This is a hugely important story which, naturally, is being ignored by the U.S. news media because it didn’t happen here…yet…or this time…or something…
An Imam at a mosque in southern Italy has been arrested for recruiting Somali refugees to launch terrorist attacks in Italy, including an attack at Rome’s central train station.
This is obviously important for two reasons:
1. It is another case of an Islamic religious cleric being involved in Jihadist terrorism, something that has happened frequently, but continues to be ignored by our bureaucratized counterterror apparatus and media.
2. The recruiting activity was being conducted among refugees seeking asylum in Italy.
There are lessons to be learned here, but we won’t hold our breath…
Campobasso (Italy), March 9 (IANS/AKI) Police arrested a Somali imam in southern Italy on Wednesday for allegedly inciting other asylum-seekers to stage jihadist terror attacks including on Rome’s central train station.
The cleric was detained in Campobasso at the Happy Family centre accommodating asylum-seekers in the city.
The imam “repeatedly encouraged other Muslims at the centre to commit acts of terrorism” showing them images of gruesome acts carried out by Islamist extremists, police said.
He also exalted the Islamic State’s deadly November attacks in Paris and urged guests at the Happy Family centre to travel to Syria with him and wage jihad, according to police.
Police seized the cleric’s phone as well as that of another Somali asylum-during searches at the centre on Wednesday.
Prosecutors in Campobasso are spearheading the ongoing probe in coordination with the national anti-mafia directorate and the European Union’s judical cooperation unit Eurojust.
There is a narrative in the West, promoted particularly by Muslim Brotherhood operatives and their allies, that violent Jihad is primarily the result of things that Westerners have done.
Among the excuses that apologists for Islamic atrocities give are:
• Islamophobia in the West and the USA in particular.
• US support for “oppressive” regimes in the Islamic world.
• US support for Israel.
• The presence of US troops in “Muslim lands.”
Linked below are news articles about two recent events that debunk the myth that Jihad is merely something that is performed in response to things we do or say.
The first is a report from India that there is a threat of terrorist attack at New Year’s from the Jihadist organization Lashkar e Taiba. Readers may recall that Lashkar e Taiba carried out a savage attack on Mumbai, India back in 2008, killing hundreds of innocent civilians.
Lashkar jihadists planning terror attacks on New Year, PM Modi, Parliament on hit list; alert issued
Boko Haram kills more than 50 people in north-eastern Nigeria in two-day wave of attacks
…Boko Haram countered with a series of devastating attacks on towns in the country’s north-east, claiming dozens of fatalities in a bloody killing spree that began on Christmas Day.
There is simply no way to blame the threat of Jihad in India or savage Christmas day terrorist attacks on Christians in Nigeria on mythical “Islamophobia” or US foreign policy or even Israel.
The fact is, Jihad is based in Islamic doctrine–doctrine that is 1300 years old. Jihadists base their actions on Islamic scripture and not on videos produced in the West or speeches given by US presidential candidates.
It’s about time we learned this lesson in America.
The US embassy in Malaysia warned American citizens yesterday to avoid a popular tourist street in the capital Kuala Lumpur because of “credible threat information regarding a potential terrorist act”. The embassy website issued the security warning for Jalan Alor, a street in the popular tourist distict of Bukit Bintang, and the immediate surrounding areas.
NOTE: We visited the US embassy web site for Malaysia and could find nothing about the warning. Our tax dollars at work. We speculate that the embassy didn’t post the warning because it might offend someone…
Americans seem to be oblivious or desensitized to the growing evidence that Jihad is hitting the streets here in America. About a week ago or so we posted a rundown of recent Jihadi activity on the continent of Africa, illustrating the fact that it has become the central front in the global Jihadist insurgency:
What may not be apparent is the escalating level of Jihadi activity here in the USA. Even attacks such as those that occurred in 2014 in Moore, Oklahoma (beheading of a grandmother by a former Muslim co-worker) and Queens, New York (hatchet attack on NYPD officers) were far from front page news.
Such incidents are almost always reflexively followed by the meant-to-be-comforting caveat…”no known connection to a terrorist organization.” This is actually more alarming than it is comforting as it is an indication that a revolutionary atmosphere has developed in the US Muslim community that has prompted individual Muslims to act on the calls to Jihad that we have seen from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Ayman al-Zawahiri and other Jihadi leaders.
