SALEM, Oregon: An immigrant from Iraq pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court in Portland, Oregon, to conspiring to provide material support to the Daesh group by producing and distributing propaganda and recruiting materials online.
Hawazen Sameer Mothafar, 33, faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine when he is scheduled to be sentenced on January 11 by US District Court Judge Marco A. Hernández. Mothafar was arrested in November 2020 following an FBI investigation.
The case underscores the Daesh group’s focus on maintaining an online presence, or “digital caliphate,” after the group — also known as Daesh — lost most of its self-declared caliphate in territory it seized in Iraq and Syria by late 2017.
“One of the primary mechanisms Daesh uses to threaten the West is its media outlets,” Christine Abizaid, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said in January. “The most prolific Daesh threat to the United States or other Western countries is through inspired attackers who are vulnerable to influence by Daesh messaging.”
Mothafar immigrated to the US from Iraq in 2014. An indictment handed down in November 2020 by a federal grand jury alleged that Mothafar conspired with Daesh group members to create and edit publications and articles supporting the group, and also provided technical support to its members overseas on social media and email accounts. Authorities said he distributed articles about how to kill and maim with a knife and encouraged readers to carry out attacks.
The resident of the Portland suburb of Troutdale had originally pleaded not guilty to charges of providing material support to a designated terrorist organization and conspiring to provide that support. After several postponements, the trial was supposed to have started on June 6, but Mothafar’s attorney instead told the court that Mothafar intended to change his plea.
On Tuesday, Mothafar pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, the US attorney’s office in Oregon said in a statement.
Mothafar was accused of providing assistance to Al Dura’a al Sunni, or Sunni Shield, a pro-Daesh Internet-based media organization that published Al-Anja! newspaper, including by moderating private chat rooms.
Iraqi immigrant pleads guilty in federal court in Oregon to supporting Daesh
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Iraqi immigrant pleads guilty in federal court in Oregon to supporting Daesh
- An indictment handed down in November 2020 by a federal grand jury alleged that Mothafar conspired with Daesh group members to create and edit publications and articles supporting the group
Three suspects detained for storming Libya’s state oil firm, attorney general says
The three suspects were handed over by the defense ministry
TRIPOLI: Three suspects have been detained for allegedly storming the Libyan state oil firm’s headquarters in Tripoli, the country’s attorney general said on Thursday, a day after its rival government in the east threatened to declare force majeure on oil fields and ports citing assaults on the firm.
The National Oil Corporation is based in Tripoli under the control of the internationally-recognized Government of National Unity. The parallel government in Benghazi in the east is not internationally recognized, but most oilfields in the major oil producing country are under the control of eastern Libyan military leader Khalifa Haftar.
The NOC has previously denied its corporation’s headquarters were stormed, calling it “completely false” and quoted its acting chief as calling it “nothing more than a limited personal dispute that occurred in the reception area.”
But the eastern-based government has threatened to also temporarily relocate the NOC’s headquarters to “safe cities” such as Ras Lanuf and Brega, both of which it controls.
“The public prosecution reviewed the evidence of the storming of the Corporation’s headquarters, inspected the scene, reviewed the video footage recorded at the time of the incident and heard the testimonies of those present,” the attorney general said in a statement.
The three suspects were handed over by the defense ministry, which was asked “to arrest the remaining contributors to the incident,” the attorney general said.
The national output of crude oil in the past 24 hours reached 1,389,055 barrels per day, the NOC said on Wednesday, reflecting normal levels.
Libya’s oil output has been disrupted repeatedly in the chaotic decade since 2014 when the country divided between two rival authorities in the east and west following the NATO-backed uprising that toppled Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.
RSF drone strike kills six in Sudan hospital: army source
- “The militia launched a drone strike on the Social Insurance Hospital, killing six and wounding 12,” an army source said
- A medical source at El-Obeid Hospital, the city’s main facility, confirmed the toll
KHARTOUM: Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces bombarded El-Obeid on Friday, killing six people in a hospital in the key southern city, medical and army sources said.
“The militia launched a drone strike on the Social Insurance Hospital, killing six and wounding 12, simultaneously attacking residential areas of the city with heavy artillery,” an army source told AFP, adding that the bombardment had also hit a second hospital in the city center.
A medical source at El-Obeid Hospital, the city’s main facility, confirmed the toll, adding that the Social Insurance Hospital had been forced shut “due to damage” sustained in the drone strike.
El-Obeid, a strategic city 400 kilometers (250 miles) southwest of Khartoum which is the capital of North Kordofan state, was besieged by the RSF for nearly two years before the regular army broke the siege in February.
It was one of a series of counteroffensives that also saw the army recapture Khartoum, but El-Obeid has continued to come under RSF bombardment.
The city is a key staging post on the army’s supply route to the west, where the besieged city of El-Fasher is the only state capital in the vast Darfur region still under its control.
The RSF and the army have clashed repeatedly along the road between El-Obeid and El-Fasher in recent weeks.
On Thursday, the paramilitaries said they retaken the town of Al-Khoei, around 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of El-Obeid, after the army recaptured it earlier this month.
The war between army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted 13 million since it erupted in April 2023.
The United Nation says the conflict has created the world’s biggest hunger and displacement crises.
It has also effectively split Sudan in two, with the army holding the center, east and north, while the paramilitaries and their allies control nearly all of Darfur and parts of the south.
Since losing Khartoum in March, the RSF has adopted a two-prong strategy: long-range drone strikes on army-held cities accompanied by a counteroffensive in the south.
On Thursday, the paramilitaries also announced they had recaptured Dibeibat, in South Kordofan state some 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of El-Obeid, another town that the army had retaken earlier this month.
Swathes of South Kordofan are controlled by a rebel group allied with the RSF, Abdelaziz Al-Hilu’s faction of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North.
