Islamist rebels execute two Shi'ite youths in Syria: monitoring group

BEIRUT | (Reuters) - Two youths from Shi'ite villages in northern Syria have been executed by members of an al Qaeda-linked Islamist rebel group, according to a video uploaded to the Internet on Wednesday by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Syrian rights group says rebels killed Italian Jesuit priest

BEIRUT |(Reuters) - Al-Qaeda-linked rebels in Syria have killed an Italian Jesuit priest who disappeared in the east of the country late last month, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Paolo Dall'Oglio, a vocal supporter of the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and some Islamist rebel groups, disappeared in the rebel-held city of Raqqa on July 29.
He had served for three decades at the Monastery of Saint Moses the Abyssinian, or Deir Mar Musa, before being expelled from the country in 2012. Since then he had returned to Syria at least twice.
The British-based monitoring group cited local activists in the city of Raqqa with close links to Dall'Oglio as saying he was killed while being held by fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
It was not immediately possible to confirm the report.
The Observatory urged all Syrian opposition forces to pressure the ISIL fighters to reveal exactly what happened to Dall'Oglio "so his killers can be held to account, and to hand over his body for burial".
Activists initially said he was kidnapped by the ISIL fighters, although some later said he had been meeting the al Qaeda-linked fighters to agree a truce with Kurdish brigades.
He was instrumental in restoring Deir Mar Musa, whose cathedral houses an exquisite 11th century fresco of the Last Judgment.
(Editing by John Stonestreet and Raissa Kasolowsky)

Syria activists: Al-Qaida kills 2 Shiite teenagers

BEIRUT (AP) -- Al-Qaida militants in northern Syria shot dead two Shiite teenagers whom they accused of being pro-government gunmen, filming video of the killing that was later posted to the Internet, an activist group said Thursday.

It's the latest apparent shooting of captives in a war that has increasingly taken on sectarian tones. Many Syrian Shiites are allied with the regime of President Bashar Assad, whose Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shiism, and who is challenged by mostly Sunni rebels. Both Sunni extremists among the rebels and Alawite gunmen have been blamed for the deaths of scores of people from different sects.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the two youths who were shot dead came from the besieged Shiite-majority towns of Nubul and Zahra in Aleppo province. Rebels currently surround the towns and have been fighting against troops and pro-government gunmen in the area for months.

An amateur video posted online showed two blindfolded males sitting in front of a masked gunman. The Observatory said they were both under the age of 18.

The masked gunman reads a statement by the al-Qaida-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant saying the two "Nubul and Zahra shabiha," or pro-government gunmen, are to be killed after two attempts to exchange them with rebel prisoners held in the towns failed. He says pro-government forces in the villages did not abide by deals that could have led to the two men's release.

"It is our duty to execute them," the man says in the statement.

After the finishing the statement, the man steps aside as others can be heard chanting, "God is great." Bullets rip into the bodies of the two blindfolded youths and they slump to the ground.

It was not clear when the shooting occurred. The videos appeared genuine and corresponded to other AP reporting on the events depicted.

Also in Aleppo province, the Observatory said, gunmen shot dead preacher Mohammed Dibo in the rebel-held town of Manbij early Thursday while on his way to the mosque to perform dawn prayers. It said Dibo was the imam of the town's main mosque.

It was not clear why the cleric was killed, but assassinations have been common in rebel-held areas as rival factions fight for power.

Unrest in Syria began in March 2011 and later exploded into a civil war. More than 100,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

Ayman al-Zawahiri said that Hezbollah had been exposed as a tool of Iranian expansionism: audio message

Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri said that Lebanese Shia armed group Hezbollah had been exposed as a tool of Iranian expansionism, in an audio message posted online on Wednesday.
Zawahiri said that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's public acknowledgement in late April that its fighters had intervened in neighbouring Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad, a key Tehran ally, "tore off the mask he always hid behind".
"The jihadist uprising in Muslim Syria has exposed the ugly face of Hasan Nasrallah, the head of the rejectionist (Shia) Safavid (Iranian) plan for Syria," the Al-Qaeda leader said.
Some hardline Sunnis describe Shia as rejectionists. The Safavids were an Iranian imperial dynasty of the 16th and 17th centuries.
"It has been revealed to the Islamic Umma (faithful) that he is just an instrument in the rejectionist Safavid plan that aims to spread the hegemony of the vali-e faqih," he said, referring to Iranian supreme leader Ayatollahi Ali Khamenei.
Zawahiri also hit out at continued "crimes" against Al-Qaeda suspects held at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba under US President Barack Obama.
"America's tyranny, inflicted on the Muslims unjustly imprisoned for 13 years without charge, is a crime that has exposed the lie about freedom, human rights, democracy and peoples' rights that America claims," he said.
"The (hunger) strike of our jailed brothers exposes the real ugly face of America," he added.
Out of 166 inmates at Guantanamo, 80 detainees continue to refuse to eat in a protest that began more than five months ago. The number rose at one point to 106 inmates.
[AFP]

