Tag Archives: Germany

Martyr for the Cause

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on October 20, 2016

Mohamedou Ould Salahi

Mohamedou Ould Salahi, a Mauritanian, was released from Guantanamo Bay back to his home country on Monday. This comes as part of Barack Obama’s effort to drive the number of inmates at the detention centre down as far as possible before his Presidency ends. Salahi is the first detainee transferred since the mass-exodus in August, leaving sixty men at Guantanamo, nineteen of them already approved for transfer. Salahi is among the many detainees who claims he is innocent and that he has been maltreated in custody, and he has written a book, Guantánamo Diary, to that effect. The known facts about Salahi’s pre-detainment behaviour suggest caution should be exercised in accepting his version of events. Continue reading →

Islamic State Intelligence Guided The Würzburg Train Attacker

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on July 21, 2016

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On 18 July 2016, in the Heidingsfeld district of Würzburg of Bavaria in southern Germany, a seventeen-year-old Afghan refugee named Riaz Khan Ahmadzai (Muhammad Riyad), armed with a hatchet and a knife, wounded five civilians, two of them seriously, on a train between Treuchtlingen to Würzburg. The four people injured on the train were from the same family from Hong Kong; Ahmadzai/Riyad then wounded another civilian seriously as he jumped from the train. Ahmadzai, who had entered Germany as an unaccompanied minor and had been living in Ochsenfurt, Bavaria, was shot dead after a chase with police.  Continue reading →

Film Review: Citizenfour (2014) by Laura Poitras

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on February 6, 2015

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Produced and directed by Laura Poitras, a Berlin-based, American-born producer and director, who has made numerous films attacking America’s foreign policy, Citizenfour rounds out a trilogy that started in 2006 with My Country, My Country about the U.S. regency in Iraq, and had its last instalment in 2010 with The Oath, a film that apparently follows two al-Qaeda members in Yemen and concludes they’re not such bad chaps.

The target this time for Poitras is the National Security Agency (NSA). Continue reading →

Book Review: The Snowden Operation (2014) by Edward Lucas

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 1, 2014

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 “Snowden is a pawn in a hostile and continuing intelligence and information-warfare operation“

So concludes Edward Lucas in a fascinating and easy-to-read brief look at the greatest intelligence disaster the West has ever experienced. Continue reading →