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.
Indonesia yesterday began enforcing its newly ratified penal code, replacing a Dutch-era criminal law that had governed the country for more than 80 years and marking a major shift in its legal landscape. Since proclaiming independence in 1945, the Southeast Asian country had continued to operate under a colonial framework widely criticized as outdated and misaligned with Indonesia’s social values. Efforts to revise the code stalled for decades as lawmakers debated how to balance human rights, religious norms and local traditions in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. The 345-page Indonesian Penal Code, known as the KUHP, was passed in 2022. It
‘DISRESPECTFUL’: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s most influential adviser, drew ire by posting an image of Greenland in the colors of the US flag, captioning it ‘SOON’ US President Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his claim that Greenland should become part of the US, despite calls by the Danish prime minister to stop “threatening” the territory. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears for Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex, given its strategic location in the arctic. While aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, Trump reiterated the goal. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ll worry about Greenland in
PERILOUS JOURNEY: Over just a matter of days last month, about 1,600 Afghans who were at risk of perishing due to the cold weather were rescued in the mountains Habibullah set off from his home in western Afghanistan determined to find work in Iran, only for the 15-year-old to freeze to death while walking across the mountainous frontier. “He was forced to go, to bring food for the family,” his mother, Mah Jan, said at her mud home in Ghunjan village. “We have no food to eat, we have no clothes to wear. The house in which I live has no electricity, no water. I have no proper window, nothing to burn for heating,” she added, clutching a photograph of her son. Habibullah was one of at least 18 migrants who died
Russia early yesterday bombarded Ukraine, killing two people in the Kyiv region, authorities said on the eve of a diplomatic summit in France. A nationwide siren was issued just after midnight, while Ukraine’s military said air defenses were operating in several places. In the capital, a private medical facility caught fire as a result of the Russian strikes, killing one person and wounding three others, the State Emergency Service of Kyiv said. It released images of rescuers removing people on stretchers from a gutted building. Another pre-dawn attack on the neighboring city of Fastiv killed one man in his 70s, Kyiv Governor Mykola