports ongoing efforts by Free Syrian Army elements to liberate towns and neighborhoods from the authoritarian oppression” of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the group’s presidency said in a statement.

“The Coalition stands in full solidarity with all Syrians rising up against al-Qaeda’s extremism and calls upon the international community to recognize the importance of supporting revolutionary forces as partners in the fight against al-Qaeda’s extremism and Assad’s sponsorship and encouragement of extremist forces,” it added.

For its part, the Army of Mujahideen, a newly formed group made up of eight brigades, demanded that ISIL fighters join the ranks of other rebel groups “or hand over their weapons and leave Syria,” earlier on Saturday.

The alliance reproached ISIL for “spreading strife and insecurity… in liberated [rebel] areas, spilling the blood of fighters and wrongly accusing them of heresy, and expelling them and their families from areas they have paid heavily to free” from Assad’s forces.

A Arabiya

 

U.S. Won’t Send Troops to Iraq to Fight al-Qaeda

By Terry Atlas and Alaa Shahine

Secretary of State John Kerry said the U.S. won’t send troops to Iraq to help the government battle al-Qaeda-linked militants who have seized control of much of the city of Fallujah and nearby towns.

“This is a fight that belongs to the Iraqis,” Kerry said at a news conference in Jerusalem today. “We’re going to do everything that is possible to help them,” while stopping short of putting boots on the ground, he said. The U.S. is in touch with tribal leaders in the region “who are showing great courage” against militants, he said.

There is little appetite in the U.S. for renewed military involvement in Iraq, where 4,489 Americans were killed and 51,778 wounded in action after President George W. Bush’s administration invaded the country almost 11 years ago. Obama has listed ending direct U.S. military action in Iraq two years ago as one of his main accomplishments. Fallujah, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) west of Baghdad in Anbar province, was one focus of the 2007 “surge” of U.S. forces against Iraqi insurgents, which paved the way for the American withdrawal.

The al-Qaeda fighters have overrun the police headquarters in Fallujah and seized military equipment there provided by the U.S. Marines, Uthman Mohamed, a local reporter in the city in Iraq’s western Anbar province, said in a phone interview late yesterday. There’s no sign of government forces inside Fallujah, and most of the fighting is occurring on a highway linking the city to Baghdad, he said.

Fighting in Syria

The Sunni Muslim gunmen in Anbar, which neighbors Syria, are affiliated with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group, whose regional influence is growing through its involvement in the war to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The U.S. has already stepped up arms supplies to help Iraq’s Shiite Muslim-led government suppress the group, agreeing to send helicopters, missiles and surveillance drones.

The street battles in Anbar add to the turmoil caused by the daily car bombs that have already complicated Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s struggle to assert control over the oil-rich country following the U.S. pullout. Sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in 2013 was the deadliest in five years. Maliki also faces political unrest, with 44 members of parliament resigning last week because the government used force to dismantle Sunni-led protests in Anbar.

Tribal Leaders

The U.S. is following the events in Iraq closely and is concerned by efforts of the “terrorist Al Qaida/Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant to assert its authority in Syria as well as Iraq,” State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said in a statement yesterday.

“We would note that a number of tribal leaders in Iraq have declared an open revolt against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” Harf said. “We are working with the Iraqi government to support those tribes in every possible way.”

Iraq’s air force carried out two air strikes on Fallujah and the nearby city of Ramadi that killed 55 al-Qaeda fighters, General Ali Ghaidan, chief of the country’s land forces, told al-Sumaria News.

Anti-government fighters captured the al-Mazraa military camp near Fallujah after heavy fighting, Al Jazeera television said.

Halima Ahmed, a health official in the province, said by phone that the death toll in Fallujah during recent days of fighting had reached 36, most civilians killed by army shelling.

