Category: Belgium

FBI Probes Belgian Terrorist Threat

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As I’ve previously explained, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs first alerted America to the danger of Belgian extremists, and whenever The Flemish Menace™ makes another terrorist attack, it’s important to give Charles credit. Consider the latest news from Pensacola:

The F.B.I. was investigating but did not confirm a report that the Saudi trainee had watched videos of mass shootings at a dinner party sometime this week, according to a senior American official who was briefed on the investigation but not authorized to speak publicly.
The gunman, who killed three people and injured eight others, did not have any apparent ties to international terrorist groups and appeared to have radicalized on his own, according to the official.
The gunman, identified as Second Lt. Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, was killed by a sheriff’s deputy who responded to the attack. Lieutenant Alshamrani was training to become a pilot and initially entered the United States in 2018, according to the official. But at some point Lieutenant Alshamrani returned to Saudi Arabia and then re-entered the United States in February 2019, the official said. . . .

OK, they haven’t gotten to the part about the Belgian connection yet, but I’m sure if we keep reading, everything will become apparent:

Six other Saudi nationals were detained for questioning near the scene of the shooting, which took place over two floors in a classroom on the base. Three of the Saudis who were detained had been seen filming the entire incident, according to another person briefed on the investigation.
It was not known whether the six Saudis detained were students in the classroom building, and there was no immediate indication that those filming the incident were connected to the gunman, the person said. . . .

Seriously, there must be a Belgian angle to this, although the motive is apparently still mysterious to these New York Times reporters:

Investigators were trying to determine what motivated the gunman.
Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, and Representative Matt Gaetz, a Republican whose district includes Pensacola, both described the shooting as an act of terrorism.

(Of course, these Republicans are RAAAAACIST!)

But federal law enforcement officials said it was too early to establish the gunman’s motive.
The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadist activity, cited a Twitter account with a name matching the gunman that had posted a “will” calling the United States a “nation of evil” and criticizing its support for Israel.

(Because we know how much Belgians hate the Jews.)

SITE said the account had also quoted Osama bin Laden, the former Qaeda leader, and was critical of United States foreign policy.
“I’m not against you for just being American,” the posts said. “I don’t hate you because your freedoms, I hate you because every day you supporting, funding and committing crimes not only against Muslims Belgians but also humanity.”

(Obviously a typographical error, which I’ve corrected.)

The account could not be independently verified, and law enforcement officials did not confirm that it was connected to the gunman.
The gunman was a member of the Saudi Air Force.
The lieutenant was a trainee with the Saudi Air Force. Saudi pilots have trained at the Pensacola base since 1995.
The gunman used a locally purchased Glock 45 9-millimeter handgun with an extended magazine and had four to six other magazines in his possession, according to one of the people briefed on the investigation.

Remember, you should always trust the FBI:

During a news conference Friday night, the FBI declined to release the shooter’s identity and wouldn’t comment on his possible motivations.
“There are many reports circulating, but the FBI deals only in facts,” said Rachel L. Rojas, the FBI’s special agent in charge of the Jacksonville Field Office.

Well, I think we’ve got enough information now to know the gunman’s motive, despite the reluctance of federal officials and the New York Times to jump to any hasty conclusions. Charles Johnson and his LGF readers all understand that Belgian crypto-Nazis are to blame.



 

TERROR ATTACK IN EUROPE: BOMB BLASTS ROCK BRUSSELS AIRPORT; UPDATE: ISIS TO BLAME; ‘LET’S STOP PRETENDING,’ OFFICIAL SAYS UPDATE: 34 DEAD, CNN REPORTS

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Islamic terrorists struck early Tuesday morning in Europe, as bombs exploded in the Brussels airport. Early reports indicate at least two bombs were used in the attack, which came just days after authorities in Belgium arrested a fugitive sought in the 2015 massacre in Paris.

