Clinton Unveils Strategy to Defeat ISIS

Nearly one week after the terrorist attacks in Paris, Hillary Clinton today laid out her strategy to combat ISIS and global terrorism in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City.

The former secretary of state focused her remarks on three objectives: defeating ISIS in Syria, Iraq and across the region; disrupting the terrorist organization’s global infrastructure and facilities; and preventing and halting homegrown threats here in the United States.

In order to do this, Clinton said the United States and international coalition must first “intensify and broaden” their efforts by creating a "more effective coalition air campaign” combined with local ground forces.

“It’s time to begin a new phase and intensify and broaden our efforts to smash the would-be caliphate and deny ISIS control of territory in Iraq and Syria. That starts with a more effective coalition air campaign; with more allied planes, more strikes, and a broader target set,” Clinton said. “And we should be honest about the fact that to be successful, air strikes will have to be combined with ground forces actually taking back more territory from ISIS.”

Clinton, for the most part, aligned herself with President Obama’s strategy. She said she agrees it is not the “smart move” to “again have 100,000 U.S. troops in combat in the Middle East,” and said that while the United States must “lead” the fight, it should "support local and regional ground forces in carrying out this mission.”

Her remarks were a subtle change in tone from what Clinton said during Saturday’s Democratic debate, where she noted, "it cannot be an American fight."

Clinton seemed to clarify that line today when she said, "this is a worldwide fight and America must lead,” which drew criticism from her challengers from both parties.

Clinton did reiterate her call for a no-fly zone over Syria, something the Obama administration has so far said it opposes. But in the Q&A that followed, Clinton clarified that the no-fly zone would not be over the entire country, but “principally over Northern Syria.”

Clinton also said the United States must do more to stop ISIS’ growth online, and called on Silicon Valley and those in the private sector to help. "We must deny them virtual territory, just as we deny them actual territory,” she said.

She called out the GOP for their use of the phrase “radical Islamists,” which she says gives terrorists more standing than they deserve. “Islam is not our adversary,” she said.

And Clinton doubled-down on her call for allowing refugees into the United States.

"It would be a cruel irony, indeed, if ISIS can force families from their homes and also prevent them from ever finding new ones,” she said.

During the Q&A that followed, Clinton added that “we should not have religious tests" to decide which refugees can come into the country.

Earlier this week, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush said he would back refugees who could “prove” they were Christian.

Her remarks come just hours after ISIS released a video announcing new threats against New York City.

In an interview on “Live! With Kelly and Michael” this morning, Clinton called the threats “serious” and pointed to lax gun laws as a factor in the increased threats.

“It’s way too easy to get guns in our country, terrorists can get guns who should never be allowed to,” she said. "They're on the no-fly list but they often aren't checked or can get guns online, so we do have to take it serious and have to be vigilant."

Suspected mastermind of Paris attacks killed

The suspected mastermind of the Paris attacks was among those killed in a police raid in a northern suburb of the French capital on Wednesday, authorities said Thursday, as the lower house of the French Parliament voted to extend state-of-emergency powers until February and Belgian officials continued their search for another suspect, who remains on the run.

Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a 28-year-old Belgian who had boasted of mounting attacks in Europe for the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), was accused of orchestrating Friday's bombings and shootings. His body was found in the apartment building targeted in a chaotic raid in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis early Wednesday morning. 

Police launched the raid after receiving information from tapped phone calls, surveillance and witness accounts suggesting that Abaaoud was holed up there. Killed along with Abaaoud was his cousin, who blew herself up with an explosives vest at the beginning of the raid, police said. Eight people were arrested in two separate raids in the area on Wednesday.

"Abdel Hamid Abaaoud has just been formally identified, after comparing fingerprints, as having been killed during the (police) raid," a statement from the Paris prosecutor said. "It was the body we had discovered in the building, riddled with bullets." But the prosecutor's office left open the possibility that Abaaoud may also have detonated an explosive device on his person.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve says France did not know before last week's deadly attacks that Abaaoud was in Europe. Cazeneuve said Abaaoud was believed to be behind four of six attacks thwarted in France since spring 2015, including an attempted attack on a high-speed train headed to Paris in August that was foiled by other train passengers.

