Jerusalem: Israeli espionage agency Mossad and the Greek police have collaborated in foiling a plot to carry out a massive terror attack targeting Israelis and Jews in Greece and police are continuing searches in Athens and other parts of the country following the arrest of two Pakistani suspects in the case.
In a statement, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said Tuesday that the two Pakistani nationals – arrested by Greek police – were part of an Iranian terror network.
“The affair that was uncovered in Greece is a severe case that was successfully thwarted by the Greek security forces. It was an additional attempt by Iran to perpetrate terrorism against Israeli and Jewish targets abroad,” the PMO said.
“After the start of the investigation of the suspects in Greece, the Mossad rendered intelligence assistance in unravelling the infrastructure, its work methods and the link to Iran. The investigation revealed that the infrastructure that operated in Greece is part of an extensive Iranian network run from Iran and spanning many countries,” it added.
The two unnamed suspects, aged 27 and 29, are reportedly being held at police headquarters in central Athens. A third man, who is not in Greece, is wanted for questioning and has been charged in absentia.
Meanwhile, Greek police were continuing searches in Athens and other parts of the country. They are investigating whether other attacks on Jewish sites in Athens were being planned.
Local media reports indicated that the target of the attack was a Chabad House, which includes a Kosher restaurant and also hosts other religious services.
It is noteworthy that Pakistani terrorists who carried out the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai also targeted the Chabad House in the Indian metropolis.
Greek Police said the suspects had chosen a target of “high symbolism” and were making final preparations for the attack.
“Their aim was not only to cause the loss of life of innocent citizens but also to undermine the sense of security in the country while hurting public institutions and threatening (Greece’s) international relations,” the Greek police said.
The two Pakistanis were said to be a part of a “wide Iranian network that operates from Iran and out of many other countries”.
“An analysis of the seized information and digital data revealed and confirmed that the members of the network had already chosen as the target of the attack, a building of special importance; had carried out the reconnaissance of the area and the planning of the attack; and had received final instructions to carry out the attack,” a police statement carried by Greek news website Directus said.
According to the report, authorities began investigating the terror network following the 2021 arrest of two other Pakistani men suspected of planning attacks on Israelis. The network was linked to an Iranian plot foiled in Turkey last year, it said.
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen thanked Greece for foiling the plot.
“The Ayatollah regime in Tehran is exporting terror to the Middle East, the Mediterranean and the wider world. Only a tough stance and cooperation will halt the terror activities of the Iranian regime,” Cohen said in a tweet.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said the arrest was “further proof of the superiority of Israeli intelligence and the importance of international cooperation in the fight against terrorism and its perpetrators”.
“The Mossad and Israel’s intelligence agencies will continue to ensure that wherever Iran seeks to act against our citizens, it will be met with an effective response,” he said.
New York: A 60-year-old Indian-origin Sikh man has been arrested in the US for allegedly attempting to hire people to shoot multiple people and burn down a prominent Gurdwara in California, according to media reports.
Rajvir Raj Singh Gill, a former Bakersfield City Council candidate, was arrested on March 4 for allegedly targeting one of Bakersfield’s largest Sikh places of worship, Gurdwara Shaheed Baba Deep Singh Ji Khalsa Darbar, and burning down the property, bakersfield.com portal reported.
Gill was arrested in connection with six counts of criminal threats after officers executed a search warrant at his residence, the report said.
The Bakersfield Police Department said in addition to offering someone money in exchange for burning down the gurdwara, Gill tried to pay people to shoot others who he had an ongoing dispute with, 23abc.com portal reported.
Gill had attempted to run for City Council Ward 7 against Manpreet Kaur in 2022. Kaur won the election and was the first Sikh Punjabi woman elected to the Bakersfield City Council, the report added.
Kaur, who won the seat for Ward 7, issued the following statement: “I am aware of the alleged allegations. I am confident the Bakersfield Police department is working diligently to keep our community safe and will address the matter accordingly. Hearing this news is distressing and frightening. This is one of our most highly attended Sikh temples locally. To hear of an alleged attempt to destroy a place of worship is heartbreaking and unfathomable.”
