Eye on Extremism - June 1, 2016

Eye on Extremism June 1, 2016 Counter Extremism Project Fox News: Shepard Smith Reporting CEP Spokesperson Tara Maller, appearing on Fox News, analyzes the continuing battle for Fallujah and stresses the importance of combatting extremist online as well as on the battlefield. CNN: ISIS Fights Back After Iraqi Forces Surround Falluja, Military Says “Fierce clashes erupted between Iraqi security forces and ISIS militants on Tuesday at the southern edge of the Iraqi city of Falluja. The U.S.-led coalition and Iraqi forces are battling to retake the city from the terror group. Iraqi security tried to enter the city at dawn, a senior member of its rank told CNN. The official requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. ISIS fighters used suicide car bombs, RPGs and snipers to beat back the Iraqi forces, the official said. The Iraqi side suffered losses, the official added, declining to say how many.” Reuters: Fear For Civilians As Islamic State Halts Iraqi Army At Gates Of Fallujah “Islamic State fighters halted an Iraqi army assault on the city of Falluja with a counter-attack at its southern gates on Tuesday, while the United Nations warned of peril for civilians trapped in the city and used by militants as human shields. The Iraqi army's assault on Falluja has begun what is expected to be one of the biggest battles ever fought against Islamic State, with the government backed by world powers including the United States and Iran, and determined to win back the first major Iraqi city that fell to the group in 2014. A week after Baghdad announced the start of the assault, its troops advanced in large numbers into the city limits for the first time on Monday, pouring into rural territory on its southern outskirts but stopping short of the main built-up area.” Reuters: Jets Bomb Syrian Rebel Group Ahrar Al Sham's Main Camp, Large Numbers Killed: Monitor “Unidentified jets bombed a major camp of the powerful Islamist Ahrar al Sham insurgent group in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib, leaving a large number of dead and wounded, a monitor reported on Tuesday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said top trainers from among Ahrar al Sham's leaders were normally at the camp located in the Sheikh Bahar area of rural Idlib. The insurgent group could not be reached comment. Syrian warplanes over the past 24 hours have intensified raids in the province, which is mainly in the hands of Ahrar al Sham and the Nusra Front, an al Qaeda offshoot.” The New York Times: Airstrikes In Syria Killed And Hurt Dozens Near Hospital, Rescuers Say “Rescue workers pulled children and other victims from the rubble of their homes in insurgent-held northern Syria on Tuesday morning after the latest aerial bombardments killed dozens of people. The attacks in the cities of Idlib and Aleppo began Monday night, and, witnesses said, they appeared to be airstrikes conducted by Syrian government forces or their Russian allies. Rescue workers and antigovernment activists said that more than 20 people had been killed, with dozens more injured. In Idlib, eight strikes around the National Hospital destroyed several buildings in a crowded area of the city; earlier, opposition activists had said the hospital had been struck. The attacks disrupted services at one of the area’s few remaining hospitals; in Aleppo, a hospital was damaged.” Reuters: Number Of Afghans Uprooted By Violence Doubles, A Million 'On Brink Of Survival': Amnesty “The number of Afghans internally displaced by conflict has ‘dramatically’ doubled to 1.2 million in just three years, Amnesty International said on Tuesday, warning that a lack of basic services was putting people on the brink of survival. The rights group said that situation of people uprooted from their homes in Afghanistan has deteriorated in recent years as global attention and aid money have been diverted to other crises. ‘While the world's attention seems to have moved on from Afghanistan, we risk forgetting the plight of those left behind by the conflict,’ said Champa Patel, South Asia director at Amnesty International.” The Wall Street Journal: U.S. Issues Travel Alert For Terrorism Risks In Europe This Summer “The State Department on Tuesday alerted U.S. citizens traveling to Europe to heightened risks of terrorism, citing events in France and Poland this summer that are expected to draw large crowds. The European soccer championships and the Tour de France bicycle race, both hosted in France in June and July, could be terrorist targets, the alert said. The Catholic