"The once-reluctant warrior now apparently resolved to waging a struggle against Islamic extremism for the remainder of his presidency."
Where has he been reluctant?
So that's going to be his legacy, huh? Handing off WWIII to the next tool?
Related: SILLI Wednesday
Let the laughs continue:
"Obama seeks world fight on Islamic State" by Mark Landler | New York Times September 25, 2014
UNITED NATIONS — President Obama charted a muscular new course for the United States in a turbulent world on Wednesday, telling the UN General Assembly in a bluntly worded speech that the American military would work with allies to dismantle the Islamic State’s “network of death” and warning Russia that it would pay for its bullying of Ukraine.
I will be getting back to that soon; however, wouldn't it have been better to never have created ISIS in the first place? Then you wouldn't have to go dismantle it.
Oh, right, this is actually about toppling Assad.
Two days after ordering airstrikes on dozens of militant targets in Syria, Obama issued a fervent call to arms against the Islamic State — the once-reluctant warrior now apparently resolved to waging a struggle against Islamic extremism for the remainder of his presidency.
“Today, I ask the world to join in this effort,” Obama said, seeking to buttress a global coalition that he said would train and equip troops to fight the group, also known as ISIL, starve it of financial resources, and halt the flow of foreign recruits to its ranks.
He's going to train terrorists to fight terrorists he created.
“Those who have joined ISIL should leave the battlefield while they can,” Obama said, foreshadowing the blows to come. “For we will not succumb to threats, and we will demonstrate that the future belongs to those who build, not those who destroy.” The brutality of the militants, he said, “forces us to look into the heart of darkness.”
Then it does not belong to AmeriKa, it will belong to China and Russia.
Unless Obama uses the nukes.
Even so, Obama said, the threat from the Islamic State was only the most urgent of an onslaught of global challenges that have given the United States no choice but to take the lead: from resisting Russia’s aggression against Ukraine to coordinating a response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa; from brokering a new unity government in Afghanistan to organizing a new campaign to confront climate change.
I will also be getting back to Ebola and Afghanistan soon, and I'm up-to-date on climate.
It was a starkly different president than the one who addressed skeptical world leaders at the General Assembly last year, two weeks after calling off a missile strike on Syria over its use of chemical weapons. In that speech, Obama offered a shrunken list of US priorities in the Middle East and showed little appetite for the charged rhetoric or interventionist policies of his predecessor, George W. Bush.
Related: Obama W. Bush
Actually, he's been worse. More drone strikes, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine all have his fingerprints, no one else's. The audacity to claim the mantle of hope and change from that man!
Obama on Wednesday spoke more like a wartime leader, reaffirming his determination to work with other countries but leaving little doubt that the United States would act as the ultimate guarantor of an international order that he said was under acute stress.
And there it is. HE has taken it on HIMSELF to DECIDE things.
As if to underscore his new role, Obama chaired a rare leaders session of the UN Security Council, which unanimously passed a resolution requiring countries to pass laws against traveling abroad to join terrorist groups or financing those efforts.
Was Putin or Xi there?
“If there was ever a challenge in our interconnected world that cannot be met by one nation alone, it is this,” he said, “terrorists crossing borders and threatening to unleash unspeakable violence.”
Yeah, never mind the missiles and jet bombs.
For all the hardening of Obama’s tone, though, it remained unclear whether the speech represented a fundamental rethinking of his policy or a reluctant response.
F*** OFF, NYT!
******************
Still, his remarks clearly seemed designed to get past months in which the president appeared visibly conflicted about the proper use of US military force in the Middle East — an ambivalence that opened him to criticism that he was feckless and irresolute.
What is the "proper" use of military force based on lies and deceptions?
In addressing the Ukraine crisis, Obama used his strongest language yet, portraying Russia’s incursions as an affront to UN principles and promising to levy a cost on President Vladimir Putin.
So is Israel but the veto is cast in their favor often enough.
