Believe it or not, there is other news in the world these days that doesn’t involve the Chinese virus!
Just one of the tens of thousands of ‘refugees’ who have made their way to Europe! So much for the highly touted biometric data!
“This is a major problem,” a counter-terrorism official in Belgium told Insider. “Abdel-Bary isn’t some Syrian guy nobody has ever heard of. He’s a well-known jihadist from a well-known jihadist family … Now it turns out he’s not dead but rather living in a rented apartment on the Spanish coast.”
The arrest in Spain of an infamous member of Islamic State from London who authorities thought had been killed in Syria has sparked fears among security officials that more foreign fighters survived the fall of ISIS-controlled territory than previously imagined.
Worse, sources tell Insider, he found a way to smuggle himself back into Europe by avoiding customs checks and biometric tracking at borders.
Abdel-Majed Abdel-Bary and two unnamed associates were arrested Monday by Spanish police in the Mediterranean port city of Almeria after coordination with the UK domestic intelligence service MI5, which had been attempting to track him since he left the UK to join ISIS in Syria in 2015.
Abdel-Bary is the son of Adel Abdel Bari, who has been accused of killing 224 people in various bomb attacks across Africa. Some believe he is linked to the terror cell that committed the Bataclan massacre in Paris in 2015.
“This is a major problem,” a counter-terrorism official in Belgium told Insider.
“Abdel-Bary isn’t some Syrian guy nobody has ever heard of. He’s a well-known jihadist from a well-known jihadist family who was active on social media from Syria and was closely linked to both the cyber-caliphate activities of Junaid Hussain and the cell of UK fighters who controlled the Western hostages in Raqqa.
Now it turns out he’s not dead but rather living in a rented apartment on the Spanish coast.”
Just another of those poor suffering refugees.
The official said the immediate suspicion was that Abdel-Bary was able to make his way back to Europe at some point in the last few years amid the ongoing flood of civilian refugees.
[….]
“Who else is living here inside Schengen […the area of 26 countries in mainland Europe through which citizens are allowed to move without passports] and able to move around freely without showing ID?” asked the Belgian official, who had tracked both the Molenbeek Cell and then assisted French and Belgian special forces in targeting Francophone fighters during the fighting in Mosul and Raqqa from 2016 to 2019.
[….]
Abdel-Bary, 28, was involved in drug dealing and had a small star turn as a jihadi inspired rapper. He was influenced by his Egyptian-born father’s yearslong detention in the UK while awaiting extradition to the US on charges he was a member of al Qaida who helped plan the 1998 East African embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
There is an interesting discussion about how the French and British military attempted to kill as many of their nationals who had joined ISIS presumably so they wouldn’t have to bother with them if they turned up back home in France or the UK.
See my complete ‘Invasion of Europe’archive that extends back for a decade. LOL! You might have a little extra reading time on your hands these days!
Endnote: You might have noticed that both of my blogs were down for awhile yesterday. Apparently my hosting company was doing some fixes, nothing nefarious!
In a perverse way, it is a good thing that the leadership of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations has chosen the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)‘s Dianne Lob as its future Chairman of the Board because it energized investigators to look into HIAS many activities that for our purposes mostly center around its role as one of nine federal refugee resettlement agencies milking the US taxpayers as it seeks to expand immigration of all sorts to your American towns and cities.
HereCaroline Glick gives us a thorough laundry list of why picking someone so closely tied to HIAS signals a wrong and dangerous direction for American Jewish groups.
Last week an event occurred will be remembered as a key moment in the disintegration of organized American Jewish support for Israel and American Jewish organizational life itself.
Last Friday, the leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations announced that the Conference’s nominating committee had selected Dianne Lob, the immediate past president of HIAS to run unopposed for the position of Chairman of the Conference’s Executive Board. Her election is scheduled to take place on April 28.
The Conference of Presidents – an umbrella group that comprises 53 Jewish American organizations — is widely viewed as the most important Jewish organization in the United States.
Why is Lob’s selection important? On the face of things, it was unremarkable.
People who have known Lob for decades describe her as a garden variety New York Jewish liberal whose views on Israel are in keeping with the views of the vast majority of American Jews.
Members of the Conference of President for their part claim not to know her at all. During her term as Chairman of HIAS from 2016-2019, she didn’t participate in major Conference events like its trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Lob’s selection is an earthquake in American Jewish organizational life is not because of anything she has said or done, but because of her organizational affiliation to HIAS.