Church’s World Youth Day in Krakow, Poland, in late July, expected to draw up to 2.5 million visitors, will result in stricter security screenings there, the alert said. The alert was issued because of the start of summer and the approach of high-drawing events, said State Department spokesman John Kirby.” The Guardian: Buhari's Crackdown In Nigeria Fails To Stamp Out Boko Haram “Time is up for Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s president and former army general, who promised before his inauguration on 29 May last year to stamp out Boko Haram within 12 months – and has singularly failed to do so, despite a tough military crackdown in the country’s north-east. While the terrorist group, blamed for 20,000 deaths over the past seven years, has taken a beating, it is down but not out. Analysts warn, meanwhile, that Buhari’s harsh approach to unrest of any kind may be causing more problems than it solves across Nigeria as a whole.” The Wall Street Journal: Egyptair Crash Pressures Airbus To Find Black-Box Alternatives “The challenges that accident investigators are facing locating crash recorders from EgyptAir Flight 804 almost two weeks after the plane went down are prompting Airbus to intensify its effort to find alternative ways to tap crucial flight data from lost aircraft. EgyptAir Flight 804 crashed into the eastern Mediterranean with 66 passengers and crew on board on May 19. The plane was flying to Cairo from Paris. Air-accident investigators still don’t know the cause of the crash, adding urgency to the search for the black boxes that typically provide clues about why a plane went down. Investigators are in a race against time. The cockpit voice and flight data recorders are equipped with underwater beacons to help locate the storage devices, but the batteries on the beacons last only 30 days.” The New York Times: In Brussels, Art Museum Brings Hope To Muslim Neighborhood Of Molenbeek “After three years of fund-raising and renovations, the founders of a contemporary art museum housed in a converted brewery in the Molenbeek district here were eagerly anticipating their grand opening on March 23. But those plans were upended on March 22, when suicide bombers struck the Brussels airport and a subway station, killing 32 people and paralyzing a city already reeling from revelations that some of the deadliest terror attacks in Europe had been carried out by homegrown extremists, many from Molenbeek. Officials at the museum, the Millennium Iconoclast Museum of Art, or MIMA, canceled the opening. They agonized over whether art lovers would venture across the Charleroi canal into the heavily Muslim and immigrant neighborhood to view what it calls ‘culture 2.0’ — art from subcultures such as tattooing, graffiti, surfing and skateboarding.” The Wall Street Journal: U.S. Tech Firms Agree To EU Code Of Conduct On Terror And Hate Content “Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and Microsoft Inc. have agreed with the European Union to remove from their websites information visible in Europe that incites hatred or acts of terror to help combat the growing threat of terrorism on the continent. In a common code of conduct, the U.S. tech companies vowed that they would review precise and substantial complaints on user’s behavior within 24 hours of receiving them and cut off access to the content, if required. The initiative, which clarifies how the companies abide by existing EU rules to tackle violent extremism and hate speech, comes in the wake of the deadly terrorist attacks in Brussels and Paris. Some of the alleged Paris attackers communicated using social media.” United States CNN: 2 U.S. Service Members Wounded In Iraq, Syria “Two U.S. service members were wounded over the weekend in Iraq and Syria, one in each country, the Pentagon said Tuesday. Speaking at a Pentagon briefing, spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said the two weren't in ‘active combat,’ but he declined to offer further details other than to note that one was in northern Iraq, near Irbil, and the other was in Syria, north of Raqqa. Davis would not confirm the troops were taken off the battlefield via helicopter, saying he did not want to provide information to enemy forces. However, he acknowledged they were wounded seriously enough that they were not able to return to duty.” Voice Of America: US Drone Strike In Pakistan Renews Calls For Transparency “The strike was unprecedented. For the first time, a U.S. drone struck Pakistan outside its lawless border area with Afghanistan, killing the leader of the Afghan Taliban in the country’s southwestern province of Baluchistan. ‘It would have been better if Pakistan had targeted him inside its own territory,’ Pakistani government employee Umair Khan told VOA. ‘It’s against the law for the U.S. to target him in our country.’Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen — the United States has not hesitated to target terrorist targets when and where it deems fit. In Pakistan alone, the U.S. has carried out 391 air strikes since 2008, according to The Long War Journal. In Yemen, U.S. strikes targeting al-Qaida commanders total 145 since 2002. Human rights groups have long called for hard numbers when it comes to counterterrorism strikes that until recently the administration refused to even confirm.” Syria Reuters: U.N. Worried For Syrians Stranded By Islamic State Advance “The United Nations said on Tuesday it was worried about 8,000 Syrians trapped by fighting north of Aleppo where Islamic State has advanced against rebels, and that both Kurdish and rebel authorities had hindered people fleeing the area. The fighting has displaced thousands more Syrians near the Turkish frontier where more than 160,000 people are already sheltering, most of whom fled fighting earlier this year, the U.N. says. ‘An unknown number of people are also unable to flee due to fighting and the closure of the main road leading north towards the town of Azaz in northwestern Syria,’ said a joint statement from the Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Syria and the Humanitarian Coordinator for the Syria Crisis. Islamic State advanced in recent days into the opposition-held town of Marea.” The Wall Street Journal: At Least 29 People Killed In Syria Airstrikes “Rescue crews dug through rubble Tuesday in the northwestern Syrian city of Idlib, looking for survivors from overnight airstrikes that hit a park, a hospital and other buildings, killing at least 29 people. The dead included seven children, according to Syria’s civil defense, which was leading the search-and-rescue operation. Many of those killed were in a hospital at the time of the attacks, local antigovernment activists said. The activists and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition monitoring group, accused Russia of carrying out the airstrikes, an allegation Moscow swiftly denied.” Iraq Business Insider: This Map Shows The Extreme Factionalism That Is Tearing Iraq Apart “ISIS's rapid advancement across Iraq in the summer of 2014 has caused so far irreparable damage to any idea of unity in the country.  As the following map shows, Iraqi territory can be thought of as belonging to one of three factions: ISIS, the Kurds, or the Iraqi government. But in actuality, the factionalism of Iraq runs much deeper. In the north of Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan and the neighboring provinces are held by various Kurdish forces that are often antagonistic towards each other. A checkpoint on the Syrian border is held by a grouping of the PKK and YPG forces that are active in Syria and Turkey. Meanwhile, the major population centers under Kurdish control are held by either the KDP Peshmerga or the PUK Peshmerga.” Time: How A Victory Over ISIS In Fallujah Could Actually Hurt Iraq “Iraq could finally turn the corner against ISIS—but at a potentially high risk to the future of the divided country. The Iraqi military and its allied militias are now engaged in intense fighting on the edges of the city of Fallujah in an effort to reclaim the city from ISIS militants. The offensive is a critical test for Iraq’s disparate armed forces in the broader war against ISIS, which overran a large portion of the country in mid-2014. Backed by U.S.-led airpower, the Iraqi military and the Shiite-majority militias known as Popular Mobilization Units face stiff resistance from ISIS forces in Fallujah. The insurgents launched counterattack on Tuesday that included a reported six car bombs, a tactic ISIS fighters have used across Iraq as they come under pressure from an array of competing forces.” Turkey Reuters: Turkey Counts Cost Of Conflict As Kurdish Militant Battle Rages On “Turkey's conflict with Kurdish militants, said to have left more than 5,000 people dead since July, has also destroyed at least 6,000 buildings that will cost approaching 1 billion lira (232.22 million pound) to rebuild, according to a government estimate. Large swathes of towns in the mainly Kurdish southeast have been devastated by daily shelling, blasts and gunfire in battles that are still raging, even as President Tayyip Erdogan says the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) is