UPDATE 4:45 a.m. ET: The exact number of killed and wounded in the attack is unknown. CNN’s first online report:

Two explosions occurred at the airport in Brussels, Belgium on Tuesday.
Several people were killed, according to the country’s public broadcaster, RTBF. Initial reports say up to 10 people were killed and more than 30 people were injured.
Federal police at the airport at Zaventem told CNN that “there has been an explosion” and “something has happened.”
Dozens of people have been taken on stretchers out of the airport, according to eyewitnesses.

The New York Times reports:

Two explosions killed at least one person and forced the evacuation of Brussels Airport around 8 a.m. on Tuesday, according to the authorities and news reports, halting arrivals and departures.
The sources of the blasts were unclear, as was the number of wounded, though a witness told CNN that he had seen people being taken away on luggage carts, and photographs on social media showed people streaked with blood and soot, looking stunned but conscious.
Other images posted on social media showed smoke rising from the departure hall, where the windows had been blown out, and people running away from the building. Hundreds were herded outside.
“We are trying to know more about what is going on,” said Anke Fransen, a spokeswoman for the airport. “It is certain there are several victims in our departure hall.”

UPDATE 5 a.m. ET: There are also reports early Tuesday of possible attacks on the Metro commuter rail in Brussels. The attacks follow on the arrest Friday of a key suspect in the November attack in Paris:

The arrest of terror suspect Salah Abdeslam resulted in authorities finding a large number of weapons, Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said Sunday.
“He was ready to restart something in Brussels,” said Reynders, speaking at the German Marshall Fund’s Brussels Forum. “And it’s maybe the reality because we have found a lot of weapons, heavy weapons, in the first investigations and we have found a new network around him in Brussels.”
The investigation also showed more people were involved in the November 13 Paris attacks than first thought, he said. . . .
His comments were reiterated by Belgian State Security Chief Jaak Raes, who told CNN Belgian affiliate VTM News on Sunday that it was “of the utmost importance that Abdeslam was captured alive, because we can now try to reconstruct the entire scenario.”
That was crucial in order “to see to what extent the intelligence services can learn lessons from the information that is gleaned,” he said.
He warned that the threat posed by ISIS to Europe was far from over, saying: “We know that a number of people are possibly on their way to Western Europe, with the intention of conducting an attack — to, with the ‘jihad mentality,’ do damage to Western democracy. We need to stay very vigilant about that.”
Authorities have said nine terrorists killed 130 people with guns and bombs in Parisian restaurants, shops and a concert venue the night of November 13.

UPDATE 5:50 a.m. ET: The latest news from BBC:

The first set of explosions took place at around 08:00 (07:00 GMT) [3 a.m. EDT] at Zaventum airport.
Some time later, a blast was reported at Maalbeek metro station, close to the city’s EU buildings. . . .
The explosion at Maalbeek station, near the EU institutions in Brussels, at 09:11 (08:11 GMT) [4:11 a.m. EDT] this morning has prompted a shutdown of the entire metro system, and trams and buses are not running either. . . .

  • A French student has tweeted video of people being moved away from Maalbeek station along the metro track.
  • Belgian broadcaster VRT says at least 13 people were killed and 35 were wounded at the airport
  • Shots were heard before the explosions, which appear to have struck near the American Airlines and Brussels Airline check in desk

UPDATE 8:10 a.m. ET: The London Daily Express:

ISIS revenge: Terror group claims
responsibility for Brussels attacks
Reports from Kurdish media said the terror group had admitted being behind today’s strike. . . .
Spanish Foreign Secretary José Manuel García Margallo immediately laid the blame with ISIS — also known by its Arabic acronym Daesh.
He said: “Let’s stop pretending, let’s worry about Daesh, which is the enemy.”
Describing the group as a “terrorist cancer”, he said: “We must be aware that as they are hit in Syria and Iraq, they are going to go elsewhere.
“They have sleeper cells all over the world and Belgium has a very serious problem.”

As of 7:30 a.m. ET, reports indicate at least 15 killed and 55 injured in the Metro bombing. With the 13 reported killed at the airport, that brings the death toll to 28 in Brussels.

