Discovery of cocaine in Russian diplomatic luggage leads to numerous arrests

A Russian former diplomatic employee and an Argentine police officer are among six people arrested following the discovery of nearly 1000 pounds of cocaine inside the Russian diplomatic compound in Buenos Aires. The arrests took place last Thursday and were announced in Argentina by the country’s Security Minister Patricia Bullrich. She told reporters that the arrests came after a 14-month investigation in Argentina, Russia and Germany. She added that the investigation unveiled “one of the most complex and extravagant drug-dealing operations” in Argentina’s history.

The 14-month probe dates to December of 2016, when Victor Koronelli, Russia’s ambassador to Argentina, and thee members of Russia’s Federal Security Service, discreetly approached Argentinian authorities. They informed the Argentinians that they had discovered 16 pieces of luggage filled with drugs inside an annex of the Russian embassy in Buenos Aires. Argentinian authorities were given permission to secretly enter the embassy grounds and inspect the suitcases. They confirmed that they contained more than 850 pounds (390 kilos) of cocaine, with a street value of more than $60 million. The suitcases were intended for transfer to Russia via a diplomatic flight. Cargo transferred on diplomatic flights cannot be searched by international customs officials due to the privilege of diplomatic immunity.

According to Bullrich, diplomatic counter-narcotics officers secretly transferred the bags to a separate location, where they replaced the cocaine with flour and fitted the suitcases with GPS tracking devices, before returning them to the Russian embassy annex. The luggage was eventually transferred to Russia via airplane in December 2017, a year after it was bugged by the Argentinians. Several Argentinian customs officers traveled to Russia to monitor the transfer of the shipment, in coordination with Russian authorities. The latter arrested two Russian citizens who tried to collect the suitcases. Another Russian citizen, and former staff member of the Russian embassy in Argentina, Alia Abyanov, was arrested in Moscow. Officials said Abyanov helped plan the transfer of the suitcases to Russia.

Two Argentines with dual Russian citizenship were also arrested in Buenos Aires. One of them has been named as Iván Blizniouk, a police officer, who is believed to have mediated between the drug smugglers and corrupt Argentine customs officers. A seventh suspect, identified only as “Señor K.” by the Argentine authorities, remains at large. He is believed to be living in Germany and is currently wanted by Interpol pursuant to an international warrant that has been issued for his arrest.

https://intelnews.org/2018/02/27/01-2278/

Boko Haram school kidnapping: an attack well-planned

Boko Haram's abduction of more than 100 schoolgirls in Dapchi, northeastern Nigeria, shows the Islamist group still has the ability and means to stage major attacks.

Since the raid last Monday, questions have been asked about how heavily armed fighters were able to storm the town in Yobe state without encountering any resistance, then disappear.

Nigeria's military claims to have the region locked down, as part of a counter-insurgency effort against the group whose nearly nine-year campaign of terror has killed at least 20,000 people.

But witnesses in Dapchi and analysts told AFP that it was a "well-planned attack" that specifically targeted the state-run boarding school.

Residents in the dusty town near the border with Niger described seeing a convoy of at least 10 to 15 vehicles just as most people were at the mosque for evening prayers.

Civilians were not harmed and the armed men instead asked for directions to the girls school.

Hundreds of students at the Government Girls Science and Technology College fled in the dark into the surrounding bush; 110 have yet to return.

Tip off? 

The attack and the confusion that followed recalled the abduction of 276 girls from Chibok, in neighbouring Borno state, in April 2014.

That brought Boko Haram - whose name translates from Hausa as "Western education is forbidden" - worldwide notoriety at a time when it controlled swathes of territory.

Since early 2015, that strength has disappeared.

But Yan St-Pierre, a counter-terrorism specialist with the Modern Security Consulting group, said: "If they kidnapped more than 100 girls, that shows they have sizeable means at their disposal and a secure place to take them."

Another worrying indication, according to the Yobe state governor Ibrahim Gaidam, is that soldiers stationed at strategic checkpoints in Dapchi, were redeployed last month.