Btw, did you ask the U.N. for permission to bomb Syria, sphincter?
He accused Russia of conspiring with Ukrainian separatists to obstruct an investigation into a downed Malaysian jetliner.
What do you mean? That vague Dutch report was buried because it implicated a false flag shoot-down by Ukraine forces working with NATO forces.
What an EMBARRASSING JERK is this guy!
“This is a vision of the world in which might makes right,” he said, “a world in which one nation’s borders can be redrawn by another, and civilized people are not allowed to recover the remains of their loved ones because of the truth that might be revealed.”
They are afraid of that last one, and what an insulting hypocrite, huh?
The 39-minute speech was also notable for what Obama did not say. Last year, he singled out nuclear negotiations with Iran and Syria’s civil war as two of his top priorities in the Middle East. On Wednesday, he mentioned them in only a cursory manner.
Iran, he said, should not let the chance for a nuclear agreement slip by. But he made no reference to Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, who has made clear he does not want to shake hands with Obama this week, a gesture long-awaited as a symbol of thawed relations between the United States and Iran.
I couldn't give a damn about more illusionary symbolism and imagery. Had my fill, sorry.
Privately, US officials have expressed deep skepticism about the status of the negotiations with Tehran, and Obama’s subdued remarks suggested he shares that pessimism.
The president also did not single out President Bashar Assad of Syria for criticism, as he did last year, over the use of chemical weapons, though he spoke of the brutality of the Assad regime. Assad has voiced support for the US-led strikes in Syria, and his air force has not interfered with US warplanes entering Syrian air space.
They were warned not to.
In a sign of how the fight against the Islamic State has reordered priorities, Obama pledged to train and equip moderate rebels in Syria — something he long resisted and labeled a fantasy.
He's resisted it, huh?
What do you do when a NEWSPAPER FLAT OUT LIES to you?
He repeated calls for a political settlement to end the civil war, acknowledging that “cynics may argue that such an outcome can never come to pass.”
The U.S. is the greatest impediment to political settlements across the planet -- unless it is to their complete advantage, of course.
Obama also only fleetingly addressed another of last year’s priorities, the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, delivering a mild rebuke to the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The violence engulfing the region today has made too many Israelis ready to abandon the hard work of peace,” he said. “That’s something worthy of reflection within Israel,” he added.
That's a rebuke?
With much of the day’s focus on the threat from foreign fighters, Obama took pains to address it. In an echo of the 2009 speech in Cairo that was aimed at the Islamic world in 2009, he issued a direct appeal to young Muslims, urging them to resist the blandishments of violent jihadism.
“You come from a great tradition that stands for education, not ignorance; innovation, not destruction; the dignity of life, not murder,” Obama said. “Those who call you away from this path are betraying this tradition, not defending it.”
And the call tracks back to EUSraeli intelligence agencies.
Also in keeping with past practice, he acknowledged that the United States is wrestling its own demons.
“In a summer marked by instability in the Middle East and Eastern Europe,” he said, “I know the world also took notice of the small American city of Ferguson, Missouri, where a young man was killed, and a community was divided.”
We sure have!
That is an indictment of you, sir.
The speech was the centerpiece of a hectic three days of diplomacy for Obama, and he appeared to make strides in broadening the coalition against the Islamic State. On Wednesday, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain recalled Parliament to meet Friday to vote on joining US-led airstrikes in Iraq.
Cameron lost a vote in Parliament last year when he sought approval for bombing Syria, alongside the United States, after Assad’s use of chemical weapons. But he told the BBC these airstrikes were the right thing to do, and he was confident Parliament would support them.
But do the British people?
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"US, Arab airstrikes target refineries in Syria" by Rebecca Collard and Craig Whitlock | Washington Post September 25, 2014
BEIRUT — The US military and two Arab allies bombarded a dozen small-scale oil refineries in eastern Syria on Wednesday as part of an expanding campaign to cut off key sources of financing and fuel for the Islamic State, according to the Pentagon.