in its ‘death throes’. Turkish warplanes struck overnight at PKK gun positions and shelters in Semdinli by the mountainous border with Iraq and Iran, the army said. One soldier was killed and one wounded in a subsequent firefight in the area. A day earlier, roadside bombs killed at least six people in two attacks on security forces in the southeast. Air strikes in northern Iraq's Metina area have killed 14 PKK fighters since last Wednesday, the army said.” Deutsche Welle: Turkey's Erdogan Warns Germany Ahead Of Armenian Genocide Vote “Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Germany on Tuesday against labeling the mass death of Armenians during World War I as a ‘genocide,’ a sensitive move that could damage relations at a critical juncture. German lawmakers are expected to pass the resolution on Thursday, with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives, coalition partner the Social Democrats as well as Greens backing the measure. Before heading on a trip to Africa on Tuesday, Erdogan told reporters the resolution's passage would ‘naturally damage future diplomatic, economic, business, political and military relations between the two countries - and we are both also NATO countries.’ As the successor state to the Ottoman Empire, Turkey officially denies that the events that started in 1915 amounted to genocide and has lashed out at countries that have officially recognized the term.” BBC: Ex-Miss Turkey Sentenced For Insulting Erdogan “A Turkish court has convicted a former Miss Turkey of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, giving her a 14-month suspended prison sentence. Merve Buyuksarac, 27, was found guilty of insulting a public official for postings she made on social media. She denied insulting Mr Erdogan. Her lawyer says he will file a formal objection to the verdict and take the case to a higher court. Rights groups have criticised Turkey for backtracking on freedom of speech. Almost 2,000 people, including celebrities and schoolchildren, have been prosecuted in Turkey for insulting the president since he came to office in 2014, under a previously little-used law.” Afghanistan CNN: Afghan Police: Taliban Kidnap 200 Travelers, Keep 20 Hostage “Nearly 200 people were kidnapped by Taliban fighters in the northeastern province of Kunduz in Afghanistan early Tuesday morning, according to a police spokesman. The majority have since been released, but around 20 hostages remain. The victims were traveling on two buses to the provincial capital of Kunduz, when the Taliban stopped their vehicles on the highway in Ali Abad district at around 3:30 a.m. local time (7 p.m. Monday ET), police spokesman Hujratullah Akbari tells CNN. Six of the passengers were killed on the spot by the Taliban, Akbari said. About 185 others, including women, children and senior citizens, were then taken to a remote village called Omarkhil in the provincial district of Chardara. The Taliban killed several of the abductees after arriving in the village, Akbari said. It's not clear how or why the majority of the hostages were able to go free.” Saudi Arabia Sputnik: Saudi Arabia Agrees On Ceasefire On Border With Yemen “Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Jubeir said Tuesday that Riyadh had reached an arrangement on a ceasefire at the Saudi-Yemeni border in order to provide access for humanitarian aid coming to the war torn country. Yemen has been engulfed in a military conflict between the government headed by Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and Houthi rebels, the country’s main opposition force. The Houthis are backed by army units loyal to former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Since March 2015, the Saudi-led coalition of mostly Persian Gulf countries have been carrying out airstrikes against the Houthis at Hadi's request.” Voice Of America: Saudi Arabia Intercepts Missile Launched From Yemen “Saudi Arabia says it has intercepted a ballistic missile launched from Yemen on Monday night. The missile was destroyed in mid-air without causing any casualties, according to the Saudi state news agency SPA. This is the second missile Saudi Arabia has intercepted from Yemen just this month. The Saudi-led coalition, which supports Yemeni president Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, has said that this attack may force them to reconsider a cease-fire which paved the way for UN-lead peace talks in Kuwait in April. Yemen's Houthi rebels have controlled the capital, Sana'a, since seizing it in September 2014. Six months later, they marched south in an offensive that led to their capture of the port city of Aden, and sent President Hadi fleeing to Saudi Arabia.” Egypt ABC News: Roadside Bombs Kills 6 Soldiers In Egypt's Sinai Peninsula “Egyptian security and hospital officials say a roadside bomb has struck a military armored vehicle in the restive northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, killing six soldiers. The officials say the attack on Tuesday also wounded six other soldiers. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which bore the hallmarks of the Islamic State group, which is fighting army and security forces in northern Sinai. Militants have been battling security forces in that area for years, but their attacks have grown much deadlier and more frequent since the ouster in July 2013 of the Islamist Mohammed Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected president, following mass protests against his divisive, one-year rule.” The Washington Post: Egypt Detains Leadership Of Journalists Union On Charges Of Harboring Fugitives “In Egypt’s latest crackdown on the press, authorities have detained leaders of the Egyptian journalists association and charged them with harboring fugitives and publishing false news. The journalists union said the detention was ‘unprecedented’ in its history, while local and international rights groups described it as a dangerous attack on freedom of expression. Prosecutors questioned union head Yehia Qallash and deputies Khaled el-Balshy and Gamal Abdel Rahim for 12 hours on Sunday. The three have refused to post bail and have since been in detention. Their trial is set for Saturday.” Middle East Reuters: Israel's Settlement Drive Is Becoming Irreversible, Diplomats Fear “In the hills east of Jerusalem, overlooking the Palestinian city of Jericho and the Jordan Valley, stands a religious Jewish settlement whose red-tile roofs, neat gardens and brightly colored playgrounds give the sense of permanence. Mitzpe Yericho has stood on this escarpment close to the Dead Sea - the lowest point on earth - since 1978. It is one of more than 230 settlements Israelis have built on occupied land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem over the past half-century. Diplomats and international monitors are increasingly concerned that the drive, which has seen Israel settle more than half a million of its people at a cost of tens of billions of dollars, may be reaching the point of irreversibility. The ongoing expansion further diminishes the prospect of any significant progress being made when foreign ministers from 20 countries meet in Paris this week to discuss how to revive Middle East peace efforts, given the settlements have been a central obstacle for at least two decades.” Libya Bloomberg: Libyan Oil Guards Free Towns From Islamic State Near Key Ports “Libya’s Petroleum Facilities Guard captured two towns near the country’s biggest oil port of Es Sider after clashing with Islamic State militants as the divided country struggles to reunite factions and revive oil production and the rest of the economy. The force took control of Nofaliyeh, just one day after seizing the nearby town of Bin Jawad in central Libya, PFG spokesman Ali al-Hasy said by phone. Five petroleum guards were killed and 22 others wounded in clashes in both towns, he said. At least six Islamic State militants were killed and six others detained by the guards in Nofaliyeh, he said.” Newsweek: Libya Oil Force Captures Key Coastal Town From ISIS “A Libyan force tasked with protecting the country’s oil ports captured a coastal town from the Islamic State militant group (ISIS), a spokesperson said on Monday. The Petroleum Facilities Guard, which is allied to Libya’s U.N.-backed government, captured the town of Ben Jawad as it advanced west, clashing with ISIS near the country’s oil terminals. Five of the force’s fighters were killed and 18 people were wounded in the clashes. ‘We launched today’s attack to purge and liberate the central region from Daesh, and secure this area under the umbrella of the ministry of defense and the Presidential Council, the Supreme Commander of the Libyan army,’ Hassi told Reuters on Monday, using an Arabic acronym for ISIS.” Nigeria Deutsche Welle: Boko Haram Victim Tells DW Of Captivity Of Chibok Girls “Twenty-year-old Christina Ijabla was kidnapped by Boko Haram in Nigeria two years ago and managed to escape from a prison camp about a month ago. She spoke to DW about her life in captivity and the fate of the Chibok girls who were kidnapped in April 2014. The students from Chibok were held in the