News of Abaaoud's death came as Belgian authorities detained seven people during several raids Thursday morning in Molenbeek, a Brussels district. The raids were linked to one of the suicide bombers in last week's attacks, Bilal Hadfi, and "his entourage," a Belgian official said.

Another suspect who had lived in Molenbeek, Salah Abdeslam, 26, remains on the run. He is suspected of having rented a black VW Polo car used in the attacks in Paris.

"In this community of Muslims in Molenbeek there is a lot of unemployment and, in this situation, it’s a basis where hate preachers can find and indoctrinate people," Jan Jambon, the Belgian interior minister, told Al Jazeera. "This analysis is already made for years but the political will was never there to change things."

On Friday Jambon will meet in Brussels with European interior and justice ministers. It's expected that French officials will call for strengthened counter-terrorism measures and tightened border checks. Officials also will mull measures to enforce stricter controls of firearm sales and enhanced intelligence-sharing.

With France still reeling from the Friday attacks, Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned that ISIL might attempt to use chemical or biological weapons.

"Terrorism hit France not because of what it is doing in Iraq and Syria ... but for what it is," Valls told the lower house of Parliament Thursday. "We know that there could also be a risk of chemical or biological weapons."

Valls' announcement came as the National Assembly, in a 551 to 6 vote, agreed to extend state-of-emergency powers until February. The vote allows the interior ministry to order house arrests and house searches without judicial approval. Since Friday’s attacks, the ministry has ordered house arrest for over 100 people, and it has conducted nearly 200 house searches.

State-of-emergency powers also allow police to prohibit the free movement of people and vehicles at any time, to block access to certain websites, and to set up checkpoints outside public and private buildings suspected of harboring people deemed dangerous to national security.

These powers were first enacted in 1955 at the start of France’s war with Algeria. Since then, France has decreed a state of emergency twice: in 1985 in the Pacific island territory of New Caledonia amid massive unrest between separatists and French loyalists, and in 2005 in response to three weeks of rioting in Paris and hundreds of other French towns.

Facebook activates safety check after Nigeria blast

Facebook has activated its "Safety Check" feature after the deadly bomb blast that killed 32 people in north-eastern Nigerian city of Yola (see 09:03 post). 

"We've activated Safety Check again after the bombing in Nigeria," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in "A loss of human life anywhere is a tragedy, and we're committed to doing our part to help people in more of these situations," he added.

The social networking site was heavily criticised for being selective after it activated the feature following the Paris attacks that killed 129 people on Friday, because it was not activated for previous similar violent incidents.

The feature is usually activated to allow users to mark themselves as safe, after natural disasters.

Africa blasts ICC as world crimes court

The African Union blasted the world's only permanent war crimes court Wednesday for its unrelenting focus on the continent, as it called for a case against Kenya's deputy president to be dropped.

"We have arrived at the conclusion that the International Criminal Court, whose establishment was strongly supported by Africa... is no longer a court for all," Ethiopian Foreign Minister Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

The Ethiopian minister was speaking on behalf of the AU at the 14th session of the Assembly of States Parties, an annual meeting between the 123 countries that have signed up to the Hague-based ICC's founding statute.

The AU, led in particular by Kenya, has accused the court of unfairly targeting Africans for prosecution as the majority of its cases come from the continent.

This included a failed case to try Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and a faltering case against his deputy William Ruto, for allegedly masterminding deadly post-election violence in the east African country in 2007-2008 in which some 1,200 people died.

The ICC's chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda dropped crimes against humanity charges against Kenyatta in December last year in a case littered with allegations of witness intimidation, bribery and false testimony.

It was her biggest setback since the establishment of the court in 2002, set up to try the world's worst crimes including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Kenya now wants the assembly to debate an amendment which has allowed the prosecutor to use previously-recorded testimonies, which were later recanted, to beef up the case against Ruto.

"We believe the trial chamber judges acted outside of their authority in agreeing (with the prosecutor) to admit recanted evidence in this ongoing case," Kenya's Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed said.