That left ordinary uniformed police as the town's only defence. One resident, Mohammed Adam, 27, said they were not effective: "They ran into the bush."

Another Dapchi resident, who asked not to be identified, said he was concerned that Boko Haram sympathisers had secretly infiltrated the town.

"I believe informants tipped them off that the troops had withdrawn that allowed them to come in because this is the first time that we have come under attack from Boko Haram."

'Tactical rapprochement' 

Until last week, Dapchi had been spared from Boko Haram, even though the group repeatedly attacked Yobe. On January 5, at least nine soldiers were killed in an attack on a military post.

That attack was claimed by the Boko Haram faction headed by Abu Mus'ab al-Barnawi, whose leadership is recognised by the Islamic State group.

Barnawi's breakaway faction operates over a vast territory in and around Lake Chad and Niger, including Yobe state.

Fighters loyal to Boko Haram's long-time leader, Abubakar Shekau, are more active in Borno state and along the Cameroon border.

Some analysts said Barnawi, rather than Shekau, was behind the Dapchi attack and may have taken hostages as human shields to mitigate military operations against them.

Boko Haram split because of Barnawi's objection to Shekau's use of violence against civilians in the Muslim-majority region, including suicide bombings in mosques and markets.

"No civilians were harmed (in Dapchi), which is likely a mode of operation of the Mamman Nur faction," said one member of the civilian militia.

Nur - Shekau's former right-hand man and the mastermind of the 2011 UN office bombing in Abuja - is seen as the Barnawi faction's de-facto leader.

"Even in the villages they attacked in the area before Dapchi, they touched no-one, they only looted food supplies," he added.

Blurred lines

Kidnapping remains commonplace for both Boko Haram factions, said St-Pierre.

"It's very difficult to know who is behind this attack because the factional divisions aren't what they used to be," he added.

Both groups had had "tactical rapprochements" and even conducted "joint operations" in recent months, he said.

Nigeria media on Monday quoted unnamed local security sources as saying that half of the hostages had been taken to Niger to prevent the Nigerian military from following them.

AFP has not been able to verify the claim, although the border is just over 100 kilometres away to the north.

Nur, who is believed to have links with Al-Qaeda affiliates in north Africa, is said to have bases on the islands of Lake Chad.

Movements of men, arms and equipment have been seen in the border region, without the intervention of either country, making the Boko Haram convoy difficult to detect, said St-Pierre.

"Whatever the reason, Boko Haram needs women in its ranks and will look to put them in a secure location," he added. "The women have a high value as hostages".

https://www.news24.com/Africa/News/boko-haram-school-kidnapping-an-attack-well-planned-20180227

Swiss trying to change image as Europe’s spy hub, say officials

Officials in Switzerland say new laws enacted in recent months will help them change their country’s image as one of Europe’s most active spy venues. For decades, the small alpine country has been a destination of choice for intelligence officers from all over the world, who use it as a place to meet assets from third countries. For example, a case officer from Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) will travel to Switzerland to meet her Algerian agent. She will exchange money and documents with him before she returns to Britain and he to Algeria, presumably after depositing his earnings into a Swiss bank account.

There are multiple reasons that explain Switzerland’s preferred status as a meeting place for spies and their handlers. The country is suitably located in the center of Europe and is a member of the European Union’s Schengen Treaty, which means that a passport is not required to enter it when arriving there from European Union member-states. Additionally, the country features an efficient transportation and telecommunication infrastructure, and its stable political system offers predictability and security, despite the limited size and strength of its law enforcement and security agencies. Perhaps most important of all, the Swiss have learned not to ask questions of visitors, many of whom flock to the country to entrust their cash to its privacy-conscious banking sector.