Reinforcements Sent

Al-Maliki sent reinforcements on Jan. 1 to dislodge militants from Fallujah and Ramadi. In Syria, the al-Qaeda-linked group has eclipsed Western-backed rebels fighting Assad. While President Barack Obama has declined to intervene directly in the Syrian war, the U.S. may come under increasing pressure to contain the fallout from that conflict if the al-Qaeda militants gain a foothold in western Iraq, Ryan Crocker, a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, said in an interview.

“If al-Qaeda manages to really take hold of western Iraq, that’s a pretty substantial base on Arab territory, where they’d have security and the space to start thinking about operations wherever they want to think about,” said Crocker, who served as ambassador from 2007 to 2009. “It’s exactly what they had in Afghanistan before” the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the U.S.

Civilian fatalities in Iraq, including police, totaled 7,818 last year, with almost 18,000 wounded, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq.

So far, the violence hasn’t affected Iraq’s major oil fields, the country’s main source of revenue. Output rose by 100,000 barrels a day last month to 3.2 million barrels, the most since August, according to a Bloomberg survey. The country pumped more crude as it increased links to wells in its predominately Shiite south. Iraq is the second-biggest producer in OPEC after Saudi Arabia.

To contact the reporters on this story: Terry Atlas in Jerusalem at tatlas@bloomberg.net; Alaa Shahine in Dubai at asalha@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Walcott at jwalcott9@bloomberg.net

ISIL Takes Credit for Reprogramming “Good Muslim” Boy Into Suicide-Bomber

Koutaiba Alsatm Mohammed Abducted in Bekaa Valley. 

[Family statement originally blamed Hezbollah for the abduction, claiming that he disappeared while clearing a Hezbollah check post.  Circumstances were such that first conclusions were wrong, indicating use of “false flag” tactic by Lebanon’s Sunni terrorists.]

[SEE:  Leb. Suicide Bomber Identified As Man Kidnapped 5 Days Ago]

Al-Qaeda’s ISIL claims responsibility for Beirut Bombing

The Al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) on Saturday claimed credit for a deadly bombing in the Beirut stronghold of the “criminal” Shiite militant group Hezbollah.

ISIL said in a statement posted online that it had penetrated the “security system of the Party of Satan (Hezbollah)… and crush its strongholds… in a first small payment from the heavy account that is awaiting those wicked criminals”.

Thursday’s suicide car bomb in the Haret Hreik district of Hezbollah stronghold of Al Dhahieh , a souther suburb of the Lebanese capital Beirut killed four people and wounded 77.

It was the latest strike against the powerful party, whose fighters are aiding Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a civil war that pits him largely against Sunni Muslims, including ISIL.

The army said Saturday that a young man from northern Lebanon was the bomber who blew himself up.

“The DNA test results on the remains of a suicide attacker found in the car used in the bomb attack… confirm they belong to the youth Qutaiba al-Satem,” said the army.

“Investigations are ongoing by the relevant judicial authorities to uncover the full details of the event,” it added.

An official from Satem’s native Sunni-majority area of Wadi Khaled told AFP on Friday suspicions over the 20-year-old’s role were based on a ID found at the scene of the blast.

The tribes of Wadi Khaled disputed the charges and said Satem “does not belong to any political or religious party, is an engineering student, who loved music and intended to travel to France in order to continue his studies.”

They claimed he was kidnapped by Hezbollah on December 30 at a checkpoint.

They also claimed that he does not have a driver’s license, does not know how to drive and is not familiar with Dhahieh area .

They also questioned the accusation against their son. If our son was a real terrorist would he carry with him his real ID ?

They called on the security services to conduct a “fair and transparent” investigation.

Meanwhile in Syria A newly formed Syrian Islamist rebel alliance has declared war on the powerful al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and joined other opposition groups in battling the extremists. For its part, Syria’s main opposition National Coalition says it backs the rebel fight against al-Qaeda.

“We, the Army of the Mujahideen, pledge to defend ourselves and our honor, wealth and lands, and to fight ISIL, which has violated the rule of God, until it announces its dissolution,” said the new alliance of eight groups, in a statement published on Facebook Friday.

Ahram/ Agencies