For the third time in three years, Syrian migrants tried to flee Greece by pretending to be a sports team. According to the Spiegel news outlet, nine Syrians in Athens, disguised as members of a volleyball team with fake travel documents, tried to board a flight to Vienna. However, the police successfully stopped them.

Last year, the police detained 12 Syrians who pretended to be handball players and provided fake Bulgarian passports during a pre-flight check. They were also heading to Vienna.

In 2019, ten Syrian refugees dressed as volleyball players with stolen and forged passports were arrested at a Greek airport trying to leave the country.

As Greece is often the first country migrants reach in the European Union, the law requires them to remain there until their asylum applications are processed.

Syrian migrants pretend to be a volleyball team yet again

A Melbourne man arrested in March for alleged involvement in jihadist terrorism has a history of extreme activity, including involvement in a violent attempt to breach Israel’s legal blockade of Gaza.

While significant attention has shifted to the threat posed by extreme right wing terrorism in Australia, the arrest of Ahmed Luqman Talib, and his co-accused Gabriel Crazzi, underlines the need to remain vigilant against the ongoing threat from adherents to violent Islamist ideologies.

Talib, 31, is accused of assisting an individual to engage in hostile activities in a foreign state.

Talib and Crazzi are alleged to have an association with Jabhat al-Nusra (also known as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham), a group on the Australian Government’s list of proscribed terrorist organisations. The group is described as adhering to “a violent extremist ideology that is anti-Western and encourages violence as a key element of pursuing its goals.” Ahmed Succarieh, an Australian man who perpetrated a suicide bombing in Syria in 2013, was also linked to Jabhat al-Nusra.

Talib’s recent arrest followed a reported raid by police on his home in October 2020, where electronic items were seized but no charges laid. The charges that Talib and Crazzi are currently facing date back to 2012 and 2014.

In addition to alleged links to Jabhat al-Nusra, Talib has been accused by US authorities of providing material assistance to al-Qaeda.

In 2013, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri announced that Jabhat al-Nusra would serve as al-Qaeda’s arm in Syria. This was later rescinded but connections between the two groups perpetuate.

His recent arrest is not the first time Talib, or members of his family, have made the news.

In May 2010, Talib, his wife and his sister were among 546 passengers who left Istanbul for Gaza on board the Turkish vessel Mavi Marmara. They were the only Australians on board this vessel.

The boat was part of a flotilla of six boats, some laden with violent protesters, attempting to break Israel’s maritime blockade on Gaza. It was organised by a Turkish group called IHH, a radical Islamist organisation with ties to Hamas, al-Qaeda and ISIS.

After being asked to leave the area, which remains under legal blockade, the vessels in the flotilla were boarded by Israeli security forces. On most of the boats, this proceeded relatively smoothly, but on the Mavi Marmara, there was organised violent resistance by highly motivated men armed with knives, clubs, axes and iron chains, and equipped with bulletproof vests, gas masks, pepper spray, headlamps and walkie-talkies. The violent clash that ensued left nine of the ship’s passengers dead, and 55 wounded, while nine IDF soldiers were wounded, several of them severely, including two with gunshot wounds.

Talib, who was born in the UK, and migrated to Australia from Sri Lanka in 1995, was among those injured in the violence on the Mavi Marmara.

According to a report in The Age, Talib received two gunshot wounds in his right leg. There are conflicting media reports as to whether his wounds were caused by ammunition or rubber bullets.

A UN report into the incident confirmed that flotilla passengers formed organised and violent resistance against IDF soldiers who boarded the vessels. While the report posited that loss of life could have been avoided, the Israeli representative on the report’s panel said the IDF responded in self-defence and “with restraint” to the violence.

Upon their return to Australia, Talib and his sister undertook a speaking tour where they condemned Israel and the IDF in the strongest terms, calling the response a “slaughter.”

His sister, Maryam Luqman Talib, recounted that an emergency medical team was assembled on the Mavi Marmara “in case of anything”. In the aftermath, she said of her brother’s injuries, “I think it is important to know this, so that people understand the true nature of the Zionist regime. These people are not human! There is no humanity in them!”

She continued: “If they really think we are terrorists, I have a message to them: I am proud to put terror in the heart of the Zionist regime.”

A decade after the Mavi Marmara incident, Talib and the Melbourne-based gemstone company he owns were designated by the US Treasury for providing material assistance to al-Qaeda.

A press release from former US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said, “Talib has had financial dealings in a number of countries and is involved in dealing gemstones, which provide him with the ability to move funds internationally for the benefit of al-Qa’ida. Talib conducts business around the world, including in Brazil, Colombia, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Turkey and the Gulf.”