“He hired the people. Those people, whoever he hired, came and told us and they made a report to the police. So, the police called us and they got our information and everything and asked questions and we told them what’s going on, and that’s when everything happened,” said Amrik Singh Athwal, a temple board member.
A Bakersfield Police Department spokesman declined Tuesday to address what may have prompted Gill to take the actions he is accused of, and he would not elaborate on the case.
A temple elder said Tuesday that Gill has in recent months shown up at the property disrupting prayers and threatening members of the congregation and carrying a gun before being arrested at one point. There are no records of his arrest prior to Saturday.
The elder, Sukhwinder Singh Ranghi, attributed the repeated confrontations to a dispute over more than USD 800,000, contributed by members of the congregation, that was supposed to reimburse a corporate entity set up to buy the temple out of foreclosure in July 2020.
“It’s the greed that most likely got to him,” Ranghi was quoted as saying by bakersfield.com.
Ranghi said the temple learned Gill offered USD 10,000 to two Hispanic men to kill certain leaders of the congregation who are involved in the court cases, including Ranghi. He said Gill drove the men around the city pointing out the homes of the temple leaders he wanted to be killed. This information came to temple leadership from an associate of the intended hitmen.
With more than 500 members, Shaheed is one of Bakersfield’s best-attended Sikh temples. It hosts an annual celebration in late October that draws thousands.
If you wanted to see how SailGP is changing the culture of sailing, last month’s event in Singapore offered a perfect visual. Each of the boat’s crews carry two grinders, usually a pair of towering men with Popeye biceps whose arms can generate the same power output as an Olympic rowers’ legs. When the US boat won the second race of the heats, however, there was a woman at the winch. She was 5ft 4in and 19 years old.
“I’m probably the world’s smallest grinder,” says a laughing CJ Perez, the team strategist who also grinds when winds are especially light. “The first time I did it, two years ago, I was gassed afterwards.”
She took herself to the gym and worked on her strength. After the race in Singapore, she screamed with delight as they crossed the finish line. “I was just so happy, I felt I had helped the team a lot.”
This is season three of SailGP, the global competition designed by the America’s Cup legend Russell Coutts to be the Formula One of sailing. In its roster of “grand prix”, foiling catamarans fly around courses at such high speeds that their hulls never need to touch the water and sailors are pinned to the sides of the craft by the G-force. On Saturday and Sunday, spectators will flock to the Sydney shoreline to watch the spectacle, promising everything from physics-defying manoeuvres to dramatic capsizes and, occasionally, collisions.
Natasha Bryant, strategist for Australia SailGP, at the Spain Sail Grand Prix in September. Photograph: Ricardo Pinto for SailGP
Not so long ago, there was no such thing as a professional racing career in sailing. The apex of the sport, the America’s Cup, takes place every four years and opportunities to take part have always been restricted to a handful of athletes. They have always been men.
SailGP’s inaugural season in 2018 was an all-male affair, but when it returned for its second edition in 2020-21, the rules required every team to take to the water with at least one female crew member. Their “women’s pathway programme” was intended to open up elite racing and its immediate success proves how powerful such structural interventions can be.
Perez grew up in Honolulu, but while all her friends surfed she never tried watersports until six years ago. “I didn’t come from a family of sailors,” she says, “and I don’t want to say I was clueless, but all I wanted was to get on the water and go fast. It wasn’t until I started going abroad and racing internationally that I saw, wow, there aren’t enough females in the sport.”
A natural from the moment she stepped in a boat, Perez won her first world title within two years. Jimmy Spithill, captain of SailGP’s USA team, was the youngest winner of the America’s Cup in 2010 and when he saw videos of Perez he knew he was looking at a future star. In 2021, she made her SailGP debut, the first Latina and the youngest woman in the competition.
She admits to more than a few rookie mistakes. “The first day I went on the F50 I had put my wetsuit on backwards,” she says. “The guys on the chase boat pointed it out. The logos were all on my butt.”
The generation gap with the rest of the crew (at 43, Spithill is old enough to be her father) makes for equally amusing culture clash at the team’s HQ, where the soundtrack is usually 80s music and country. “I want to listen to hip-hop and talk about boys, but I don’t think they’re into that.”
Natasha Bryant, of the Australia team, is three years older than Perez. Growing up in north Sydney, her ambition was to play soccer for her country. “I had my heart set on being a Matilda,” she says. “But my brother was getting competitive with his sailing and he needed a training partner.”
Aged 11, she went out on the water with him every day after school, a sibling rivalry that pushed them both. Their next-door neighbour and babysitter Jason Waterhouse, who won a silver medal at the 2016 Olympics, was their sporting role model. He’s now Bryant’s crew-mate on the Australia team.
CJ Perez, strategist for the USA team, after a practice session for the Denmark SailGP. Photograph: Ricardo Pinto for SailGP
Like Perez, Bryant had been surprised by the small pool of female talent. “At our first youth world championships there were 250 boats and less than 20 of those were girls’ teams.” Having missed out on selection at her first SailGP trial, she found herself on an F50 a few weeks later and was handed the wheel by the Australia captain, Tom Slingsby.
“I was there as the reserve sailor, so I wasn’t even sure if I’d get on the boat,” says Bryant. “But Tom didn’t give me any time to think about it, he just said ‘here you go’… I was really naive. Everyone laughs at me, but I’d only been in dinghies before, so I’d never sailed anything with a wheel. I was thinking: ‘OK, it’ll be kind of like driving a car.’ It wasn’t.”
Skippering an F50 is like nothing else on earth. Flying speeds of up to 60mph (Olympic-class boats top out at less than 20mph) require quick thinking and nerves of steel. They also demand perfect communication between the crew, especially the wing trimmer, responsible for managing the windpower to the boat, and the flight controller, whose job is to keep the boat off the water and gliding on its foils. Two grinders work on the winch handles to move the wing back and forth as required.
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The remaining role, which all of the women on the pathway programme assume, is that of strategist, feeding information that helps the team make best use of conditions and anticipating the movements of the other boats to find the driver the fastest route. “The races are so short that if you collide or get stuck with traffic it’s really hard to get out of it,” says Bryant. “And everything happens so quickly that the further ahead you can plan the easier it is to have a smooth clean race.”
For Hannah Mills, the role came naturally. She and Ben Ainslie are the most successful British Olympic sailors of all time and their skills complement each other well. “Ben used to be a single-handed sailor, whereas I have always sailed double-handed,” she says. “I came from Tokyo with a lot of skills and experience in communicating in a team.”
Hannah Mills at the San Francisco SailGP last year. Photograph: Thomas Lovelock for SailGP
Bryant found the most urgent lesson was when to talk and when not to. “In my first few races I got so nervous I was a little bit quiet.” The encouragement of her more experienced male teammates gave her confidence. “Now I pretend I’m the one driving and think: ‘What input would I like to hear right now?’”
All three women want to become drivers and they can achieve that only by gaining experience on the F50s, which is hard when the athletes sail the boats for only three days each race weekend. “The lack of training time is the biggest challenge,” says Perez.
“The organisers have talked about putting in a training block next season to have the women on the boat for longer, but you need funding to do that.” She will miss the next two races to give other women on the US team the opportunity to sail.
The Australia GP will be Mills’s third race; she debuted in 2021 before stepping back to have her first baby. Off the boat, she took responsibility for a number of gender equality and sustainability projects including the Athena Pathway, which she and Ainslie launched last August to fast-track female athletes into high-performance foiling and encourage young people into careers within the sport. It is the engine room for the British campaign to win the first Women’s America’s Cup and defend the Youth America’s Cup in Barcelona next year.
Returning post-pregnancy was a feat of physical preparation. “I was nervous because I’d gone from being in the best form of my life at the Tokyo Olympics to a very different body,” says Mills. In Singapore, she had her ankles taped to combat the softening of ligaments that occurs when breastfeeding.
Motherhood contributed to her decision not to launch an Olympic campaign for Paris 2024, but the opportunities afforded by SailGP are also a factor. Bryant, who missed out on selection for Tokyo, says even a year ago she never imagined any career in sailing beyond the Olympic Games. “It was what I wanted to do for so many years and it’s weird to change my mind, but SailGP has given us an avenue I never really thought was possible. I enjoy being with this team and I’m learning so much.”
Thanks to her fellow crew, Bryant owns her first Moth, a foiling dinghy for single-handed racing, while Perez will soon be in Miami, trialling for the USA team for the Women’s America’s Cup. “In high school I didn’t even think sailing was a profession,” she says. “This is history in the making.”
