Mohammed Merah: Lead Suspect In France-Based Jewish School Assassins (Al Qaeda Jihadist)

Who is French shootings suspect Mohammed Merah?

Mohammed Merah, a 23-year-old man described by French authorities as a self-styled al Qaeda jihadist, has been named as the chief suspect in a series of shootings that have left seven people dead.

As a standoff with security forces in Toulouse continued Wednesday, a picture emerged of a man who was already known to the police and had apparently sought out Islamist jihadists in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"He claims to be a jihadist and says he belongs to al Qaeda," Interior Minister Claude Gueant told reporters in Toulouse. "He wanted to avenge the Palestinian children and take revenge on the French army because of its foreign interventions."

Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said the suspect told the officers surrounding his apartment that he had acted alone -- and that he had intended to carry out more attacks on police and a soldier Wednesday.

His only regret was that he was not able to kill more people, the prosecutor said.

But, Molins added, Merah indicated he was not on a suicide mission. He "does not have the soul of someone who would commit suicide, does not have the soul of a martyr. He would prefer to kill and to live," the prosecutor said.

A French national of Algerian origin, Merah had been under surveillance by French intelligence for a couple of years, having "already committed certain infractions, some with violence," Gueant told CNN affiliate BFM-TV.

Merah has spent considerable time in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the minister added.

Lawyer Christian Etelin, who represented Merah in connection with previous minor offenses, said his client went to Afghanistan two years ago.

He had become suddenly radicalized, Etelin told CNN affiliate BFM-TV, and wanted to become more involved politically.

Etelin last saw Merah, whom he described as having a "complex" personality, on February 24, when he appeared in court accused of driving without a license and causing an accident with injuries.

Merah was sentenced to a month in prison and was to appear before the judge again in early April to determine where he would serve that sentence, the attorney said.

But a series of clues, some relating to a scooter used in the attacks, instead led investigators to the apartment in Toulouse where he holed up under siege for hours, Molins said.

The shootings have revealed a ruthless and determined killer.

All seven victims were shot in the head, most at point-blank range, and authorities said they were carefully targeted because of their religious and ethnic backgrounds.

The gunman's first victims were three soldiers of North African origin who had recently returned from Afghanistan, who were shot dead in two separate incidents.

Days later, the killer struck again, killing a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school Monday.

Merah claims to want to bring France "to its knees," Molins said.

He told police he had trained with al Qaeda in Pakistan's Waziristan region, bordering Afghanistan, Molins said.

He was sent back to France after being picked up at a traffic stop by Afghan police who reported his presence to international forces, the prosecutor said.

Although his neighbors describe him as being a quiet man, at home Merah had watched violent jihadist videos online, including footage of decapitations, Molins said.

He was sentenced 15 times by a Toulouse juvenile court when he was a minor, the prosecutor added.

The French defense ministry said Merah had twice tried to join the country's armed forces.
The first time, in the northern city of Lille, he was turned down because of his prior convictions.

The second time, in July 2010, he attempted to sign up for the Foreign Legion in Toulouse but left during the first round of testing, the ministry said.

As the net closed on the suspect early Wednesday, two police officers were wounded as shots were fired from the apartment where he is holed up.

Gueant said authorities found weapons in the suspect's car, which was parked near the building.

Police tracked Merah down via his brother's computer IP address, which was apparently used to respond to an advertisement posted by the first victim, Gueant said.

His brother Abdelkader Merah has been detained, and police are questioning other family members, including his mother, Zoulika Aziri, Molins said.

She lives in the Toulouse suburb of Mirail, BFM-TV reported.

Merah's activities in Pakistan and Afghanistan led to him being placed under surveillance by France's domestic intelligence agency, the Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence, for suspected involvement as a radical Salafist, Gueant said.

But little is known about what might have triggered a radicalization.

He was born in Toulouse in October 1988, according to Elisabeth Allanic, magistrate at the prosecutor's office in Paris, and at one time he worked in a garage in a Toulouse suburb.

Lawyer Etelin told BFM-TV he had represented Merah since 2004 or 2005, when his client was a minor, mostly over accusations of theft.

He said Merah had been "polite and courteous" and had shown no signs then of a tendency toward radicalization.

That might have changed after his trips to Pakistan and Afghanistan, but Etelin said he didn't notice a big difference.

"I never discussed his political ideas with him. I knew he was politically active but he never spoke to me about this. He didn't want to talk about this," Etelin said.

"He was very discreet on this. But I never had the impression that he was an individual radically different from the one I knew in the beginning. I always knew him as being someone very flexible in his behavior, courteous, polite, soft and certainly not rigid to the point of being led by a certain fanaticism."

Etelin has mainly been in contact with Merah's older sister, who, along with their mother, he recounted, was "exasperated" with Merah's minor crimes and said "it was not possible to see him being serious."

Merah grew up in a northern suburb of Toulouse called Les Izards, which Etelin described as an area with some drug-related activity.

Merah was never mixed up in drug-related incidents but rather with robbery, he said.
Etelin has not spoken to Merah since he was named as the suspect in the killings in Toulouse and Montauban but fears the siege of his apartment will end in further violence.

"There is no situation more terrible than the one he is in now, where he will die or will commit suicide," Etelin said.

French authorities continue to negotiate with the suspect as they seek to take him into custody alive.


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French Jewish School Assassin Is Islamic Extremist Linked To Jihadist Group

French Police Say They Have Cornered Suspect in School Shooting

A 23-year-old man suspected in the methodical killings of four men and three children in this region over the past 10 days barricaded himself in a small apartment building in Toulouse early Wednesday as negotiators tried to secure his surrender.

In a standoff that stretched past 12 hours, he fired several heavy volleys at the hundreds of police officers ringing the building, injuring two, though neither seriously. At one point the suspect threw a .45-caliber pistol from the window, the same kind used in each of the three attacks.

Officials identified the man in French media reports as Mohammed Merah, a French national of Algerian descent. Interior Minister Claude Guéant, speaking at the site, said the man told negotiators that he belonged to Al Qaeda and that the attacks were meant to avenge the deaths of Palestinian children and to protest French military deployments abroad.

