United States ( American " Jihad's " return from Syria ) See story

  

The senior officials said that more than 50 "U.S. persons" -- a designation that covers both natural-born and naturalized citizens as well as those who have lived in the U.S. -- have returned here after battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime in the Middle Eastern nation's bloody civil war. One of the senior counter-terrorism officials went further, saying the actual number of returning U.S. fighters from Syria is classified but is "much higher" than 50.
Not all of those who have returned are considered "jihadis" who adhere to the anti-U.S. violent ideology espoused by the late al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, but many are suspected of such sympathies, officials say.

Al Qaeda-aligned jihadi commanders in Syria screen new American arrivals in the ranks of foreign fighters to recruit those with clean passports who have the capability to conduct future operations against the West, two national security officials told ABC News.
One of the officials compared that process of selection to how the U.S. military screens raw recruits for Special Operations Forces qualification courses.
FBI Director James Comey said Thursday the threat is one of his "greatest concerns."
"My concern is that people can go to Syria, develop new relationships, learn new techniques and become far more dangerous, and then flow back," Comey told reporters.
Previous estimates put the number of Americans in the Syrian conflict at 16, but researcher Aaron Zelin at the Washington Institute for Near-East Policy in a report last month said as many as 60 from the U.S. may have fought among an estimated 11,000 foreign militants in Syria.
Only one American, Muslim convert Nicole Lynn Mansfield, 33, is known to have been killed in the Syrian war, though her daughter has insisted her mother was not a terrorist. Mansfield participated in protests against Israel in Michigan before joining combatants in Syria.
Several other reports of Americans killed in Syria fighting with al Qaeda-linked resistance groups have not been verified by the FBI, a spokeswoman told ABC News last week.

One "martyrdom" video supposedly featuring threats against his homeland by an alleged American killed with an al Qaeda group, "Abu Dujana al-Amriki," is considered a likely hoax by the Assad regime, which has capitalized on U.S. jihadis joining Salafist extremists.

Counter-terrorism officials in the United Kingdom and other Western European countries also have privately discussed with their American counterparts their difficulty in identifying citizens or residents of their nations who have slipped into Syria.

It is the easiest war zone for foreign fighters to reach since the Russians faced the insurgency in Afghanistan three decades ago, officials say, which makes tracing the volunteers' travel highly challenging if they're not already on watch lists.

Groups of foreign fighters -- many hardcore Islamist jihadis -- slip into Syria by the hundreds every month through Turkey. They often meet in places such as nearby Bulgaria and make their way there, often by car, said one senior U.S. official.

Kenya ( Kenya’s military has killed more than 30 Al-Shabab militants )

NAIROBI: Kenya’s military has killed more than 30 Al-Shabab militants, including commanders, a spokesman said, in its first major barrage of airstrikes in Somalia since the retaliation for the militants’ attack on a Nairobi shopping mall.


Kenyan fighter jets hit a camp at Garbarahey in the Gedo region on Thursday evening, where the militants, who profess links to Al-Qaeda, were holding a meeting, the military said.
Al Shabab has been weakened by African Union troops over the past two years, ushering in some stability in many parts of the Horn of Africa country after a campaign of cross-border raids and kidnappings of Westerners and security forces.
However, the rebels, who have waged a seven-year insurgency seeking to impose a strict interpretation of sharia law in Somalia, stunned the world in September when they attacked an upscale shopping mall in Nairobi, killing at least 67 people.
Thursday’s air raids were the first since October, when Kenyan warplanes bombed targets held by the militants in reprisal for the attack on the mall..
“There are remnants of Al-Shabab that are still trying to draw back the gains that have been made (against them),” Kenyan military spokesman Col. Cyrus Oguna told Reuters on Friday.
“Those remnants are the ones we are focusing on now.”
Despite more than two years of attacks on Al-Shabab positions by Kenyan and other east African troops, there is no clear picture of how many are involved in the movement or whether its numbers have been eroded by the intervention.
After October’s raid, the Kenya Defense Forces said it destroyed a training camp, killing or wounding many of the more than 300 fighters there.
The militants, who said they attacked the shopping center because of Kenya’s intervention in Somalia, denied there had been any attack then and was not immediately available to comment on Friday.
It was not immediately clear what, if anything other than opportunity, had triggered Thursday’s raids.
Residents in Gedo, however, said Al-Shabab has been regrouping its fighters in the area over the past days.

Mexico ( Inmate who tried to "Escape " found Dead in his Cell )

MEXICO CITY – An inmate who recently fled from a prison in central Mexico only to be recaptured the next day was found beaten to death inside his cell, Morelos state authorities said.

Guards made the discovery Wednesday after Hilario Montaño, 45, failed to show up for roll call.

The victim, who was serving 30 years for homicide and auto theft, escaped from Atlacholoya prison with three other inmates last Friday, but was apprehended a day later.

Media outlets said that once back in custody, Montaño told authorities the escapees had help from guards. The same outlets suggested he might have been killed for fingering the guards.

“They are accounts that are circulating, but they are not confirmed,” the No. 2 official in Morelos, Government Secretary Jorge Messeguer, told Radio Formula.

He added, however, that Montaño’s murder would be incomprehensible “without the complicity of guards.”

All of the guards who were on duty Wednesday will be questioned in connection with Montaño’s killing, the state government said.