"We believe these cases should never in the first place have been brought," Mohamed told AFP on the sidelines of the meeting.

"These cases should have been handled on a domestic and regional level," she said.

Both Kenya and South Africa -- which is embroiled in a spat with the court for failing to arrest Sudan's wanted leader Omar al-Bashir when he travelled to Johannesburg for an AU summit in June -- have threatened to withdraw from the court.

Ghebreyesus in his speech did not go as far, but he warned: "Our common resolve (in Africa) should not be tested."

"The continent may be left with no other choice than to reserve the right to take measures it may think necessary in the interest of preserving and safeguarding the stability, dignity, sovereignty and integrity of the continent," he said. 

- 'No political will ' -

Bensouda told AFP in an interview that there was "no political will" in Kenya to try the cases.

The AU's criticism "does not match the reality... It is a blanket criticism," she said.

Despite all the cases so far at the trial stage being from Africa, Bensouda said: "All the cases that we have, except Kenya, Sudan and Libya, all those cases were at the request of African states asking for the ICC's intervention."

Regarding South Africa, she said Pretoria "should have arrested Bashir and surrendered him to the ICC, once he found himself on the territory of South Africa, which is a state party to the Rome statute, part of the ICC, and has treaty obligations under the statute."

But South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane told AFP Pretoria "could not arrest Bashir because he was attending an AU summit as an international head of state."

South Africa vigorously maintained that its obligations to the AU, which included granting immunity to attending heads of state, trumped the laws of the ICC.

The case is currently before a South African court, while ICC judges have given Pretoria more time to explain their failure to arrest Bashir.

African states form the largest bloc at the ICC assembly, with 34 countries, followed by South America with 27.

ISIL releases video threatening attack on New York City

The Islamic State released a new propaganda video threatening attacks on New York City, city officials confirmed Thursday.

The authenticity of the video has not been verified and New York officials have said there are not any specific threats against the city. The video showed images of bombs and suicide bombers getting ready for an attack, as well as street scenes, including Herald Square and Times Square.

The Islamic State considers the United States its top enemy and frequently threatens attacks against American targets.

The video comes amid heightened security in all major U.S. cities in the wake of Friday’s massacre in Paris that killed at least 129 people. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

“While some of the video footage is not new, the video reaffirms the message that New York City remains a top terrorist target,” according to a NYPD statement released Thursday.

"While there is no current or specific threat to the city at this time, we will remain at a heightened state of vigilance and will continue to work with the FBI, the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the entire intelligence community to keep the City of New York safe," the statement said. "In addition, we are continuing to deploy additional Critical Response Command teams throughout the city out of an abundance of caution.”

New York Police Commissioner William Bratton said at a late-night press conference that the video is "a mish-mosh" of old ISIS propoganda videos and that there is no blatant new threat. He stressed that the police force is continually monitoring all possible terrorist threats but have not received any new information that indicates an imminent threat.

The Islamic State also released a video threatening to attack Washington, D.C., in the wake of the Paris attacks.

France Searches For Second Fugitive

French police are hunting for a second fugitive directly involved in the deadly Paris attacks, officials said Tuesday after France made an unprecedented demand that its European Union allies support its military action against the Islamic State group.

Surveillance video obtained by The Associated Press indicates a team of three attackers carried out the shootings at a Paris sidewalk cafe, leading police to believe that a second assailant is on the loose.

Video footage shows two black-clad gunmen with automatic weapons calmly firing on the bar, then returning slowly toward a waiting car, whose driver was maneuvering behind them.

Officials previously had not specified how many people were involved in the attack on the sidewalk bar on La Fontaine au Roi street. Three French officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment on the investigation, confirmed that an analysis of the series of attacks on Friday indicated that one additional person directly involved in the assault remains unaccounted for.

In Germany, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told reporters in Berlin that a Syrian passport found with one of the Paris attackers with the name Ahmad al Mohammad may have been a false flag intended to make Europeans fearful of refugees. The passport showed registrations in Greece, Serbia and Croatia, which he described as "unusual."

He said the multiple registrations by a person using the passport were "evidence that this was a trail that was intentionally laid, but it can't be ruled out at the moment that this was an IS terrorist who came to France ... via Germany as a refugee.”    

Reuters reported on Wednesday that the man carrying the passport may have traveled with a companion from Turkey to Europe.

The disclosure of a second possible fugitive came on the same day that France launched new airstrikes on the militants' stronghold in Syria; as Vladimir Putin ordered a Russian military cruiser to cooperate with French on fighting IS in Syria and as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry hinted at a possible upcoming cease-fire in Syria that would let nations focus on fighting IS.

French and Belgian police were already looking for key suspect Salah Abdeslam, 26, whose suicide-bomber brother Brahim died in the attacks Friday night that killed at least 129 people and left over 350 wounded in Paris. Islamic State militants have claimed responsibility for the carnage.

A friendly soccer game between Germany and the Netherlands in Hanover, Germany, was canceled on short notice Tuesday after a suspicious object was discovered at the stadium. 

Everyone inside had to be evacuated, policeman Joerg Hoffmeister told the AP. Announcements at the stadium asked visitors to go home in a calm manner and said there was no danger to fear. 

No immediate reason was given for the cancellation, but news agency dpa reported that there had been a threat of an "impending attack that had to be taken seriously." Earlier, the streets leading to the stadium had been blocked due to a bomb threat outside the stadium.

A German official said no explosives were found and no arrests were made in Hanover, according to Reuters. 

Seven attackers died Friday night -- three around the national stadium, three inside the Bataclan concert hall, and one at a restaurant nearby. A team of gunmen also opened fire at nightspots in one of Paris' trendiest neighborhoods.

A cell phone with a map of the music venue that was attacked and a text message with words to the effect of "let's go" was found in a dustbin near the Bataclan concert hall, Reuters reported, citing CNN and French website Mediapart. 

The Paris attacks have galvanized international determination to confront the militants.

The French government invoked a never-before-used article of the EU's Lisbon Treaty obliging members of the 28-nation bloc to give "aid and assistance by all the means in their power" to a member country that is "the victim of armed aggression on its territory." 

French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said all 27 of France's EU partners responded positively.

"Every country said: I am going to assist, I am going to help," Drian said.

Arriving for talks in Brussels, Greek Defense Minister Panagiotis Kammenos told reporters that the Paris attacks were a game-changer for the bloc. "This is Sept. 11 for Europe," he said.

Paris police said 16 people had been arrested in the region in relation to the deadly attacks, and police have carried out 104 raids since a state of emergency was declared Saturday.

French military spokesman Col. Gilles Jaron said the latest airstrikes in the Islamic State group's de-facto capital in the Syrian city of Raqqa destroyed a command post and training camp. NATO allies were sharing intelligence and working closely with France, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said.

In Moscow, Putin ordered the Russian missile cruiser Moskva, currently in the Mediterranean, to start cooperating with the French military on operations in Syria. His order came as Russia's defense minister said its warplanes fired cruise missiles on militant positions in Syria's Idlib and Aleppo provinces. IS has positions in Aleppo province, while the Nusra militant group is in Idlib.

Moscow has vowed to hunt down those responsible for blowing up a Russian passenger plane over Egypt last month, killing 224 people, mostly Russian tourists. IS has also claimed responsibility for that Oct. 31 attack.

Seven of the Paris attackers died Friday -- six after detonating suicide belts and a seventh from police gunfire -- but Iraqi intelligence officials told The Associated Press that their sources indicated 19 people had participated in the Paris attacks and five others had provided hands-on logistical support.

Mohamed Abdeslam, another brother of fugitive Salah Abdeslam, on Tuesday urged his brother to turn himself in. Mohamed, who was arrested and questioned following the attack before being released Monday, told French TV BFM that his brother was devout but showed no signs of being a radical Islamist. He said Salah prayed and attended a mosque occasionally, but also dressed in jeans and pullovers.

Two men arrested in Belgium, meanwhile, admitted driving to France to pick up Salah Abdeslam early Saturday, their lawyers said.