We’ve decided to post recent articles about Jihadi arrests, plots and cases that have appeared in the news to illustrate that, well, the enemy is indeed here in our midst and active. Keep in mind that these are only the enemy that our law enforcement community has publicly identified, pursued and apprehended…
In just the last week, Jihadis from Texas, Philadelphia and New York have been apprehended…note also mention of a Jihadi from Minnesota…
U.S. prosecutors in New York City and Philadelphia charged four people with terrorism-related crimes, including two Queens women who allegedly discussed making bombs with an undercover federal agent.
Noelle Velentzas, 28, and Asia Siddiqui, 31, were accused of conspiring to prepare an explosive device to detonate in the U.S.
A Texas man, Muhanad Mahmoud al Farekh, was charged separately with seeking to train alongside Muslim militants who allegedly plotted to attack New York City subways.
Friday, U.S. prosecutors announced charges against a Philadelphia woman, Keonna Thomas, accused of attempting to join Islamic State. The government said she posted items expressing support for the group on Twitter, and communicated online with a Somalia-based jihadi fighter from Minnesota, a radical Islamic cleric and an ISIS fighter in Syria.
Velentzas allegedly praised the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and declared that she and Siddiqui were “citizens of the Islamic State.” Siddiqui had repeated contact with members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, including propagandist Samir Khan, former editor of Inspire, al-Qaeda’s English-language online magazine, the U.S. alleged in court papers.
Khan, who was killed in Yemen in 2011, published articles including “I am proud to be a traitor to America” and “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom,” according to prosecutors.
In discussions with the undercover officer last year, the women allegedly said they were learning “science” in order to build a bomb. They later said they were reading technical books and learning about making homemade grenades, pipe bombs and pressure-cooker bombs, the U.S. alleged.
Siddiqui wrote jihadist poetry with lines about dropping bombs and referred to “nations wiped clean of filthy shrines,” according to the government. She obtained multiple propane tanks and had instructions for using them as explosives, prosecutors alleged.
Farekh [the Texas man], who studied at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, is accused of leaving the school for Pakistan in 2007, joining others seeking to train for attacks against U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan. He was eventually deported from Pakistan.
An alleged co-conspirator, Ferid Imam, aided a plot to attack the New York City subways, according to the government. That plot was foiled in 2009.
In the Philadelphia case, Thomas, who allegedly went by the name “YoungLioness,” was asked by an ISIS fighter if she wanted to be involved in a martyrdom operation. Thomas, 30, responded by stating, “that would be amazing….a girl can only wish,” according to the government. She was arrested after purchasing tickets to fly overseas, prosecutors said.
The cases are U.S. v. Velentzas, 15-mj-00303, and USA v. AL Farekh,1:15-mj-00021, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn).
There have been separate reports that Velentzas and Siddiqui sought to attack a police funeral to maximize casualties among U.S. law enforcement and that one of the two put on a veneer of patriotism with an American flag displayed in front of her home.
Noelle Velentzas…Note her affiliation with the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), one of the largest Islamic organizations in America
Velentzas and Siddiqui were apparently tied to Tairoid Pugh, the US Air Force veteran who was arrested in March for joining the Islamic State:
A one-time Air Force mechanic whose radical beliefs had him on the FBI’s radar since the late 1990s has been charged in federal court in Brooklyn with trying to join the Islamic State terror group..
Tairod Pugh, 47, of Neptune, New Jersey, allegedly did Internet searches for border crossings into Syria and downloaded execution videos by the jihadist group, before traveling from Egypt to Turkey in January to fight for the group…
After being turned away, the government said, he wiped most of his electronic devices of evidence but kept a picture of a machine gun on his phone. Deported from Egypt to the United States, he was charged in a sealed complaint in January, and indicted this week.
“Pugh, an American citizen, was willing to travel overseas and fight jihad alongside terrorists seeking to do us harm,” Diego Rodriguez, head of the FBI’s New York office, said in a statement.
In February, three Brooklyn men were accused of plotting to aid the terror group, including two who planned to join, authorities said.
Court papers said Pugh served in the Air Force as an avionics instrument system specialist from 1986 to 1990, and worked for American Airlines and a military contractor in Iraq. Overseas for the past 12 to 18 months, he allegedly lost his last job as a mechanic in Kuwait in December.