But, according to the Swiss Federal Intelligence Service (FIS), foreign spies and their handlers should find another venue to meet in secret. Speaking to the Sunday edition of Switzerland’s NZZnewspaper, FIS spokeswoman Isabelle Graber said she and her colleagues were aware that their country is a venue for meetings between intelligence operatives from third countries. Such meetings have “continued to rise in the last few years” and include “everyone from security agency employees to freelancers”, as “the market in trading secrets has exploded”, she said. That trend, added Graber, has led to a corresponding rise in meetings aimed at exchanging information for money. Many such meetings take place throughout Switzerland, she noted, and are “in violation of Swiss sovereignty and can lead to operations against the interests of the nation”.

In the past, said Graber, FIS was unable to prevent such activities on Swiss soil, due to pro-privacy legislation, which meant that the agency’s ability to combat foreign espionage in Switzerland was “far more limited than in other countries”. However, said the intelligence agency spokeswoman, the law recently changed to permit FIS to break into homes and hotels, hack into computers, wiretap phones, and implement surveillance on individuals believed to be spies or intelligence officers of foreign countries. Armed with the new legislation, the FIS is now “working hard to clear up third-country meetings [and] to prevent these from happening or at least disrupt them”, said Graber. Several times this year alone, FIS had forward information about “third-country meetings” to judicial authorities in Switzerland, she said.

https://intelnews.org/2018/02/06/01-2264/

Americans In ISIS: Some 300 Tried To Join, 12 Have Returned To U.S.

Abdirahman Sheik Mohamud is shown in a Columbus, Ohio, courtroom in 2015. He was arrested after traveling to Syria, then returning to Ohio, where he planned to carry out an attack. According to a new report, he's one of 12 Americans who went to join extremist groups in Syria or Iraq, and then returned back to the U.S. Mohamud was sentenced last month to 22 years in prison.

An estimated 300 Americans attempted to join the Islamic State and other radical Islamist groups in Iraq and Syria, including a small number who rose to senior positions, according to the most detailed report to date on this issue.

So far, 12 of those Americans have returned home, yet none has carried out an attack on U.S. soil, according the report released Monday by George Washington University's Program on Extremism.

"I think what we were struck with was the few numbers of returnees that we saw," said Seamus Hughes, one of the report's authors. "There was always concern that this wave of what the FBI would call 'the terrorist diaspora' would come back. In many ways it's just a trickle right now."

The exact number of Americans who ran off to join the Islamic State — and their fates — has always been fuzzy. The FBI has occasionally offered general numbers, but provided few details.

The report covers the period since 2011, when the Syria war erupted. The Islamic State peaked, in terms of power and territory, in the summer of 2014, when it held large parts of Syria and Iraq.

The U.S. then began working with local partners to battle ISIS. The extremist group has now lost virtually all territory it once held, though it is still capable of carrying out deadly attacks in those countries, and has established footholds in several other states.

One percent of foreign fighters

The 300 or so Americans account for about 1 percent of the estimated 30,000 foreign fighters who joined ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The majority came from the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.

The George Washington University team scoured online material, reviewed court records, spoke with government officials and interviewed some of those who returned to the U.S. after joining ISIS.

Still, the report could account for just over a third of those who tried or succeeded in joining radical Islamist groups.

"I know the numbers in the intelligence community are much better than mine, as one would expect," said Hughes. "But we tried to do our best to have the largest public accounting of the phenomenon."

Around 50 Americans were arrested as they tried to leave the country, and never made it out of the U.S. The report was able to document 64 individuals who did reach Syria or Iraq.

They include Zulfi Hoxha, a New Jersey resident of Albanian descent.

"He was a bit of loner. High school friends describe him as kind of a geek," Hughes said.

He traveled to Syria in 2015, and U.S. authorities have described as a "senior ISIS commander." He appears in two ISIS propaganda videos, including one where he beheads a prisoner, according to Hughes.

A dozen return to the U.S.

Of the 12 Americans who returned, nine were arrested and remain in custody, the report said. Two others are known to law enforcement, but have not been detained, it added. The 12th man went back to Syria a second time and carried out a suicide bombing, the report said.

While no American has returned and carried out an attack, one man, Abdirahman Sheik Mohamud of Ohio, planned to do so.

