More Than 500 Indonesians Have Joined Islamic State in Iraq and Syria

BANGKOK – More than 500 Indonesians have joined the ranks of the Islamic State, IS, jihadist group in Iraq and Syria while the authorities have not taken any precautionary measures, according to the country’s largest Muslim body, local media reported Friday.

“At least 514,” Nadhlatul Ulama Chairman Said Aqil Siraj told kompas.com, referring to the number of people who have joined the IS, after a meeting Thursday with Indonesian President Joko Widodo.

Siraj said that the president had not commented on the increasing number of Indonesians joining the jihadist group, according to the Jakarta Post newspaper.

A report by the country’s intelligence revealed the existence of an underground network, which was spreading around the country, for recruiting and indoctrinating people for the IS, despite an official ban on these activities.

The president has sought the support of the Muslim organization to fight radicalism, and threatened to criminalize support to the IS and revoke the citizenship of those found guilty of non-compliance.

Most Islamic countries have asked the president to bring Indonesia to the frontline in the fight against IS and radicalism, according to Siraj.

Indonesia is known to have the largest number of Muslims in the world, or more than 200 million people, most of whom are Sunnis.

IRAN: Police attack peaceful protesters outside Tehran court

Police in Tehran attacked 3,000 protesters supporters of a spiritual group gathered in peaceful protest outside the city's Revolutionary Court before the trial of their faith's founder.

Intelligence Ministry agents used tear gas on the crowd, and arrested some who were transported to an unknown location.The violent scenes forced shops and businesses in the area to close down, and it took the police two hours to clear the area of demonstrators.

The trial involved allegations against Mohammad Ali Taheri, founder of Erfan-e-Halgheh group who was arrested on May 4, 2011, by officials linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and was held in Evin Prison.

He was later charged with 'spreading corruption on Earth', a catch-all indictment of political dissent which carries the death penalty.

His supporters have gathered on numerous occasions outside Tehran’s Evin prison chanting 'freedom of expression is our right'.

International rights groups have issued statements expressing concern about welfare of Mr Taheri, who is serving his sentence in solitary confinement and his repeated requests to be transferred to a cell shared with other inmates have been denied, leading him to go on hunger strike.

PCSD searching for two men accused of stealing 8,000 cigarettes

TUCSON- The Pima County Sheriff's Department is searching for two men accused of stealing 8,000 cigarettes from a Northwest side convenience store.

According to PCSD, the theft occurred on February 14 around 4:40 a.m. at the Circle K located at 2080 W. Ruthrauff Rd.  

The two men walked into the store, went behind the counter and stole the 40 cartons of cigarettes, PCSD said.

The clerk told deputies he was in the back of the store when the theft was occurring and called 911 when he came out front and saw the men.

PCSD said the men were wearing dark colored clothing and hooded sweatshirts.  Both men had bandanas over their faces and were carrying duffle bags.  

Anyone with information is asked to call 911 or 88-CRIME.

U.S. looking into NCRI’s revelation of secret Iran nuclear site, Kerry says

Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Wednesday that a final nuclear deal with Iran could be derailed if new allegations from an Iranian dissident group that Iran is running a secret uranium enrichment operation at a facility near Tehran prove true,” The Washington Timesreported.

Mr. Kerry told lawmakers that U.S. officials knew of charges related the site prior to this week, but that “it has not been revealed yet as a nuclear facility.”

“It is a facility that we are well aware of, which is on a list of facilities we have,” the secretary of state said during a Capitol Hill budget hearing on Wednesday morning. “I’m not going to go into greater detail.”

“But these things are obviously going to have to be resolved as we go forward,” he said.

Mr. Kerry made the comments during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, in which lawmakers raised questions about the revelations Tuesday by the National Coalition of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), exposing a secret facility has never before been revealed to international officials.

On Wednesday, a State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said: “We have seen these claims and we take all such reports seriously”, according to The Washington Post.

