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The EU's top human rights court on Thursday ordered France to pay thousands of euros to Somali pirates who attacked French ships for "violating their rights" by holding them an additional 48 hours before taking them before a judge. The Somali pirates were apprehended on the high seas by the French army on two separate occasions in 2008 and taken back to France for trial. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said that French authorities should have brought the pirates before a judge "without delay" when they arrived on French territory after being held at sea. The EU’s top...

Shortly before Christmas 2012, a group of young men booked a room at a Premier Inn in Bristol. The friends, all in their early 20s and members of the city’s Somali community, chatted, drank and chewed the stimulant khat. One of the men, a local drug dealer called Said Zakaria – also known by his street name Target – was tasked with the job of finding some girls to “party with”. Zakaria, 22, made a few calls and went off to pick up a girl he had been having sex with who can only be identified as Complainant 1 –...

The number of people killed by terrorists worldwide in 2013 rose by 60 percent compared to the previous year – from 11,133 to 17,958 – with four Sunni Muslim extremist groups responsible for two-thirds of all fatalities, according to a comprehensive annual study. Eighty-two percent of fatalities occurred in just five countries – Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and Syria, although the number of countries that experienced more than 50 terror-related deaths also rose – to 24, compared with 15 the previous year. ... Four Sunni groups were responsible for 66 percent of all terror fatalities in 2013. In order of...

They are going there to get subsidized Section 8 housing vouchers to take to another state. Refugee resettlement is a euphemism for importing whole Muslim communities, importing jihad. I have long documented the targeting of gateway cities (smaller cities) overwhelmed with Muslim refugee immigration from countries like Somalia — cities like Emporia, Kansas, Nashville, Greeley and Fort Morgan, Colorado, Lewiston, Maine et al. The over-saturation and drain on city resources has driven these immigrants northward to settle in Wyoming, according to these reports. Organizations like Lutheran Family Services profit enormously from the Federal government handling these refugees. The sharia compliant...

Armed Israeli security guards thwarted an attempt by Somali pirates to a hijack a ship that was sailing to Israel on Tuesday. The ship was sailing with a foreign flag but had Israeli security guards on board. The ship continued on its way to Israel and will arrive in a couple of days. The ship was carrying trade to Israel and had embarked on its journey a few days earlier from southeastern Asia by way of the Suez Canal.

Armed Israeli security guards thwarted an attempt by Somali pirates to a hijack a ship that was sailing to Israel on Tuesday. The ship was sailing with a foreign flag but had Israeli security guards on board. The ship continued on its way to Israel and will arrive in a couple of days. Israeli security companies have conquered the shipping security industry in the past couple of years. Hundreds of former IDF combat unit fighters secure foreign ships, both trade and commercial, from the threat of pirates.

COLOGNE, Germany — With its wood-paneled piano bar and luxurious spa, the four-star Bonotel assures visitors paying up to $300 per night that it meets the "international standard of a first-class hotel." But starting next year, the hotel's marble-and-mirrored lobby and "quiet, peaceful ambience" will play host not to indulgent travelers but desperate asylum seekers. Germany's fourth-largest city spent almost $7 million to buy the Bonotel this summer. Its doors will soon be shut and its 93 opulent rooms filled with asylum seekers, a move underscoring how Europe's economic powerhouse has been overwhelmed by an influx of people seeking a...

The Duke of Wellington said of his close-run victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo that the French "came on in the same old way, and we sent them back in the same old way." Something like that happened to the Democrats in Tuesday's midterm elections, as they lost the Senate, a few more seats in the House and additional governorships. They came on with the same old strategy, but this time they went down with it. Obama and the Democrats chose not to defend the administration's record of the last six years. On foreign policy, no Democratic chorus...

CAIRO — The Arab League warned Sunday that Israel has reached a “red line” after fresh clashes in Jerusalem, urging international pressure to stop what it branded “violations” in the holy city. Clashes around the flashpoint Temple Mount and the al-Aqsa Mosque compound — the third holiest site in Islam and Judaism’s holiest — prompted Israel on Thursday to close the site for a day. The Temple Mount and adjacent neighborhoods have seen months of violence, with the mosque compound a rallying point for Palestinian resistance to perceived Jewish attempts to take control of it...

The Houthis, Iranian backed rebels have taken control of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa. The comparison to Hezbollah is apt as Reuters is reporting that the Houthi are blocking the appointment of Yemen’s president. So what’s Iran’s interest in Yemen? It was spelled out by Michael Segall of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs two and a half years ago. A couple of Segall’s observations are sobering: "Iran regards Yemen in general, and its Shia northern part in particular, as a springboard for subversion and for creating a tangible threat to Saudi Arabia, its main religious-political rival in the region. Iran also...