Investigators believe the suspect was the motorcyclist behind the killings of three paratroopers in Toulouse and the nearby city of Montauben, all three of Arab descent, over the past 10 days ago. They also believe he conducted an attack on Monday outside a Jewish school that killed a rabbi, two of his young children, and an 8-year-old girl. The gunman held the girl by the hair to execute, pausing to switch to a 9-millimeter gun when his .45 jammed. Investigators believe he was wearing a camera around his neck at the school to record his murders.

The chief editor of France 24 said in a televised interview that she had spoken by telephone to a man who claimed to be the shooter in the hours before the police surrounded his building. “He was calm, was speaking in very good French and punctuated by Arabic expressions,” said the editor, Ebba Kalondo. She said he spoke of planning more attacks and that he intended to post video of his killings online.

The suspect had traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan and called himself a mujahedeen, or freedom fighter, and had been under surveillance by the French domestic intelligence service for several years, Mr. Guéant said, “though nothing whatsoever allowed us to think he was at the point of committing a criminal act.” He became a suspect on Monday afternoon, after investigators traced an IP address, used in connection with the killing of the first paratrooper 10 days ago, to the suspect’s mother, according to Pierre-Henry Brandet, a spokesman for Mr. Guéant.

Aviv Zonabend, the vice president of the local branch of the Crif, France’s most prominent Jewish organization, who met with Mr. Guéant on Wednesday morning, gave a slightly different account, saying that investigators apparently had been unable to locate the suspect before the shootings on Monday.

The police action started shortly after 3 a.m. on Wednesday after lengthy planning late Tuesday night, officials said.

The suspect’s mother was taken to the building by police in the hope that she would help persuade the man to surrender, Mr. Guéant said, but she declined to speak to him, saying that he had refused to listen to her in the past. The suspect’s brother, who was known locally for his radical religious ideology, was detained with a friend outside Toulouse for questioning on Monday, Mr. Guéant said, without giving details. The mother was also being questioned Wednesday afternoon, according to the prosecutor leading the investigation.

President Nicolas Sarkozy presided over a funeral service for the three paratroopers in nearby Montauban on Wednesday. A fourth paratrooper was critically wounded in the attacks in that city; he was black.

The bodies of those killed at the school were flown overnight to Israel for burial. They were Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, 30, a religious instructor; his two sons, Arye, 6, and Gabriel, 3; and Miriam Monsonego, 8, the daughter of the school’s principal. Rabbi Sandler was a French citizen; the three children had dual French-Israeli nationality.

Mr. Sarkozy had ordered the region’s security alert to the high level of “scarlet,” giving security forces wide powers that include the authority to close some public places, halt and search buses and trains and deploy combined patrols of police officers and soldiers. Police officers were ordered to guard Muslim and Jewish schools and places of worship across the region.

A French lawyer in Toulouse told the BFMTV broadcaster that he had represented a teenage Mr. Merah multiple times for relatively petty crimes. The lawyer, Christian Etelin, said, “I defended him multiple times in juvenile court for thefts and for violence, for the kinds of delinquency that is common in these neighborhoods.”

Before the authorities said on Wednesday that their prime suspect claimed ties to Al Qaeda, many analysts had speculated that he might have been motivated by extreme right-wing passions coinciding with the presidential elections.

After the shootings on Monday, the main candidates in the French presidential campaign, including Mr. Sarkozy, suspended their campaigns as political debate swirled around whether the killings were somehow inspired by anti-immigrant rhetoric. The campaign has been long and heated, and Mr. Sarkozy has been trying to win back voters who drifted to the far-right National Front party.

It remained unclear what the effect of the killings would be on the election, which is only a few weeks away. Nor was it clear whether they would further stoke anti-Muslim rhetoric in the country. Muslims complain widely of feeling vilified by some political elements, on the right in particular, and the anti-immigration far right has been gaining unprecedented popularity in recent months. Some analysts have suggested that the deaths could cause a calming of the political discourse.

In Paris on Wednesday morning, Mr. Sarkozy met with Jewish and Muslim leaders and called for restraint and solidarity among the populace. “We must be united,” he said in a brief address. “We must yield neither to easy falsehoods nor to vengeance.”

Before meeting with Mr. Sarkozy, Richard Prasquier, the national head of Crif, the Jewish organization, said: “It is absolutely excluded that we confuse this character — and the Islamist, jihadist, Al -Qaeda-linked movement he represents — and the Islam of France, which is a religion like all other religions.”

“These acts are in total contradiction with the foundations of this religion,” said Mohammed Moussaoui, the president of the French Council for the Muslim Faith, who also met with Mr. Sarkozy.


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Christine LaGarde: Elected First Female IMF Chief! Sarkozy's Win!

IMF names France's Lagarde managing director

Christine Lagarde, the finance minister of France, was voted to the post of managing director of the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday.

Lagarde, the first woman to run the global financial institution, will succeed Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was arrested last month in New York on sexual assault charges.

The vote on the influential post came at a crucial time for the IMF, which has been working closely with the European Union and the European Central Bank to provide financial support for Greece and other troubled European economies.

In a brief statement, the IMF's executive board said Lagarde will serve a five-year term as the managing director and chairman of the international financial institution beginning next month.

"I am deeply honored by the trust placed in me by the Executive Board," Lagarde said in a statement.

The only other contender was Mexican Central Bank chief Agustin Carstens, who was supported by Australia, Canada and Mexico.

The IMF said it selected Lagarde by a consensus vote.

"I would like to thank the Fund's global membership warmly for the broad-based support I have received," said Lagarde. "I would also like to express my respect and esteem for my colleague and friend, Agustín Carstens."

U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner announced his support for Lagarde earlier Tuesday.

"Minister Lagarde's exceptional talent and broad experience will provide invaluable leadership for this indispensable institution at a critical time for the global economy," Geithner said in a statement.

Lagarde was also backed by the United Kingdom, Germany and most European powers, as well as some Asian and African nations.

The IMF, which is made up of 187 member countries, has traditionally been led by a Western European official.

For Greece, the real challenge is still ahead

Some developing nations had pushed to break that tradition, arguing that the IMF should consider candidates from rising economic powers in Asia and South America.

"I will make it my overriding goal that our institution continues to serve its entire membership with the same focus and the same spirit," said Lagarde.