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#Making #waves #female #athletes #plotting #SailGP #history #Emma #John
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
“This planned attack threatened lives and would have left thousands of Marylanders in the cold and dark,” U.S. Attorney for Maryland Erek Barron said in a statement. “We are united and committed to using every legal means necessary to disrupt violence, including hate-fueled attacks.”
Russell has previously been described by federal officials as a founder of a Neo-Nazi group known as the Atomwaffen. In 2018, he was sentenced to five years in prison on explosives charges. Russell was released in August 2021, federal Bureau of Prisons records show.
According to a criminal complaint charging the pair with conspiracy to destroy an energy facility, Clendaniel told an FBI confidential informant about plans to attack five substations in an effort to cause widespread blackouts. That “would completely destroy this whole city,” Clendaniel allegedly said.
Extremists, cybercriminals and vandals have intensified attacks on the power grid in recent years, with such incidents reaching a decade-long peak last year. High-profile incidents late last year left thousands in North Carolina and Washington state without power. Suspects in those cases remain at large.
However, Sobocinski said the FBI isn’t aware of any links between the pair and other plans to attack electrical infrastructure. “We have no indication that this was anything larger than what we have,” the FBI official said.
Prosecutors released a photo of Clendaniel holding an assault rifle, but the complaint says she’d lost access to such a weapon recently in a dispute with a neighbor.
The complaint says the pair believed that attacks on a handful of substations would lead to “cascading failure” in the power grid.
Sobocinski said the FBI viewed the plot as serious, although he was uncertain whether the attacks the pair planned would have actually devastated the electrical grid in Baltimore. “The FBI believes that this was a real threat,” he said. “Our hope is that it would have been minimal, but we couldn’t be able to tell you what that result would look like.”
Federal regulators have warned for decades that targeting certain critical components of the grid could lead to widespread blackouts. Investigators have discovered several conspiracies to take down the power system in recent years, including a plot last year by three men tied to white supremacy and neo-Nazis.
Regulators are currently assessing whether to heighten grid security requirements in light of the rise in incidents.
Utility Baltimore Gas & Electric confirmed in a statement that law enforcement arrested the individuals before any damage was done to the targeted infrastructure. BG&E said it is not aware of any other threats to its infrastructure.
Despite a Justice Department press release from 2018 describing Russell as a neo-Nazi, Sobocinski and Barron seemed to go out of their way not to use that term Monday. “The FBI views them as racially- or ethnically-motivated extremists,” Sobocinski said of the suspects.
Clendaniel and Russell were arrested at their respective homes without incident and are expected to appear in court later Monday, officials said.
According to the complaint, in conversations with the informant, Clendaniel also recently said she had little to lose because she suffers from a kidney illness and is unlikely to live more than a few months.
Catherine Morehouse contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Islamabad: Pakistani police on Thursday arrested former interior minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed from his home for accusing ex-president Asif Ali Zardari of plotting to kill former prime minister Imran Khan.
An ally of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, Ahmed is the chief of Awami Muslim League (AML).
His nephew Sheikh Rashid Shafique said that the AML chief was arrested from his home in a private housing society in Islamabad.
The former minister was arrested by Islamabad police in the early hours of Thursday in connection with remarks he made against former president Zardari, accusing him of hatching a “murder plot to eliminate PTI chief Imran Khan”.
Sheikh Rashid was later presented before the court of Judicial Magistrate Omar Shabbir who granted the police two-day physical remand of the AML chief.
The police had requested his eight-day remand for investigation.
Sheikh Rashid was arrested on a police complaint filed by Raja Inayat-ur-Rehman, a vice president of PPP Rawalpindi Division, wherein he said that the AML chief, in a television interview on January 27, alleged that Pakistan People’s Party co-chairman Zardari got the assistance of some terrorists to kill Khan.
Khan also in a television address on January 27 had alleged that Zardari was behind a fresh assassination plot a “plan C” and a terror group had been engaged for the purpose. He offered no evidence to back up his accusation.
Sheikh Rashid in fact had repeated what Imran Khan had said in his television address.
