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Srinagar: The Jammu and Kashmir government has terminated the services of three of its employees under Article 311(2)(c) of the Constitution of India, over alleged terror links.
The terminated staffers are Mohammed Mir Andrabi, Syed Hameed Yatoo, Arif Sheikh dismissed from services for terror links in Jammu and Kashmir.
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#Govt #terminates #services #employees #alleged #terror #links
( With inputs from : roshankashmir.net )
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Mumbai: Activist Gautam Navlakha, arrested in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist links case, had connections with a Pakistani ISI agent arrested in the US, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has told the Bombay High Court while opposing his bail application.
The agency, in its affidavit filed in response to Navlakha’s plea, also claimed that he had “committed acts that had a direct impact on the national security, unity and sovereignty.”
NIA lawyer Sandesh Patil on Monday informed a division bench of Justices A S Gadkari and P D Naik that it had filed its reply opposing Navlakha’s bail plea.
The bench said it would hear arguments on the application on February 27.
The NIA in its affidavit claimed that Navlakha had visited the United States thrice to speak at the Kashmiri American Council Conference organised by Ghulam Nabi Fai with whom Navlakha was in touch regularly.
“Ghulam Nabi Fai was arrested by the (US agency) FBI in July 2011 for accepting funds from the ISI and Pakistan government….Navlakha had written a letter to the judge of the US court trying Ghulam Nabi Fai’s case for clemency,” the NIA said.
“Gautam Navlakha was introduced to a Pakistani ISI General for his recruitment by Ghulam Nabi Fai on the direction of the ISI, showing his nexus and complicity with Ghulam Nabi Fai and Pakistani ISI,” the agency further claimed.
Navlakha is presently under house arrest, instead of being in jail, as permitted by the Supreme Court on health grounds.
The agency also stated that Navlakha has “deep links with CPI (Maoist) and he espouses Maoist ideology and anti-government utterances through his various lectures and videos.”
The objective of these activities was to overthrow the government, it said.
Navlakha was assigned tasks such as uniting intellectuals against government forces and recruitment of cadres for “guerrilla activities of CPI (Maoist)”, the NIA alleged.
He was not merely supporting a banned terror organisation but “had an active role in furthering CPI (Maoist) activities,” it claimed.
The Elgar case relates to alleged inflammatory speeches made at the Elgar Parishad conclave held in Pune on December 31, 2017, which the police claimed triggered violence the next day near the Koregaon-Bhima war memorial in Pune district.
Police had also claimed the conclave was backed by Maoists. Later the probe in the case, where more than a dozen activists and academicians have been named as accused, was transferred to the NIA.
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#NIA #accuses #Navlakha #links #ISI #agent #opposes #bail #plea
( With inputs from www.siasat.com )
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The announcement yesterday that Queensland police now consider the Wieambilla attacks to be a “religiously motivated terror attack” connected to a Christian extremist ideology should constitute a seismic shift in our understanding of the terror threat in Australia.
Middle-aged, middle-class Christian Australians, two of them teachers, ambushed and killed two police officers and a neighbour. This should and must and trigger debate about new directions in extremism in Australia and equally, should stimulate a wider introspection about the increase in polarisation and extremism in Australia.
It is important to try to unpack, even with the still limited information available, what we do know about “Christian extremist ideology”. The deputy commissioner of Queensland police, Tracey Linford, indicated that evidence pointed towards the attackers subscribing “to what we would call a broad Christian fundamentalist belief system, known as premillennialism”, which drove a direct attack upon police.
Premillennialism may be understood as a form of evangelical Christian belief centred on the second coming of Christ. It has a number of offshoots grounded in different interpretations of text, primarily, but not limited to the Book of Revelation. A period of immense tribulation, defined by corruption and great evil (which some adherents believe is currently taking place) will precede the “rapture”, for many evangelicals, a terrifying event whereby the good will ascend into heaven and the evil be brutally punished. This will be followed, based on their belief, by a 1,000-year reign of Christ defined by peace and salvation.
While some evangelical Christians view the end times as a metaphor for personal salvation, others believe it’s a literal, physical event for which they must prepare.
In this context, for those who believe the end of days is imminent and who have become radicalised, those deemed evil are considered legitimate targets for extreme violence and terror. Perversely, as with terrorists of other religious backgrounds, they believe this is justified in the name of God. In this particular case, Linford said the attackers saw police as “monsters and demons”.
New formations of violent extremism are brewing away in the post-Covid context. Rapidly increasing economic inequalities, catastrophic natural disasters, vaccination mandates are some key contributing factors and the rise of social media and encrypted messaging enable the free flow of extremist content.
The Australian far right, which inspired the white Australian Christchurch terrorist Brenton Tarrant, continue to be active in efforts to recruit. Sovereign citizens, anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists are also highly active, while misogynists such as Andrew Tate continue to spread their messaging through social media.