The fund was established in 1947 to help rebuild the international monetary system after World War II. In addition to monetary cooperation and exchange rate stability, the IMF works to facilitate international trade and promote economic growth around the world.

The IMF has been led by John Lipsky, a veteran deputy managing director, since May 19.

Strauss-Khan pleaded not guilty earlier this month to seven charges involving a May 14 incident in which a housekeeping employee at New York's Sofitel hotel accused him of sexual assault.

Once considered a top candidate in France's next presidential race, Strauss-Khan officially resigned from the IMF on May 19. He is being held under house arrest in a Manhattan apartment on $6 million in bail money.

Lagarde, 55, has been French President Nicolas Sarkozy's finance minister since June 2007. She also served as the country's to foreign trade official.

A lawyer by training, Lagarde was a partner at the international law firm of Baker & McKenzie before going into politics.

According to her official biography, Lagarde was born in Paris to school teachers and has two children of her own.

She was a member of the French national synchronized swimming team and was inducted into the nation's Legion of Honor in 2000.


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Ivory Coast Abandoned By U.S. & U.N.! No Oil Interests!

So More Than 800 People Have Been Shot To Death During A Four-Month Long Civil/ Tribal War On The Ivory Coast. Excuse Me But Isn't This Also A Humanitarian Issue? Where's The U.N.? Where's France?? Could It Be The Lack Of America & France's Involvement Is Largely Due To Neither Country Having Any OIL Interests In That Part Of The World? Hmmm.





Red Cross: 800 killed In Ivory Coast Town

In an especially grisly chapter of Ivory Coast's four-month conflict, hundreds of people have been killed in the western cocoa-producing town of Duekoue.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said 800 people were shot to death. A United Nations official put the death toll so far at 330.

Guillaume Ngefa, the deputy human rights director at the U.N. mission in Ivory Coast, blamed 220 of the deaths on forces loyal to Alassane Ouattara, the man recognized by the United Nations and other global powers as the rightful president of Ivory Coast. Ngefa said pro-Gbagbo forces killed 100 people.

The massacre occurred between Monday and Wednesday as Ouattara's Republican Forces led an offensive through the country to the commercial center of Abidjan, Ngefa said.

"We have evidence, we have pictures. This was retaliation," he said, referring to Ouattara's forces.

The Ouattara camp denied the accusations.

"The government firmly rejects such accusations and denies any involvement by the Republican Forces of Cote d'Ivoire (the French name for Ivory Coast) in possible abuses," it said in a statement.

"The government wishes to establish that the situation is quite the opposite," it said. "Forces loyal to former President Laurent Gbagbo, and its affiliated mercenaries and militias that have engaged in countless atrocities in western Cote d'Ivoire, during their flight before the advance of Republican Forces of Cote d'Ivoire."

Ngefa said so far, 320 bodies have been identified and the actual number could be much higher. He said the dead included civilians as well as mercenaries.

Before the Duekoue killings, human right monitors documented 462 deaths in the Ivory Coast conflict. This was the single bloodiest incident yet.

The International Committee of the Red Cross sent a team to Duekoue on Thursday and said most of the victims were civilians, said spokesman Kelnor Panglungtshang in Abidjan.

"They saw the bodies on the streets," he told CNN. "There were so many.

"There is always a lot of resentment after something like this and it can explode," he said. "It's highly tense, obviously."

Ngefa said a contingent of U.N. peacekeepers are stationed in Duekoue and are patrolling the town.

The massacre illustrated the bloody nature of Ivory Coast's conflict, now in its fifth month. The violence erupted after a disputed November election led Gbagbo and Ouattara to both claim the presidency.

The international community recognized Ouattara as the legitimate winner but Gbagbo refused to cede power and violence engulfed the nation, escalating this week with a major offensive launched by Ouattara's Republican Forces.

Fierce fighting erupted for control of Abidjan, Ivory Coast's largest city. Gbagbo's forces were thought to be on the brink of defeat but regained key areas Saturday.

They retook control of Ivory Coast's all-powerful state-run television network that has been the embattled president's voice in his standoff with Ouattara.

An Abidjan resident, who asked not to be named for security reasons, said the network, which had gone dark after pro-Ouattara forces took control of the building, began broadcasting again Saturday morning.

An American teacher, holed up in her Abidjan apartment, told CNN she was frightened and was trying desperately to get help from U.S. or French officials to help evacuate her.

She said she last went to school Thursday and by that afternoon, she could hear the rattle of gunfire and the boom of explosions everywhere. She, too, was not identified for security reasons.

"I am very scared," she said, "because the shelling is intense."

A U.N. peacekeeping patrol came under attack from Gbagbo's forces Saturday in an Abidjan suburb, a U.N. statement said. In the exchange of fire, five members of Gbagbo's forces were shot, the statement said.

Gbagbo adviser Abdon Bayeto blamed the United Nations and global leaders -- including France and the United States -- for Ivory Coast's bloodshed by recognizing Ouattara as the legitimate president.

Ouattara knows he lost the election, Bayeto told CNN, adding that Gbagbo is a true democrat.

"For 30 years there was no trouble in the country," he said. "We are going to be victorious."

Gbagbo's whereabouts were unknown. He has not recently appeared in public and the French ambassador said his residence was empty.

Ngefa, the U.N. human rights official, said tension was running high everywhere and could explode as it did in Duekoue.

The nation had been on the rebound from a 2002 civil war and the elections last year had been expected to help begin a new chapter that would take Ivory Coast closer to becoming a stable democracy.

But the political chaos inflamed old tensions, including land issues in the nation's western region, rich with cocoa plantations that attract migrants from other parts of Ivory Coast as well as foreign workers from regional countries like Burkina Faso and Mali, said Panglungtshang of the Red Cross.

The violence has also displaced 1 million of Abidjan's 4 million people and sent thousands fleeing across the border into countries like Liberia, which is trying to hold onto its own fragile peace.

Some 1,400 foreigners, including 500 French citizens, have sought refuge at a French military camp, a spokeswoman for the French Defense Ministry said Saturday.

"The situation on the streets has deteriorated to such an extent that it's just become too dangerous to go outside," said Henry Gray, a field coordinator with Medicins Sans Frontieres, a humanitarian medical group known in English as Doctors Without Borders.

He said doctors were treating civilian casualties, many of them for gunshot wounds.

"There's a lot of pillaging and looting going on, and if you're out on the streets, you're basically a target," Gray said.

Abidjan, said Gray and others interviewed for this report, was now a shadow of its former self.


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Pres. Obama Demands Iranian Gov't Submit To Nuke Plant Inspections

(Leaders from U.S., Britain and France hold a press conference to discuss Iran's nuclear facility.)

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Pres. Obama demands Iran open plant to inspectors


President Barack Obama demanded Friday that Iran open up a previously covert nuclear fuel facility to international inspectors, saying "Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow."

Hours later, Iran's nuclear chief confirmed the existence of a new plant, which he said was still under construction, and suggested that U.N. inspectors could be allowed to visit the facility.

Obama, flanked by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, said the site "deepens a growing concern" that Iran has failed to live up to its international obligations.

Obama said the "size and configuration" of the site was inconsistent with a peaceful facility, which is a direct challenge to Tehran's claim that its nuclear plants are designed for civilian purposes.

The three leaders made the announcement before the opening of the Group of 20 economic summit in Pittsburgh.

Line in the sand

Speaking after Obama, Sarkozy said Iran must comply with international demands by December or face a new round of sanctions. "Everything must be put on the table now," the French leader said.

Brown bluntly accused Iran of engaging in "serial deception" that would "shock and anger" the world.

The Western powers had "no choice but to draw a line in the sand" on Iran's nuclear program, Brown said.

Separately, Russia said Friday that Iran's construction of a second uranium enrichment plant violated U.N. Security Council decisions and should be investigated immediately by the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

A statement by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called on Iran to cooperate with the proposed probe and said Moscow remained committed to dialogue with Tehran on nuclear issues. He urged Tehran to prove that its program is intended for peaceful purposes.

The statement made no mention of sanctions. However, earlier this week, Medvedev opened the door to backing potential new sanctions as a reward to Obama's decision to scale back a U.S. missile shield in Eastern Europe.

A senior administration official said Obama told Medvedev about the facility during their meeting this week in New York. The Chinese were informed about 48 hours ago and are "just absorbing these revelations," the official said.

Before the scheduling of the Oct. 1 meeting, the U.S. had long avoided direct talks with Tehran over its nuclear program.

Raising the pressure

The Obama administration wants to ratchet up pressure on Iran on the eve of the talks to make clear that Tehran has not been forthcoming about its nuclear activities, officials told NBC.

Earlier, senior administration officials noted that the nuclear non-proliferation treaty requires countries to disclose such facilities at the beginning of construction. This plant, located about 20 miles from the holy city of Qum, would also be in violation of U.N. resolutions requiring Iran to halt enrichment activities.

U.S. officials said that the proximity to Qum would make a strike on the facility very difficult politically as it would likely spark an uproar in the Muslim world.

Later Friday, Ali Akbar Salehi, who heads the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, confirmed that Tehran was "now in the process of building" what he called "a semi-industrial plant for enriching nuclear fuel," according to the state news agency IRNA.

But Salehi, who said the plant would "be in the framework of the measures" of the International Atomic Energy Agency, gave no details on the facility, including its name or location.

Iran had previously said it was operating only one plant, which is being monitored by the IAEA.

Disclosure on Monday

Iran has kept the facility, 100 miles southwest of Tehran, hidden from weapons inspectors until a letter it sent to the IAEA on Monday, which was publicly disclosed for the first time Friday.

But the U.S. has known of the facility's existence "for several years" through intelligence developed by U.S., French and British agencies, a senior White House official said. Obama decided to gather allies to talk publicly about it after Iran's letter made clear it had become aware that Western intelligence knew of the project, officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity to let the statements from Obama and the leaders remain the focus.

The plant would be about the right size to enrich enough uranium to produce one or two bombs a year, but inspectors must get inside to know what is actually going on, the official said.

Obama hopes the disclosure will increase pressure on the global community to impose new sanctions on Iran if it refuses to stop its nuclear program.

Beyond sanctions, the leaders' options are limited and perilous; military action by the United States or an ally such as Israel could set off a dangerous chain of events in the Islamic world. In addition, Iran's facilities are spread around the country and well-hidden or buried, making an effective military response logistically difficult.

The leaders did not mention military force. But Sarkozy said ominously, "Everything, everything must be put on the table now. We cannot let the Iranian leaders gain time while the motors are running."

The disclosure comes on the heels of a U.N. General Assembly meeting at which Obama saw a glimmer of success in his push to rally the world against Iranian nuclear ambitions. And it comes just days before Iran and six world powers are scheduled to discuss a range of issues including Tehran's nuclear program.

Grave development

Germany is one of those six powers, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters Friday that her country views the revelation of the second nuclear site as "a grave development" and called on Iran to answer IAEA questions about it "as quickly as possible."

She said Germany, Great Britain, France and the United States had consulted on the issue and agreed to a joint response. Merkel did not appear with Obama, Sarkozy and Brown because she had an already-scheduled meeting with Russian President Medvedev at the same time.

Address to U.N.

Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, made no mention of the facility while attending the U.N. General Assembly in New York this week. But he insisted that his country has fully cooperated with international nuclear inspectors. Iran denies that it is enriching uranium to build a nuclear bomb — as the West suspects — and says it is only doing so for energy purposes.

However, Iran is under three sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions for refusing to freeze enrichment at what had been its single publicly known enrichment plant, which is being monitored by the IAEA.

Officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was confidential, said that Iran's letter to the IAEA contained no details about the location of the second facility, such as when — or if — it had started operations or the type and number of centrifuges it was running.

But one of the officials, who had access to a review of Western intelligence on the issue, said it was underground and is the site of 3,000 centrifuges that could be operational by next year. The U.S., British and French officials provided detailed information to the IAEA on Thursday, Obama said.

"The size and configuration of this facility is inconsistent with a peaceful program," he said.

Iranian semiofficial new agency ISNA on Friday confirmed reports on a second enrichment plant.

An August IAEA report said Iran had set up more than 8,000 centrifuges to produce enriched uranium at the first facility, also underground and located outside the southern city of Natanz. The report said that only about 4,600 centrifuges were fully active.

