Police arrested two men on Sunday who are suspected of being members of al-Qaeda, saying they were planning suicide bombings in Iraq.
They said the suspects had also tried to buy a small amount of enriched uranium from a contact in Luxembourg for undisclosed purposes.
One of the men, whom the authorities identified as Ibrahim Mohamed K., a 29-year-old Iraqi who lives here, is suspected of having recruited suicide bombers in Germany, and has had contacts with senior al-Qaeda leaders, a German prosecutor, Kay Nehm, said on Sunday at a news conference in Karlsruhe. By German custom, the surnames of suspects in criminal cases are not disclosed.
Nehm said the Iraqi man had trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and spent a year there afterward fighting US troops.
While in Afghanistan the suspect had contact with Osama bin Laden and Ramzi Binalshibh, who acted as a link between bin Laden and the men in Hamburg who are believed to have carried out the Sept. 11 attacks in the US, Nehm said.
Back in Germany, Ibrahim Mohamed K. found a willing recruit in Yasser Abu S., 31, a Libyan-born Palestinian, Nehm said.
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that saw the release of hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), officials said on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that 189 Ukrainian prisoners, including military personnel, border guards and national guards — along with two civilians — were freed. He thanked the UAE for helping negotiate the exchange. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that 150 Russian troops were freed from captivity as part of the exchange in which each side released 150 people. The reason for the discrepancy in numbers
A shark attack off Egypt’s Red Sea coast killed a tourist and injured another, authorities said on Sunday, with an Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs source identifying both as Italian nationals. “Two foreigners were attacked by a shark in the northern Marsa Alam area, which led to the injury of one and the death of the other,” the Egyptian Ministry of Environment said in a statement. A source at the Italian foreign ministry said that the man killed was a 48-year-old resident of Rome. The injured man was 69 years old. They were both taken to hospital in Port Ghalib, about 50km north
‘MAGA CIVIL WAR’: Former Trump strategist Bannon said the H1-B program created ‘indentured servants,’ but Musk said that he was willing ‘to go to war on this issue’ US president-elect Donald Trump on Saturday weighed in on a bitter debate dividing his traditional supporters and tech barons such as Elon Musk, saying that he backs a special visa program that helps highly skilled workers enter the country. “I’ve always liked the [H1-B] visas, I have always been in favor of the visas, that’s why we have them” at Trump-owned facilities, he told the New York Post in his first public comments on the matter since it flared up this week. An angry back-and-forth, largely between Silicon Valley’s Musk and traditional anti-immigration Trump backers, has erupted in fiery fashion, with Musk
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland on Tuesday expressed concern about “the political crisis” in Georgia, two days after Mikheil Kavelashvili was formally inaugurated as president of the South Caucasus nation, cementing the ruling party’s grip in what the opposition calls a blow to the country’s EU aspirations and a victory for former imperial ruler Russia. “We strongly condemn last week’s violence against peaceful protesters, media and opposition leaders, and recall Georgian authorities’ responsibility to respect human rights and protect fundamental freedoms, including the freedom to assembly and media freedom,” the three ministers wrote in a joint statement. In reaction
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