Thursday, March 3, 2011

#1

Frankfurt, Germany (CNN) -- The man who shot and killed two American troops in Germany was a recently radicalized Muslim who seems to have been influenced by local radical Islamist websites, a German official said Thursday.

Arid Uka told interrogators that his aim was to kill American troops, said Boris Rhein, interior minister of the German state of Hesse, where the shooting took place. Two U.S. airmen were killed and two others were wounded in the attack Wednesday on a U.S. military bus at Frankfurt Airport, authorities say.

The 21-year-old man said he was motivated to carry out the attack after seeing a video on the internet the day before, which he claimed showed American soldiers raping Muslim women, according to a German intelligence official who viewed a record of the suspect's interrogation.

The suspect confessed to the shooting, and said that he acted alone with no helpers, the German intelligence official told CNN on Thursday.

The indications at this time are that the suspect was part of an extremist pro-al Qaeda network in Germany, but that he planned the attack alone without the network's knowledge, the official said.
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He was friends on Facebook with several pro-al Qaeda extremists from a group based in Bonn, Germany, that is known to German intelligence officials, according to the official. That included links to an Islamic preacher named Pierre Vogel and someone named Nessery, who was arrested about two months ago in Afghanistan, according to a U.S. official with direct knowledge of the investigation.

Current indications are that the suspect radicalized quickly, the German official said.

The gunman was a postal worker at the airport, but worked outside the secure area. The U.S. official said that Uka didn't appear to punch into work Wednesday -- having apparently canvassed the area beforehand, helping him get around the extensive uniformed and plain-clothes security that typically patrol the Frankfurt airport.

Another U.S. official on Thursday said that Uka was "not on the radar screen" of American authorities prior to the attack.

The suspect is from the northern town of Mitrovica, Kosovo's interior minister, Bajram Rexhepi, told CNN, citing the U.S. Embassy in Pristina as his source.

The U.S. official with knowledge of the probe said Uka was a 1-year-old toddler when he moved to Germany, and that authorities believe Uka's relatives had suffered in the 1990s during the Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanians.

He has passports from both Germany and Yugoslavia, the latter of which was issued prior to Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008, Rexhepi said.

Uka told interrogators that he lived with his family in high-rise public housing in a poor area of Frankfurt, the German intelligence official said. He said he did not have a friendly relationship with people in the neighborhood and did not interact with others there. He said his father was very strict and harsh with him, according to the official.

On Wednesday, he allegedly approached a bus, which was parked outside Terminal 2 and was clearly marked as a U.S. military vehicle, German police said after the shooting.

According to a U.S. official, the suspect approached one troop on the curb outside and asked him for a cigarette, only to be rebuffed. He then boarded the vehicle and shot over several rows of backpacks and luggage at troops in the back of the bus.

At some point the weapon jammed and the suspect fled, the German official said. He made it into the terminal, where he was taken into custody by German federal police, according to police.

The weapon was a 9 mm handgun that was illegally purchased, Rhein said.

The bus was occupied by 15 members of the security forces team that was on its way to Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany before deploying to Afghanistan, the spokesman said.

One of the dead airmen was a vehicle operator at Ramstein, and the second was part of a security forces team based in the U.K., an Air Force spokesman said.

Zachary Cuddeback was one of those killed, his grandfather, Daniel Cuddeback, told CNN. It's not clear if he was the vehicle operator or the member of the security forces team. A statement from his family described Cuddeback as a hockey player and "Army brat" with especially strong roots in Missouri in Virginia who joined the Air Force in 2009 after a year at Old Dominion University.

The U.S. Defense Department on Thursday identified the other victim as Senior Airman Nicholas J. Alden, 25, of Williamston, South Carolina. He had been assigned to the 48th Security Forces Squadron based out of the Lakenheath air base in Great Britain.

The two wounded troops were in a Frankfurt hospital, one in critical condition and the other in serious condition, an Air Force spokesman said.

These two were security forces who were on their way to a deployment, said a source, who did not want to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the incident.