The Islamic Republic insists that it has the right to the activity to generate fuel for what it says will be a nationwide chain of nuclear reactors.

But because enrichment can make both nuclear fuel and weapons-grade uranium, the international community fears Tehran will use the technology to generate the fissile material used on the tip of nuclear warheads.



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Iran Has A Second Nuke Station....Surprise!...U.S. Publicly Accuses Of Hiding

(President Obama and the leaders of Britain and France will reportedly accuse Iran of building a secret underground nuclear plant. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell and Savannah Guthrie report.)

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(How does the world fix Nuke problems? Andrea Mitchell reports.)

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Iran Reveals Existence of Second Uranium Enrichment Plant

The government of Iran has told the International Atomic Energy Agency that it is building a second uranium enrichment plant for making fuel, the nuclear watchdog agency said Friday.

President Obama will call attention to the existence of the underground facility in an early-morning statement to reporters here before the opening of the G-20 economic summit in Pittsburgh, and will say that Western intelligence agencies have been tracking the facility for years.

Pres. Obama's statement, which will be made jointly with the leaders of France and Great Britain, was added to his schedule late Thursday night. It comes a day after Obama chaired a United Nations Security Council session on halting the spread of nuclear weapons throughout the world.

Although Pres. Obama referred to the nuclear ambitions of both Iran and North Korea during the session, diplomatic maneuvering kept any mention of the two countries out of a resolution that the council unanimously approved. The omission prompted passionate criticism from French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who will join Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown Friday morning to decry Iran's newly disclosed facility.

"How, before the eyes of the world, could we justify meeting without tackling them?" Sarkozy scolded Thursday, referring to Iran and North Korea. "We live in the real world, not a virtual world. And the real world expects us to take decisions."

Iran was previously known to have one enrichment plant.

Iran's Sept. 21 letter to the IAEA stated "that a new pilot fuel enrichment plant is under construction in the country," agency spokesman Marc Vidricaire said. "The letter stated that the enrichment level would be up to 5 percent."

Vidricaire said the Vienna-based agency responded by asking Iran to quickly provide more specifics about the facility -- "to assess safeguards verification requirements." He said Iran told the IAEA "that no nuclear material has been introduced into the facility."

Pres. Obama and other Western leaders have been trying to increase pressure on Iran to disclose more about its nuclear ambitions in advance of international talks next week about Iran's nuclear program. On Oct. 1, a senior Iranian diplomat will meet counterparts from the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany in Geneva.

"We expect a serious response from Iran," during the talks, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said this week in a statement approved by the six nations. If such a response is not forthcoming, he said, the six nations will decide on "next steps."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in an interview this week that he is willing to have Iran's nuclear experts meet with scientists from the United States and other world powers as a confidence-building measure.

Ahmadinejad insisted that Iran is using nuclear technology only for energy and medical purposes and has no interest in acquiring nuclear weapons. He said he wants to buy enriched uranium from the United States that would be used for medical purposes.

The nuclear material Iran is now producing is 3 to 5 percent enriched and suitable only for energy purposes. Nuclear material for medical purposes must be 20 percent enriched -- purchasing such material would require a waver of international sanctions. While weapons-grade material is more than 90 percent enriched, making material for the medical reactor could put Iran on the next step to reaching that level.

In Tehran Friday, Iranian state television revealed the Sept.21 letter on its Arabic language news channel, Al-Alam, which is often used to transmit important official Iranian foreign policy decisions. The report quoted an unnamed source who described the letter as further evidence of Tehran's transparency in dealing with the IAEA about its nuclear program. It repeated Iran's long-held assertion that it is acquiring nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.



Pres. Obama to accuse Iran of hiding 2nd nuke plant

President Barack Obama on Friday will urge Iran to come clean about its nuclear activities amid reports that Tehran is building a secret underground plant to manufacture nuclear fuel, officials told NBC News.

The administration wants to ratchet up pressure on Iran on the eve of talks set for next week and make clear that Tehran has not been forthcoming about its nuclear activities, officials said.

Senior administration officials noted that the nuclear non-proliferation treaty requires countries to disclose such facilities at the beginning of construction. This facility, known as the "Qum facility," would also be in violation of U.N. resolutions requiring Iran to halt enrichment activities.

Pres. Obama, along with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, will make the information on the covert facility public at around 8:30 a.m. ET, before the opening of the Group of 20 economic summit in Pittsburgh.

Iran revealed the existence of the plant earlier this week in a letter sent to Mohamed ElBaradei, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, officials told The Associated Press.

It had previously said it was operating only one plant, which is being monitored by the IAEA.

The New York Times reported Friday that Tehran disclosed the existence of the facility after learning that its secrecy had been breached by Western intelligence agencies.

Iran is under three sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions for refusing to freeze enrichment.

The Islamic Republic insists that it has the right to the activity to generate fuel for what it says will be a nationwide chain of nuclear reactors.

But because enrichment can make both nuclear fuel and weapons-grade uranium, the international community fears Tehran will use the technology to generate the fissile material used on the tip of nuclear warheads.

Fresh sanctions?

American officials told The Times that the latest revelations would make it easier to build a case for new sanctions against Tehran in the event Iran prevents inspections or rules out halting its nuclear program.

“They have cheated three times,” The Times quoted a senior administration official with access to the intelligence saying of the Iranians. “And they have now been caught three times.”

The references to cheating stem from the discovery of the underground plant at Natanz in 2002 and after U.S. intelligence agencies uncovered evidence in 2007 that the country had sought to design a nuclear warhead, the newspaper said.

Pivotal talks

The revelations further burden the chances of progress in scheduled Oct. 1 talks between Iran and six world powers.

At that planned meeting — the first in more than a year — the five permanent U.N. Security Council members and Germany will be pressing Iran to scale back on its enrichment activities. But Tehran has declared that it will not bargain on enrichment.

Officials told The AP that Iran's letter about the enrichment plant contained no details about the location of the facility, when it had started operations or the type and number of centrifuges it was running.

The government officials — one speaking from his European capital outside Vienna, the other a diplomat in Vienna from a country accredited to the IAEA — demanded anonymity Friday because their information was confidential. One said he had seen the letter. The other told the AP that he had been informed about it by a U.N. official who had seen it.