[….]
As the Zionist Organization of America documented in a letter*** to the heads of the Conference of Presidents following Lob’s selection, in a declaration before a U.S. federal court, HIAS attested that the refugees they serve today come from “Syria, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Ukraine, Bhutan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Burundi, South Sudan, Uganda, Russia, Belarus, and Burma, among other countries. Many of these clients are Muslim.”
Lob herself attested that 90 percent of the Syrians and 60 percent of the Iraqis that HIAS brings to the U.S. are Muslim.
HIAS’s contribution to Muslim immigration to the U.S. is significant for two key reasons. First it is indisputable that many of the Muslims immigrating to the U.S. are anti-Semitic. As ZOA noted, “according to the ADL Global 100 Antisemitism Index, in 16 Muslim majority Middle Eastern countries, 74% to 93% of the population is antisemitic.”
So by bringing Muslims from Syria and Iraq to the U.S., HIAS is in all likelihood bringing anti-Semites to America.
29 groups make up the Refugee Council USA, the lobbying arm of the refugee industry. They all work with Islamic Relief USA. https://rcusa.org/members/
The second reason HIAS’s efforts to bring Muslims to America is significant is because in its work in this arena HIAS has collaborated with Islamic groups associated with Islamic terrorist organizations. For instance, HIAS has worked with Islamic Relief.
Islamic Relief is a branch of Islamic Relief Worldwide, (IRW). As the ZOA noted, Israel outlawed IRW because of its terrorist activities, including financing of Hamas terror. HIAS has also worked with the Council on American Islamic Relations, (CAIR) which was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holyland Foundation trial where the Holyland Foundation was found guilty of funding Hamas.
[….]
In Israel, HIAS works with other leftist extremist groups to prevent the deportation of illegal aliens from Sudan and Eritrea.This week they launched a protest with the Anti-Defamation League in Israel demanding that Israel expand the rights of illegal aliens who have lost their jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic.
*** The ZOA letter is here, keep it for future reference if you need information on HIAS!
I have a huge archive on HIAS because of its longtime role as a US resettlement contractor and more recently because it is an unabashed Trump-hating political activist group, see it here.
….but it isn’t for lack of searching for it by the mainstream media.
For weeks I have been scouring news stories daily looking for the widespread arrival of COVID-19 in refugee camps around the world where people are living packed together and soap is a scarce commodity.
Several times I’ve wanted to just post the breathless headlines that scream a human tragedy is on the way. “Catastrophe” and “carnage” are the words that appear in many of the articles I’ve read.
But, so far (and I emphasize ‘so far’) the places where you would think the virus should have spread like wildfire are pretty much untouched.
However, this morning I found this headline at US News and figured it was time to report on the refugee ‘catastrophe’ about to explode (or maybe not):
Coronavirus Cases Rise in Refugee Camps
AS THE NUMBER OF coronavirus cases in refugee camps starts to rise around the world, experts are sounding the alarm over the vulnerabilities of displaced people during the pandemic.
There is a paragraph here taking a whack at the US and ICE, then this….
Meanwhile, confirmed coronavirus cases are turning up in refugee camps. In Greece, authorities announced on April 2 that a migrant camp had been quarantined after 23 asylum seekers tested positive for the coronavirus – the first such facility in the country to be hit since the outbreak, according to Reuters.
Bangladesh imposed a lockdown on March 24 after the first case of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, was reported in the refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Reuters reported. The camps at Cox’s Bazar house more than 1 million Rohingya.
A combination of population density, a lack of information and access to basic human services make refugees particularly vulnerable to the spread of the coronavirus, according to Refugees International.
In a country where soap and water is in short supply, as of today the whole country of Bangladesh has only 482 cases.
Chris Boian, a senior communications officer with the U.N. Refugee Agency, the UNHCR, says that there have been “relatively low numbers of suspected or confirmed cases among refugees” overall.
Never letting a good crisis go to waste, here comes the New Yorker yesterday with an interview with ‘moneybags’ Miliband about the International Rescue Committee’s report on the crisis they are sure will unfoldin refugee camps worldwide.
