Did Israel Kill Another Islamic Scientist ?

Death of Muslim scientists puts spotlight on Mossad

Middle East | Worldbulletin News

World Bulletin / News Desk

The assassination late last year of a Tunisian aviation engineer with alleged links to Palestinian group Hamas has put the spotlight on Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency suspected of killing Israel’s enemies.

Mohamed al-Zawari was shot dead in December outside his home in Tunisia’s southeastern city of Sfax. Hamas swiftly blamed Israel for the murder, saying the slain engineer had overseen the group’s drone program.

Al-Zawari was the latest in a number of Muslim scientists and activists the self-proclaimed Jewish state is widely believed to have killed in the past.

In 1967, Egyptian nuclear scientist Samir Naguib was killed in a car accident in the U.S. Naguib was reportedly planning to return to Egypt at the height of war with Israel to help launch Egypt’s nuclear program when he was killed.

Another Egyptian nuclear scientist, Yahya al-Mashad, who headed Iraq’s nuclear program, was killed in a Paris hotel room in 1980.

In 1991, Lebanese condensed matter physicist Rammal Hassan Rammal died in mysterious circumstances in France.

In 1993, Egyptian writer Gamal Hemdan died in a fire in his apartment in the Egyptian capital. His relatives, however, claimed he was hit on the head and that the drafts of books he was writing had disappeared, and on top of it was topics about Jews and Zionism.

1997, Mossad agents tried -- and failed -- to kill Hamas political chief Khaled Meshaal in Jordan by spraying poison into his ear.

In 2004, Iraqi nuclear scientist Ibrahim al-Dhaheri was shot dead as he was riding a cab in Iraq’s western city of Baquba.

In 2010, Iranian quantum field theorist and elementary-particle physicist Masoud Alimohammadi was shot dead outside his home in Tehran.

Iran accused the U.S. and Israel of killing the scientist, but Washington denied the accusation. Israel, however, did not deny or confirm involvement.

In the same year, Iranian nuclear engineer Majid Shahriari was killed in a car bombing in Tehran.

Mossad is also believed to have been behind the assassination in 2010 of top Hamas commander Mahmud al-Mabhuh in a Dubai hotel.

Israel has never confirmed or denied its involvement in any of these murders.

-Israeli tactic

Analysts believe that the killing of Muslim scientists is an Israeli tactic that aims to prevent Muslim countries from getting the nuclear and technological know-how.

“Israelis view Muslims possessing the tools of technology as a danger,” Turkish political analyst Mustafa Ozcan told Anadolu Agency.

“They don’t want Muslims to make a breakthrough in this field, so they target scientists [from Muslim countries like] Egypt, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan,” he said.

The Turkish analyst cited the destruction of the Iraqi nuclear reactor in Israeli airstrikes as an example of Israeli attempts to prevent Muslim states from possessing the nuclear know-how.

In mid-1981, Israeli warplanes struck a nuclear reactor being built by Iraq southeast of Baghdad.

“Israel, however, declines to comment on the assassination of Muslim scientists in order to avoid raising this issue at international levels,” Ozcan said.

Hatem al-Zoabi, a Swedish writer of Syrian origin, echoed a similar opinion.

“The murder of Muslim scientists by Mossad aims to prevent their countries from developing their researches,” he told Anadolu Agency.

He opined that Israel “targets any efficient Muslim who could help develop his country in any field”.

Terrorism Is The Mark Of The Beast (Revelation 13:16)

2,000 feared killed in ‘deadliest’ Boko Haram attack in Nigeria

Aminu Abubakar and Faith Karimi, CNN

Updated 6:18 PM ET, Sat January 10, 2015

Kano, Nigeria (CNN) Boko Haram militants opened fire on northern Nigerian villages, leaving bodies scattered everywhere and as many as 2,000 people feared dead, officials said.

“The attack on Baga and surrounding towns looks as if it could be Boko Haram’s deadliest act,” Amnesty International said in a statement.

Islamist militants sprayed bullets as they stormed in last weekend in trucks and armored vehicles, local authorities said Friday.

When they arrived, they unloaded motorcycles and pursued residents who fled into the bush, firing indiscriminately, said Baba Abba Hassan, a local district head.