While Iran's mainstay P-1 centrifuge is a decades-old model based on Chinese technology, it has begun experimenting with state-of-the art prototypes that enrich more quickly and efficiently than its old model.

U.N. officials familiar with the IAEA's attempts to monitor and probe Iran's nuclear activities have previously told The AP that they suspected Iran might be running undeclared enrichment plants.

The existence of a secret Iranian enrichment program built on black market technology was revealed seven years ago. Since then the country has continued to expand the program with only a few interruptions as it works toward its aspirations of a 50,000-centrifuge enrichment facility at the southern city of Natanz.

The last IAEA report on Iran in August said Iran had set up more than 8,000 centrifuges to churn out enriched uranium at the cavernous underground Natanz facility, although the report said that only about 4,600 of those were fully active.


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Sources: Washington Post, NY Times, Bloomberg.com, MSNBC, Ynetnews.com, Google Maps

D-Day Facts: Where, What, How, Why, When...65th Anniversary

Wikipedia----

The Normandy Landings were the first operations of the Allied invasion of Normandy, also known as Operation Neptune and Operation Overlord, during World War II.

The landings commenced on June 6, 1944 (D-Day), beginning at 6:30 British Double Summer Time (H-Hour). In planning, D-Day was the term used for the day of actual landing, which was dependent on final approval. The assault was conducted in two phases: an air assault landing of American, British and Canadian airborne troops shortly after midnight, and an amphibious landing of Allied infantry and armoured divisions on the coast of France commencing at 6:30. The invasion required the transport of soldiers and materiel from the United Kingdom by troop carrying aircraft and ships, the assault landings, air support, naval interdiction of the English Channel and naval fire-support.

There were also subsidiary 'attacks' mounted under the codenames Operation Glimmer and Operation Taxable to distract the Kriegsmarine and the German army from the real landing areas. The operation was the largest single-day amphibious invasion of all time, with 160,000 troops landing on June 6, 1944. Allied naval and merchant navy personnel in over 5,000 ships were involved.

The landings took place along a 50-mile (80 km) stretch of the Normandy coast divided into five sectors: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. The Allies had previously invaded mainland Europe September 3, 1943 with the landings in Italy.

The Allied invasion was detailed in several overlapping operational plans according to the D-Day museum:

"The armed forces use codenames to refer to the planning and execution of specific military operations. Operation Overlord was the codename for the Allied invasion of northwest Europe. The assault phase of Operation Overlord was known as Operation Neptune.Operation Neptune began on D-Day ( June 6, 1944) and ended on June 30,1944. By this time, the Allies had established a firm foothold in Normandy. Operation Overlord also began on D-Day, and continued until Allied forces crossed the River Seine on 19 August."

Weather:

Only a few days in each month were suitable for launching the operation, because both a full moon and a spring tide were required: the former to illuminate navigational landmarks for the crews of aircraft, gliders and landing craft, and the latter to provide the deepest possible water to help safe navigation over defensive obstacles placed by the Germans in the surf on the seaward approaches to the beaches. Allied Expeditionary Force Supreme Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower had tentatively selected 5 June as the date for the assault. Most of May had fine weather, but this deteriorated in early June. On 4 June, conditions were clearly unsuitable for a landing; wind and high seas would make it impossible to launch landing craft, and low clouds would prevent aircraft finding their targets. The Allied troop convoys already at sea were forced to take shelter in bays and inlets on the south coast of Britain for the night.

It seemed possible that everything would have to be cancelled and the troops returned to their camps (a vast undertaking because the enormous movement of follow-up formations was already proceeding). The next full moon period would be nearly a month away. At a vital meeting on 5 June, Eisenhower's chief meteorologist (Group Captain J.M. Stagg) forecast a brief improvement for 6 June. General Bernard Montgomery and Eisenhower's Chief of Staff General Walter Bedell Smith wished to proceed with the invasion. Leigh Mallory was doubtful, but Admiral Bertram Ramsay believed that conditions would be marginally favorable. On the strength of Stagg's forecast, Eisenhower ordered the invasion to proceed.

The Germans meanwhile took comfort from the existing poor conditions, which were worse over Northern France than over the Channel itself, and believed no invasion would be possible for several days. Some troops stood down, and many senior officers were away for the weekend. General Erwin Rommel, for example, took a few days' leave to celebrate his wife's birthday,[7] while dozens of division, regimental, and battalion commanders were away from their posts at war games.

Allied Order of Battle
D-day assault routes into Normandy

The order of battle for the landings was approximately as follows, east to west:

British Second Army:

* 6th Airborne Division was delivered by parachute and glider to the east of the River Orne to protect the left flank. The division contained 7,900 men, including one Canadian battalion.
* 1st Special Service Brigade comprising No. 3, No. 4, No. 6 and No. 45 (RM) Commandos landed at Ouistreham in Queen Red sector. No.4 Commando were augmented by 1 and 8 Troop (both French) of No. 10 Commando.
* I Corps, 3rd Infantry Division and the 27th Armoured Brigade on Sword Beach, from Ouistreham to Lion-sur-Mer.
* No. 41 (RM) Commando (part of 4th Special Service Brigade) landed on the far West of Sword Beach.[9]
* 3rd Canadian Infantry Division, 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade and No.48 (RM) Commando on Juno Beach, from Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer to Courseulles-sur-Mer.[8]
* No. 46 (RM) Commando (part of 4th Special Service Brigade) at Juno to scale the cliffs on the left side of the Orne River estuary and destroy a battery. (Battery fire proved negligible so No.46 were kept off-shore as a floating reserve and landed on D+1).
* XXX Corps, 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division and 8th Armoured Brigade, consisting of 25,000 men landing on Gold Beach,[10] from Courseulles to Arromanches.
* No. 47 (RM) Commando (part of 4th Special Service Brigade) on the West flank of Gold beach.
* 79th Armoured Division operated specialist armour ("Hobart's Funnies") for mine-clearing, recovery and assault tasks. These were distributed around the Anglo-Canadian beaches.
* 4th Free French Special Air Service Battalion from the British SAS Brigade, by parachute in Brittany.