These are internationally linked movements that are tied in to racist, antisemitic, anti-democratic and anti-women worldviews. Militant forms of Christianity such as those that have emerged in the United States (for example Christian nationalism) will also be taking hold among some Australians. Notwithstanding the diversity of these movements, many adherents are white, middle-aged Australian men and women.
This requires a deep reflection by both intelligence communities and society in general. The focus on the “other” as the primary source of violent extremism and terror threats is not only outdated, but dangerous. The US is already abundantly aware of this. Queensland police on Thursday referred explicitly to the Waco massacre in Texas in 1993, but we can look at the Unabomber, Timothy McVeigh, Ku Klux Klan and many other terror attacks carried out by white Americans. In 2019, at the height of the Trump years, Congress found that “white supremacists and other far-right extremists are the most significant domestic terrorism threat facing the United States”. We saw the result of this at the insurrection at the Capital building on 6 January 2021.
From an investigative standpoint, implicit bias can cloud judgment when examining data. Two of the three Wieambilla attackers were accomplished teachers and educational leaders and all of them identified as Christian. Yet it is known that they had at the very least attempted to accumulate firearms. One of the attackers is reported to have posted direct threats to police and in one video, made posts online referring to himself as a “barbarian”, “savage” and “extremist”. In a similar vein, reports of concerns to police about the Christchurch terrorist’s statements and actions were overlooked by authorities in both Australia and New Zealand.
The even bigger problem, however, is the complete failure to have any sort of reflection or introspection about these attacks from within the community to which they belong. For two decades, Australian Muslims have been required to answer for the actions of an extremist fringe. Yet in the aftermath of the horrific Christchurch attack in which the attacker made reference to the Crusades and historic battles between Christians and Muslims, and now a double police murder, there has been very little, if any, introspection by the wider Australian community, including politicians and Christian leaders alike. There must be a collective acknowledgement and condemnation of the violent potential of intolerance, racism, hate and extremism in all its forms, including that which has become pervasive in our political discourse, media, religious institutions and wider society.
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#talk #extremism #links #Christian #fundamentalism #Josh #Roose
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
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Srinagar, Feb 11: The Jammu and Kashmir Board of School Education (BOSE) Saturday reopened links for submission of online forms for annual regular examination 2023 for classes 10th to 12th standard.
The online links for submission of the forms will be opened from February-14 to February-15 with a late fee Rs 6000 in addition to last prescribe Fee.
According to the news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO), Director Academic BOSE in a communique said, “It is notified for the information of all concerned students who have not so far, submitted their examination forms can now submit their examination forms for Classes 10th, 11th and 12th Annual Regular Examination 2023, online with a late fee Rs 6000in addition to last prescribe Fee.”
“The link for submission of online examination forms shall be made available on official website of JKBOSE with immediate effect from February-14 to February-15,” BOSE said—(KNO)
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#JKBOSE #reopen #links #days #submission #online #exam #forms #Classes #10th #12th
( With inputs from : roshankashmir.net )
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Indore: Police have arrested a 30-year-old woman having alleged links with the banned outfit Popular Front of India (PFI) for filming the proceedings of a court during a hearing in Madhya Pradesh’s Indore district, an official said on Sunday.
The woman, identified as Sonu Mansuri, later told the police that an advocate had asked her to make the video to be sent to the Islamic outfit PFI and she was given Rs three lakh for the work, Additional Commissioner of Police Rajesh Raghuvanshi told PTI.
During the hearing of a case related to Bajrang Dal leader Tanu Sharma on Saturday, his advocates Amit Pandey and Sunil Vishwakarma noticed the woman shooting the video in court room no. 42 of Indore district court, he said.
“The advocates got suspicious and with the help of women lawyers caught the woman. They then alerted the MG Road police who detained her on Saturday evening and formally arrested her at night,” he said.
Mansuri, a resident of Indore, claimed before the police that senior advocate Noorjahan Khan had given her the task of making the video to be sent across to the PFI, the official said.
The woman also told the police that she was given Rs three lakh for this work, the official said, adding the money has been recovered.
“Further investigation is on and Sonu is being interrogated to extract more information about her link with the PFI. She will be produced in a court on Sunday afternoon,” Raghuvanshi said.
Action will also be taken against advocate Noorjahan Khan if there is substantial evidence, he added.
The Centre had in September 2022 banned the PFI and several of its associates for five years under a stringent anti-terror law, accusing them of having “links” with global terror groups like ISIS and trying to spread communal hatred in the country.
Before the ban, the National Investigating Agency (NIA), the Enforcement Directorate(ED) and various state police forces had carried out raids in a massive pan-India crackdown on the PFI and arrested several of its leaders and activists from various states for allegedly supporting terror activities in the country.
