Girls' Suspected IS Recruiter A 'Disgrace'

Written By Unknown on Minggu, 22 Februari 2015 | 14.59

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Relatives of a British woman who travelled to Syria to join Islamic State have expressed anger that she may have tried to recruit three missing London schoolgirls.

Police are searching for Shamima Begum, 15, Kadiza Sultana, 16, and Amira Abase, 15, after they left Gatwick Airport on Tuesday bound for Istanbul.

Authorities believe the teenagers are attempting to reach Syria.

One of the girls, who attended Bethnal Green Academy in east London, sent a tweet to Aqsa Mahmood, who left her Glasgow home in 2013 after becoming radicalised.

The message - which was sent on 15 February, two days before the schoolgirls left London said: "Follow me so I can dm (direct message) you back."

In a statement released through their lawyer Aamer Anwar, Ms Mahmood's family said they were "full of horror and anger" that she may have played a role in "the recruitment of these young girls".

In a direct message to Ms Mahmood, they said: "You are a disgrace to your family and the people of Scotland, your actions are a perverted and evil distortion of Islam.

"You are killing your family every day with your actions, they are begging you to stop if you ever loved them."

Ms Mahmood travelled via Turkey to Aleppo in Syria in November 2013.

Authorities fear the three London teenagers are also trying to reach Syria through Turkey.

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Gallery: Schoolgirls May Have Gone To Syria

Scotland Yard are trying to trace three teenage girls from the same East London school who are believed to have run off to Syria

CCTV captured images of the girls at Gatwick Airport

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Kadiza Sultana at Gatwick Airport

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On Saturday the schoolgirls' families pleaded with them to come home.

Shamima's family issued a statement saying they miss her "terribly" and are "extremely worried" about her.

They said: "Please, if you hear this message, get in touch and let us know you are safe. We want you home with us. You belong at home with us."

Kadiza's family said: "We are sending you our heartfelt love and continue to pray that you, along with your friends, safely return to us, or at least contact us to let us know you are OK.

"We all love you dearly and the last four days have been a complete nightmare, not knowing where you are and how you are keeping."

The family of Amira said they and her friends missed her, adding: "Please come home Amira, everyone is missing you.

"You are strong, smart, beautiful and we are hoping you will make the right decision."

The Metropolitan Police has disclosed the three girls were questioned by officers in December as part of a "routine inquiry".

According to The Times none of the three was subsequently monitored by counter-terrorism police.

Questions have been raised over how the girls - who were described as "straight-A students" - were able to leave the UK so easily.

Former Metropolitan Police border control officer Chris Hobbs told Sky News that checks for people departing from UK airports made it a "walk in the park for jihadis and girls like this" to leave.

"At the moment you go through security, you get on the plane, you might be checked by a private security guard," he said.

"Unless you're very unlucky you won't pass under the eyes of anyone from UK law enforcement."

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Written By Unknown on Sabtu, 21 Februari 2015 | 14.59

Three schoolgirls are feared to have run away from east London with plans to travel to Syria and join Islamic State.

Police said the close friends were last seen on Tuesday morning as they left their homes telling their families they would be out for the day.

Instead they met and travelled to Gatwick airport before boarding a Turkish Airlines flight, which landed at Istanbul that evening.

The three - Shamima Begum, 15, Kadiza Sultana, 16, and a third female aged 15 who is not being named at the request of her family - are pupils at Bethnal Green Academy and have been described as "straight-A students".

Metropolitan Police Commander Richard Walton said he was "extremely concerned" for their safety.

He revealed the runaways are good friends with another 15-year-old girl who fled to Syria in December.

"We are concerned about the numbers of girls and young women who have or are intending to travel to the part of Syria that is controlled by the terrorist group calling themselves Islamic State," Mr Walton said.

"It is an extremely dangerous place and we have seen reports of what life is like for them and how restricted their lives become.

"It is not uncommon for girls or women to be prevented from being allowed out of their houses or if allowed out, only when accompanied by a guardian.

"The choice of returning home from Syria is often taken away from those under the control of Islamic State, leaving their families in the UK devastated and with very few options to secure their safe return."

Mr Walton added the teenagers' families were "devastated" but there was a "good chance" the girls were still in Turkey.

All three have mobile phones, and police are using Turkish media and social media in the hopes of reaching them.

Salman Farsi, spokesman for their local East London Mosque, said: "They have been misled. I do not know what was promised to them. It is just sad. We have not had anything like this before in our community.

"I think the girls need to know they have done nothing wrong. They have been manipulated."

A family friend of one of the missing girls told Sky News: "It's really sad what has happened.

"Maybe they need to educate people more, tell them about the risks of going to Syria, that it's not safe out there."

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said: "The idea of 15-year-old British schoolgirls setting off to Syria is very disturbing, and shows that more action is urgently needed to stop young people being drawn into extremism and conflict, and to help families and communities who are trying to counteract extremist recruitment messages."

The number of Westerners who have travelled to Iraq and Syria to join IS is thought to be about 3,000, including as many as 550 women, according to the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

Former Metropolitan Police border control officer Chris Hobbs told Sky News that checks for people departing from UK airports made it a "walk in the park for jihadis and girls like this" to leave.

"At the moment you go through security, you get on the plane, you might be checked by a private security guard," he said.

"Unless you're very unlucky you won't pass under the eyes of anyone from UK law enforcement.

"If you're on a watch list then you will ping the system. If you're not on the radar then the odds are you will get on the plane without too many problems."

Police have released descriptions of the girls:

:: Shamima Begum, 15

Shamima is around 5ft 7in tall and was wearing black, thick-rimmed glasses, a black hijab, a light brown and black leopard-print scarf, a dark red jumper, black trousers and jacket.

She was carrying a dark blue cylindrical holdall with white straps. She is a British national of Bangladeshi heritage and speaks English with a London accent. She also speaks Bengali.

:: Kadiza Sultana, 16

Kadiza is described as 5ft 6in tall and slim, and was wearing black-rimmed glasses, a long black jacket with a hood, grey striped scarf, grey jumper, dark red trousers and was carrying a black holdall.

She is a British national of Bangladeshi heritage and speaks English with a London accent. She also speaks Bengali.

:: Third Missing Girl, 15

The third girl, who is not being named, is German but living in London. She is described as 5ft 6in tall and slim. She was wearing black, thick-rimmed glasses, a black head scarf, a long dark green jacket with a fur-lined hood, a light yellow long-sleeved top, black trousers and white trainers.

She was carrying a black Nike holdall. She speaks English and Amharic.

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Fire Engulfs Dubai's Torch Tower Skyscraper

A huge fire engulfed part of the Torch Tower in Dubai in the early hours of this morning, forcing hundreds of people to flee the 1,100ft skyscraper.

Witnesses said the blaze appeared to have started at around 2am in the middle of the residential building, rapidly spreading across some 15 floors.

In several videos posted on social media websites, multiple floors of the high-rise were seen ablaze.

Strong winds fanned the flames and burning debris from the fire could be seen falling from building.

One witness said flames shot out from two sides of the building as glass and metal rained down from near the summit of the structure.

Another witness said it looked "like the Titanic going down", according to Gulfnews.com.

One resident, Briton Steve Short, 53, from Liverpool, praised the work of firefighters who arrived quickly.

He said fire alarms alerted people to the blaze and building management sent workers knocking on doors to ensure residents got out.

Residents of at least one neighbouring tower were told to evacuate as a precaution because of high winds, but they were later allowed back inside.

It took firefighters several hours before they extinguished the blaze, according to a witness at the scene.

The cause of the fire was not immediately clear. Officials said there were no reports of casualties.

Opened in 2011, the Torch Tower has 79 floors and is one of the world's tallest residential buildings.

It is located in the Marina district of the city which is home to dozens of towering apartment blocks and hotels, many of them built over the past decade.