The government said Pugh converted to Islam in 1998. In 2001, a co-worker allegedly tipped the FBI that Pugh sympathized with Osama bin Laden and held anti-American views. In 2002, an associate said Pugh hoped to fight jihad in Chechnya.
But the government said he objected to deportation from Egypt because the “U.S. doesn’t like black Muslims.” A search of his laptop revealed 180 jihadist videos and an email intended for his Egyptian wife, according to the criminal complaint.
“I am a Mujahid,” said the email. “. . . There is only two possible outcomes for me. Victory or Martyr.”
Tairod Pugh: Air Force veteran, former American Airlines employee and long-time Jihadi
Note in the article above the mention of the three Brooklyn men indicted on terror charges in February.
Here is an article about the Philadelphia woman who faces terrorism charges…
Authorities charged a Philadelphia woman on Friday with attempting to join Islamic State…
Keonna Thomas, a 30-year-old U.S. citizen who went by “YoungLioness” online, was arrested before she could travel to Syria and join the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, according to a criminal complaint.
Last month she bought a plane ticket to Barcelona, court records show, and was due to fly on March 29. Federal agents executed a search warrant at her home on March 27 and seized evidence, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Philadelphia said.
Ms. Thomas, who is charged with knowingly attempting to provide material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization, was ordered held until a detention hearing next week.
Ms. Thomas’s postings on social media drew the attention of law enforcement, according to an affidavit from a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent.
But her case differs from other recent prosecutions of Islamic State sympathizers because it doesn’t appear to rely on an undercover FBI operative working with the target. Instead, the FBI intercepted communications between Ms. Thomas and an overseas Islamic fighter, among others. In them, she allegedly expressed her desire to travel to join the group in Syria.
In the past 18 months, dozens of Americans—from Colorado to Minnesota to New York—have faced criminal charges related to ISIS.
Ms. Thomas’s alleged support of Islamic State dates to 2013, according to court filings. The FBI affidavit claims that in August 2013 she reposted a picture on Twitter showing a camouflage-clad boy wearing firearm magazine pouches, with this caption: “Ask yourselves, while this young man is holding magazines for the Islamic state, what are you doing for it? #ISIS.”
In December 2013, court filings show, she exchanged messages with a man described by the FBI as a Somali-based violent jihadi fighter from Minnesota. Ms. Thomas allegedly told him she planned to “leave the land of kufr [nonbelievers]” and would travel once she got enough money.
In January 2014 she tweeted, “Only thing I’m jealous of is when I see the smiles of shuhadaa [martyrs],” according to court records, which allege that she posted messages throughout the year that appeared to support ISIS.
In late January of this year, the FBI alleges, she sent a message to a radical Islamic cleric in Jamaica in which she wrote, “i don’t want to say much here….as of now im still here in the states but will be leaving soon.”
Five days later she applied for a passport and in mid-February told the cleric she had deactivated her Twitter account, saying, according to court records, “don’t want to draw attention of the kuffar [nonbelievers] and it mess my plans and they take my pass port and I get stuck here.”
On Feb. 17, the FBI affidavit says, the known overseas fighter wrote to her: “U probably want to do Istishadee [martyrdom operations] with me.” She allegedly replied: “that would be amazing….a girl can only wish.”
“I can make that wish come true,” the militant allegedly responded.
She researched indirect travel routes to Turkey, a common transit point to Syria, according to the complaint. Among them was flying to Spain to avoid suspicion, then traveling by bus to Turkey.
Keonna Thomas appearing in court after arrest on terrorism charges. Why she is allowed to appear in court covered that way is anyone’s guess.
Here is an article on Muhanad Mahmoud al Farekh, the Texas native indicted on terror charges…
A U.S. citizen accused of conspiring to support al Qaeda appeared in a federal court in New York on Thursday. Muhanad Mahmoud Al Farekh, 29, was charged with conspiracy, reports said, citing the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
Farekh reportedly plotted with others to provide material support to the terrorists. He also helped them gain personnel to kill U.S. citizens and members of the U.S. military in other countries, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing a charging document. Farekh was deported from Pakistan and arrested due to a pending warrant.
Texas born Al Qaeda terrorist Muhanad Mahmoud al Farekh
Another Jihadi case surfaced in Illinois over a week ago when two cousins–one a soldier with the Illinois Army National Guard–were arrested on terrorism charges:
An Army National Guard member and his cousin have been arrested in Illinois for allegedly conspiring to provide material support to the terrorist organization ISIS, federal prosecutors said Thursday.