Al-Qaeda unleashed against Syria and Iraq with acceptance of the West

 
Author: Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT and TomDispatch, and a frequent contributor to websites and radio shows ranging from the US to East Asia. Published time: July 25, 2013 14:13
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – the official denomination of al-Qaeda in Iraq – does not even pretend to be not responsible for the relentless bombing, political assassination and mostly sectarian horror unleashed across Iraq during Ramadan.
But this is exactly what they’re doing, with relish; throwing arrays of crude bombs made with fertilizer enhanced with ball bearings, manipulating a small army of foreign suicide bombers. Most of these, by the way, crossed the desert from Syria.
July has been a deadly month ; over 600 Iraqis killed up to July 25. May was even worse; at least 963 civilians killed and more than 2,000 injured. And now comes the coup de grâce; the already notorious Abu Ghraib jailbreak. 
Abu Ghraib is charged with symbolism – indelibly linked with the American occupier. When the Abu Ghraib scandal erupted in 2004 I was on the road in the US. This is what I wrote at the time; in Texas especially, everybody saw the routine humiliation of Iraqi prisoners as the new normal.

To the Syriamobile !

Fast forward to 2013. The al-Maliki government insists anti-terrorist forces are on top of everything going on in Baghdad. Not really. My matchless source in Baghdad, Asseel Kamal, explains how the commander of the 17th Army Division, General Abdul Naser al-Ghanam, apparently did not resign; he fled, before advising al-Maliki that all hell would break loose. The government was stunned by the veritable horde that staged the double attack - on Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, and Taji prison in the north of the city.
The siege of Abu Ghraib started with nine bombs thrown at the entrance, and dozens of mortars, followed by a battle against the guards; a group of suicide bombers attacked the walls while another group of car bombers attacked the main entrance. And then the critical gambit, when a series of car bombs exploded all along the main road up to the bridge that links the prison to the highway leading to Baghdad, cutting all its connections with the capital.
The numbers game is still a mess; everything from 500 to 1,000 and even 1,400 escapees. Same for the official numbers of dead prisoners (65), dead guards (28), injured prisoners (124) and injured guards (43). Kamal quotes prisoners’ families saying prisoners who did not manage to escape were brutally "interrogated". And helicopters bombed them mercilessly.
According to Hakim al Zamili, a member of Parliament who’s part of the Committee for Defense and Security, this operation has been prepared for at least two weeks – and plenty of guards were onto it. Kamal reveals that at least 15 men dressed in military garb got inside and "released" - as in escorted to freedom - selected al-Qaeda princelings ; and left the rest to fend for themselves. Better yet : this selected group – which includes a bunch of Jihad International foreign fighters captured by the US military in 2006 and 2007 - has fled to, where else, Syria. 

It’s the occupation, stupid

Al-Maliki’s government has closed Iraq’s borders with Syria – to no avail; it’s desert on both sides, it’s powerful Sunni tribal Sheikhs on both sides, it’s 'family' on both sides. This proves once again that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – with its tactical alliance with jihadis of the Jabhat al-Nusra kind – is already establishing the embryo of a beyond-borders Islamic Emirate. They even have secured territory in northern Syria.
Most of the best commanders on the ground in Syria are Iraqis – and have battleground experience of fighting the Americans. Their long-term wishful thinking strategy is that once Bashar al-Assad’s government falls, the next will be al-Maliki’s.
These jihadis see that fighting a secular, apostate, “infidel” government in Syria – supported by Iran and Hezbollah - is the equivalent of fighting an “apostate” government in Iraq enjoying close relations with Iran. This – a ghastly sectarian war - was always the plan since the bombing of Samarra’s golden shrine in 2006. 
As much as Syrian civilians are caught in the crossfire of the proxy war involving Western powers and Gulf petro-monarchies against the support of Iran (and Russia) to Damascus, Iraqi civilians are now caught in the resurgent civil war. Civilians in Baghdad do fear what these escapees might unleash.
It’s always crucial to go back to the basics. With the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the clueless Bush gang handed out a base to al-Qaeda on a plate.
Yet when the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in 2004, the prisoners were not al-Qaeda, but the Sunni resistance. When the Petraeus surge started in 2007, the plan was to buy the leaders of the Sunni resistance to fight al-Qaeda. The Sunni sheikhs took the money and decided to wait. Al-Qaeda dissolved and regrouped.
Now, with Syria as the new magnet of global jihad – once again a direct consequence of a US power play, via Barack “Assad must go” Obama -  al-Qaeda is resurgent on both fronts. Washington has already destroyed the social fabric of Iraq. Now it’s helping to destroy Syria’s. If Abu Ghraib was the new normal in 2004, the jailbreak cannot but be the new new normal of 2013.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.-(RT)