Nigerian village of Kago in the Sambisa Forest near Nigeria’s border with Cameroon, Ijabla said, adding: ‘We saw them once, but we were told to keep out of their way. They were given special treatment. Some had been married off to Boko Haram commanders, but most of the girls, as far as I could see, were still together as a group.’” United Kingdom The Jerusalem Post: UK Labor Politician Who Called Israel A 'Terrorist State' Tapped As Local Equality Chief “A British Labour politician who has called Israel a ‘terrorist state’ and derided another politician for being a ‘Zionist’ has been appointed to oversee equality in the city of Birmingham, the UK's Daily Mail reported on Tuesday. Waseem Zaffar a Labour politician from Birmingham, who was appointed as the city council's new cabinet member for Transparency, Openness and Equality, is regarded by British law as a polygamist.  According to British media, Zaffar divorced his first wife in Islamic court, which isn’t recognized by British law, and then remarried his second wife in 2014. According to the Daily Mail report, Zaffar called Israel a ‘terrorist state’ at a pro-Palestinian rally in 2014 and called on protesters to stand against ‘something that can only be described as state supported terrorism by this Zionist Israeli government.’” Germany Reuters: Germany Investigates Sexual Attacks On Women At Music Festival “German prosecutors are investigating claims by 26 women that they were sexually harassed at a music festival in the western city of Darmstadt at the weekend and police have arrested three men with Pakistani backgrounds, a police spokesman said on Wednesday. By late on Tuesday, 26 women had come forward and 14 formal complaints had been made. ‘The women complained that they were surrounded by small groups of men who then touched them inappropriately,’ the spokesman said, adding the matter was now with prosecutors. The incident has set off alarm bells in Germany after mass sexual attacks on women at New Year's Eve in Cologne, which fuelled a backlash against Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door migrant policy.” France BBC: Euro 2016 Football Tournament In France Could Be Terror Target, US Warns “The US has warned that the Euro 2016 football championship being held in France next month could be a target of militant attacks. ‘The large number of tourists visiting Europe in the summer months will present greater targets for terrorists,’ the State Department said. The event is being hosted from 10 June to 10 July at various venues. France is already under a state of emergency following last year's Islamist-claimed attacks in Paris. The near-simultaneous assaults on a stadium, concert hall, bars and restaurants left 130 people dead and many more wounded. In March, 32 people died in neighbouring Belgium when suicide blasts hit Brussels airport and a metro station. So-called Islamic State said it was behind both the Paris and Brussels attacks. Up to a million foreign fans are expected in France for the tournament, which involves the continent's top national teams.” Europe Deutsche Welle: OSCE: Fighting Terrorism At Its Roots “Since the start of the year, Germany has been at the helm of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). With that, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (pictured above) is also the current OSCE chairman. At the end of 2015, Steinmeier said that one of his goals for the German chairmanship would be to strengthen the OSCE's role as a platform for dialogue. It's against this backdrop that Berlin is currently hosting a two-day OSCE conference through June 1 on anti-terrorism measures. The German Foreign Ministry says participants are discussing not just how to combat terrorism, but how to prevent it. Some countries put all their resources into repressive measures. But fighting terrorism requires a ‘comprehensive approach,’ as Steinmeier said in his opening remarks. All levels of terrorism have to be considered, including recruitment methods, causes of radicalization and preventative measures.” Newsweek: Over 1 Million ‘Trapped In Slavery’ In Europe “More than a million people are locked into modern slavery in Europe, according to a report that finds that the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan Syria, Yemen and Libya exacerbate the problem. The Global Slavery Index 2016, prepared by the Walk Free Foundation NGO, estimates that just over 1.2 million people are enslaved on the continent. Turkey and Macedonia both top the ranking within Europe, with about 0.6 percent of the population of each country thought