Zardari rejected the allegations and also sent a legal notice to Khan to apologize and take back the accusations or a case of damages would be filed against him.
According to a video clip of the arrested leader, he alleged that police ransacked his house and thrashed domestic staffers while attempting to arrest him. He also vowed to challenge his arrest in the high court.
He also alleged that some (personnel) used ladders to enter his house. He went on to say that he had been arrested despite getting relief from the Islamabad High Court.
He claimed that lawyer Mian Tahir had secured his bail and went on to allege that Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah was behind the incident.
Reacting to the arrest, Khan said: “Never in our history have we had such a biased, vindictive caretaker government appointed by totally discredited the ECP (Election Commission of Pakistan). The question is: can Pak afford a street movement which we are being pushed towards at a time when we have been bankrupted by imported government?”
The FIR filed against the AML leader claimed that Ahmed’s statement was made as part of a conspiracy to defame the former president and create a permanent threat to his family.
“He wants to create conflict and enmity between two groups PPP and PTI with this fabricated and baseless conspiracy so that the peace of the country can be disturbed,” it added.
Islamabad Police had on Wednesday summoned Ahmed to appear before it today in connection with the case. However, the Islamabad High Court suspended the notice.
The court also issued notices to the Islamabad police chief and asked him to nominate a senior officer who could apprise the high court of the facts related to the case. The former interior minister had claimed that he had “inside information of the murder conspiracy” and that the former president had allegedly hired “assassins to kill Imran Khan”.
In the petition, Sheikh Rashid challenged the notice issued to him by the local police and dubbed the notice as contradictory to different provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code. Further hearing has been adjourned until February 6.
Sheikh Rashid served as interior minister when Khan was prime minister and claims that he has served 16 times as minister in various governments.
His arrest comes amid a raft of legal moves against PTI leaders and their allies. Last week, PTI’s senior leader Fawad Chaudhry was arrested for allegedly making threats against election commission members’ families. He was later released on bail. A sedition case was filed against former PTI lawmaker Shandana Gulzar Khan.
US Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on Friday, the arrest of 3 people on suspicion of involvement in what he described as a “Tehran-backed plot” for attempting to assassinate journalist and a prominent human rights activist of Iranian origin Masih Alinejad in the United States (US).
Garland said that two of the three arrested are members of a mafia operating in Eastern Europe and linked to Iran.
The announcement of the arrest of the three people and charges of attempted murder came to them six months after one of them, Khaled Mehdiyev, was arrested in front of Alinejad’s house in New York in possession of an AK-47 assault rifle.
US Secretary of Justice did not mention the name of the journalist and human rights activist, but the American activist of Iranian origin, Masih Alinejad, published a video clip on Twitter, in which she confirmed that she was the person concerned.
Masih Alinejad said she had just returned from the FBI headquarters in New York, where she had a meeting with 12 agents in the office.
She further adds that she learned from the FBI that there were 3 people in New York who tried to kill her on American soil.
Masih aising her left hand, pointing to her face, said, “Yes, this is the face of the person who was targeted by the assassination plot,” confirming that she was not afraid for her life.
I just learned from 12 FBI agents that the 3 men hired by the Iranian regime to kill me on US soil have been indicted. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards have been conducting these terrorist operations for four decades. Islamic Republic is ISIS with oil. #WomanLifeFreedompic.twitter.com/T9Hbp0iwG3
Masih Alinejad, an Iranian journalist and feminist activist, participated in publishing tweets supporting the demonstrators in Iran after the death of the young Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, after she was arrested by the morality police in September 20.
Hyderabad: Police arrested two persons for criminal conspiracy and possessing deadly weapons here on Wednesday.
According to police, the accused – 24-year-old Mohd Faiz Khan from Yakutpura and 25-year-old Mohd Mohsin from Talabkatta were arrested while they were moving near Roshan Dairy Chanchalguda with a big knife.
On being interrogated, the two confessed to plotting murder against one Khader.
“Faiz wanted to kill Khader to avenge the murder of his friend Chacha. He is involved previously in three criminal cases in Dabeerpura and Malakpet,” said G Prasada Rao, ACP Mirchowk.
Mohsin is involved in theft cases in Malakpet, Afzalgunj and Chaderghat police stations. A case has been registered.