Local officials reported death tolls ranging from hundreds to as many as 2,000 people.

“Dead bodies litter the bushes in the area and it is still no‎t safe to go and pick them (up) for burial,” said Musa Bukar, the chairman of the local government where Baga is located.

“Some people who hid in their homes were burned alive.”

Raid lasted for days

During the raid that started January 3, hundreds of gunmen seized the town of Baga and neighboring villages, as well as a multinational military base.

Attacks started at dawn and continued throughout last weekend, according to residents.

Though local officials gave conflicting death tolls, they agreed on the massive number of fatalities.

More than 2,000 people were killed in attacks on 16 villages, Bukar said. He could not explain how he arrived at that toll.

But the local district head said hundreds of people had been killed, not thousands. The actual toll will be known after a headcount of households is complete, Hassan said.

An offensive is underway to reclaim the areas from the militants, according to Mike Omeri, a government spokesman.

Tens of thousands displaced

At least 30,000 people were displaced, authorities said. About 20,000 of the displaced camped in Maiduguri city, the capital of Borno state.

Authorities are making arrangements to transport the 10,000 others from Monguno town, 60 kilometers (36 miles) from Baga. Some residents fled into neighboring Cameroon and Chad.

“If reports that the town was largely razed to the ground and that hundreds or even as many as 2,000 civilians were killed are true, this marks a disturbing and bloody escalation of Boko Haram’s ongoing onslaught against the civilian population,” Amnesty International’s Daniel Eyre said.

Boko Haram has terrorized northern Nigeria regularly since 2009, attacking police, schools, churches and civilians, and bombing government buildings. It has also kidnapped students, including more than 200 schoolgirls who were abducted in April and remain missing.

The Islamist group has said its aim is to impose a stricter form of Sharia law across Nigeria, which is split between a majority Muslim north and a mostly Christian south.

The United States condemned the attacks, saying the group “shows no regard” for human life.

“All those responsible for these recurring terrorist attacks must be held accountable,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

Threats against Cameroon

In neighboring Cameroon, President Paul Biya urged the international community to help battle the terror group. His call came after the leader of the terrorist group threatened him in a YouTube video.

“Oh Paul Biya, if you don’t stop this, your evil plot, you will taste what has befallen Nigeria. Your troops cannot do anything to us,” Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau said in the video released this week.

The threat against the President came after Cameroonian soldiers killed dozens of Boko Haram fighters this month.

Biya told the international community that a global response is required to combat the terror group.

CNN’s Faith Karimi wrote and reported from Atlanta, and Aminu Abubakar reported from Kano. CNN’s Steve Almasy and Ngala Killian Chimtom contributed to this report.

Israel Likely Assasinated Syrian Nuclear Scientists

Hezbollah blames Israel in death of 5 nuclear technicians in Syria

By Mitchell Prothero

McClatchy Washington BureauNovember 10, 2014

IRBIL, Iraq — The deaths of five nuclear scientists Sunday in an ambush outside Damascus has raised anew suspicions about whether Israel is conducting an assassination campaign intended to blunt Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

At least one of the men was an Iranian nuclear technician, according to Syrian state television, members of the internal security wing of Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors violence in that country.

Rami Abdurrahman, the observatory’s director, described the dead as “five nuclear engineers” in a Facebook post and said they worked at a scientific research center “near the neighborhood of Barzeh, northern Damascus.” The Britain-based observatory, which works with a network of informants in Syria, has a reputation for accurate reports on events there.

Syrian government officials, speaking to government-friendly television stations, later confirmed that at least one of the men was an Iranian “scientific consultant,” but they released no other details on the nationalities of the other four men killed.

Both Iran and North Korea have provided Syria with technical nuclear expertise in the past, most notably at a secret reactor facility that the Israeli air force destroyed in a surprise attack in northern Syria in 2007. That previously unknown reactor facility was being built with the technical assistance of Iranian and North Korean scientists, according to statements made after the attack by American and Israeli intelligence officials. The facility, which U.S. and Israeli officials said hid a Syrian attempt to start a secret nuclear weapons program, was rendered unusable in the strike and later was dismantled by the Syrians.