On April 1st, the I.R.C. released a report on how the coronavirus pandemic could affect refugees. Focussing on displaced populations in Syria, Greece, and Bangladesh, the I.R.C. found that refugees will likely face extreme risk when the virus begins to spread. “The rapid spread of covid-19 on the Diamond Princess”—the cruise ship that was quarantined in the port of Yokohama, Japan—“showed how the virus thrives in confined spaces,” Marcus Skinner, a senior policy adviser at I.R.C., wrote, but the conditions of millions of displaced people “are far more cramped and poorly serviced, and the risks are far deadlier.”
I recently spoke by phone with David Miliband, the president and C.E.O. of the I.R.C. He was formerly a Labour Member of Parliament and the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed what can be done to prevent vulnerable populations from contracting the coronavirus, how the I.R.C. is protecting its own staff, and why a pandemic makes international coöperation all the more necessary.
Of course their plan offers no real solutions. They say they are fighting “disinformation” and promoting government health services and are happy to report that private donations haven’t dried up.
They also want governments to keep their borders open, blah, blah, blah.
There is no way to promote social distancing in refugee camps, but Miliband does offer up a suggestion that more soap is needed because we all need to know this.
Miliband:
Everyone needs to know Anthony Fauci washes his hands fifty times a day and, if possible, know that their local trusted people are doing the same.
It is along articlethat you might want to save for future reference.
Only time will tell if the ‘carnage’ arrives in refugee camps like this million-plus Rohingya camp at Cox’s Bazar, but I find it interesting that it has been three weeks since the first case was reported there and there has not been any widespread infection where I expect there is no social distancing and little hand washing happening.
Although as you know by now the arrival of refugees has all but stopped due to travel restrictions put in place worldwide.
The UN halted refugee travel a few days ago and the US State Department has reported that no new refugees will arrive now before April 6th.
However, I have been on the hunt to find out if Special Immigrant Visas are still coming in and sure enough they are.
Thanks to a reader for spotting this e-mail from Lutheran Social Services National Capital Area:
Now check this out! They want a piece of a House goody bag! You’ve been reading that Nancy and her Democrat pals are working on a massive giveaway that apparently the refugee contractors expect to benefit from!
I have been checking the data at Wrapsnet (Refugee Processing Center) and sure enough 211 Afghans (who receive all the benefits regular refugees are entitled to) arrived this week bringing the total for the month of March (3 weeks) to 660 from Afghanistan.
That brings the overall total to over 66,000 since FY2008 when this effort to bring Afghan ‘interpreters’ to American towns began.
Although there is no data readily available on where the 211 were placed in the last week, one might expect they were placed in the usual top sites—obviously in Virginia and Maryland as LSS reported in its e-mail.
In this fiscal year (FY2020) that began on October 1, 2019 these are the top five states that ‘welcomed’ Afghan interpreters and their relatives.
California (2,697)
Texas (1,280)
Virginia (730)
Maryland (510)
Washington (489)
So, as your travel is being restricted, planes are still in the air bringing Afghans here for American taxpayers to support!
And, btw, Afghanistan has COVID-19. Are the arriving special refugees being tested?
This is a follow-up to my post yesterday in which I directed your attention to the Processing Countries map.
Ukraine is the location where the largest numbers of refugees are processed for your towns and cities, but Malaysia is not far behind.
And, as I said yesterday I am not seeing any US State Department guidance or mention that refugees from these locations are being blocked from entry into the US or are being tested for coronavirus if they are being admitted.
Here is the news from Malaysia (a Muslim country where we process Rohingya Muslims into the US, among other refugees who have found their way to that country).
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Malaysia reported 190 new coronavirus cases on Sunday, with most linked to a religious event at a mosque that was attended by 16,000 people from several countries.
The new cases bring the total number of infections in the country to 428, the health ministry said, making it the worst affected in Southeast Asia.
A total of 243 cases have been linked to the mosque gathering with 9 cases critically ill in intensive care, the ministry said, adding that all event participants and their close contacts will be placed under mandatory quarantine for 14 days.
About 14,500 Malaysians and 1,500 foreigners attended the religious gathering between Feb. 27 and March 1 at a mosque near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian health authorities have said.
Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said on Friday that the country was facing a “second wave” of infections, and warned of an impact on economic growth.
Chris Boian, a senior communications officer with the U.N. Refugee Agency, the UNHCR, says that there have been 