This isn't about the "Islamic State"; this is about overthrowing the Syrian government! That's why the propaganda pre$$ was making such a big deal out of the terrorist oil being sold to Turkey.
US fighter jets and drones, alongside warplanes from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, struck the refineries in remote parts of the Syrian desert one day after a larger wave of airstrikes targeted Islamic State training sites, ammunition depots, and command centers in the country, US military officials said.
A lot of them were empty buildings, but whatever.
Wednesday’s operation is part of a broader strategy to sever supply lines and transportation corridors connecting Islamic State strongholds in Syria and Iraq, the officials said.
Industry experts estimate the Islamic State group produces between 25,000 and 40,000 barrels of oil a day, earning as much as $1 million daily.
Attacks on the refineries came on a day in which US military forces also reported hitting an Islamic State convoy in Syria near the Iraqi border, and Syrian opposition groups reported heavy bombardment in areas near Turkey. American planes also carried out four airstrikes in Iraq, US officials said.
Iraqi state television reported that two raids by US planes mistakenly hit Iraqi army forces and killed 75 soldiers in Saladin province. But it was not possible to confirm the report on Wednesday evening with Iraqi or American officials.
OOOOOOOPS!?!
Islamic State fighters are waging a two-front war in Iraq and Syria, seeking to expand the boundaries of their self-declared caliphate, or state ruled by strict Islamic law. The group is accused of widespread atrocities in both countries, and the beheadings of at least three Western hostages.
But they are finding support from local populations, or so I have been told by my propaganda pre$$.
Despite widespread resentment of the extremists in Syria, the expansion of strikes against Islamic State has been met with mixed reactions in Syria.
Since when?
After more than three years of war, Syrian residents and rebels have expressed frustration that the intervention is not targeting President Bashar Assad’s government, with some even holding small scale demonstrations Wednesday against the coalition strikes.
HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!
Eight Islamic State vehicles were hit in an airstrike northwest of the border town of al-Qaim, US Central Command said. Syrian opposition activists said the coalition strikes occurred near Boukamal, where Islamic State drove out other rebels in July after seizing the al-Qaim border crossing. Islamic State bases and checkpoints were also targeted later in the day, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights group said.
The organization also said several aerial attacks were carried out near Kobane, a border town with Turkey that has been the site of intense battles between Islamic State fighters and militias from Syria’s Kurdish region in recent weeks.
Moustafa Oniedi, a Kurdish activist in Marj Ismael, about two miles from Kobane, said there were strikes south of Kobane but that they did not hit active fronts with Islamic State militants. Still, in an area where the radical fighters’ offensive has displaced tens of thousands of people, the intervention was met with enthusiasm.
Yeah, everyone loves it when AmeriKa bombs their village!
‘‘The strikes triggered a lot of joy,’’ he said. ‘‘People were clapping, chanting, and dancing in celebration because the Americans are hitting the region and they believe that the US came to their rescue.’’
OMG! Does this person even exist?
More than 130,000 refugees fled to Turkey to escape the battles before Turkish authorities closed the border. Hundreds more fled on Wednesday.
Elsewhere there were small-scale protests. A video purporting to be from Kafranbel town in Idlib province, an area not controlled by Islamic State militants and known for its liberal antigovernment opposition, showed a small group of demonstrators taking to the streets.
In another scene from the town, captured in a photo, the town’s activists held up a sign reading ‘‘Americans! If you don’t topple Al-Assad now, don’t boast about democracy.’’
Yeah, WHATEVER, AGENDA-PUSHING WaPo!
This in light of the RECENT ELECTION that ASSAD WON HANDILY!
I have to tell you, I DON'T BELIEVE THESE ACCOUNTS, VIDEOS, PHOTOS, WITNESSES, whatever have you in the propaganda pre$$.
It's over!!
This reflects the sentiments of many members of the Syrian opposition who see Assad as the main enemy.