The alleged plot included a plan to attack a U.S. military installation in Illinois.
In the past 18 months, the Justice Department’s National Security Division has prosecuted or is prosecuting 32 cases of people attempting to travel abroad to join or providing support to terrorist groups. Of those cases, 18 allegedly involve support to ISIS.
Spc. Hasan Edmonds, 22, was arrested Wednesday night at Chicago Midway International Airport while attempting to travel to Egypt to eventually join ISIS…
His cousin, Jonas “Yunus” Edmonds, 29, was arrested at his home in Aurora in connection with an alleged plot to carry out an armed attack on an unspecified U.S. military facility in northern Illinois where Hasan Edmonds had been training.
After an undercover FBI informant posing as an ISIS fighter outside the United States sent Hasan Edmonds a Facebook “friend” request in late 2014, he began to receive private messages from him indicating that he and his cousin were willing to travel to overseas and fight for ISIS, according to the court documents.
“InshAllah we will complete our task or be grants [sic] shahada [Arabic for martyr] I look forward to the training,” Hasan Edmonds is alleged to have told the informant in January. “I am already in the American kafir army and now I wish only to serve in the army of Allah alongside my true brothers.”
They continued to communicate over the following weeks, with Hasan Edmonds expressing concerns about Jonas Edmonds’ criminal record and whether he would be allowed to travel overseas.
“They try hard to keep people like him trapped in America,” he told the undercover FBI employee.
“I know several Muslims have been caught attempting the Turkey route so tell me why not many Americans take the Egypt route. I am open to either way,” Hasan Edmonds told the informant, according to court documents.
On February 2, Hasan Edmonds contacted the undercover informant again and said his cousin was willing to carry out an attack on U.S. soil.
“Honestly we would love to do something like the brother in Paris did,” Hasan Edmonds stated, referring to the French terror attacks in January in which 16 people were killed.
Prosecutors said Jonas Edmonds contacted the informant to arrange travel accommodations.
“Number one on my list is Mosul,” he stated, referring to Iraq’s second-largest city. “If I find myself stuck here [in the United States], I intend to take advantage of being so close to the kuffar.”
Jonas Edmonds this week accepted that he would be unable to travel and told the FBI informant of his intention to buy AK-47s and grenades to carry out an attack on the military facility. He would use his cousin’s uniform and “anticipated a body count of 100 to 150.” He was given a list of officer rankings by his cousin and advised to “kill the head,” according to court documents.
Prosecutors said Jonas Edmonds planned to carry out the attack after Hasan Edmonds left the country.
Hasan Edmonds planned to use his military training to fight for the terrorist organization, prosecutors said in a statement. Hasan Edmonds booked airline travel to depart Wednesday from Chicago and arrive in Cairo on Thursday.
The cousins presented an undercover informant with plans to attacks the military facility, prosecutors said.
More than 20,000 fighters, from more than 90 countries, have traveled to the ISIS battlefield, according to the testimony of Nicholas Rasmussen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, before the House Homeland Security Committee.
The rate of foreign fighters traveling to Syria “exceeds the rate of travelers who went to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen or Somalia at any point in the last 20 years,” Rasmussen said.
Of those fighters, an estimated 3,400 are believed to have come from Western countries, including more than 150 from the United States, officials said.
Jonas Edmonds–evidently no stranger to the penal system.
Hasan Edmonds
Finally, in Boston, Americans for Peace and Tolerance have uncovered evidence of Jihadist indoctrination at the Islamic Society of Boston, which was the mosque attended by the Tsarnaev brothers who bombed the Boston Marathon. It was also founded by Abduraham Alamoudi, who was later revealed to be an Al Qaeda terrorist and was convicted on terrorism charges…
Islamic Society of Boston: co-founded by Al Qaeda terrorist, mosque of Boston marathon bombers.
The Boston Marathon bombers’ mosque, the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB), employs an intensive radicalizing program aimed at Boston’s historically moderate Muslim community, especially at its youth. It’s called “Tarbiya,” which is Arabic for “growth and refinement.” It is not something that is practiced as part of classical mainstream Islam.
APT has obtained several curriculum documents created by ISB-affiliated groups, which describe exactly what is taught and when, with assignments detailed down to book and page number.