The NCRI revealed on Tuesday the details of Lavizan-3 top-secret site currently used by Iranian regime for research & development on nuclear field using advanced centrifuges for uranium enrichment. 

The NCRI announced that the explosive revelation was result of several years of detailed work by the network of the Iranian opposition movement, the People’s Mojahedin Organization in Iran (PMOI/MEK).

Rep. Brad Sherman, California Democrat, said in the hearing: “They [PMOI (MEK)] are the ones that told the world about the Iranian nuclear program.” “They now say that there’s a secret facility at Lavizan-3.”

PMOI's sources established that since 2008 the Iranian regime has secretly engaged in research and uranium enrichment at this site.

The NCRI provided Satellite imagery of the site, its entrance, and overview of the site in the press conference.

The NCRI representatives ripped the Iranian regime’s claim regarding transparency in the nuclear talks and went on to say the Iranian regime is deceiving international community.

They pointed out that research and development with advanced centrifuges in highly secret sites are only intended to advance the nuclear weapons project.

The NCRI stressed if US is serious about preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, it must make continuation of the talks predicated on the IAEA’s immediate inspection of the site before the regime gets a chance to destroy the evidence.

Iran news in brief, 25 February 2015

Iran regime's hysteric reaction to NCRI revelations of nuclear sites

Some 30 hours after the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) unveiled for the first time details of a secret nuclear site has resorted to a hasty, desperate and pathetic propaganda blitz against the Iranian Resistance.

At a news conference at the National Press Club on Tuesday, February 24, 2015, the U.S. Representative Office of NCRI, unveiled information about Lavizan-3 site, where research and testing with advanced centrifuge machines for the purpose of uranium enrichment were being conducted.

Instead of addressing the concerns of the international community about the nature at the site and instead of providing access to the International Atomic Energy Agency, resorted to the pathetic propaganda blitz.

On Sunday, February 22, the NCRI-US announced that it intends to hold a press conference on "Secret, Parallel Nuclear Program in Iran – Details to Be Unveiled." The next day, the regime's president Hassan Rouhani and the head of the expediency council, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, attempted to preemptively cast doubt on what was going to be made public, describing it as a "big lie." Following the press conference on Tuesday, February 24, the Iranian regime's envoy to the UN, Gholamali Khoshroo, and Mansour Haqiqat-pour, the deputy chair of the national security and foreign policy committee of the regime's parliament, side stepped NCRI's intelligence entirely, and instead cried out that the NCRI was "anti-humanitarian" and a "spent, mercenary force."

If that were not enough, a website in an article written by an unidentified individual claimed that the image of the 40 cm thick and radiation-proof doors of the four-hall underground Lavizan-3 site, which was presented at the news conference and included in the NCRI report, was fabricated and was actually taken from the website of a company in Iran called Ganjineh Mehr Pars (GMP). One other discredited website, whose collaboration with the Iranian regime has been common knowledge for the past 10 years, posted the same story.

The NCRI-US offers the following clarification:

1. The Iranian Resistance reiterates most emphatically its call on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to demand immediate access to Lavizan-3 and see the centrifuge machines in-situ.

2. Instead of beating around the bush, the Iranian regime must grant immediate access to the IAEA to conduct a thorough inspection of Lavizan-3. However, by engaging in such publicity stunts, Tehran is trying to buy time to destroy the evidence of its decade-long illicit activities at Lavizan-3. This ruse is simply a pathetic and desperate smokescreen on the part of the Iranian regime to conceal the truth and to overshadow the impact of the exposure of its secret uranium enrichment research using advanced centrifuges in an underground site.

3. At the news conference on Tuesday, the NCRI showed the image of the door and identified it as one of the doors that had been installed at one of the underground halls at Lavizan-3 site. The NCRI, through its sources within Iran, was fully aware that these doors had been built by GMP Company for the purpose of being installed at Lavizan-3.

