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Osama bin Laden warns Europeans to exit Afghanistan or face retaliation

DEBKAfile Special Report

September 28, 2009, 6:26 PM (GMT+02:00)

Bekkay Harrach threatens German voter in al Qaeda's name

In a new audiotape posted Friday, Sept. 25, al Qaeda's leader Osama bin Laden warns Europeans they should pull their troops out of Afghanistan or share America's blame. The tape with German subtitles against his still image appears two days before Germany's general election.

Last week an al Qaeda, German-speaking spokesman warned Berlin to remove its troops from Afghanistan or face extreme retaliation.

Last week, Bekkay Harrach, who grew up in Bonn and relocated to an al Qaeda base in the Pakistan tribal area of Waziristan, ordered Berlin to withdrew its 4,200 troops from Afghanistan within two weeks after its election or face a widespread terror offensive.
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Israel suspends Swedish press permits over anti-Semitic article

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis

August 27, 2009, 9:56 PM (GMT+02:00)

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt - unnecessary bombast

Israel's interior minister Ellie Yishai Sunday suspended the press credentials of Swedish correspondents working in Israel after the Swedish government refused to condemn an Aftonbladet article accusing Israel's military of stealing organs from dead Palestinians. DEBKAfile's political sources report that although this is clearly a contemporary sample of a classical anti-Semitic blood libel, the issue should have been settled diplomatically without the unnecessary bombast which surrounds it.

More about this in DEBKAfile's Exclusive Analysis below.
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European leaders decide not to decide on measures against Russia

September 2, 2008, 11:23 AM (GMT+02:00)

Ahead of their emergency summit meeting in Brussels on the Georgia crisis, Sept. 1, twenty-seven European Union leaders backed away from practical measures against Moscow, stating only that EU-Russian relations will be under review “in various areas.”

DEBKAfile reports that, after getting away with recognizing the independence of Georgia’s breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia – which Russian president Dmitiry Medvedev said Monday was “irrevocable” - Moscow is now pressing for regime change in Georgia.
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Polish police rescue three Jewish boys taken hostage by Muslim man

May 6, 2008, 11:23 PM (GMT+02:00)

First identified as a drunk, the man is now named only as Mohammed A. He burst into a Warsaw Holiday Inn hotel room, cursing the three boys, said he was holding them hostage and would detonate a bomb.

They had come from Brazil for the March of Life from Auschwitz last week. The Warsaw police cleared the guests and staff from the hotel while a Polish counter-terror unit stormed the room.
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Marek Edelman, last Warsaw Ghetto commander, pays tribute to comrades

April 21, 2008, 9:44 AM (GMT+02:00)

Aged 85, Edelman was pushed in his wheelchair to the site of the bunker where the Jewish revolt’s leader Mordechaj Anielewicz and 80 comrades committed suicide as Nazi forces closed in. Edel, who then took command of the doomed ghetto uprising, marked its 65th anniversary at the imposing monument on the site. Participants then walked to the railway siding from which the Nazis sent more than 300,000 Jews to the Treblinka death camp in northeast Poland.

The Israeli and Polish presidents attended the official ceremony Tuesday, three days earlier.

Found 10 articles

Israel and Sweden: An unnecessary diplomatic crisis

September 19, 2009, 2:16 PM (GMT+02:00)

Swedish foreign minsiter Carl Bildt

The blood libels beloved of anti-Semites through the ages echoed clearly from the unsupported op-ed article freelance reporter Donald Bostrom ran in the Swedish Aftonbladet newspaper last week. All the same, DEBKAfile's political sources say the diplomatic crisis which has since blown up between Israel and Sweden would have faded quickly had a lot less noise issued from Jerusalem and Stockholm acted with less arrogance. As it is, the European and some US media seized on the tiff and trotted freelancer Bostrom out to repeat the offending charge. Bostrom's article drew on one Palestinian family's claim in the 1990s that they suspected the Israeli military of stealing the organs of their son whose body was returned five days later after he was killed by Israeli forces. Their suspicion was based on a cut in his midsection. Another 20 Palestinian families then stepped up with the same charge. When asked, the Israeli military spokesman explained that in the 1990s, autopsies were routine for Palestinians killed in clashes to ascertain that Israeli troops had acted in accordance with their orders and rules of engagement.
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The Pope is Sorry. Muslims Terrorists Are Not

September 16, 2006, 3:08 PM (GMT+02:00)

A firestorm of Muslim rage was ignited by a lecture on the theme of Faith and Reason that Pope Benedict XVI gave at Regensburg University in Germany Tuesday, Sept 12. The fury that beset the Muslim world recalls the tempest which greeted the Muhammad cartoons in a Danish newspaper earlier this year. The government in Ankara said his safety could not be guaranteed during his visit in November, during which the pope had hoped to improve relations between Christians and Muslims. Turkey’s Catholic bishops will meet next Monday to discuss the visit. DEBKAfile’s Islamic observers comment that the threat of Muslim anger exploding into violence is becoming an increasingly powerful deterrent to any religious controversy that touches on the Muslim faith - especially in the West - because Western Christians, moderate Muslims and the Jewish world continue to distinguish between international Islamic terrorist groups and Muslims at large. While the majority of Muslims do not subscribe to al Qaeda’s violent methods, neither do they actively oppose them. As for Palestinian violence against Israel, that is universally condoned.
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Is the largest ever UK police anti-terror operation beginning to fall apart?

June 4, 2006, 11:55 AM (GMT+02:00)

The raid was carried out amid fears of a new terror attack to coincide with the first anniversary of the July 7 London transport attacks, that left 52 commuters dead and hundreds injured. It was guided by “specific intelligence” that a bomb was assembled ready for use. First, an explosive bomb vest was mentioned, then deadly sarin, which would be shot from a canister or flask. The railway attack in Tokyo which killed 12 people and injured 5,000 in March 1995 was cited. The next day, when no bombs or the makings thereof were found at the first two addresses, the police moved on to the two brothers’ workplaces. Sunday, still nothing was found.
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The EU Incentives Proposal for Iran Is Rife with Hidden Dangers

May 20, 2006, 2:38 PM (GMT+02:00)

The Bush administration accuses the Europeans of going behind America’s back to assemble an apparently innocuous proposal which is rife with hidden dangers. In the first place, not one, but several light water reactors are on offer. In the second, Iran will get an almost unlimited supply of fuel rods containing enriched uranium (up to 60%) for powering these reactors. Furthermore, the spent fuel contains fission products and plutonium which has military uses. The economic incentives on offer to Iran are deemed generous enough. According to our sources, they include a massive financial-technological shot in the arm to bring Iran’s oil industry up to date. In return for giving up their clandestine nuclear ambitions, Tehran is now being offered, with US assent, the most advanced oil production technology available in the world.
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A Death Designed for Shock Effect

March 11, 2006, 11:22 PM (GMT+02:00)

Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, 64, was found dead in his cell at The Hague early Saturday, March 11. His lawyer Zdenko Tomanovic announced a few hours later that Milosevic had told him Friday that he feared he was being poisoned in the UN detention facility. He at once passed that information to the Russian embassy and now demanded that the official autopsy be conducted in Moscow, not The Hague. The truth may never be known about the alleged poisoning claim. DEBKAfile’s Balkan and Russian sources believe that the accused leader was politically cunning and manipulative enough to engineer his death in a way to cause the greatest possible international shock and embarrassment. He may have instructed his lawyer to pass the poisoning suggestion to the Russian embassy and then deliver the bombshell after his death, together with the demand for the autopsy to take place in Moscow. The manner of Milosevic’s death has opened two fronts:
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