UPDATE 10:15 a.m. ET: CNN now reports that the death toll in Brussels is 34, with at least another 170 people injured.

 

TERROR MANHUNT: French Authorities Seeking Accomplices of Islamic Killers

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The perpetrators of Friday’s massacre in Paris have been identified, and the investigation exposes the worldwide menace of Islam:

Police [on Saturday] issued an international arrest warrant for one of three Belgian-born brothers believed to be at the heart of the eight-strong ISIS cell who murdered 132 people in Paris.
French police are hunting 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, from Brussels, who is accused of renting a Volkswagen Polo used by the suicide bombers who killed 89 people at the Bataclan music venue on Friday.
His brother Ibrahim is believed to have blown himself up during the Paris siege and a third unnamed sibling has been arrested in the Belgian capital.
An official told the Washington Post another of the shooters was Bilal Hadfi, who was from Belgium and had spent time fighting with ISIS in Syria, who also died after detonating his suicide vest during a murderous rampage.
The killer gang, containing a number of Frenchman living in Belgium, two others carrying Syrian passports after sneaking into Europe disguised as migrants and a female accomplice, are believed to have travelled together from Brussels to Paris in rented cars.
Serbian media claims Ahmed Almuhamed, 25, whose Syrian passport was found on the body of a suicide bomber, allegedly blew himself up at the Bataclan concert hall, where at least 89 people were slaughtered on Friday. Two other bombers were said to be carrying fake Turkish passports, it was being reported tonight.
French police have said homegrown terrorist Omar Ismaël Mostefai , 29, from Courcouronnes, Paris, was one of the Bataclan suicide bombers but he is said to have been radicalised by a Brussels-based hate preacher who spoke regularly at his French mosque.

We learn more about the role of “refugees” in the Paris attack:

The [Serbian] newspaper, Blic, claims [Ahmed] Almuhamed arrived with another of the bombers in Europe on the Greek island of Leros on October 3 on his way to Paris. Greek website Protothema have published ferry tickets showing the name of a second man, Mohammed Almuhamed, who could be a relation.
French police are hunting 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, from Brussels, who is accused of renting a Volkswagen Polo used by the suicide bombers who killed 89 people at the Bataclan music venue on Friday.
His brother Ibrahim is believed to have blown himself up during the Paris siege and a third unnamed sibling has been arrested in the Belgian capital. . . .
Bilal Hadfi, who was from Belgium and had spent time fighting with ISIS in Syria, who also died after detonating his suicide vest during a murderous rampage.
One of the attackers has been named locally as homegrown terrorist Omar Ismaël Mostefai , 29, from Courcouronnes, Paris. The petty criminal was known to police as a radical and identified by the fingerprint on a severed digit found after he detonated his suicide belt. . . .
The disclosure that some may have entered Europe as migrants, which came amid claims of French intelligence failures, inevitably raises new security concerns about the safety of Europe’s borders.
Meanwhile the black Seat Leon used by the terrorists who murdered diners outside the Casa Nostra pizza restaurant and the La Belle Équipe cafe has been found abandoned 20 minutes away in Montreuil with three AK-47s with five full magazines and 11 empty ones. . . .
Ahmed Almuhamed is believed to have taken around a month to travel to France posing as a migrant. He had entered Serbia at Miratovce, having crossed the frontier from Macedonia. The newspaper reported that Almuhamed, applied for asylum in Serbia in Presevo before crossing into Croatia and Austria.
Paris prosecutors confirmed that the suspects, all wearing explosive vests, roamed across the French capital in three teams, perpetrating the ‘worst acts of violence’ in the country since the Second World War. Fingerprint records show that two of the terrorists had arrived in the EU as refugees through Greece.