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#Woman #alleged #PFI #links #held #recording #court #proceedings
( With inputs from www.siasat.com )
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MI5 repeatedly refused to investigate evidence that an alleged Russian spy was attempting to cultivate influence with senior Conservative politicians and channel illegal Russian funds into the party, a Tory member has alleged in a new complaint lodged with the investigatory powers tribunal (IPT).
Sergei Cristo, a Conservative party activist and a former journalist with the BBC World Service, has lodged a complaint with the investigatory powers tribunal, filing the case after corresponding with the chair of parliament’s intelligence and security committee, Conservative MP Julian Lewis, who recommended he take the information to the authorities.
The committee’s Russia report claimed in 2020 that the security services had turned a blind eye to “credible evidence” of Russian interference and Cristo’s allegations offer potentially explosive new evidence that confirms its findings. Labour MP Ben Bradshaw said “allegations that the security services ignored evidence from a Conservative whistleblower exposing Russian infiltration at the highest levels of the party are truly shocking” and claimed the “Conservative party’s Russia problem” was an ongoing threat to Britain’s national security.
Cristo says that it was reading the Russia report that made him “suddenly aware that maybe the story I had was more significant than I thought” and, at Lewis’s suggestion, he wrote to Cressida Dick, then commissioner of the Met police.
He received a response from the counter-terrorism command (SO15) who said it was not a matter for the Met and advised him to take it to the IPT – which oversees the security services – which he has now done.
The allegations centre around the formation of a group called Conservative Friends of Russia in 2012, and its relationship with a Russian diplomat, Sergey Nalobin.
In August of that year, the Russian ambassador, Alexander Yakovenko, hosted a lavish launch party for the group in the gardens of his residence in Kensington with guests who included the former minister of culture, media and sport, John Whittingdale, and Boris Johnson’s now wife, Carrie Symonds. The Russian government also funded an all-expenses-paid trip to Moscow for a handpicked group of members including the future CEO of Vote Leave, Matthew Elliott.
Cristo says his suspicions about Nalobin, who was the political first secretary at the embassy, had been aroused two years earlier when he was approached by the diplomat and they met at the Carlton Club. When Nalobin learned that Cristo was a volunteer with the treasurers’ department of the Conservative campaign headquarters (CCHQ), he said he could “make introductions to Russian companies who would donate money to the Conservative party”.
“I knew straight away that what he was suggesting was illegal under UK law,” Cristo wrote in a letter to Lewis last year.
Alarmed by Nalobin’s efforts and the embassy’s sponsorship of the group, Cristo contacted Luke Harding at the Guardian and revealed Nalobin’s background and his disturbing relationship with the group. Harding and journalists at Russia’s The Insider found Nalobin had family connections to the FSB spy agency: his father, Nikolai, was a KGB general whose responsibilities included supervising Alexander Litvinenko, while his brother Viktor also worked for the FSB.
The resulting articles led to the resignation of the honorary president of Conservative Friends of Russia, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, and the renaming of the group.
What Cristo has never previously revealed is his abortive attempts to get the security services to act. He says that he whistleblew to the Guardian only after his attempts to get the authorities to act failed. In 2011, he tried repeatedly to raise the alarm with MI5. After an initial meeting with a junior agent went nowhere, he wrote to the director general of MI5, which resulted in a further meeting with two agents in a government building in Whitehall.
Cristo offered to meet Nalobin again and question him while wearing a hidden camera about how the Russian government intended to make the donations. That offer was also declined and he was advised to cease contact with Nalobin.
He also took his concerns to senior members of the party after a discussion with Britain’s most famous Russian defector, Oleg Gordievsky, a former KGB colonel. Gordievsky studied Nalobin’s biography and told Cristo that he believed he was a spy.
Conservative Friends of Russia was reinvented as the Westminster Russia Forum and only finally shut down altogether last year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Meanwhile Nalobin continued to cultivate close relationships with MPs and Conservative party activists for a further three years until the Foreign Office declined to renew his visa.
In 2017, the Observer published an article that referred to Nalobin’s interest in the rivalry between David Cameron and Boris Johnson and his forced departure from the UK. It resulted in a series of furious emails from the Russian ambassador who sought to “correct” the article. The Observer declined to do so. Last year, Nalobin surfaced in Estonia when news broke that he had been expelled for espionage and had been “directly and actively engaged in undermining Estonia’s security”.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has been accused of deploying more intelligence agents in London than at the height of the Cold War.
“I think this is important because none of this ought to have happened,” Cristo said last week. “If MI5 had taken action, Conservative Friends of Russia would never have launched and Nalobin would not have been allowed to get close to so many key Conservative politicians and party members.”
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#MI5 #refused #investigate #Russian #spys #links #Tories #whistleblower
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )