In this mailing:
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).
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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