4. The image displayed at the press conference had been provided to the NCRI by its sources in Iran and was not grabbed from the GMP website. In fact, that image was posted on the Company's website recently as a product sample, whereas the NCRI had been working on compiling information on Lavizan-3 for the past several years and thus possessed the image long before it was posted on the GMP website.

5. This is the image of one of the doors installed at one of the underground halls at Lavizan-3. It was taken after its construction at GMP workshops and prior to being transferred to Lavizan-3 for installation. In its report, NCRI did not specify the name of the company that had built the doors, and it chose not to show the full picture for security reasons and to protect the source(s) of the information.

6. In 2005, Kalaye Electric Company ordered 4 of these doors from GMP. The individual who referred the GMP Company to Kalaye Electric was named […] Shahbazian, who is a friend of Farrokh Esfandiari, the Director General of GMP. At the time, the cost for building each door was about $30,000 and it took about three months to build them.

7. GMP installed the doors at Lavizan-3. Trucks transported the doors to the site. They were then lowered into the tunnel, using cranes, through the elevator shaft area (because the elevator had not yet been installed). Once underground, the doors were moved around by small manual cranes and mounted on a roller pulled by a Land Rover pick-up, which had also been lowered to the underground site.

8. GMP built a number of vault doors for the Natanz site in the same year. This company is currently engaged in manufacturing doors for weapons depots of the Intelligence Ministry to be installed in the [Iran-Iraq] border region. In 2014, GMP built explosion-proof doors for Pars Garma Company (affiliated with the Ministry of Defense) to be installed in Gachsaran in Khuzistan Province.

9. In a marketing booklet published by GMP, it boasts that "highly advanced technology is used in the construction of these doors," and that "GMP Company is the sole producer of this product inside Iran in compliance with international standards." "This product will probably be used in Iran's nuclear energy program, and as such is under [international] sanctions and cannot be practically procured from abroad…," the booklet adds. Two of its six utilities listed in the booklet include, "nuclear energy centers and nuclear facilities," as well as "military capabilities in nuclear and laser testing systems." (The marketing booklet written in Farsi language is available)

FBI Arrests 3 New York Men Planning to Join IS in Syria

NEW YORK – The FBI on Wednesday arrested three New York residents who allegedly were planning to join the jihadist Islamic State and commit terrorist acts in the United States, officials with the agency and the Justice Department said.

Abdurasul Hasanovich Juraboev and Abror Habibov, both citizens of Uzbekistan, and Akhror Saidakhmetov, a citizen of Kazakhstan, are facing charges of conspiracy for supporting that terrorist group.

The arrests of the three men, all residents of the New York borough of Brooklyn and who had been under observation by law enforcement for several months, were made in New York and Florida.

The FBI investigation revealed that Juraboev, 24, and Saidakhmetov, 19, were planning to travel to Syria via Turkey to join the Islamic State, while Habibov, 30, helped finance Saidakhmetov in his efforts but had no plans to leave the country.

Saidakhmetov was arrested Wednesday morning at JFK international airport in New York as he was getting ready to board a flight to Istanbul, while Juraboev had bought a ticket for next month to travel to the same destination and was arrested in Brooklyn.

According to local media, Habibov was arrested in Florida.

In the indictment, prosecutors say Juraboev first came to the attention of law enforcement authorities last August when he posted a message on an Uzbek-language website that propagates the Islamic State ideology saying he and his companions wanted to “pledge our allegiance” to the IS “and commit ourselves.”

In the same post, he offered to assassinate President Barack Obama if the terrorist group ordered him to do so. He also threatened to plant a bomb on New York’s Coney Island.

Meanwhile, Saidakhmetov intended to carry out an attack on U.S. soil if he was unable to travel to Syria to join the IS, and recently he expressed his intention to buy a pistol to shoot police officers and FBI agents if they learned of his plans.

“The flow of foreign fighters to Syria represents an evolving threat to our country and to our allies,” said the U.S. attorney for Eastern New York, Loretta E. Lynch, in the statement announcing the arrests.