He was among a small number of Americans to join al-Nusra in Syria, an extremist group linked to al-Qaida. One of his commanders sent him back to Ohio with orders to attack a U.S. military facility.

Mohamud returned to Ohio in 2014, and was arrested the following year. He pleaded guilty to plotting the attacks and last month was sentenced to 22 years in prison.

The report did not deal with those who may have been inspired by ISIS and acted inside the U.S. For example, authorities say Sayfullo Saipov, the man charged with ramming a truck into pedestrians, killing eight in New York City last October, was inspired by ISIS. But his case is not included in the report.

It's still not clear what's happened to thousands of other ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria as the group lost its self-declared caliphate.

Hard-core fighters are expected to remain and keep fighting. Others may be slipping across the border into Turkey. And some have been detained, though the U.S. has given no indication it is holding ISIS fighters.

In Iraq, the government is putting ISIS members on trial.

In Syria, where the war grinds on, it's more complicated. The Syrian Democratic Forces, militia fighters aligned with the U.S., are holding hundreds of ISIS fighters, according to U.S. military officials.

https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/02/05/583407221/americans-in-isis-some-300-tried-to-join-12-have-returned-to-u-s

Ex-spy chief claims Palestinian officials worked with CIA to wiretap opponents

The former head of the Palestinian Authority’s spy agency claims that the Palestinian government in the West Bank worked with the United States Central Intelligence Agency to wiretap thousands without court authorization. Tawfiq Tirawi, who headed the Palestinian General Intelligence from its founding in 1994 to 2008, has filed an official complaint against the Palestinian Authority and is calling for a criminal investigation into the alleged wiretaps. The complaint has also been signed by Jawad Obeidat, who is the president of the West Bank’s Bar Association. It is based on a leaked 37-page document that surfaced last month on the social networking application WhatsApp. The document was leaked by an anonymous individual who claims to have worked for a surveillance unit in the Palestinian Preventive Security Service, the Palestinian Authority’s domestic security service.

The leaked document appears to show that the Palestinian Preventive Security Service reached out to the CIA in 2013 asking for assistance with installing a communications surveillance system in the West Bank. The CIA agreed to provide the system in exchange for access to the intercepted data. The two agencies installed the interception system in the summer of 2014 and initiated what appears to have been a large-scale operation that included thousands of telephone subscribers. Initial targets of the operation included members of Hamas —the Palestinian group that controls the Gaza Strip— as well as members of the Iran-supported Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine. But, according to the Associated Press, over time the targets of the program expanded to include “thousands of Palestinians, from senior figures in militant groups to judges, lawyers, civic leaders and political allies of Abbas”. The list of targets included Tirawi and Obeidat, who filed the official complaint on Tuesday.

The anonymous leaker of the document said he decided to quit his job and reveal the information about the intercepts after US President Donald Trump shifted Washington’s policy on Israel’s capital, by officially recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state. Earlier in February, the Palestinian Authority dismissed the leaked document as “nonsense” and said it was part of a large conspiracy that sought to harm Palestinian interests. The CIA refused to comment on the allegations.

https://intelnews.org/2018/02/07/01-2265/

New York man gets 18 years prison for Islamic State support

A New York City man was sentenced to 18 years in prison on Tuesday after he pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to aid Islamic State and assaulting a federal law enforcement officer.

Munther Omar Saleh, 22, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Margo Brodie in Brooklyn, according to John Marzulli, a spokesman for federal prosecutors.

“Mr. Saleh is sincerely remorseful,” said Saleh’s lawyer, Deborah Colson. “He is relieved to have put this behind him and he is ready to make amends.”

Saleh, a resident of the New York City borough of Queens and a U.S. citizen, pleaded guilty in February 2017. He admitted that in 2015 he helped New Jersey resident Nader Saadeh with his travel and accompanied him to John F. Kennedy International Airport for a flight to Jordan, where Saadeh was subsequently detained.

Saadeh has pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to help Islamic State but has yet to be sentenced.