“We can confirm that five scientific experts were martyred by terrorists as part of the ongoing plots of the Zionist entity,” a Hezbollah internal security commander said via instant messaging from Beirut. He insisted on anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to reporters. “This follows the pattern of the enemy who backs and controls terrorists inside Syria in a program to hurt the resistance axis.”
The commander also cited the assassination in December 2013 of Hassan Laqqis, a high-ranking Hezbollah official who reportedly was tied to the group’s technical programs, including advanced drone and missile technology, according to accounts in Hezbollah-controlled media outlets shortly after his death. He was killed by unknown gunmen outside a suburban Beirut safe house.

An internal Hezbollah and Lebanese army investigation later determined the assassins had infiltrated Lebanon by sea, staked out the parking lot of the apartment complex, shot Laqqis at close range with silenced pistols and departed the country by sea in an operation that took a matter of hours, a hallmark of any of a number of similar assassinations of Islamist and Palestinian figures attributed to Israel over the last four decades.

In Sunday’s attack, the five men were killed by machine-gun fire while riding in a commuter van on the outskirts of Damascus. The Hezbollah official said he believed the attack was carried out by Syrian rebels working for Israel.

“We have long determined that the Zionist entity works closely with a number of the so-called rebel groups for anti-Hezbollah and anti-Syrian regime operations,” he said.

Since the start of the Syrian civil war, Israeli aircraft have launch at least three airstrikes on Syrian military hardware that Israel feared was being transferred to Hezbollah. Those targets have included advanced missile parts. In May 2013, suspected Israeli aircraft bombed a Syrian research center near the border with Lebanon, where advanced missile technology was under development. Iran, Hezbollah and Syria cooperate closely on the development of long-range weapons, which compose the bulk of Hezbollah’s deterrent capability against Israel.

Syria has long denied having any nuclear weapons program, but it is reported to have a small Chinese-made reactor for peaceful research purposes. It is unclear if that reactor is located in Barzeh.

The Barzeh facility itself came under attack in July 2013, when a group described by state television as “jihadists” fired at the facility with rocket-propelled grenades as staff members were departing work, killing at least six and wounding 19, according to Syrian state television at the time.

Israel, which maintains that Iran is developing a nuclear weapons capability, has recently criticized efforts by President Barack Obama to reach a compromise with the Iranian regime that would allow it to have a peaceful nuclear program and would lift economic sanctions in exchange for Iran renouncing efforts to develop a weapon.

A least five Iranian scientists tied to Iran’s nuclear program have been killed in recent years in incidents in or near Tehran, the Iranian capital. Iran has blamed Israel’s Mossad spy agency for the deaths; the Israeli government has denied involvement.

Prothero is a McClatchy special correspondent. Email: mprothero@mcclatchydc.com; Twitter: @mitchprothero
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/11/10/246402_hezbollah-blames-israel-in-death.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

Pakistani Nuclear Officers Assassinated

Two Linked to Pakistan nuclear program killed in attack

First Iran, Now Pakistan

Agencia EFE June 4, 2014 6:21pm

Islamabad, Jun 4 (EFE).- A suicide attacker killed two military officers linked to Pakistan’s nuclear program, along with three civilians, near the Kamra air base, not far from this capital, police told Efe.
The incident occurred in the Fateh Jang area about 10 a.m. when a vehicle belonging to the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission was boarded by the suicide bomber, who was on foot, after which he detonated the explosives attached to his body.

The attacker took advantage of the moment when the vehicle slowed down briefly to jump on board, according to police officer Mohammed Altaf, who said that a guard and the driver of the vehicle were wounded.

Military spokesman Abid Askari told Efe that both men who were killed held the rank of lieutenant colonel, but he did not mention the fact that they were working in the nuclear program and placed the attack in the nearby city of Rawalpindi.

Police said that the vehicle had come from one of the country’s air bases, which analysts and international media said is part of Pakistan’s nuclear program.

The installation, where dozens of the best aircraft in the air force are based, two years ago was the target of a Taliban attack in which a guard and eight insurgents died.

The Fateh Jang attack is the second one to be staged on Wednesday against the armed forces after an insurgent assault on two posts in northwestern Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan, in which two soldiers died and three others were wounded.