Talib’s father and brother – Professor Lukman Thalib and Ismail Talib, both Australian citizens – were also arrested in 2020, a few months before Talib’s designation by the US. They were held in a prison in Qatar, where they both live, on unspecified charges. The Australian Government confirmed to media that it had provided consular assistance to the pair.

Following their release in January 2021, media reports indicate the pair flew to Turkey and then planned to travel on to Australia.

NGO CAGE reported that Sri Lanka-based members of Talib’s family were also detained and questioned.

Talib has now been remanded in custody by a Brisbane magistrate after the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions Clare O’Connor alleged he had travelled back to Turkey between 2012 and 2013 to arrange for an unidentified individual to enter Syria to fight government forces.

The picture above shows who was supporting the Islamists at the time…
Kübra Gümüşay
Sympathiser of the Millî Görüş movement, the Turkish nationalist variant of the Muslim Brotherhood…

Gümüşay is a “Visiting Fellow” of the Progressive Centre, an “Associated Expert” of the Berlin organisation Center for Intersectional Justice and is a member of the general assembly of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, which belongs to the German Green Party.

https://www.boell.de/de/mitgliederversammlung – https://aijac.org.au/featured/mavi-marmara-passenger-arrested-on-terrorist-charges/

The German federal government has introduced a mandatory PCR test for all air travellers. But not for everyone, as various sources from the Federal Ministry of the Interior have confirmed. Illegal immigration to Germany, which has been going on for a long time via Greek airports, is not affected by this mandatory test.

Germans face travel bans in their own country, with overnight stays, and even private and family meetings in their own apartments not allowed. Now the mainstream is declaring millions more people in their own country to be the new enemies: First protesters who take to the streets for the basic rights of all citizens, who have been defamed as “Covidiotes”, followed by vaccine skeptics who have been declared “anti-vaxxers”. The latest species on the hit list are vacationers: families, children, married people and singles who are trying to escape the Corona madness.

The PCR test obligation is mainly intended to deter and turn every vacation trip into a bureaucratic disaster with unforeseen costs, penalties for arbitrary Corona rules and forced quarantine.

While official figures from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bamf), confirmed that more than a third of asylum seekers now reach Germany by plane, research into the Federal Ministry of the Interior showed that no regulation had been issued regulating compliance with the PCR test requirement for migrant flights from Greece.

And this is despite the fact that Greek airports have developed into a hub for the flow of migrants and human traffickers. According to information provided to Stefan Schubert by the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI) and according to the documents examined, Thessaloniki Airport in particular has developed into a hotspot for illegal migration.

Its location between the Greek islands, Albania, Bulgaria and Turkey is strategically placed on the Balkan route. This is well known to the German authorities, the Federal Police and the Federal Ministry of the Interior and can also be clearly seen in the daily situation reports. But the federal government is doing nothing to stop illegal migration. Rather, the opposite is true.

As a request from the AfD parliamentary group brought to light, the Greek authorities are not preventing these organized flows of migrants, but are even providing migrants with passports for onward travel.

“Germany must put an end to this asylum tourism from Greece immediately and prevent entry. It cannot be that the Greek authorities issue asylum seekers travel documents so that they can board the next plane to Germany to choose their desired host country,” the deputy AfD parliamentary group leader in the Bundestag, Leif-Erik Holm, told Berlin weekly Junge Freiheit.

In 2017, “non-Schengen flights” meant that illegal immigrants could be checked upon arrival in Germany and processed accordingly by the police. However, due to extreme pressure on the federal government by the European Commission and representatives of the migration industry, it was stopped.

Experts in the Federal Ministry of the Interior have recently called for a review of all flights to Greece, but according to information from Schubert, the party political leadership in the BMI does not want to act.

Meanwhile German vacationers from Mallorca are harassed with a PCR test obligation, while migrants fly in every month in the four-digit range from Greek accommodations where poor hygienic conditions prevail. The compulsory PCR test therefore applies to everyone – except for illegal immigrants from Greece. The government has not yet answered Schubert’s request for information.

https://freewestmedia.com/2021/04/05/travel-bans-pcr-testing-mandatory-for-everyone-except-illegal-immigrants/

Yesh Atid chief and Opposition Leader Yair Lapid has acquiesced to a key demand made by the Yamina party, agreeing that Yamina chairman Naftali Bennett will serve first as prime minister if a rotational, power-sharing deal can be made to establish a new government.