The apartments are popular with Dubai's large number of expatriate professionals.

Dubai, known for its skyline of hugely varied skyscrapers, has seen fires at towers in the past.

In 2012, a huge blaze gutted the 34-Tamweel tower in the nearby Jumeirah Lake Towers district. It was later revealed to have been caused by a cigarette butt thrown into a bin.

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Tough Talks On Greek Debt As D-Day Looms

Written By Unknown on Jumat, 20 Februari 2015 | 14.59

These could well prove the most important few days in the euro's existence.

In the corridors and meeting rooms of the Justus Lipsus building in Brussels, Greece and its euro counterparts have been charged with discussing how to keep the struggling nation in the single currency.

Their chances of success seem to be flagging.

Quite how we got here is a complicated story - it involves political and economic mistakes, financial jiggery-pokery, many decades of historical animosity and some big personality clashes.

Let's leave that aside for a moment and recall where we stand today.

Briefly: Greece is in dire need of money. The state has a series of debts to repay in March, some to the International Monetary Fund, some to the European Central Bank.

It can't easily raise cash in the open markets (would you really want to lend to Athens right now?) so it will have to find that money elsewhere.

That means borrowing it from its eurozone colleagues. Greece is of course still receiving bailout support from the so-called Troika lenders (the European Commission, ECB and IMF), so the most straightforward thing would be to extend the existing bailout and withdraw some extra cash from it (there's about €7bn of it left, which would be very helpful right now).

However, extending the bailout would also mean extending the conditions attached to it - austerity, privatisations, labour market and pension reforms.

Syriza, the party which leads the new Greek government, adamantly set itself against that in its election campaign. It also said it would refuse to co-operate with the Troika in future.

That leaves it in a sticky place. Its finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, has spent most of the past few weeks attempting to persuade his European counterparts to lend Greece some cash, but to do it as a "bridging loan" rather than as an extension of the "current programme".

That might seem like a mere terminological distinction - and in one sense it is. But underlying the terminology are real differences.

Signing up to the "current programme" again would mean obeying those hated conditions. A "bridging loan" of some sort, on the other hand, could have some discrete conditions of its own. Though some of these might be uncomfortable, they would at least be of Greece's new government's own making.

The problem is that Greece's creditors are reluctant to let the country off all those conditions they set when lending them money.

For one thing, Greece has already been forgiven a chunk of its debts in 2012; the interest rates and maturities of its debts have been stretched out way into the future, making them cheaper to service.

For another, those conditions were not merely there as punishment - they were there to make the economy more healthy in the future.

Raising retirement ages, removing archaic protections on employees, privatising nationalised industries - those are precisely the kinds of Thatcherite reforms many other countries had to go through long ago, and are reaping the rewards of today.

Then there's the politics: German voters are becoming increasingly disenchanted with the idea of funding a poor creditor elsewhere whose own people seem to hate them.

The Spanish government is desperate that Syriza doesn't succeed, for fear of encouraging its people to vote for their own upstart leftist anti-austerity rival party, Podemos. The Irish would be furious if a country was given special treatment they were denied.

These countervailing forces mean getting an agreement, either today or this weekend or in the coming months, will be very difficult. And, as if things couldn't already be more difficult, the process has also been waylaid by some personal histrionics.

The Greek negotiators have been unpredictable in the extreme - openly leaking bundles of documents, flagrantly disregarding the long-established rules of negotiations and publicly criticising their counterparts.

"These people are crazy," said one eurocrat when the talks broke down the last time, on Monday night. "They're totally crazy."

One can only assume yet more craziness to come in the next hours and days. The latest developments, on Thursday, included a letter from the Greek authorities which seemed to offer massive compromises on its position - including an extension of the bailout in some guise, and Troika supervision.

That was then dismissed abruptly by the Germans, who derided it as a "Trojan horse" gambit.

All of which threatens to make today's negotiations particularly awkward.