Overall, the 2nd Army contingent consisted of 83,115 troops (61,715 of them British).[8] In addition to the British and Canadian combat units, two troops of No. 10 Commando were employed, manned by Frenchmen, and eight Australian officers were attached to the British forces as observers.[11] The nominally British air and naval support units included a large number of crew from Allied nations, including several RAF squadrons manned almost exclusively by foreign flight crew.

U.S. First Army:

* V Corps, 1st Infantry Division and 29th Infantry Division making up 34,250 troops for Omaha Beach, from Sainte-Honorine-des-Pertes to Vierville-sur-Mer.
* 2nd and 5th Ranger Battalions at Pointe du Hoc (The 5th diverted to Omaha).
* VII Corps, 4th Infantry Division and the 359th RCT of the 90th Infantry Division comprising of 23,250 men landing on Utah Beach, around Pouppeville and La Madeleine.
* 101st Airborne Division by parachute around Vierville to support Utah Beach landings.
* 82nd Airborne Division by parachute around Sainte-Mère-Église, protecting the right flank. They had originally been tasked with dropping further west, in the middle part of the Cotentin, allowing the sea-landing forces to their east easier access across the peninsula, and preventing the Germans from reinforcing the north part of the peninsula. The plans were later changed to move them much closer to the beachhead, as at the last minute the German 91st Air Landing Division was determined to be in the area.[12][13]

In total, the First Army contingent totaled approximately 73,000 men, including 15,500 from the airborne divisions.

German Order of Battle:

The number of military forces at the disposal of Nazi Germany reached its peak during 1944. By D-Day, 157 German divisions were stationed in the Soviet Union, 6 in Finland, 12 in Norway, 6 in Denmark, 9 in Germany, 21 in the Balkans, 26 in Italy and 59 in France, Belgium and the Netherlands.[14] However, these statistics are somewhat misleading since a significant number of the divisions in the east were depleted due to intensity of fighting; German records indicate that the average personnel complement was at about 50% in the spring of 1944.[15]

German Defenses:

The German defenses used an interlocking firing style, so they could protect areas that were receiving heavy fire. They had large bunkers, sometimes intricate concrete ones containing machine guns and high caliber weapons. Their defense also integrated the cliffs and hills overlooking the beach. The defenses were all built and honed over a four year period.

Atlantic Wall:

Standing in the way of the Allies was the English Channel, a crossing which had eluded the Spanish Armada and Napoleon Bonaparte's Navy. Compounding the invasion efforts was the extensive Atlantic Wall, ordered by Hitler in his Directive 51. Believing that any forthcoming landings would be timed for high tide (this caused the landings to be timed for low tide), Rommel had the entire wall fortified with tank top turrets and extensive barbed wire, and laid a million mines to deter landing craft. The sector which was attacked was guarded by four divisions.

Divisional Areas:

* 716th Infantry Division (Static) defended the Eastern end of the landing zones, including most of the British and Canadian beaches. This division, as well as the 709th, included Germans who were not considered fit for active duty on the Eastern Front, usually for medical reasons, and soldiers of various other nationalities (from conquered countries, often drafted by force) and former Soviet prisoners-of-war who had agreed to fight for the Germans rather than endure the harsh conditions of German POW camps (among them so called hiwis). These "volunteers" were concentrated in "Ost-Bataillonen" (East Battalions) that were of dubious loyalty.
* 352nd Infantry Division was a well-trained and equipped formation defending the area between approximately Bayeux and Carentan, including Omaha beach. The division had been formed in November 1943 with the help of cadres from the disbanded 321st Division, which had been destroyed in the Soviet Union that same year. The 352nd had many troops who had seen action on the eastern front and on the 6th, had been carrying out anti-invasion exercises.
* 91st Air Landing Division (Luftlande–air transported) (Generalmajor Wilhelm Falley), comprising the 1057th Infantry Regiment and 1058th Infantry Regiment. This was a regular infantry division, trained, and equipped to be transported by air (i.e. transportable artillery, few heavy support weapons) located in the interior of the Cotentin Peninsula, including the drop zones of the American parachute landings. The attached 6th Parachute Regiment (Oberstleutnant Friedrich August Freiherr von der Heydte) had been rebuilt as a part of the 2nd Parachute Division stationed in Brittany.
* 709th Infantry Division (Static) (Generalleutnant Karl-Wilhelm von Schlieben), comprising the 729th Infantry Regiment, 739th Infantry Regiment (both with four battalions, but the 729th 4th and the 739th 1st and 4th being Ost, these two regiments had no regimental support companies either), and 919th Infantry Regiment. This coastal defense division protected the eastern, and northern (including Cherbourg) coast of the Cotentin Peninsula, including the Utah beach landing zone. Like the 716th, this division comprised a number of "Ost" units who were provided with German leadership to manage them.

Adjacent Divisional Areas

Other divisions occupied the areas around the landing zones, including:

* 243rd Infantry Division (Static) (Generalleutnant Heinz Hellmich), comprising the 920th Infantry Regiment (two battalions), 921st Infantry Regiment, and 922nd Infantry Regiment. This coastal defense division protected the western coast of the Cotentin Peninsula.
* 711th Infantry Division (Static), comprising the 731th Infantry Regiment, and 744th Infantry Regiment. This division defended the western part of the Pays de Caux.
* 30th Mobile Brigade (Oberstleutnant Freiherr von und zu Aufsess), comprising three bicycle battalions.

Coordination with the French Resistance

The various factions and circuits of the French Resistance were included in the plan for Overlord. Through a London-based headquarters which supposedly embraced all resistance groups, État-major des Forces Françaises de l'Intérieur (EMFFI), the British Special Operations Executive orchestrated a massive campaign of sabotage tasking the various Groups with attacking railway lines, ambushing roads, or destroying telephone exchanges or electrical substations. The resistance was alerted to carry out these tasks by means of the messages personnels, transmitted by the BBC in its French service from London. Several hundred of these were regularly transmitted, masking the few of them that were really significant.

Among the stream of apparently meaningless messages broadcast by the BBC at 21:00 CET on 5 June, were coded instructions such as Les carottes sont cuites ("The carrots are cooked") and Les dés sont jetés ("The dice have been thrown").