Another video posted on social media from the Idlib town of Kafr Tkharam showed a small crowd chanting, ‘‘the people want the Islamic State,’’ and ‘‘down with the Western-Arab coalition’’ in reference to Obama’s allies in the campaign.
PFFFFFT!
‘‘Of course the Syrian Coalition has welcomed the international coalition to join us in our fight against extremism,’’ said Monzer Akbik, a member of the Syrian political opposition group. ‘‘There should be advancement on the ground by the Free Syrian Army to liberate those areas.’’
Further muddying the picture are the US strikes against the so-called Khorasan group, which is embedded with Jabhat al-Nusra, an Al Qaeda-linked group that has popular support in Syria. Some 50 Nusra fighters were killed in a strike on Tuesday, rebels said.
I thought those were clearing things up!
The group was pulling out of its bases on Wednesday, said Ali Bakran, a rebel commander with a brigade linked to the relatively moderate Free Syrian Army. He moved to Turkey from Idlib after the airstrikes began in order to prevent civilian casualties.
‘‘People are so angry,’’ he said. ‘‘For a long time they have been caught between Islamic State and the regime. Now they are caught between Islamic State, the regime and the United States and their coalition’s strikes.’’
--more--"
"US airstrikes kill one of Khorasan’s leaders" by Karen DeYoung, Greg Miller, and Loveday Morris | Washington Post September 25, 2014
More garbage.
WASHINGTON — US missile strikes against an obscure Al Qaeda cell in Syria killed at least one of the group’s leaders, delivering what US officials described as a significant but not decisive blow to a terrorist group accused of plotting attacks against Europe and the United States.
I was told the attack was imminent, so this doesn't matter; if imminent, the operatives have already slipped over the southern border and are in place. All they are waiting on is the "go."
US officials said late Wednesday that American intelligence agencies had not confirmed reports that the leader of Al Qaeda’s Khorasan group, Mushin al-Fadhli, was the senior operative killed in the barrage of strikes west of Aleppo. But that prospect was a focus of ongoing US efforts to assess the impact of the operation, carried out simultaneously with a broader offensive against the Islamic State.
Oh, no, ANOTHER CIA-DUH GHOST EXHUMED from the GRAVE!
The growing certainty that a senior operative were killed came as US officials provided new details on the origins of the murky terrorist entity and the status of its alleged attempt to mount an attack against Western targets.
HA-HA-HA-HA!
SIGH!
Although Obama administration officials described the group as ‘‘nearing the execution phase’’ of a potentially major terrorist plot, other US officials said Wednesday that there was no indication that it had selected targets, deployed operatives or otherwise set a specific plan in motion.
Translation: This was all more FEAR-MONGERING so a WAR COULD GET GOING and the NEO-CON WAR AGENDA FULFILLED!
F*** THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!
Fadhli, born in Kuwait in 1981, is one of a number of Al Qaeda figures living in Iran during the past decade.
HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!
This is ABSOLUTELY PITIFUL PROPAGANDA! Yup, IRAN -- of all people -- released the Shi'ite-hating heretic they had jailed so he could attack AmeriKa.
Gimme us a f***ing break!!!!!!!!!!!!
He helped raise money and orchestrate the movement of extremist fighters through Iran, first into Iraq and later into Syria.
A trusted lieutenant to Osama bin Laden and his successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, he is on US and UN terrorist designation lists.
Yup, Iran is with ISIS, 'er, CIA-Duh, ash, Khorasan, yeah, that's them, yup.
I have to tell you, THIS CRAP is FAR MORE OFFENSIVE than ANY PROFANITY I COULD UTTER!
What ABSOLUTE RUBBISH!!
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Related rubbish: Obama pulls off balancing act on ISIS, but dangers await
I'm told "the only lasting solution to terrorism, [is] good governance."
No wonder AmeriKa is in such sh** shape.
And look who warned ISIS of US airstrikes:
Related rubbish: Obama pulls off balancing act on ISIS, but dangers await
I'm told "the only lasting solution to terrorism, [is] good governance."