Mohammed Amri, 27, denies any involvement in the Paris attacks and says he went to Paris to collect his friend Salah, according to his defense lawyer Xavier Carrette. Hamza Attou, 21, says he went along to keep Amri company, his lawyer Carine Couquelet said. Both are being held on charges of terrorist murder and conspiracy.

Belgian media reported that Amri and Attou were being investigated as potential suppliers of the suicide bombs used in the attacks, since ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer that can be used to make explosives, was discovered in a search of their residence.

Their defense lawyers said they could not confirm those reports.

Salah and Brahim Abdeslam booked a hotel in the southeastern Paris suburb of Alfortville and rented a house in the northeastern suburb of Bobigny several days before the attacks, a French judicial official told The Associated Press. She spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak about the ongoing investigation.

Austria's Interior Ministry said Salah Abdeslam, the suspected driver of one group of gunmen carrying out attacks on Paris, entered the country about two months ago with two companions that were not identified. After the attacks, Salah Abdeslam slipped through France's fingers, with French police accidentally permitting him to cross into Belgium on Saturday.

Seven people who were arrested near the Western German city of Aachen -- and who did not appear to have a direct link to the Paris attacks -- have been released. Authorities had acted on a tip that one of those arrested may be a key suspect, according to German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere. "Sadly it's not the man that everyone hoped it would be," he said.

Another Belgian car with a shattered front passenger window was found Tuesday in northern Paris -- the third vehicle police identified as having possible links to the attacks. Belgian media reported several kalashnikovs were found in the car.

Kerry flew to France as a gesture of solidarity and met Hollande and Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on Tuesday.

A cease-fire between Syria's government and the opposition -- which would allow nations supporting Syria's various factions to focus more on IS -- could be just weeks away, Kerry said, describing it as potentially a "gigantic step" toward deeper international cooperation.

Standing next to Hollande at the Elysee Palace, Kerry said the carnage in the French capital, along with recent attacks in Egypt, Lebanon and Turkey, made it clear that more pressure must be brought to bear on Islamic State extremists.

A French security official said anti-terror intelligence officials had identified Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian of Moroccan descent, as the chief architect of the Paris attacks.

The official cited chatter from IS figures that Abaaoud had recommended a concert as an ideal target for inflicting maximum casualties, as well as electronic communications between Abaaoud and one of the Paris attackers who blew himself up. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive investigation.

It was not exactly clear where Abaaoud is.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve conceded that "the majority of those who were involved in this attack (in Paris) were unknown to our services."

In Paris, the Eiffel Tower shut down again Tuesday, after opening for just a day, and heavily armed troops patrolled the courtyard of the Louvre Museum.

In a show of solidarity, British Prime Minister David Cameron was to join Prince William at a friendly soccer match Tuesday night between England and France in London's Wembley Stadium. Armed police were patrolling the site and British fans, in a show of solidarity, were being encouraged to sing the French national anthem as well.

Paris attacks: New evidence

evidence emerging from the investigation into the Paris attackspoints to a conspiracy significantly wider than the nine jihadis thought to have carried out the killings and that was orchestrated primarily by disaffected young Europeans.

Seven men and a woman were detained in the aftermath of Wednesday morning’s shootout in the Paris suburb of St-Denis, including the tenant of the apartment that was the focus of the police raid, Jawad Bendaoud, who told journalists he had been asked by a friend to put up “two of his mates for a few days”. He said all he knew is “they came from Belgium”. 

The St-Denis detentions bring to 10 the number of people being held in connection with Friday night’s assault on Paris. Two Belgians, Mohammed Amri and Hamza Attou, have been charged in Brussels with complicity in the attacks and participation in terrorist activity. They have admitted driving to Paris to pick up one of the attackers, a friend from the Molenbeek neighbourhood of Brussels, and escorting him back home.

hat attacker, Salah Abdeslam, is still at large, but French police distributed to their European counterparts the details and number plate of a Citroen Xsara, which they believe he may be driving. Dutch police also revealed he had been arrested in the Netherlands in February for possession of cannabis. The arrests in Paris and Brussels point to the existence of a circle of sympathetic “enablers”, willing to help out without asking too many 

questions even if they had a limited idea of the plot. But the new evidence also strengthens investigators’ belief that the synchronised multiple attacks were coordinated by a control point in Paris. A mobile phone found in a dustbin near the Bataclan theatre, where 89 people were killed, contained a floor plan of the theatre and a text message signalling the start of the attacks, which was sent to another phone at a hotel room booked by Abdeslam in the southern Paris suburb of 

Alfortville. Another safe house had been rented by his brother, Brahim, and the third hideout, in St-Denis, was located through a combination of a witness testimony, surveillance and phone tapping, according to the French state prosecutor, François Molins.