One famous pair of these messages is often mistakenly stated to be a general call to arms by the Resistance. A few days before D-Day, the (slightly misquoted) first line of Verlaine's poem, Chanson d'Automne, was transmitted. "Les sanglots longs des violons de l'automne"[17][18] (Long sobs of autumn violins) alerted the resistance of the Ventriloquist network in the Orléans region to attack rail targets within the next few days. The second line, "Bercent mon coeur d'une langueur monotone" ("soothe my heart with a monotonous languor"), transmitted late on 5 June, meant that the attack was to be mounted immediately.

Josef Götz, the head of the signals section of the German intelligence service (the SD) in Paris, had discovered the meaning of the second line of Verlaine's poem, and no fewer than fourteen other executive orders they heard late on 5 June. His section rightly interpreted them to mean that invasion was imminent or underway, and they alerted their superiors and all Army commanders in France. However, they had issued a similar warning a month before, when the Allies had begun invasion preparations and alerted the Resistance, but then stood down because of a forecast of bad weather. The SD having given this false alarm, their genuine alarm was ignored or treated as merely routine. Fifteenth Army HQ passed the information on to its units; Seventh Army ignored it.[18]

In addition to the tasks given to the Resistance as part of the invasion effort, the Special Operations Executive planned to reinforce the Resistance with three-man liaison parties, under Operation Jedburgh. The Jedburgh parties would coordinate and arrange supply drops to the Maquis groups in the German rear areas. Also operating far behind German lines and frequently working closely with the Resistance, although not under SOE, were larger parties from the British, French and Belgian units of the Special Air Service brigade.

American Airborne Landings

The U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, numbering 13,000 paratroopers and delivered by 12 troop carrier groups of the IX Troop Carrier Command, were less fortunate in quickly completing their main objectives. To achieve surprise, the drops were routed to approach Normandy from the west. Numerous factors affected their performance, but the primary one was the decision to make a massive parachute drop at night (a tactic not used again for the rest of the war). As a result, 45% of units were widely scattered and unable to rally. Efforts of the early wave of pathfinder teams to mark the landing zones were largely ineffective, and the Rebecca/Eureka transponding radar beacons used to guide in the waves of C-47 Skytrains to the drop zones were a flawed system.

Three regiments of 101st Airborne paratroopers were dropped first, between 00:48 and 01:40, followed by the 82nd Airborne's drops between 01:51 and 02:42. Each operation involved approximately 400 C-47 aircraft. Two pre-dawn glider landings brought in anti-tank guns and support troops for each division. On the evening of D-Day two additional glider landings brought in two battalions of artillery and 24 howitzers to the 82nd Airborne. Additional glider operations on 7 June delivered the 325th Glider Infantry Regiment to the 82nd Airborne, and two large supply parachute drops that date were ineffective.

After 24 hours, only 2,500 troops of the 101st and 2,000 of the 82nd were under the control of their divisions, approximating a third of the force dropped. The dispersal of the American airborne troops, however, had the effect of confusing the Germans and fragmenting their response. In addition, the Germans' defensive flooding, in the early stages, also helped to protect the Americans' southern flank.

Paratroopers continued to roam and fight behind enemy lines for days. Many consolidated into small groups, rallied with NCOs or junior officers, and usually were a hodgepodge of men from different companies, battalions, regiments, or even divisions. The 82nd occupied the town of Sainte-Mère-Église early in the morning of 6 June, giving it the claim of the first town liberated in the invasion.

Omaha Beach

Elements of the 1st Infantry Division and 29th Infantry Division (US) faced the veteran German 352nd Infantry Division, one of the best trained on the beaches. Allied intelligence failed to realize that the relatively low-quality 716th Infantry Division (static) had been replaced by the 352nd the previous March. Omaha was also the most heavily fortified beach, with high bluffs defended by funneled mortars, machine guns, and artillery, and the pre-landing aerial and naval bombardment of the bunkers proved to be ineffective. Difficulties in navigation caused the majority of landings to drift eastwards, missing their assigned sectors and the initial assault waves of tanks, infantry and engineers took heavy casualties. Of the 16 tanks that landed upon the shores of Omaha Beach only 2 survived the landing. The official record stated that "within 10 minutes of the ramps being lowered, [the leading] company had become inert, leaderless and almost incapable of action. Every officer and sergeant had been killed or wounded [...] It had become a struggle for survival and rescue". Only a few gaps were blown in the beach obstacles, resulting in problems for subsequent landings. The heavily defended draws, the only vehicular routes off the beach, could not be taken and two hours after the first assault the beach was closed for all but infantry landings. Commanders (including General Omar Bradley) considered abandoning the beachhead, but small units of infantry, often forming ad hoc groups, supported by naval artillery and the surviving tanks, eventually infiltrated the coastal defenses by scaling the bluffs between strongpoints. Further infantry landings were able to exploit the initial penetrations and by the end of the day two isolated footholds had been established. American casualties at Omaha on D-Day numbered around 5,000 out of 50,000 men, most in the first few hours, while the Germans suffered 1,200 killed, wounded or missing. The tenuous beachhead was expanded over the following days, and the original D-Day objectives were accomplished by D+3.

War memorials and tourism
The Bény-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery.

The beaches at Normandy are still referred to on maps and signposts by their invasion codenames. There are several vast cemeteries in the area. The American cemetery, in Colleville-sur-Mer, contains row upon row of identical white crosses and Stars of David, immaculately kept, commemorating the American dead. Commonwealth graves, in many locations, use white headstones engraved with the person's religious symbol and their unit insignia. The largest cemetery in Normandy is the La Cambe German war cemetery, which features granite stones almost flush with the ground and groups of low-set crosses. There is also a Polish cemetery.

Streets near the beaches are still named after the units that fought there, and occasional markers commemorate notable incidents. At significant points, such as Pointe du Hoc and Pegasus Bridge, there are plaques, memorials or small museums. The Mulberry harbour still sits in the sea at Arromanches. In Sainte-Mère-Église, a dummy paratrooper hangs from the church spire. On Juno Beach, the Canadian government has built the Juno Beach Information Centre, commemorating one of the most significant events in Canadian military history. In Caen is a large Museum for Peace, which is dedicated to peace generally, rather than only to the battle.


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Sources: Wikipedia, About.com, History Place, Day Life, Google Maps