Friday, January 27, 2017

Germany Downplayed Threat of Jihadists Posing as Migrants

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Germany Downplayed Threat of Jihadists Posing as Migrants

by Soeren Kern  •  January 27, 2017 at 5:00 am
  • More than 400 migrants who entered Germany as asylum seekers in 2015 and 2016 are being investigated for links to Islamic terrorism, according to the Federal Criminal Police.
  • The German experience with jihadists posing as migrants serves as a case study on errors for other countries to avoid. German authorities allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants, many lacking documentation, to enter Germany without a security check. German authorities admitted they lost track of some 130,000 migrants who entered the country in 2015.
  • German authorities knew in early 2015 that Walid Salihi, an 18-year-old Syrian who applied for asylum in Germany in 2014, was recruiting for the Islamic State at his asylum shelter in Recklinghausen, but they did nothing.
  • Anis Amri, the Tunisian jihadist who attacked the Christmas market in Berlin, used at least 14 different identities, which he used to obtain social welfare benefits under different names in different municipalities.
  • "We have probably forgotten to take into account what political opponents such as the Islamic State are capable of doing and how they think." — Rudolf van Hüllen, political scientist.
On July 19, 2016, a 17-year-old Afghan asylum seeker seriously injured five people on a train in Germany, while shouting "Allahu Akbar." He is shown at left in an Islamic State video saying, "In the name of Allah, I am a soldier of the Caliphate and am launching a martyrdom operation in Germany... I will slaughter you in your own homes and in the streets." Right: The attacker's body is removed from the place where police shot him, after he charged at them with the axe.
German political leaders and national security officials knew that Islamic State jihadists were entering Europe disguised as migrants but repeatedly downplayed the threat, apparently to avoid fueling anti-immigration sentiments, according to an exposé by German public television.
German officials knew as early as March 2015 — some six months before Chancellor Angela Merkel opened German borders to more than a million migrants from the Muslim world — that jihadists were posing as refugees, according to the Munich Report (Report München), an investigative journalism program broadcast by ARD public television on January 17.
More than 400 migrants who entered Germany as asylum seekers in 2015 and 2016 are now being investigated for links to Islamic terrorism, according to the Federal Criminal Police (Bundeskriminalamt, BKA).

Immigration Priorities: Translators, and Victims of Genocide

by Shoshana Bryen  •  January 27, 2017 at 4:30 am
  • Prioritize two groups from the Middle East: those who have worked for the U.S. military as translators (and their families); and Middle East Christians who, according to then-Secretary of State Kerry, were being subjected to genocide in Syria and Iraq.
  • In 2008, Congress authorized 20,000 special visas for Iraqis who served the U.S. for a year or more; and in 2009, authorized 7,500 visas over seven years for Afghan translators. The idea was to get allies who had risked their lives for American troops out as quickly as possible, but thousands have waited for years.
  • Iraq and Afghanistan are countries in which being tagged as helpful to the U.S. military can be, and has been, a death sentence. And worse, in July 2016, an extension of the visa program failed to make it out of the Senate.
  • Of the 10,801 refugees accepted in fiscal 2016 from Syria, only 56 (0.5 percent) were Christian.
  • Making a concerted effort to bring those two desperately threatened groups to the United States would meet our commitment to the translators, give concrete expression to our revulsion at genocide, protect the interests of the American people, and ensure that America remains hospitable to immigrants and refugees.
When a few persecuted Iraqi Christians crossed the border into the U.S., they were thrown in prison for several months and then sent back to the countries persecuting them, possibly to be enslaved, raped, or murdered. Pictured above: Members of California's Iraqi Christian community and their supporters protest the months-long detention of Iraqi Christian asylum-seekers at the Otay Mesa detention center. (Image source Al Jazeera video screenshot)
If you want security clearances in the United States, the government "vets" you quite thoroughly. They begin by asking you questions and then ask for a list of people to interview -- family, friends, employers, etc. They take your list and ask those people for more people who will talk about you, then take that list and ask those people for more people who will talk about you -- and so on until the lists have the right number and combination of names that overlap. If you have a vindictive ex-wife, watch out. They do a credit check, a criminal background check, a motor vehicle records check, and a medical records check. Psychiatrist? That too.

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