No wonder AmeriKa is in such sh** shape.
And look who warned ISIS of US airstrikes:
"Iran helped Kurds ward off Islamic State this summer" by Ali Akbar Dareini | Associated Press September 25, 2014
TEHRAN — A top Iranian general and 70 of his forces were on the ground in Iraq this summer, helping Kurdish fighters defend the regional capital Erbil against Islamic State militants, a senior commander from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said Wednesday.
So? The U.S. is preparing to send 30,000 troops soon.
That's a REOCCUPATION, I don't care what servile political slaves or the propaganda pre$$ mouthpieces say!
The commander’s remarks appeared to confirm for the first time that Iranian military forces are playing a battlefield role alongside Iraqis against the Islamic State extremist group, though it was not clear whether they were involved in combat or merely serving as advisers.
That CRACKS ONE UP! What CRAP MEDIA!!
Iran has said it provides advice to Iraq’s government but has denied sending combatants or weapons.
General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, who runs the Guard’s aerospace division, said a top general, Ghasem Soleimani, was instrumental in preventing the fall of Erbil.
‘‘If it were not for Iran’s help, the [Islamic State] would have captured [Iraq’s] Kurdistan,’’ he said on state television late Tuesday.
The Islamic State militants approached the outskirts of Erbil in August, prompting the United States to launch airstrikes that helped Kurdish forces drive them back.
Soleimani has since 1997 been head of the Quds Force, a division of the elite Revolutionary Guard that carries out special operations outside Iran.
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It gets even sillier and sillier (except for the dead bodies):
"Australian Police Say Terror Suspect Was Killed After Slashing Officers" by MICHELLE INNIS, SEPT. 24, 2014
SYDNEY, Australia — An 18-year-old man who was fatally shot after wounding two police officers near Melbourne was a “known terror suspect” whose passport had been confiscated, Australian officials said Wednesday.
The man, whose name was not released, attacked two officers with a knife in the parking lot of a police station on Tuesday in the town of Endeavour Hills, about 20 miles southeast of Melbourne, the police said. One officer shot the man and killed him, the police said. The two officers, who worked together on a counterterrorism task force, were hospitalized.
Here we go again!
In a video statement released from Hawaii, Prime Minister Tony Abbott described the man as a terror suspect who had mounted a fierce attack on the two officers, one of whom Mr. Abbott said was seriously hurt.
Like that fake British bulls*** from a while back?
“Obviously this indicates there are people in our community who are capable of very extreme acts,” said Mr. Abbott, who was on his way to New York for meetings at the United Nations. “It also indicates that the police will be constantly vigilant to protect us against people who would do us harm.”
Thanks for adding to the greenhouse gas pollution and cooling the planet.
The shooting follows recent warnings by the government that dozens of Australians are believed to be fighting overseas for the Islamic State and other extremist groups, constituting what officials called a threat to domestic security.
I'm getting a REAL GLADIO FEEL!
The man killed Tuesday first became a “person of interest” to the police about two months ago, and his passport was confiscated about a week ago, senior police officials said Wednesday at a news conference.
The officials, Acting Commissioner Andrew Colvin of the Australian Federal Police and Commissioner Ken Lay of the Victoria State Police, said the man had been seen carrying an Islamic State flag at a local shopping center. Mr. Colvin would not say why the man’s passport had been taken or whether he was believed to have been planning to leave Australia.
That is where the Globe print ended, and so that is where Ken Lay wound up after his fake death.
At an earlier news conference Wednesday at Endeavour Hills, officers said the man had been asked to come to the police station to discuss his intentions. When the two officers went to the parking lot to meet him, he lashed at them with a knife, the police said. A second knife was found on the man’s body after he was shot, they said. Officers said they believed that the man had been acting alone.
Of course.
The Australian Security Intelligence Organization has said that about 60 Australians are fighting overseas with Islamist extremist groups. Earlier this month, the government cited that warning in raising Australia’s terrorism alert from medium to high.
