ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

When Rodney Watson was called up by the U.S. army for a second deployment to Iraq in 2006, he made the decision to desert. He now lives in a small room in a church in Vancouver, which immigration officials refrain from entering due to a tradition of sanctuary that dates back to medieval times. Yolande Cole VANCOUVER, British Columbia — For more than five years, former U.S. soldier Rodney Watson has lived as a prisoner, confined to a church that serves a poor neighborhood here. Wanted on charges of desertion in the United States and marked for deportation from Canada, he’s invoked the protection of sanctuary. Following a tradition established in medieval times, the Canada Border Services Agency officers have refrained from entering the church. Watson is safe from arrest as long as he stays within its walls. There are as many as two dozen men and women like Watson living in Canada today. Self-described conscientious objectors or resisters to the 2003 Iraq war, they have applied to Cana...

(Reuters) - Protests erupted at universities across Egypt on Sunday, condemning a court decision to drop criminal charges against Hosni Mubarak, the president whose ouster in the 2011 uprising raised hopes of a new era of political openness. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered at Cairo University, waving pictures of Mubarak behind bars and demanding the "fall of the regime", the rallying cry of the Arab Spring uprisings that shook governments from Tunisia to the Gulf in 2011. Police stood ready at the gates to bar students that sought to take their demonstration into the streets. An Egyptian court on Saturday dropped its case against Mubarak over the killing of protesters in the 2011 uprising that ended his 30-year rule. The ruling was seen by activists as the latest sign that the rights won during the revolt are being eroded. Two people were killed and nine were wounded on Saturday evening, when security forces fired tear gas and birdshot to disperse about 1,000 protesters wh...

(Reuters) - At a desert base, Gulf state Qatar is covertly training moderate Syrian rebels with U.S. help to fight both President Bashar al-Assad and Islamic State and may include more overtly Islamist insurgent groups, sources close to the matter say. The camp, south of the capital between Saudi Arabia's border and Al Udeid, the largest U.S. air base in the Middle East, is being used to train the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and other moderate rebels, the sources said. Reuters could not independently identify the participants in the program or witness activity inside the base, which lies in a military zone guarded by Qatari special forces and marked on signposts as a restricted area. But Syrian rebel sources said training in Qatar has included rebels affiliated to the “Free Syrian Army” from northern Syria. The sources said the effort had been running for nearly a year, although it was too small to have a significant impact on the battlefield, and some rebels complained of not being ta...

The Brazilian Navy has selected MBDA's Sea Ceptor to provide the local area air defence for its next generation Tamandaré class corvettes. After the UK's Royal Navy (RN) and the Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN), Brazil's is now the third navy to have chosen Sea Ceptor. With discussions also well advanced with other leading navies around the world, Sea Ceptor is rapidly establishing a significant user community. A production contract was awarded by the UK MoD in September 2013 for Sea Ceptor to provide the next generation Air Defence capability and so replace the Seawolf system on the Royal Navy's Type 23 frigates from 2016 onwards. Sea Ceptor will subsequently be transferred to the Royal Navy's new ships as they start entering service, when the Type 23s are replaced by the future Type 26s. This long term commitment to Sea Ceptor by the Royal Navy is a solid assurance to each new member of the weapon's user community of the longevity of this new system over the y...

Armed men, believed to be Kurdish fighters, run after an explosion during fighting against Islamic State militants at a location west of Kobani November 23, 2014 (Reuters / Osman Orsal) An attack by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) jihadists on the Syrian border town of Kobani has come from Turkish territory for the first time, a Kurdish official said. IS forces advanced from the Turkish territory to attack the border crossing between Kobani and Turkey, according to Nawaf Khalil, a spokesman for Syria's prominent Kurdish Democratic Union Party. The Islamic State "used to attack the town from three sides. Today, they are attacking from four sides,"Khalil is cited as saying by AP. The assault began with an armored vehicle suicide attack on the border crossing, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Heavy fighting also took place southwest of Kobani, where the IS militants used tanks to reinforce their ground troops. At least eight Kurdish fighters and 17 ji...

Reutets/Shawn Nickel/U.S. Air Force The Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) has not been weakened since US-led airstrikes began in September, Syria’s foreign minister said, adding that nothing will change until Turkey increases security at its borders. "All the indications say that [the Islamic State] today, after two months of coalition air strikes, is not weaker," Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem told the Beirut-based Al Mayadeen TV on Friday. US-led airstrikes in Syria against the IS began as part of a larger effort to battle the jihadist group after it had seized vast amounts of territory in Iraq and Syria. Despite carrying out airstrikes in Syria, Washington has refused to work with the country’s government, stating that it wants to see Bashar Assad ousted. Turkey shares the latter stance with the US. Muallem noted that until Ankara is forced to step up security at its borders, the Islamic State cannot actually be defeated. "If the Security Council and Washi...

The Syrian Electronic Army has claimed responsibility for hacking into multiple news websites on Thursday, including the New York Times, CBC and the Telegraph. Visitors saw this pop-up message: “you’ve been hacked by SEA.” Most of the news organizations hit were in the UK and the US. US sites hit included the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, CNBC, CBC and Forbes. The SEA said on its Twitter feed that the attacks were designed to coincide with the Thanksgiving holiday in the US. "Happy thanks giving, hope you didn't miss us! The press: Please don't pretend #ISIS are civilians. #SEA,"said the Tweet. Happy thanks giving, hope you didn't miss us! The press: Please don't pretend #ISIS are civilians. #SEA pic.twitter.com/ZXzMWbXoYp — SyrianElectronicArmy (@Official_SEA16) November 27, 2014 In the UK, affected media organizations included the Telegraph, the Independent and the Evening Standard. A part of our website run by a third-party was compromised earlier ...

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (AFP Photo) The siege of Knightsbridge is a farce. For two years, an exaggerated, costly police presence around the Ecuadorean embassy in London has served no purpose other than to flaunt the power of the state. Their quarry is an Australian charged with no crime, a refugee from gross injustice whose only security is the room given him by a brave South American country. His true crime is to have initiated a wave of truth-telling in an era of lies, cynicism and war. The persecution of Julian Assange must end. Even the British government clearly believes it must end. On 28 October, the deputy foreign minister, Hugo Swire, told Parliament he would “actively welcome”the Swedish prosecutor in London and “we would do absolutely everything to facilitate that”. The tone was impatient. The Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny, has refused to come to London to question Assange about allegations of sexual misconduct in Stockholm in 2010 – even though Swedish law allows...