Al-Qaeda-aligned militants are withdrawing from their last major stronghold on Somalia's southern coast, residents in Barawe have told the BBC. They said that al-Shabab battle-wagons loaded with their weapons had been leaving since the morning. African Union forces and Somali government troops have been closing in on the town - an official says they are about 20km (12 miles) away. Barawe is in a strategic position 200km south of the capital. The African Union says the militants have been using it as a base to launch attacks on the capital, Mogadishu.

We’ve got a problem in the Twin Cities that is based in our large and still growing population of Somali immigrants. Somalis have been immigrating to Minnesota for more than twenty years now. They have taken advantage of all the services that our state and local institutions offer. They have been welcomed with open arms, in Minnesota’s characteristic style. Yet Minnesota’s Somali community — a/k/a “Minnesotans” — is the most fertile ground in the United States for the recruitment of terrorists by foreign terrorist organizations in Africa and the Middle East. We are concerned that they may choose to return...

President Obama on Wednesday delivered a speech at the United Nations filled with his usual soaring rhetoric of global collectivism and the importance of “international norms.” But the president also displayed a shocking naivete about global affairs, religion, Islam — a Pollyannaish interpretation on the state of the world and America’s role in it. Although Mr. Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize just eight months into office, the president made his annual trip to the ineffectual world council to deliver a call to war. “Ladies and gentlemen, we come together at a crossroads between war and peace, between disorder and...

While incumbent Minnesota Sen. Al Franken (D) has a comfortable lead in opinion polls, some are wondering if his relatively muted response to ISIS actively recruiting soldiers from Minnesota will come back to haunt him in November.Minnesota has been a hotbed for ISIS recruitment, with over a dozen residents of the Twin Cities traveling to the Middle East to fight for the Islamic State. Two have been killed. Mike McFadden, the Republican candidate for Franken's seat, has jumped on the issue of ISIS in Minneapolis by portraying Franken as ineffectively combating the terror threat.More from ABC: Hours after the release...

At 22, Kadra Mohamed is a civilian employee of the police department, a community liaison officer making a courtesy call to a merchant, a time-tested neighborhood policing method. Still, this visit -- and many she makes -- breaks new ground. In March, the St. Paul Police Department hired Mohamed, its first female Somali community liaison officer, a move designed to improve the sometimes tense relations with 80,000 Somali-Americans in the Twin Cities -- more than half of them in St. Paul -- the nation's largest Somali community. Each time she wears her crisp blue police department uniform with its thick...

Amir Meshal has a fascinating history. He's originally from New Jersey, but back in 2007 he was detained and interrogated by the FBI in Kenya after escaping from Somalia. Somehow, his travels brought him to Minnesota, and to a mosque in Bloomington, which kicked him out this summer. Friday prayers bring hundreds to the Al-Farooq Youth and Family Center, which is perhaps the largest mosque in the Twin Cities. But not everyone is welcome -- not after Meshal began attending prayer and hanging out earlier this year. In June, the center called police and had Meshal, 31, removed and ticketed...

This was one of the headlines greeting me when I woke up this morning, and in a week filled with generally dreary news it was a small ray of sunshine. A US airstrike six days ago took out Ahmed Godane in Somalia. A leader of the militant Islamist group al-Shabaab has been killed in an American air strike, military chiefs have confirmed.The death of Ahmed Godane was announced on Friday by Pentagon press secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby, who declared it a “major symbolic and operational loss”.The lethal strike in Somalia took place on Monday, but military analysts were...

Ahmad Abdi Godane, the late leader of Somalian militant Islamist group al-Shabaab, was killed in a U.S. air strike, both the Pentagon and Somalia’s premier confirmed on Friday. The demise of the reclusive leader—of whom very few confirmed photos exist—was hailed by the White House as “a major symbolic and operational loss” for the al-Qaeda linked group. Due to al-Shabaab’s activities under Godane’s leadership and his allegiance to al-Qaeda, the U.S. State Department had listed him as one of the world’s eight top terror fugitives, with a $7 million reward for information leading to his arrest, the third-highest level of...

Over the course of two decades, the federal government’s Refugee Resettlement Program has forcibly infused the Minneapolis-St. Paul area of Minnesota with a large dose of Somali culture, and the transition has not always been smooth. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., told WND that while many of the Somali transplants have been hard-working citizens, the experiment has been costly for her state. And too many Somalis remain dependent on public assistance. “We have the largest population of Somalis in the United States, and Somalia is a failed state. It is based on piracy for ransom and fraud,” Bachmann said. “It is...

The Pentagon said Friday that it had confirmed the death of a key Somali militant leader allied with al-Qaeda who had been targeted in a U.S. airstrike earlier this week. Ahmed Abdi Godane, a co-founder of a network blamed for its brutal tactics in Somalia and for the attack on an upscale Kenyan shopping mall last year, was killed Monday in an attack carried out by U.S. drones and other aircraft, the Pentagon said.