Officials said then that there was no evidence of an imminent threat. But on Thursday, raids involving hundreds of police officers were conducted in Sydney and Brisbane after what Mr. Abbott said were indications that “demonstration” killings were being planned by militant Islamists.
Then they went and had their meetings free of protest!
Mr. Abbott said Friday that an Australian fighting for the Islamic State had instructed followers in Australia to kill people; the prime minister said in Parliament that only “a knife, an iPhone and a victim” would be needed for such a killing.
Fifteen people were detained in the Sydney and Brisbane raids; most were released, but two were charged, one with conspiring to plan a terrorist attack and another on a weapons count.
Earlier this week, Mr. Abbott proposed a range of measures that he said would enhance the authorities’ ability to track and detain terrorism suspects and increase surveillance and protection at airports, military bases and large public events.
Abbott the asshole!
--more--"
Don't loose your head laughing:
"Algerian Islamic militants behead French hostage" by Paul Schemm and Karim Kebir | Associated Press September 25, 2014
ALGIERS — The killing of Herve Gourdel, a mountaineer who was kidnapped while hiking in Algeria, was a ‘‘cowardly assassination,’’ a visibly upset President Francois Hollande of France said Wednesday, but he vowed to continue the military operation.
Something about airstrikes being ‘‘human dignity against barbarity’’ Hollande told an unusual session of the UN Security Council chaired by President Obama, who said people around the world had been ‘‘horrified by another brutal murder.’’
*************
On Friday, France joined the United States in conducting airstrikes in Iraq....
Gourdel, a 55-year-old mountain guide from Nice, was seized Sunday while hiking in the Djura Djura mountains of northern Algeria. His Algerian companions were released.
Jund al-Khilafah, or ‘‘Soldiers of the Caliphate,’’ split from Al Qaeda and pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group two weeks ago....
An online video showed masked gunmen standing over a kneeling Gourdel. They pledged their allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and said they were fighting his enemies.
Who?
Oh, right, the Mossad/CIA agent Baghdadi.
The video showed the captive pushed to the ground before he was beheaded....
It's another fake, probably taken all at the same time.
--more--"
Turns out I was right about the Germans (they had U.S. help?), and look at this French funny:
This will make you laugh:
"3 militants in French custody after mix-up" by Dan Bilefsky | New York Times September 25, 2014
PARIS — Three Frenchmen suspected of joining militants in Syria were expecting to be arrested by French police after Turkish officials put them on a flight home Tuesday.
Instead, after their plane landed in the southern city of Marseille, they walked free while French intelligence officers waited at the wrong airport, hundreds of miles away.
After finding one police station empty, the men eventually turned themselves in Wednesday.
HA-HA-HA-HA!
But not before politicians, the media, the prime minister, and the defense minister assailed a national security “foul-up” that has laid bare Europe’s struggle to deal with an estimated 3,000 citizens — about 930 from France — who have left to join the ranks of jihadi groups in Syria, often using Turkey as a transit point.
For France, the bungled security operation was particularly embarrassing.
France is so fearful of French jihadi returning from Syria that last week the National Assembly approved legislation to prevent them from leaving.
Related: French farmers torch tax office in Brittany protest
They must be Syrian.
The country has been on special alert since last week, when France launched airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq and the group ordered its followers to attack French citizens.
On Wednesday, an Al Qaeda offshoot in Algeria said it had beheaded a French hostage in retaliation for France’s participation in the raids.
Making matters worse, all three men at the center of the mix-up this week are well known to French counterterrorism officials and have long been under surveillance.
OMG, this is STINKING to HIGH HEAVEN!
One was identified as Abdelouahab el-Baghdadi, 29, a brother-in-law of Mohammed Merah, who killed seven people, including three Jewish children, in Toulouse and Montauban in 2012.
Another Baghdadi also tied into to that false flag op?
