20-Dec-18: Has Iran's terrorism-by-remote-control activities just run into Albanian resistance?

The Kosovar defendants in their May 2018 trial
[Image Source: Balkan Insight]

Times of Israel has an important-sounding story today about how Albania has expelled two Iranian diplomats for what are being called illegal activities threatening Albania's security.

The threats, it appears, were directed at Israeli football players engaged in a World Cup qualifying match. 

The technical grounds for the expulsion as quoted in an Associated Press report published yesterday (Wednesday) are “violating their diplomatic status”.

The TOI report quotes Top Channel, a private Albanian media outlet [on line here] saying

the Iranians are suspected of illegal activities related to a World Cup qualification soccer match between Albania and Israel two years ago. About 20 people were arrested in Albania and Kosovo following that match, which was threatened with an alleged terrorist attack. Albanian officials would not confirm that report. The planned attack in November 2016 was said to have been coordinated by two Albanians in Syria fighting with the Islamic State group.

Albania's capital city, Tirana [Image Source]

Eight Albanians were sentenced by a Kosovo court in May 2018 to imprisonment over the same foiled attack, according to an Associated Press report ["Eight Kosovars jailed after foiled attack on Israeli football team"] at the time. Police found explosive devices, weapons, electronic equipment, and extremist religious literature at their homes:

The prosecution said the group had planned to attack the Israeli team with explosives and automatic rifles. Police found explosive devices, weapons, electronic equipment and extremist literature at their homes. The plan was thwarted when Kosovo police got wind of the plot and tipped off Albanian authorities who moved the game from a stadium in Shkoder, near the border with Kosovo, to a town closer to the Albanian capital, Tirana. The prosecution said some of the defendants received orders to carry out an attack from Lavdrim Muhaxheri, a prominent Daesh member from Kosovo and the self-declared “commander of Albanians in Syria and Iraq.” Muhaxheri was killed in Syria, police and family members say...

Kosovo used to be part of Serbia but broke away and declared its independence in 2008. The country is ethnically Albanian and religiously Muslim, and 

has been confronted with hundreds of its citizens waging jihad in Syria and Iraq. It has subsequently strengthened legislation and attempted to root out radical Islamist networks [Times of Israel]. 

What do we know about the expelled Iranians? Not much at this stage except that another Associated Press report [here] says

A tweet from President Donald Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, provided the first report that Albania had expelled the Iranian ambassador. Bolton praised Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama for expelling "the Iranian ambassador, signaling to Iran's leaders that their support for terrorism will not be tolerated." "We stand with PM Rama and the Albanian people as they stand up to Iran's reckless behavior in Europe and across the globe," he wrote.

An anti-Iranian-regime source [here] suggests Iran has been targeting Albania for some time with diplomats who happen to be intelligence operatives.

If we learn more, we will update this post.

21-Jul-16: Lone wolf truck-ramming murderer transforms - yet again - into a far more lethal figure

The weapon in the Bastille Day massacre in Nice, France
[Image Source]

What we know, or were told we know, or thought or suspected we knew turns out - almost as we watch - to be very different. And what's different makes it much, much more threatening. (For background: "15-Jul-16: The terrorist vehicle-ramming murders in France: what the media see and won't see"] Above all, this was not, in any sense, an attack by a truck.

From Associated Press tonight:

The truck driver who killed 84 people on a Nice beachfront had accomplices and appears to have been plotting his attack for months, the Paris prosecutor said on Thursday. Prosecutor Francois Molins said five suspects currently in custody are facing preliminary terrorism charges for their alleged roles in helping 31-year-old Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel in the July 14 attack in the southern French city. Molins' office, which oversees terrorism investigations, opened a judicial inquiry Thursday into a battery of charges... The suspects are four men — two Franco-Tunisians, a Tunisian and an Albanian — and one woman of dual French-Albanian nationality, Molins said. The driver was a Tunisian man who had been living in Nice for several years. People close to Bouhlel said he had shown no signs of radicalization until very recently. But Molins said information from Bouhlel's phone showed searches and photos that suggested he could have been preparing an attack as far back as 2015.

Almost no aspect of what was suggested about the attacker in the hours and first days after the incredibly lethal assault by truck-ramming has remained in its original shape. This will not prevent the very same thing from happening next time there is a terrorist attack in which, as far as the naked eye can see, is done by an individual. He or she will be a lone wolf for media and government policy purposes until the facts make that theory impossible to sustain.

We, the civilized side, are not winning this ongoing war yet.