On Wednesday evening, it was still unclear whether this coordinator was Abdel-Hamid Abu Oud, a Belgian jihadi wanted before the Paris slaughter for a series of attacks in Belgium and France. He was previously thought to been in contact with the gunmen from Syria and Greece, but the tip that helped lead to the St-Denis raid suggested he was hiding there, but Molins did not confirm press reports on Wednesday that he was one of the dead. He only said that neither Abu Oud nor Salah Abdeslam were among those detained.

On Tuesday night, French police distributed the photograph of one of the three dead attackers from the Stade de France, who is believed to have travelled through Greece and the rest of the Balkans in the two months before the attacks carrying a passport in the name of Ahmad Almohammad, with the details of a long-dead Syrian soldier. All the other known attackers, as well as Abu Oud, are of French and Belgian nationality with similar life stories of limited petty crime or drug taking, and radicalisation in their late teens or early twenties. At least four are known to have spent time in Syria with Islamic State extremists. As European citizens, there was no need to resort to subterfuge or risk Mediterranean sea crossings to reach their target. They could travel freely around the continent even when the authorities in their home countries were aware of their extreme views and foreign travels.

The Belgian prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday that Salah and Brahim Abdeslam had been interrogated earlier this year, but had not been detained because they were not seen as a threat. 

Brahim, who blew himself up outside a Paris bar on Friday night, was questioned in February, after Turkish authorities stopped him on suspicion of attempting to go to Syria to fight, and sent him back to Brussels. 

“He denied to us that he wanted to go to Syria. When he was interrogated, he just said he had been trying to go on holiday to Turkey,” said Eric Van der Sypt, the spokesman for the federal prosecutor’s office. “There were no signs he was participating in terrorist activities. He was just a radicalised youngster, and there were no reasons to hold him.”

Salah was also questioned at about the same time, although he had not gone on the Turkish trip and the prosecutor’s office found no evidence he had gone to Syria. “Not to our knowledge,” Van der Sypt said. He too was not deemed a threat.

The prosecutor added: “We have over 130 who we know have come back from Syria, and spent a certain amount of time there, and we can hardly follow up on them. We can’t keep an eye on everyone.”

Simply increasing the resources of the police and the prosecutors would not solve the problem, Van der Sypt argued.

“It’s impossible,” he said. “You could double the effectiveness of the police and the prosecutors which would mean you could keep an eye on more people but would this mean such attacks can be prevented?” European interior ministers aremeeting in Brusselson Friday to discuss better intelligence sharing, tighter controls on Schengen area borders, and the dissemination of advance passenger lists on commercial flights to help spot foreign fighters returning from Syria and other flagged security risks.

Most of the plotters involved in the Paris killings would, however, have been able to sidestep such enhanced measures. Even if information had been shared about the Abdeslam brothers it is far from clear it would have led to their arrests or to the prevention of the attacks. 

Van der Sypt said no details of the brothers’ background had been shared with the French authorities before the attacks because they were simply seen as being too insignificant. 

“Imagine if we had spread the information to the whole world. Do you have any idea of the amount of information that would be spread? No one in the world can handle so much information. There are 135 [returned foreign fighters] that we know of. France has many more. You can share the information, but the question is can you handle the information?” the prosecutor said.

He would not comment on a proposal being discussed in the Belgian cabinet to put electronic tagging bracelets on radicals who return from fighting in Syria. 

“To start with it is a social problem. That is the basis to it all,” Van der Sypt said. “The judicial answer is the last answer. More important is prevention of people getting radicalised. There will never, ever be a watertight system to catch people who are going to Syria.”