Israel minister says ‘we will build Jewish Israeli state’ in West Bank
- “This is a decisive response to the terrorist organizations that are trying to harm and weaken our hold on this land,” Katz said
- Katz was speaking during a visit to the Sa-Nur settlement outpost in the northern West Bank
JERUSALEM: Defense Minister Israel Katz vowed on Friday to build a “Jewish Israeli state” in the occupied West Bank, a day after the government announced the creation of 22 new settlements in the Palestinian territory.
Israeli settlements in the West Bank, seen as a major obstacle to lasting peace, are regularly condemned by the United Nations as illegal under international law, and Thursday’s announcement drew sharp foreign criticism.
“This is a decisive response to the terrorist organizations that are trying to harm and weaken our hold on this land — and it is also a clear message to (French President Emmanuel) Macron and his associates: they will recognize a Palestinian state on paper — but we will build the Jewish Israeli state here on the ground,” Katz was quoted as saying Friday in a statement from his office.
“The paper will be thrown into the trash bin of history, and the State of Israel will flourish and prosper.”
Katz was speaking during a visit to the Sa-Nur settlement outpost in the northern West Bank.
Sa-Nur was evacuated in 2005 as part of Israel’s disengagement from Gaza, promoted by then prime minister Ariel Sharon.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.
During a visit to Singapore on Friday, French President Macron asserted that recognition of a Palestinian state, with some conditions, was “not only a moral duty, but a political necessity.”
An international conference meant to resurrect the idea of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is set to take place in June at the UN headquarters in New York.
A diplomat in Paris close to preparations for the conference said it should pave the way for more countries to recognize a Palestinian state.
Macron said in April that France could recognize a Palestinian state in June.
Following Israel’s announcement of the new settlements on Thursday, Britain called the move a “deliberate obstacle” to Palestinian statehood, while UN chief Antonio Guterres’s spokesman said it pushed efforts toward a two-state solution “in the wrong direction.”
11 Sudanese migrants killed in a car crash in the Libya desert, authorities say
- Authorities say 11 Sudanese migrants and a Libyan driver were killed in a car crash in the desert in Libya
- The dead included three women and two children. A 65-year-old man and his 10-year-old son were also wounded in the crash
The crash between the migrants’ vehicle and a truck happened early Friday in the desert, 90 kilometers (56 miles) north of the Libyan town of Kufra, the town’s Ambulance and Emergency Service said in a statement.
The dead included three women and two children, the service’s director Ibrahim Abu Al-Hassan told The Associated Press.
A 65-year-old man and his 10-year-old son were also wounded in the crash, he added.
It was the latest deadly incident involving Sudanese migrants in the Libyan desert.
Earlier this month, seven Sudanese were found dead after their vehicle broke down in the desert. The vehicle broke down in a path used by traffickers between Chad and Libya, leaving 34 migrants on board stranded for several days in the desert.
Libya was plunged into chaos following a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed longtime autocrat Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.
It has become a main transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East to seek better lives in Europe. The country shares borders with six nations and has a long coastline along the Mediterranean.
Human traffickers have benefited from more than a decade of instability, smuggling migrants across Libya’s borders with six nations, including Chad, Niger, Sudan Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia.
Thousands of Sudanese have fled to Libya since April 2023 after simmering tensions between the Sudanese military and a powerful paramilitary group exploded into street fighting across the country.
The conflict in Sudan has turned into a civil war that killed thousands people, displaced over 14 million, and pushed parts of the county into famine.
Egypt denies court ruling threatens historic monastery
- A court in Sinai ruled on that the monastery ‘is entitled to use’ the land, which ‘the state owns as public property’
- Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens called the court ruling ‘scandalous’
CAIRO: Egypt has denied that a controversial court ruling over Sinai’s Saint Catherine monastery threatens the UNESCO world heritage landmark, after Greek and church authorities warned of the sacred site’s status.
A court in Sinai ruled on Wednesday in a land dispute between the monastery and the South Sinai governorate that the monastery “is entitled to use” the land, which “the state owns as public property.”
President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s office defended the ruling Thursday, saying it “consolidates” the site’s “unique and sacred religious status,” after the head of the Greek Orthodox church in Greece denounced it.
Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens called the court ruling “scandalous” and an infringement by Egyptian judicial authorities of religious freedoms.
He said the decision means “the oldest Orthodox Christian monument in the world, the Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine in Mount Sinai, now enters a period of severe trial — one that evokes much darker times in history.”
El-Sisi’s office in a statement said it “reiterates its full commitment to preserving the unique and sacred religious status of Saint Catherine’s monastery and preventing its violation.”
The monastery was established in the sixth century at the biblical site of the burning bush in the southern mountains of the Sinai peninsula, and is the world’s oldest continually inhabited Christian monastery.
The Saint Catherine area, which includes the eponymous town and a nature reserve, is undergoing mass development under a controversial government megaproject aimed at bringing in mass tourism.
Observers say the project has harmed the reserve’s ecosystem and threatened both the monastery and the local community.
Archbishop Ieronymos warned that the monastery’s property would now be “seized and confiscated,” despite “recent pledges to the contrary by the Egyptian President to the Greek Prime Minister.”
Greek Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis contacted his Egyptian counterpart Badr Abdelatty on Thursday, saying “there was no room for deviation from the agreements between the two parties,” the ministry’s spokesperson said.
In a statement to Egypt’s state news agency, the foreign ministry in Cairo later said rumors of confiscation were “unfounded,” and that the ruling “does not infringe at all” on the monastery’s sites or its religious and spiritual significance.
Greek government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said “Greece will express its official position ... when the official and complete content of the court decision is known and evaluated.”
He confirmed both countries’ commitment to “maintaining the Greek Orthodox religious character of the monastery.”