U.S. President Barack Obama told reporters Wednesday he was "saddened and outraged" by the attack. "We will spare no effort in learning how this outrageous attack took place," he said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said how upset she was by the incident, expressed her condolences to the troops' families and stressed that Germany will "do everything we can to try and find out quickly what happened."

FBI agents were on the scene shortly after the shooting occurred, said Tom Fuentes, a former FBI assistant director and CNN contributor.

The FBI's main office in Germany is in the capital Berlin, he said, but it has a sub-office in Frankfurt.

The offense is a federal crime both in the United States and in Germany, he said, and could be prosecuted in either location, although that will be determined later. However, the investigation will meet U.S. constitutional standards, he said.

Authorities will be investigating the suspect's background and associates, likely subpoenaing telephone and e-mail records, Fuentes said.

Coment:

I belived that this was an al Qaeda  planed attack at europe

#2

(CNN) -- Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and some of his sons and closest advisers face investigation for alleged crimes against humanity, International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said Thursday.

"I would like to use this opportunity to put them on notice," Moreno-Ocampo told CNN. "I want to be clear: If their troops commit crimes, they could be made criminally responsible."

It is the first time the court will be investigating allegations as an event is ongoing.

They include allegations of security forces killing unarmed protesters, forced displacement, illegal detention and airstrikes on civilians.
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Investigators will look at the most serious accusations in Libya since February 15, the prosecutor said, when demonstrations against Gadhafi ramped up.

Moreno-Ocampo provided a map showing the locations where alleged crimes may have been committed.

He cautioned, however, that he needed more time to review the evidence.

"This is the beginning of the investigation. I can give no details," he said.

"We cannot confirm these allegations that these civilians were bombed by planes. But we have ... confirmation that civilians that were demonstrating were shot by security forces.

"We interview people and we will present the evidence to the judges. The judges will decide who should be prosecuted," he said.

But Moreno-Ocampo warned that anti-Gadhafi protesters would also be held accountable for criminal activity.

"Now, it's not just civilian demonstrations. Now, there are people opposing Gadhafi with weapons. And also we would like to warn them, you cannot commit crimes. Our business in Libya is (to) stop the crimes," he said.

The prosecutor will offer Gadhafi and others "any opportunity they want to provide their own version (of events). Because we have to be impartial. But also, we want to warn the other parties. No one can commit crimes in Libya."

Moreno-Ocampo emphasized it was the first time the ICC was able to respond in real time to allegations, partially due to social-networking sites such as Facebook.

"This triggered a very quick reaction. The (United Nations) Security Council reacted in a few days; the U.N. General Assembly reacted in a few days. So, now because the court is up and running we can do this immediately," he said.

"I think Libya is a new world. How we manage the new challenge -- that's what we will see now."

Moreno-Ocampo, who said he plans to finish his investigation within weeks and hopes to have the judge's decision within months, also announced the probe at a press conference Thursday.

"We identified some individuals with a factor of formal authority who have authority on the security forces who allegedly committed the crimes," he told reporters.

"They are Moammar Al Gadhafi, his inner circle including some of his sons who have a facto authority, but also there are some people with formal authority that should pay attention to the crimes committed by their people because if they are not preventing stopping and punishing these crimes they could be responsible in accordance with the law.

"They are minister of foreign affairs, the head of the regime security and intelligence, the head of Gadhafi personal security and the head of Libyan external security. So we would like to use this opportunity to put them on notice. If forces under their command commit criminal acts, they could be responsible."

Coment: 

Gadhafi should quit his charge because all his crimes were prooved

#3

(CNN) -- A vehicle packed with explosives rammed into a police checkpoint in northwest Pakistan on Thursday, killing nine people, police said.

Thirty-one others were hurt in the attack outside Hangu district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, said police official Aslam Khan.

The province was formerly known as the North West Frontier Province.

Meanwhile, six tribal policemen were killed and three others injured Thursday when unknown gunmen opened fire on a patrol in Khyber Agency in Pakistan's tribal region, a senior government official said.

The police van was on a routine patrol when more than five gunmen opened fire, said Shafeerullah Khan, the administration chief of Khyber Agency.

Coment:

This attacks need to be over  because if not more people are going to die.

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