Saleh and a high school senior, Imran Rabbani, were arrested in June 2015 after running toward a law enforcement surveillance vehicle as they drove to a mosque, according to court records. When he pleaded guilty, Saleh said he “knew” the officers were following him because of his support for Islamic State.

Rabbani was sentenced to 20 months in prison in August 2016 after pleading guilty to a non-terrorism charge.

Prosecutors said Saleh, who was studying at an aeronautics college in Queens, also researched carrying out a domestic attack using a pressure cooker bomb and discussed his plan with another man, Fareed Mumuni, who was also charged.

Mumuni also pleaded guilty but has not yet been sentenced.

As of January, 157 have been charged in the United States in connection with Islamic State, according to the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. The militant group has lost most of the territory it once controlled in Iraq and Syria.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-new-york-security-islamicstate/new-york-man-gets-18-years-prison-for-islamic-state-support-idUSKBN1FQ35B

Oklahoma man accused of attending al Qaeda terrorist training camp before 9/11

An Oklahoma man was arrested Tuesday by the FBI, accusing of lying about attending an al Qaeda terrorist training camp, officials said.

A federal grand jury in Oklahoma City handed up the indictment Tuesday against 34-year-old Naif Abdulaziz Alfallaj, a citizen of Saudi Arabia, charging him with visa fraud and lying to FBI agents.

Prosecutors said he came to the United States just more than six years ago and failed to indicate on his application for a visa that he attended al Qaeda's al Farooq training camp in Afghanistan in fall 2000.

Federal law enforcement officials said Alfallaj was caught after the FBI recently discovered that his fingerprints matched those found on documents that were seized when the U.S. military raided the camp 16 years ago.

An Oklahoma man was arrested Tuesday by the FBI, accusing of lying about attending an al Qaeda terrorist training camp, officials said.

A federal grand jury in Oklahoma City handed up the indictment Tuesday against 34-year-old Naif Abdulaziz Alfallaj, a citizen of Saudi Arabia, charging him with visa fraud and lying to FBI agents.

Prosecutors said he came to the United States just more than six years ago and failed to indicate on his application for a visa that he attended al Qaeda's al Farooq training camp in Afghanistan in fall 2000.

Federal law enforcement officials said Alfallaj was caught after the FBI recently discovered that his fingerprints matched those found on documents that were seized when the U.S. military raided the camp 16 years ago.

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 August 2017: Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan, 16 years after 9/11

He pleaded not guilty during a brief federal court hearing Tuesday and was ordered held without bond pending a detention hearing next week.

Court documents said that when Alfallaj was questioned in December by the FBI, he denied ever traveling to Afghanistan or associating with any foreign terrorist groups.

Authorities said Alfallaj entered the U.S. in late 2011 on a nonimmigrant visa based on his wife's status as a foreign student. The indictment said Alfallaj answered "no" on an immigration application when asked if he supported terrorist organizations or had received firearms or other specialized training.

Investigators said Alfallaj applied for training at a flight school in western Oklahoma in 2016 and provided his fingerprints as required. Five months later, prosecutors said, FBI analysts discovered a match between those prints and 15 latent fingerprints that were found on al Qaeda forms filled out by people attending the al Farooq training camp.

Federal officials said Alfallaj has been living in Oklahoma since 2012 after having traveled to the United States to join his wife.

The al Qaeda documents were among more than 100 similar forms seized by the U.S. military in December 2001. Asked why it took so long to find a match, an FBI official said the military provided "rooms and rooms" of documents and other materials from the camp to analyze.

"The technology has evolved over the years, allowing us to better check for fingerprint matches. And part of the challenge is the sheer volume of the work," the official said, asking that his name not be disclosed.

A video grab dated June 19, 2001 shows members of Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda, or "The Base", organization training with AK-47 sub-machine-guns in a video tape said to have been prepared and released by bin Laden himself.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/oklahoma-man-accused-attending-al-qaeda-terrorist-training-camp-n845351