Skip to main content

2 PRO-MILITANT PROPAGANDISTS ALLEGEDLY INCLUDED IN ‘KILL LIST’ OF DRONES SUE TRUMP & HIS ADMINISTRATION

Two pro-militant journalists have sued US President Donald Trump and his administration for the fact that they were allegedly included in a list of persons that should be eliminated by US drones due to ties with terrorist organizations.
US President Donald Trump (Photo: AFP 2017 / Mandel Ngan)


Former chief of the Al Jazeera bureau in Pakistan, Ahmed Zaidan, and string correspondent Bilal Kareem have sued US President Donald Trump and officials of his administration, the Politico magazine reported on Friday. The journalists claim that they were allegedly included in a list of persons that should be eliminated by US drones due to ties with terrorist organizations.

According to the journalists, they were added to the list of special services under the administration of former US President Barack Obama, but the new president and his team did nothing to exclude them from the targets of the US Air Force.

The reporters deny their connection with terrorists in a lawsuit, filed in the Washington District Court on Thursday. They demand from Trump, as well as from the US Defense Department, the US Department of Justice and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to exclude them from any existing document, according to which they can be destroyed by US attack drones.


Ahmed Zaidan (Photo: AP / Anjum Naveed)

According to documents of the US National Security Agency (NSA), which were published by the Intercept website in 2015, Zaidan was included by Washington in the list of members of the Al-Qaeda terrorist group. The journalist, who has Syrian and Pakistani citizenship, focused his reports throughout his career on the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, and conducted several high-profile interviews with senior Al-Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden. As the Intercept information website noted, a slide, dated June 2012, from a National Security Agency PowerPoint presentation bears Zaidan’s photo, name, and a terror watch list identification number, as well as labels him a “member of Al-Qa’ida” and the Muslim Brotherhood.

According to US law enforcement officials, Kareem, who has an American passport and has been working as an independent journalist in Syria in recent years, is connected with the Taliban movement. Kareem has a long and established record of creating what is essentially propaganda for extremist groups in Syria. He has conducted dozens of interviews with militants from various extremist groups, including Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate and its allies. In addition, according to the Alternet information website, he has expressed support for Anwar Al-Awlaki, the extremist preacher, credited with inspiring multiple attacks, including the mass shooting at the Fort Hood military base.

The list was published in May 2015. The journalists stressed that people, included in it, may be killed with the help of drones. So, according to Kareem, he has “narrowly avoided being killed by five separate air strikes” over the past year.

In March 2017, the Wall Street Journal newspaper found out that Trump had given the CIA authority to attack positions of terrorists with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).


Bilal Kareem interviewing a new leader of the jihadist forces in Aleppo city, December 2016 (Photo: YouTube / OGN TV)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why States Still Use Barrel Bombs

Smoke ascends after a Syrian military helicopter allegedly dropped a barrel bomb over the city of Daraya on Jan. 31.(FADI DIRANI/AFP/Getty Images) Summary Barrel bombs are not especially effective weapons. They are often poorly constructed; they fail to detonate more often than other devices constructed for a similar purpose; and their lack of precision means they can have a disproportionate effect on civilian populations. However, combatants continue to use barrel bombs in conflicts, including in recent and ongoing conflicts in Africa and the Middle East, and they are ideally suited to the requirements of resource-poor states. Analysis Barrel bombs are improvised devices that contain explosive filling and shrapnel packed into a container, often in a cylindrical shape such as a barrel. The devices continue to be dropped on towns all over Syria . Indeed, there have been several documented cases of their use in Iraq over the past months, and residents of the city of Mosul, which was re
Post a Comment
Read more

Russia Looks East for New Oil Markets

Click to Enlarge In the final years of the Soviet Union, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev began orienting his foreign policy toward Asia in response to a rising Japan. Putin has also piloted a much-touted pivot to Asia, coinciding with renewed U.S. interest in the area. A good expression of intent was Russia's hosting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in 2012 in Vladivostok, near Russia's borders with China and North Korea. Although its efforts in Asia have been limited by more direct interests in Russia's periphery and in Europe, Moscow recently has been able to look more to the east. Part of this renewed interest involves finding new export markets for Russian hydrocarbons. Russia's economy relies on energy exports, particularly crude oil and natural gas exported via pipeline to the West. However, Western Europe is diversifying its energy sources as new supplies come online out of a desire to reduce its dependence on Russian energy supplies . This has
Post a Comment
Read more

LONDON POLICE INDIRECTLY ENCOURAGE CRIMINALS TO ATTACK RUSSIAN DIPLOMATIC PROPERTY

ILLUSTRATIVE IMAGE A few days ago an unknown perpetrator trespassed on the territory of the Russian Trade Delegation in London, causing damage to the property and the vehicles belonging to the trade delegation , Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said during the September 12 press briefing. The diplomat revealed the response by the London police was discouraging. Police told that the case does not have any prospects and is likely to be closed. This was made despite the fact that the British law enforcement was provided with video surveillance tapes and detailed information shedding light on the incident. By this byehavior, British law inforcements indirectly encourage criminals to continue attacks on Russian diplomatic property in the UK. Zakharova’s statement on “Trespassing on the Russian Trade Mission premises in London” ( source ): During our briefings, we have repeatedly discussed compliance with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, specif
1 comment
Read more