Ten guards at Atlacholoya are already under investigation for the Jan. 3 escape

Mexico ( Three " Heads " left on top of a vehicle behind motel ) Cartel Wars

ON THE STREETS OF FARMERS AND DOUGLAS COLONY CANDIDO AGUILAR CITY AND PUERTO DE VERACRUZ WERE LEFT HEADS OF THREE MEN WITH A poster WITH A MESSAGE THAT SAID: THIS IS GOING TO SPEND ALL THAT filthy THAT ANDE KIDNAPPING AND STEALING PEOPLE INNOCENT ATTE. CJNG.



THE LEFT ON A WHITE CHEVY ORDER OF CIRCULATION WITHOUT PLATES THAT WAS ABANDONED BEHIND THE MOTEL LAS VEGAS. CAME THE MARINE POLICE PUBLIC SAFETY, POLICE AGENCY OF VERACRUZ AND RESEARCH STAFF ATTORNEY. NEIGHBOURS were horrified FIND THE MACABRE

Read more: http://www.elblogdelnarco.net/2014/01/fotos-de-tres-decapitados-estos-le-va.html # ixzz2q0y6Jhax
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Saudi Arabia ( Sex Offender " Arrested " for sexually assaulting a 7 year-old girl at School )

The Eastern Province police arrested on Thursday the man filmed on a surveillance camera sexually assaulting a seven-year-old girl in the foyer of a residential building in Dammam.
Col. Ziad Al-Ruqaiti, spokesman for the Eastern Province police, said the man is in his 20s and has a criminal record.
He said specialists analyzed the video published on YouTube and used the information to identity the perpetrator.

Al-Ruqaiti said the police dealt with few such cases. He warned parents to watch over their children when they are out in public.
There was an outpouring of anger and shock on the Internet on Wednesday after the 47-second video appeared on YouTube.
Many users on social networks called for the government to punish the man severely and introduce new legislation, including tougher sanctions, for sexual harassment.
They also called on government to introduce lessons on sexual harassment at schools.
The video shows the little girl in her school uniform standing at the elevator in the foyer of the building when the perpetrator shows up.
The man, dressed in a white short-sleeved thobe and skullcap, first walks past her to check if anyone is on the staircase and then turns back to talk to her. He checks the doors to the fire escape and the elevator, and then lifts the little girl’s dress and starts molesting her.
He stops as the elevator arrives, and then enters it behind her. The video ends at this point.
Suhaila Zain Al-Abideen, a member of the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR), has called on the judiciary to name and shame men found guilty of sexual abuse, followed by lengthy jail sentences.

Iraq ( Suicide bomber " kills 21" at military recruiting center )

BAGHDAD: A suicide bomber blew himself up at a military recruiting center in Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least 21 people in an attack likely meant to send a message to the government and would-be army volunteers over the Iraqi troops’ ongoing push to retake two cities overrun by Al-Qaeda militants.
The blast struck as an international rights group warned of the apparent use of indiscriminate mortar fire in civilian areas by Iraqi forces in their campaign to reassert control over the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.

 Tribal leaders in Fallujah, 65 km west of Baghdad, have warned Al-Qaeda fighters there to leave to avoid a military showdown.
Vice President Joe Biden has spoken to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki twice this week, voicing support for his government’s efforts to regain control of the cities and urging him to continue talks with local, tribal and national leaders.
Iran, too, is watching the unrest with alarm as it shares American concerns about Al-Qaeda-linked militants taking firmer root in Iraq. It has offered to supply military equipment and advisers to help fight militants in Anbar should Baghdad ask for assistance.
Human Rights Watch said on Thursday that Iraqi forces appear to have used mortar fire indiscriminately in civilian areas in recent days in their effort to dislodge militants in Anbar, and that some residential areas were targeted with mortar shells and gunfire even though there was no signs of an Al-Qaeda presence in those specific areas.
The New York-based group said its allegations were based on multiple accounts provided by Anbar residents.
It also warned that a government blockade of Ramadi and Fallujah is limiting civilian access to food, water and fuel, and that “unlawful methods of fighting by all sides” has caused civilian casualties and major property damage.
Several approaches to Fallujah have been blocked by Iraqi troops, and only families with children were being allowed to leave with “extreme difficulty” through two checkpoints that remained open, the rights group said. It added that single men were being denied exit from the city.
“Civilians have been caught in the middle in Anbar, and the government appears to be doing nothing to protect them,” the group’s Mideast director, Sarah Leah Whitson, said in a statement.

Saudi Arabia ( Border Guards bust " drug traffickers " with 352 slabs of hashish )

Jazan Border Guard patrols busted 352 slabs of cannabis (known locally as hashish), weighing 358 kg on Thursday.
Three drug traffickers were transporting the substance by boat. The main smuggler, who jumped into to sea to escape arrest, sought the guard’s assistance to save him from drowning.



Brig. Gen. Abdullah bin Mahfouz, a spokesman for the Jazan border guards, said the operation was detected by the marine radar staff, who saw an object going from the north to the south.
“When we approached the boat, we found three persons on board. They tried to escape, but we fired some warning shots. Feeling besieged and powerless, one of them tried to escape by jumping into the sea. But he did not know how to swim and was rescued by police divers,” he said.
“When the police took over the boat, the three were put under arrest. The boat was found containing quantities of cannabis and three cell phones, in addition to a Garmin GPS device.”
He said the trio was carrying 352 cannabis slabs weighing 358 kg.
He added that security agents were studying the case to take proper action against the three.
Maj. Gen. Abdul Aziz Al-Subhi, commander of the Jazan border guard, said: “I ask vacationers and holiday makers, as well as fishermen at sea, to report any suspicious boat they see at sea by calling 994.”