Suspect in New Year’s Eve Attack on Istanbul Nightclub Captured Alive
Posted: January 16, 2017 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Global, Terrorism | Tags: AK-47, Anadolu Agency, Bosphorus, Central Asia, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Istanbul, New Year, New Year's Day, New Year's Eve, Turkey, Turkish Armed Forces, İzmir Leave a commentSuspect aught with his son in a raid in an Istanbul suburb.
The man authorities suspect of being behind the New Year’s Eve attack on an Istanbul nightclub has been captured alive, according to Turkish police sources.
The alleged attacker was caught with his son in a raid on the Esenyurt suburb of Istanbul, sources said.
Thirty-nine people were killed in the attack and dozens more were injured.
Authorities said the gunman fired 180 rounds of 7.62-mm bullets, which are commonly used in AK-47 assault rifles. The attacker also used flares to illuminate the inside of the nightclub during the attack, according to police.
Police said they don’t believe the weapon used in the attack came from inside Turkey. The serial number on the weapon had been defaced. Read the rest of this entry »
Islamist Turkey Seizes All Christian Churches in City and Declares them ‘State Property’
Posted: April 21, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Religion, Terrorism | Tags: Anadolu Agency, Ankara, Brussels, EUROPE, European Union, Istanbul, President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Syria, Turkey 2 Comments“The government didn’t take over these pieces of property in order to protect them. They did so to acquire them.”
— Ahmet Guvener, pastor of Diyarbakir Protestant Church
The state-sanctioned seizure is just the latest in a number of worrying developments to come out of increasingly hardline Turkey, which is in advanced talks with the EU over visa-free travel for its 80 million citizens.
Included in the seizures are Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox churches, one of which is over 1,700 years old.
[Read the full story here, at express.co.uk]
They claim it was made on the grounds that authorities intend to rebuild and restore the historical centre of the city, which has been partially destroyed by 10 months of urban conflict between government forces and militants from the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK).
VICE Journalists Charged With Working for ‘Terrorists’ in Turkey
Posted: August 31, 2015 Filed under: Censorship, Global, Mediasphere, War Room | Tags: Anadolu Agency, Ankara, Diyarbakır, Jake Hanrahan, Kurdish people, Kurdistan Workers Party, media, news, Philip Pendlebury, Reuters, Terrorism, Turkey, Turkish language, Vice 1 CommentTurkish authorities on Monday charged three Western news reporters in southeastern Turkey with working for a “terrorist organization,” said their employer VICE News on Monday, days after the journalists’ detention caused an outcry among human rights groups.
“Today the Turkish government has leveled baseless and alarmingly false charges of ‘working on behalf of a terrorist organization’ against three VICE News reporters, in an attempt to intimidate and censor their coverage.”
— A spokesman for VICE
Jake Hanrahan, Philip Pendlebury, as well as a fixer and a driver were detained by the Turkish authorities while reportedly filming clashes between police and supporters of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the province of Diyarbakir.
On Monday, they were charged in a Turkish court, VICE said. Read the rest of this entry »
Turkish Prosecutor Taken Hostage in Istanbul
Posted: March 31, 2015 Filed under: Global, War Room | Tags: Al-Raqqah, Anadolu Agency, Istanbul, Kurdish people, President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Tear gas, Turkey, Turkish language 3 CommentsMembers of the illegal left-wing organization the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party Front have broken into a Turkish prosecutor’s office and taken him hostage
Yael Klein writes: The prosecutor, Mehmet Selim Kiraz, was targeted by the organization because he represented the state in the sensitive case of a young man’s death during anti-government protests in 2013. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was the Turkish prime minister at the time of the protests, exercised a very strict policy against the protestors. The young man was killed after the police used excessive force against the demonstrators, and the organization has taken Kiraz hostage as an act of protest against Erdogan.

Special Forces surrounding the building Photo Credit: Reuters / Channel 2 News
The Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front has issued a message in the social media, threatening to execute the prosecutor by 3:36 pm (local time) if its demands are not answered. The members of the organization demand that the police officers who caused the death of the young man in the 2013 protests confess to killing him on live television. Read the rest of this entry »
Spies in the Skies: Americans’ Cellphones Targeted in Secret U.S. Spy Program
Posted: November 13, 2014 Filed under: Law & Justice, Science & Technology, War Room | Tags: American Civil Liberties Union, Anadolu Agency, Arrest, Arrest warrant, Associated Press, Australia, Civil liberties, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security Agency, Same-sex relationship, Supreme Court of the United States 4 CommentsFake Cellphone Towers on Planes Used to Target Criminals, but Also Sift Through Thousands of Other Phones
WASHINGTON—Devlin Barrett reports: The Justice Department is scooping up data from thousands of cellphones through fake communications towers deployed on airplanes, a high-tech hunt for criminal suspects that is snagging a large number of innocent Americans, according to people familiar with the operations.
“The program cuts out phone companies as an intermediary in searching for suspects. Rather than asking a company for cell-tower information to help locate a suspect, which law enforcement has criticized as slow and inaccurate, the government can now get that information itself.”
The U.S. Marshals Service program, which became fully functional around 2007, operates Cessna aircraft from at least five metropolitan-area airports, with a flying range covering most of the U.S. population, according to people familiar with the program.
“Similar devices are used by U.S. military and intelligence officials operating in other countries, including in war zones, where they are sometimes used to locate terrorist suspects, according to people familiar with the work. In the U.S., these people said, the technology has been effective in catching suspected drug dealers and killers. They wouldn’t say which suspects were caught through this method.”
Planes are equipped with devices—some known as “dirtboxes” to law-enforcement officials because of the initials of the Boeing Co. unit that produces them—which mimic cell towers of large telecommunications firms and trick cellphones into reporting their unique registration information. Read the rest of this entry »