to be enslaved. The highest-ranking EU country is Poland, which has the third greatest proportion of its population, almost 0.5 percent, in slavery. But countries in Europe singled out for praise for their tough response to the issue include the U.K., The Netherlands, Sweden, Portugal, Croatia, Spain, Belgium and Norway.” Arabic Language Clips ISIS New Sabah: ISIS Compensates Itself For The Declining Numbers (Of Fighters) By Deploying Armed Teenagers In Mosul ISIS has begun preparations for the Mosul battle by dismantling and stealing insulation from the ceilings of governmental offices, to be used for insulating tunnels. And while the deployment of dozens of armed teenagers was observed through the streets of Mosul, the Iraqi city faced darkness following the collapse of the electricity system due to poor maintenance. Meanwhile, a reliable Iraqi security source in the Nineveh province was quoted as saying, "The terrorist organization of ISIS has begun preparing for the decisive battle of Mosul through a series of measures. Perhaps the most notable development is that ISIS has started digging tunnels through residential neighborhoods as well as in open areas near the outlying suburbs." Hezbollah An-Nahar: Sanctions Threatening The Relations Between Municipalities (Controlled By) Hezbollah And (Lebanese) Banks The imposition of US financial sanctions on Hezbollah is still a focal point of discussion by the Lebanese Council of Ministers, the Central Bank of Lebanon and the relevant authorities. What emerged from the recent visit of Daniel Glaser, Assistant Secretary for the Department of the Treasury of the United States, and his meetings with Lebanese officials is that Washington will not retreat from the decision it has taken regarding Hezbollah. During his talks in Beirut, the US official rejected any exceptions to the sanctions. He also rebuffed the notion that Hezbollah has representatives in the government, a parliamentary bloc and broad undeniable popular support. The sides are yet to reach a final agreement on the issue of banking transactions with Lebanese municipal councils headed by senior leaders of Hezbollah in the southern suburbs of Beirut, the Bekaa and southern Lebanon. If the banks refrain from dealing with the heads of these municipalities, it dooms them to paralysis. Muslim Brotherhood The Seventh Day: Brotherhood Asset Freeze Committee Completes Seizure Of 95% Of The Group's Property And Holds 35 Billion Egyptian Pounds Judicial sources revealed that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Asset Freeze Committee seized assets belonging to the group's leaders, at an estimated value of 35 billion pounds ($3.97 billion). In addition, it appropriated real estate properties, including offices belonging to the group, the Freedom and Justice Party and schools. The sources added that the committee intends to study and investigate, in cooperation with relevant state authorities, any irregularities committed by the Brotherhood. If they are substantiated, legal action will be taken against suspects. The sources noted that the Committee has completed the seizure of 95% of all Brotherhood-owned assets and expects to complete its task soon. The Seventh Day: Serious Blow To The Brotherhood After Removal Of Al-Nouran For Exchange Which Was Involved In Speculative Trading Judicial sources revealed that Karam Abdel Wahab Abd El Aal, the owner of Al-Nouran for Exchange Co., owns funds worth approximately 4 billion Egyptian pounds ($455 million). They were seized by Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood Asset Freeze Committee, which also issued an order to close all its branches and remove its name from the Central Bank of Egypt's records. The sources claimed that Abdel Wahab cooperated with the Brotherhood in speculative trading in the foreign exchange market, in amassing US dollars and manipulating the dollar rate compared to the official rates announced by the Central Bank. Veto: Oğlu: The Relationship Between Erdogan And The Muslim Brotherhood Has Become Commercially, Not Ideologically, Motivated Turgut Oğlu, director of the Turkish Zaman newspaper, stated that Erdogan has entered into a relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups based on interests. He stressed that Erdogan's relationship with the Brotherhood is now more commercial than ideological. Oğlu added that the Muslim Brotherhood members in Turkey must have money to secure their stay in Turkey. He also claimed that the ruling Justice and Development Party serves as mediator between the Turkish government and Brotherhood leaders.