Germany: Arrests, raids against suspected Daesh supporters

German Chancellor Angela Merkel pays her respects to the victims by laying flowers as she visits the Christmas market at Breitscheidplatz in western Berlin’s main shopping district on Dec. 12, 2017, almost a year after an Islamist attacker hijacked a truck and plowed into shoppers. (AFP/dpa/Michael Kappeler)
Updated 14 December 2017
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Germany: Arrests, raids against suspected Daesh supporters

BERLIN: Authorities in Germany have arrested two suspected Daesh supporters and conducted raids in the capital in connection with the group.
Prosecutors said Thursday that police arrested two Palestinian men Tuesday in the central German city of Salzgitter. The two 21-year-old men, who were not named, had threatened online to commit attacks and spread jihadi material “in order to create a climate of insecurity and fear.”
Separately, prosecutors in Berlin said authorities are conducting searches across the city as part of investigations into people traveling from Germany to join Daesh.
The Berlin daily B.Z. reported the suspects have been linked Anis Amri, the Tunisian who drove a stolen truck into a Berlin Christmas market last year, killing 12 people and injuring dozens. Amri was shot dead by Italian police days later.


Sri Lanka hospital releases 22 rescued Iranian sailors

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Sri Lanka hospital releases 22 rescued Iranian sailors

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka discharged from hospital 22 Iranian sailors who were plucked from life rafts after their warship was sunk by a US submarine, officials said Sunday.
The sailors were treated at Karapitiya Hospital in the southern port city of Galle since Wednesday after the IRIS Dena was torpedoed just outside Sri Lanka’s territorial waters.
“Another 10 are still undergoing treatment,” a medical officer at the hospital told AFP.
He said the bodies of 84 Iranians retrieved from the Indian Ocean were also at the hospital.
Those discharged from hospital overnight had been taken to a beach resort in the same district.
Sri Lankan authorities said the survivors from the Dena were being handled according to international humanitarian law, and the government had contacted the International Committee of the Red Cross for assistance.
The island is also providing safe haven for another 219 Iranian sailors from a second ship, the IRIS Bushehr, that was allowed to berth a day after the Dena was sunk.
Sailors from the Bushehr have been moved to a Sri Lanka Navy camp at Welisara, just north of the capital Colombo, and their ship taken over by Sri Lanka’s navy.
Sri Lanka announced it was taking the Bushehr to the north-eastern port of Trincomalee, but an engine failure and other technical and administrative issues had delayed the movement, a navy spokesman said.
Sri Lanka has denied claims that it was under pressure from Washington not to allow the Iranians to return home, and said Colombo will be guided solely by international law and its own domestic legislation.
A US State Department spokesperson said the disposition of the Bushehr crew and Iranian sailors rescued at sea was up to Sri Lanka.
“The United States, of course, respects and recognizes Sri Lanka’s sovereignty in the handling of this situation,” the spokesperson told AFP in Washington.
India, meanwhile, said Saturday that it had allowed a third Iranian warship, the IRIS Lavan, to dock in one of its ports on “humane” grounds after it too reported engine problems.
The three ships were part of a multi-national fleet review held by India before the war in the Middle East started last week.
“I think it was the humane thing to do, and I think we were guided by that principle,” Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said on Saturday.
The Lavan docked in the south-west Indian port of Kochi on Wednesday.
“A lot of the people on board were young cadets. They have disembarked and are in a nearby facility,” Jaishankar said.