UPDATE: Read what Pamela Geller wrote:

Despite all this horror, the European Union elites are bringing into Europe millions of these savages. I have warned for years about this coming jihad. For doing so, I was attacked, smeared, and marginalized. We were right about it all, and yet still my colleagues and I are blacklisted. Hundreds are dead, and the war has just begun. We did everything in our power to save lives. But the political, media, and academic elites aligned with the savages. . . .
This is a world war. I have exposed hundreds of Islamic State social postings which name names and provide addresses and photos of U.S. soldiers here in the States, urging American Muslims to slaughter our boys and girls.
Right now, nothing is being done to stop jihad recruiting in U.S. mosques, even as several hundred young Muslims from the U.S. have gone to wage jihad for the Islamic State. And now they seek to wage jihad here at home.

UPDATE II: More on the terrorists who struck Paris:

French authorities have said seven suicide attackers died in Friday’s carnage and are hunting another believed to be “directly involved” in the bloodshed. Belgian authorities have arrested seven other men in connection with the attacks. . . .
Omar Ismaïl Mostefai was the first attacker named by French authorities. The 29-year-old is of Algerian heritage and grew up in Courcouronnes, just south of Paris, where he picked up a criminal record for petty offences. . . .
French intelligence took note of Mostafei when he began spending time at a mosque with radical links in 2010, but they lost track of him in 2013, when he may have travelled to Syria, the Washington Post reported. . . .
Salah’s brother Ibrahim Abdeslam was identified by prosecutors as the man who rented a Seat vehicle used in the attacks. He carried out the suicide attack at the Comptoir Voltaire cafe. He was 31.
A third Abdeslam brother, who has not been named, is believed to have been among seven people arrested on Saturday in the Molenbeek-Saint-Jean district of Brussels, suspected of being connected to the attacks.

Also, speaking to CNN, French senator Nathalie Goulet said that the suspect on the run is most probably the bomb-maker and is one of the three brothers thought to have been involved in the attacks. “With such heavy material, they need a professional.” The New York Times reports:

The carefully coordinated attacks on Friday night, which killed at least 129 people and which are believed to be the work of the Islamic State, increasingly appear to have involved extensive planning by a network of men with sophisticated weapons who plotted their attack from outside the country. . . .
French officials initially described eight attackers, but on Saturday night said that only seven had died — six by blowing themselves up and one in a shootout with police. . . .
The Salah brothers lived in Molenbeek, an impoverished section of Brussels that is mostly populated by immigrants from the Arab world and that has been linked to violence. “We don’t have control of the situation in Molenbeek at present,” [Belgium’s Interior Minister Jan] Jambon told VRT, a television channel.

Having surrendered control of their borders, by admitting many thousands of Arab immigrants, now Belgian officials are forced to admit they “don’t have control” over parts of their own capital city. It is in these neighborhoods — “no-go zones” that are effectively off-limits to non-Muslims, including police — that this attack on France was planned and organized. But you will be denounced as a “racist” if you call attention to this danger, because liberals always think it is better for innocent citizens to be murdered by terrorists than for any Muslim immigrant to have his feelings hurt.

(Via Memeorandum.)

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The Death of a Freak: Euthanasia for Belgium’s Botched Sex-Change ‘Monster’

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What depths of self-hatred could lead someone to this?

Nathan, born Nancy, Verhelst, 44, was given legal euthanasia, most likely by lethal injection, on the grounds of “unbearable psychological suffering” on Monday afternoon. . . .
“I was the girl that nobody wanted,” Mr Verhelst told Het Laatste Nieuws newspaper in the hours before her death. . . .
Mr Verhelst had hormone therapy in 2009, followed by a mastectomy and surgery to construct a penis in 2012. But “none of these operations worked as desired”.
“I was ready to celebrate my new birth,” he told the newspaper. “But when I looked in the mirror, I was disgusted with myself. My new breasts did not match my expectations and my new penis had symptoms of rejection. I do not want to be… a monster.”
The case will revive Belgium’s debate over medical euthanasia as statistics show a steep year on year increase in the number of patients killed by doctors after a request to die.

The distance between one’s desires and one’s reality can most easily be shortened by accepting reality. The alternative of pursuing hopelessly unrealistic desires is likely to end unhappily.

(Via Mememorandum, which has further blog commentary by Moonbattery, Weasel Zippers and VodkaPundit.)