The others are Imad Jjebali, a childhood friend of Merah who had previously been sentenced to four years in prison in 2009 on terrorism charges, and Gael Maurize, who was known to the French intelligence services for suspected links to a terrorist cell.
So for which intelligence agency where they working?
--more--"
Laughing so hard I'm crying:
"Jordan acquits militant cleric in terrorism case" by Ranya Kadri and Alan Cowell | New York Times September 25, 2014
AMMAN, Jordan — A militant Islamic cleric known as Abu Qatada walked free Wednesday after a state security court acquitted him on terrorism charges, punctuating 15 years of legal battles with the Jordanian and British authorities.
Related: Putting ISIS on Jordan
His case had long been closely watched, regarded as a test of the conflicting imperatives of national security and human rights, and the verdict was a dramatic reversal of his fortunes following an earlier death sentence that was later reduced to life imprisonment.
In his latest trial, Abu Qatada, whose real name is Omar Mahmoud Mohammed Othman, faced accusations relating to a plot to bomb Israeli, American, and other Western tourists at millennium celebrations in Jordan in 2000. In June he was acquitted on separate charges of planning to carry out a terror attack on an American school in Amman, the Jordanian capital.
He had denied all the charges.
The 54-year-old cleric stood for the judgment in a cage inside the courtroom. As a judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence to convict him, relatives chanted “God is great” and his eyes filled with tears, according to reporters at the hearing.
After his release from prison a few hours later, he and other family members reunited at his mother’s home in Amman. Witnesses said supporters cheered and women ululated to welcome Othman home.
The verdict also cast some light onto the murky rivalries among Islamist factions and their Arab hosts at a time when the rise of the militant Sunni group Islamic State has set a new benchmark for ferocity in the name of jihad.
Othman’s acquittal came after he and another militant cleric known as Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, whose real name is Mohammed al-Barqawi, condemned the Islamic State, which broke away from Al Qaeda this year. The group is seeking to build an Islamic caliphate in Syria and Iraq, igniting concerns that the militants could spread chaos in Jordan, a pro-Western monarchy that has long straddled the region’s political and religious fault lines.
Yeah, why is it ISIS only attacks the enemies of USrael?
Jordan is one of five Arab nations that joined the United States in bombing Islamic State targets in Syria early Tuesday.
Analysts said the acquittal of Othman could reflect a calculation among Jordanian security officials that there was a tactical advantage in releasing him as a counterweight to the influence of newer and more extreme jihadists, like those loyal to the Islamic State.
So he wasn't really innocent, is that what they are implying?
Earlier this year, for instance, the cleric joined Barqawi in urging Islamic State leaders to refrain from killing Muslim and non-Muslim hostages who had not taken up arms against them.
The appeal did not avert the beheadings of two American and one British captive in recent weeks.
On Wednesday, fighters affiliated with the Islamic State released a video showing the beheading of a French tourist captured just days ago in Algeria.
Another Western hostage, Alan Henning, a British cabdriver who had volunteered to deliver humanitarian aid in Syria, has been publicly threatened with the same fate. His wife, Barbara, issued an appeal for mercy Tuesday, saying she had gotten an audio file of Henning pleading for his life.
“I have been told that he has been to a Sharia court and found innocent of being a spy and declared to be no threat,” she said.
“I implore Islamic State to abide by the decisions of their own justice system. Please release Alan.”
Please stop it with the scripted and staged crisis actors.
Othman went on trial in Jordan after his deportation last year from Britain, where he spent many years in exile, resisting efforts to expel him.
Backed by human rights lawyers, he won legal successes that galled British officials, who breathed a collective sigh of relief when he left.
“The UK courts here were very clear that Abu Qatada poses a threat to our national security,” Theresa May, Britain’s home secretary who led an effort to remove Othman, said. “That’s why we were pleased as a government to remove him from the UK.”
Supporters of the cleric are likely to cast the latest ruling as a final vindication of his long-standing protestations of innocence.
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