Meanwhile, hanging over all of this is the question of whether Greece will have money to pay its bills next month, whether it defaults, and, ultimately, whether it can stay in the euro.

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UK Warning As Germany Snubs Greek Loan Plan

The continuing stand-off between the eurozone and Greece over its debt could lead to a "full blown crisis", George Osborne has warned.

The Chancellor's comments come as eurozone finance ministers prepare for crunch talks later on whether to extend the EU loan programme to Greece which wants an extra six months but without austerity conditions.

Mr Osborne said: "What you see now in this stand-off between the eurozone and Greece is the risk of a full blown crisis which would do real damage to the European economy - and is a risk to Britain.

"We need the eurozone to find a common solution and here at home we need to go on working through our economic plan which has kept us safe".

Greece says the EU has "just two choices" when it comes to Athens' request - accept it or reject it.

But Germany has already rejected it, saying it was "no substantial proposal for a solution" and "does not meet the criteria" laid out by the ministers.

The office of the German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble issued the terse response just hours after Greece formally lodged its bid for a half-year deal to effectively replace its bailout, which is due to expire at the end of the month.

German finance ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger added that it amounted to a request "for bridge financing without fulfilling the demands of the (bailout) programme".

But after the snub, a Greek government source said: "The eurogroup has just two choices. To accept or reject the Greek request. We will now discover who wants to find a solution, and who does not."

The country's new anti-austerity government is seeking a compromise to break the deadlock with European creditors, especially Germany, as it runs the risk of running out of cash and defaulting on its debts without agreement.

It has ruled out the prospect of any deal under the terms of its previous rescue because of its mandate from the Greek people who swept the anti-austerity Syriza party to power last month.

The details of the Greek request were not made public but the Reuters news agency published a document it had seen which suggested Greece had watered down some of its previous demands.

The letter, purportedly written by Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, pledged to honour all Greek debts and not take unilateral action that would undermine agreed fiscal targets.

The government of Alexis Tsipras blames the conditions attached to its bailout of hampering the country's recovery and leading to a deterioration of living standards.

Unemployment remains at more than 25%.

On Monday, the government rejected a plan to extend its current €240bn (£178bn) bailout deal, describing it as absurd.

Eurozone finance ministers had given Greece until Friday to request an extension of its current austerity and reform programme.

Germany has been particularly vocal in insisting the country sticks to the terms of its commitments.

The formal Greek request was submitted after the European Central Bank (ECB) agreed to increase its emergency funding to Greek banks amid a capital flight from the country.

Depositors are fearful the lack of a deal will force Greece from the single currency and back to the drachma, representing a significant devaluation.

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Russia A 'Real And Present Danger' To NATO States

Written By Unknown on Kamis, 19 Februari 2015 | 14.59

There is a "real and present danger" Russia could repeat its covert campaigns in the Crimea and Ukraine to destablise former Soviet bloc countries, the Defence Secretary has warned.

Michael Fallon said NATO must be ready for Russian aggression against alliance members including Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

He warned the action could involve using irregular troops, cyber attacks and inflaming tensions with ethnic Russian minorities.

"NATO has to be ready for any kind of aggression from Russia, whatever form it takes. NATO is getting ready," he said.

Mr Fallon added that he was worried about Russian President Vladimir Putin's "pressure on the Baltics".

Earlier this month, two long-range Russian bombers flew down the English Channel off the coast of Bournemouth.

"It is the first time since the height of the Cold War that has happened and it just shows you the need to respond each time he does something like that," he added.

His comments come after Prime Minister David Cameron urged Europe to tell Russia it faces economic and financial consequences for "years to come" if it continues to destabilise Ukraine.

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Gallery: Nov 1: RAF Redirects Russia Bombers

Typhoon fighter jets were scrambled to intercept Russian military 'Bear' bombers for the second time in a week, it has emerged (Pic: MoD)

The aircraft were were sent up from RAF Lossiemouth on Friday, 31 October, to escort the Soviet-era Tupolev Tu-95 aircraft (Pic: MoD)

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