Jihad is inherently expansionist and aggressive. Apologists in the West who try to sell the bill of goods like “the Taliban are only interested in Afghanistan,” or “HAMAS only wants ‘their’ land…or Al Shabaab is only targeting Somalia, simply have no idea what they’re talking about.
Al Shabaab, for instance, has targeted Kenya and Uganda in the past and now they are evidently targeting Ethiopia:
Somali Islamist insurgents are plotting to attack an upmarket area of Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa, the US embassy has warned, in a notice to citizens to avoid crowded areas.
The exact target is not known but the embassy said the “potential imminent terrorist attack” threatened the busy Bole district, which includes the capital’s international airport and several diplomatic missions. “The embassy has received threat reports of Al Shabaab’s intent to target the Bole area,” said the notice to citizens released Tuesday.
“Restaurants, hotels, bars, places of worship, supermarkets, and shopping malls in the Bole area should be avoided until further notice, because they are possible targets.”
Anyone who doesn’t realize that Hezbollah is a Jihadist organization with global reach hasn’t been paying attention.
There are too many Americans in particular who have come to view Hezbollah as strictly an organization limited to operations in Lebanon.
That just isn’t true. In fact, there can be no doubt that Hezbollah has operatives here in America, perhaps many of them. And we know that Hezbollah has supporters, including financial supporters, here in the USA.
But the latest story involving a Jihadist plot by Hezbollah comes from Thailand, a popular tourist destination for Israelis and other Westerners–and a country that is contending with an Jihadist insurgency of its own.
Thai authorities arrested two Hezbollah members who evidently confessed to a bomb plot targeting Israeli tourists.
The two Jihadis were identified as Daoud Farhat, a French-Lebanese national, and Youssef Ayad, who is of Lebanese-Filipino extraction.
Farhat held a French passport and Ayad carried a Philippines passport. Their passports indicated that both were born in Lebanon, but it is not yet certain that the passports are genuine.
Farhat was in Thailand for the first time, but Ayad has visited Thailand 17 times.
Thai investigators believe at least nine suspected foreign terrorists connected to Hezbollah are somewhere in Thailand and that one other possible co-conspirator may have already fled Thailand. One of the other suspects is said to be named Bilal Bahsoun.
More details are available at the counter terror site, stop910.com:
Two North Carolina Muslim converts were arrested on terrorism charges this week:
Authorities said in court documents that Akbar Jihad Jordan and Avin Marsalis Brown planned to travel to Syria and Yemen to fight for Islam.
Brown was arrested Wednesday at Raleigh-Durham International Airport, and he told investigators that he planned to fly to Turkey and then travel to Syria, according to court records.
Brown and Jordan, a 2011 Millbrook High School graduate, began talking last May about going overseas to engage in jihad.
The pair planned to use a charity as a cover for their travels, saying the government would have a hard time making a terrorism case against them if they argued they were on a charitable mission overseas, according to court records.
These two were proselytized, then recruited to Jihad. They didn’t brew up this scheme on their own. This is so similar to what happened to Carlos Bledsoe in Tennessee before he traveled to Yemen and came back to wage Jihad in Nashville and Little Rock.
There are active Jihadi recruiting operations going on in the US…
Most of the casualties were people on their way to work or college students on their way to school. Reports indicate that Russians are now avoiding transit vehicles altogether due to the Jihadist threat…
Russian authorities said the same type of bomb was used in both the rail station attack and the trolley bus attack in Volgograd. There’s widespread speculation the attacks were the work of Chechen Jihadi terrorist leader Doku Umarov, who has claimed responsibility for suicide bombings in Moscow in 2010 and 2011 that left a combined 77 people dead.
^^^Here is Doku Umarov^^^
Umarov has declared the Olympic Games to be “satanic” and claims that the Jihadists must do everything in their power to prevent them.
Russian security measures in Sochi are said to be extraordinary, but clearly other major cities and transportation hubs in Russia are vulnerable. Umarov may have decided that the best way to disrupt the games in Sochi is to make traveling in Russia dangerous. Russia’s second city of Saint Petersburg has cancelled its planned New Year fireworks display.