Bennett met with Lapid Saturday night, following a meeting with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Friday afternoon.

According to a report by Channel 13 Sunday evening, significant progress has been made since the meeting between Lapid and Bennett Saturday night, with the Opposition Leader agreeing to Bennett’s demand that he serve first as prime minister in a rotational power-sharing arrangement.

After serving as prime minister for the first half of the government’s term, Bennett would rotate out, with Lapid rotating in to complete the term.

In exchange for this concession, according to the report, Lapid has demanded that Bennett commit to not joining a Netanyahu-led government, and to back a reduction in the number of ministries in the next government, with no more than 18 ministers to be appointed. Lapid’s demand includes a call for Bennett to publicly vow that he will only join a government without Prime Minister Netanyahu at the helm.

Bennett has yet to make a final decision on how to respond to Lapid’s offer, the report said.

Senior Likud officials expressed concern Sunday evening that the change in Lapid’s position could lead to the formation of an alternative government, and undermine Netanyahu’s chances of remaining in office. Some worried that the Likud is on the verge of losing the government, citing Religious Zionist Party chief Bezalel Smotrich’s staunch opposition to the formation of a minority government relying on the United Arab List (Ra’am) from outside of the coalition.

Earlier reports on Sunday, indicated that Bennett was leaning towards supporting a government led by Netanyahu, and that he has been trying to convince New Hope chief Gideon Sa’ar – a long-time Netanyahu rival – to back the formation of a rightist government under Netanyahu.#

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/299615

By Andrea Widburg

One of Jesus’s last acts before his crucifixion was the incident we know as “the cleansing of the temple,” when he thew the money changers out of the Temple in Jerusalem for defiling God’s house. That image came inexorably to my mind when I saw the video of a Canadian pastor, through sheer force of will, sending eight COVID cops, many of them armed, out of the church.

Visually, the video is simple but compelling. The church is on the second story of a building with a stairway leading directly from the front door up to the place where the congregation assembles. A masked female spokeswoman has climbed all the stairs. Behind her are seven police officers, in uniform, and all heavily armed with guns, cuffs, safety vests, and the ubiquitous and useless cheap paper masks.

The woman is trying to speak but there is a voice from behind the camera that thunders “Get out!” No matter what she says, he tells her some variation of “Out! And don’t come back unless you have a warrant.” The police stand quietly watching their spokeswoman as she is repeatedly prevented from saying her COVID shtick.

Every time the woman tries to speak, the man is clear. “I don’t want to hear anything. Out of this property immediately. I don’t want to hear a word. Out! Out!”

He doesn’t get physical. He doesn’t threaten her. He doesn’t waste too many words. She backs down a step. And she backs down another step. And the policeman who climbed the stairs with her starts backing down too.

When they move too slowly for him, the man begins to call them “Nazis” and “Gestapo.” Now, normally, I’m opposed to the operation of Godwin’s law which holds that, sooner or later, every argument devolves into one side calling the other something to do with the Nazis. (The law is directed at internet arguments, but it applies generally to the world today.) However, what we see in the video is heavily armed police invading a house of worship during Holy Week. Moreover, they’re doing so as part of a year-long complete denial of civil liberties. What makes the loss of civil liberties even more serious is that the experiences of Florida versus New York, and of schools demanding masks versus those that do not, show there’s no serious evidence that masks make a difference.

My suspicion is that the masks worsen things because people keep handling them. What really matters is that people wash their hands more and keep them away from their faces – the same as always when dealing with a virus.

But back to that man. Eventually, the police sheepishly retire, completely bested by his refusal to be intimated. In the second video, the man, tells everyone watching that all free people must stand against this tyranny. He describes how Germany has completely given itself over to the vaccine passport madness and says that, if Canadians don’t fight back, the same will happen there. He knows he may get arrested (indeed, in Canada, will probably get arrested), but he’s willing to take a stand nevertheless. 

Will it surprise you to learn that this brave man is Polish? It didn’t surprise me. Artur Pawlowski, the Pastor of the Cave of Adullam Church in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, is clearly old enough to have lived under the Soviet Union’s totalitarian occupation. He knows what ascendent socialism looks like and it’s not pretty.

Watching Pawlowski, I had to wonder if he was inspired by Jesus’s courage in ejecting the money changers from the temple. He knows that he has to answer to someone higher than Justin Trudeau.

As for the rest of us, the window of time within which we can act with courage and integrity (and, you’ll note, without violence or threats) is closing fast. If we wait too long, all action will be illegal.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/04/how_not_to_cower_before_the_covid_police.html