Here is a chilling eyewitness account of the Volgograd train station bombing. Note that most of the victims seem to have been bunched up in the cue waiting at the security checkpoint…
Other than to order heightened security, Russia’s Vladimir Putin has stayed silent on the attacks. This is not unusual for him. In the wake of the Beslan school massacre in 2004, Putin was largely silent and declined to meet with the families of the victims.
Putin has a reputation as a tough guy, but Russia has been repeatedly targeted by Jihadists on his watch and his response has mainly been to consolidate his own power, rather than to act forcefully against the Jihadists.
This morning a female Islamikaze bomber struck a rail station in Volgograd, Russia, killing at least 16 people.
For hours there was scant coverage of this Jihadi attack in the US news media, but foreign news organizations did manage to fit in coverage of the event.
The Belfast Telegraph from the UK had a report, including video footage of the detonation of the bomb:
Note from the Telegraph report that the Jihadi appeared to detonate the bomb as she approached a metal detector at a security checkpoint:
A spokesman for the nation’s top investigative agency said the bomb appeared to have been detonated as the attacker approached a metal detector at the entrance to the central railway hub in the city of Volgograd.
This is not the first time Jihadists have targeted a transportation hub in Russia. A few years ago they detonated a bomb in a Moscow airport terminal. It should also be pointed out that the FBI intercepted a plot earlier this month in Wichita, Kansas in which a Jihadi sought to bomb an airport terminal.
The point here is that, as security services seek to tighten access to airplanes and trains, which have been targeted in the past, they are creating massive bottlenecks in passenger terminals, particularly at the security checkpoints that are ostensibly there to keep travelers safe. As a result, the Jihadis now target the lines of travelers in the passenger terminals themselves.
We have blogged about this in the past and it seems that security services have no answer at this point for this new Jihadi tactic:
While our 13 November 2012 post focused on airport security, the same clearly applies to rail security, as was so tragically demonstrated in Russia this morning.
Here is direct link to the video of the train station explosion in Volgograd at LiveLeak:
Mediaite points out that this attack comes just six weeks before the Olympics are due to open in Sochi, Russia. Jihadists have in fact threatened the Olympics.
Sochi, site of the Olympics is not terribly far from Volgograd:
Be advised the legend and graphics have no meaning for the present situation. Map is shown strictly to show proximity of Volgograd, site of Jihadist attack today, to Sochi, site of Summer Olympic Games in 6 weeks.
Note also that both Volgograd and, rather ominously, Sochi, are quite close to Chechnya and Dagestan, two hotbeds of the global Islamic insurgency:
Volgograd was once called Stalingrad. There are now conflicting reports that the Islamikaze bomber may have been a man, not a woman, or that the woman may have had a male accomplice. Note that the cited source for these contradictory reports are Russian law enforcement agencies, something that isn’t terribly comforting or surprising given the circumstances:
The UN Secretary General has condemned the attack (we’re sure the Jihadis are quaking in their boots over that). Note also that this is the second Islamikaze bombing in Volgograd in the past two months. Another female Islamikaze bomber blew herself up on a bus two months ago, killing 7 innocent victims and wounding scores of others.
The Volgograd attack comes in the wake of threats by Chechen Jihadi terrorist Doku Umarov calling for new attacks against civilian targets in Russia, including the Sochi Olympic Games.
This article from the New Zealand Herald contains good detail from the Associated Press, eyewitness accounts and a historical background. It’s the best piece we’ve seen so far on the attack:
Note especially that Russia has been victimized numerous times in recent years by Islamikaze bombers, including females. Also included is some general information on Russia’s extraordinary security measures to protect the Olympics, including measures that would never be approved of here in the US due to trespassing on civil liberties and the overt use of military forces on a direct, wide scale, as opposed to a support capacity. Hopefully the Russian measures will prove effective once the Olympics get underway.
Russian authorities have tentatively identified the Islamikaze bomber as Oksana Aslanova, a Dagestani citizen whose husband was a Jihadi killed by Russian special operations forces. Evidently Aslanova was known to Russian authorities and she “got around,” having reportedly been married to other Jihadist terrorists as well.
This article from The Age in Australia includes a close-up image of the entrance to the railway station. It appears that the Russians smartly placed the metal detectors at the entrance, so most of the people in the crowded station escaped injury. The article also contains more background on “black widow” Islamikaze bombers that have struck Russia. Incidentally, there was evidently a previously little-noticed car bomb in Pyatigorsk, Russia on Friday:
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Terror Trends Bulletin 