Celso e Edgar trocaram Sintra por Londres e foram parar à jihad

A revista Sábado conta a história de dois irmãos portugueses que trocaram o mundo ocidental pelo Estado Islâmico.

O vídeo de que se fala é protagonizado por dois portugueses: Celso e Edgar. Nele defendem a causa jihad e gabam a “matança” levada a cabo pelos militantes do ISIS. Para Edgar, de 31 anos, é uma estreia nestas ‘andanças’, mas para Celso não – já tinha aparecido noutro vídeo divulgado em abril.
 
Outra novidade é o facto de aparecerem os dois de cara tapada. “Será mais um elemento de prova a juntar aos outros que já existem no processo que corre contra eles”, disse à Sábado fonte das autoridades portuguesas.

Mas quem são estes dois irmãos, nascidos e criados em Portugal, que deixaram Massamá, na linha de Sintra, e foram integrar-se nas fileiras do Estado Islâmico.

Edgar e Celso têm outros dois irmãos. Um que vive em Londres e outro, Carlos, que ainda está em Portugal. Este último conversou com a revista Sábado sobre a presença dos irmãos no vídeo: “Parecem ser eles. [A voz] é pelo menos idêntica”.

Os quatro irmãos eram muito unidos nos idos dos anos 90, época em que faziam parte do mundo do hip-hop, tendo chegado mesmo a formar uma banda. Faziam ‘breakdance’, rimas e beatbox e Celso chegou a jogar no Sporting, mas uma perna partida afastou-o do mundo de futebol.

Os irmãos Costa tinham um amigo, Sadjo Turé que também era filho de pais guineenses. Ao contrário de Celso, Edgar e Carlos, Sadjo era muçulmano. Depois de se licenciar em Engenharia Informática rumou a Londres.

O mesmo caminho seguiu Celso, “mais ou menos em 2004”, acompanhado pelo irmão mais velho cujo nome não é mencionado na reportagem da Sábado.

O último a seguir para Londres foi Edgar Costa que primeiro se licenciou em Gestão e Marketing.

Carlos, que ficou por Lisboa, disse não saber qual dos irmãos foi o primeiro a converter-se ao islão, mas acredita que foi uma influência de Sadjo que, depois de chegar a Londres, dedicou mais tempo à religião. “Foi por volta de 2006”, referiu Carlos, que também se converteu, convencido pelos irmãos numa das vezes que regressaram a Portugal.

“Em 2012, o Celso e o Edgar vieram para Portugal com as mulheres e os filhos recém-nascidos. Diziam que a Síria era um país com boas condições onde a religião era bem praticada. Mostraram-me que o Islão é o caminho correto que dá paz de espírito”, explicou Carlos.

Durante um ano estiveram a viver em Portugal sem trabalhar. “Passavam o tempo no ginásio, na mesquita e a jogar futebol”.

Agora aparecem em vídeos de propaganda jihadista a exaltarem a violência e morte de inocentes.

http://www.noticiasaominuto.com/pais/489230/celso-e-edgar-trocaram-sintra-por-londres-e-foram-parar-a-jihad

Jihadista português morto viveu em Massamá, Sintra

Segundo o Expresso são já cinco os jihadistas portugueses que morreram a combater pelo Estado Islâmico.

Sadjo Ture tinha 35 anos, nasceu na Guiné-Bissau e cresceu em Massamá, no concelho de Sintra. De acordo com o Expresso, é o quinto jihadista português a ser morto no conflito com o Estado Islâmico.
 
Ao que apurou o Expresso, Sadjo foi baleado em combate com as tropas sírias fiéis a Bashar al-Assad, não se sabendo exatamente a data em que faleceu, tendo acabado por morrer no hospital para onde foi levado em estado grave.

Sadjo conheceu os irmãos Costa em Massamá. Depois de radicalizado viajou, em 2014, para a Síria onde se juntou aos amigos Celso e Edgar Costa, Nero Saraiva, Fábio Poças e Sandro Monteiro.

Os seis pertenciam à ‘célula de Leyton’, nome de um bairro londrino onde todos viveram depois de deixar Portugal.

noticiasaominuto

Venezuelan plane caught with drugs departed from government-operated terminal

Caracas –  Nestled between the Caribbean Sea and the Avila Mountain, the tallest on the east side of the Andes, lays Venezuela’s first airfield, the Simón Bolívar International Airport.

From one of the government-operated terminals, a Cessna Citation 500 took off on Sunday Nov. 8 carrying more than 1,700 pounds of cocaine, according to the District Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.

On board were two close relatives of Venezuela’s presidential family, both of them allegedly carrying Venezuelan diplomatic passports.

Francisco Flores, 29, and Efraín Campos, 30, the nephews of first lady Cilia Flores, were among four passengers and two pilots on the Haiti-bound Citation 500. The plane was co-piloted by Pablo Urbano and Pedro Rodriguez, according to a copy of the flight log obtained by Fox News Latino.

Flores and Campos were arrested in Haiti last week on charges of conspiring to smuggle cocaine into the United States. They are being held without bail in New York after a federal grand jury handed up an indictment last week. They both pleaded not guilty.

According to the flight log, the other two passengers were Marco Uzcategui and Jesfran Moreno. Those two passengers and the co-pilots are believed to be back in Caracas and have not been charged with a crime, an unnamed source in Caracas told Fox News Latino.

As is customary in this terminal, called SAR for its acronym in Spanish, the aircraft carrying the young, well-connected men was not searched.

“The plane left without a hitch,” said a person with knowledge of airport operations. “As far as I know, it wasn’t even searched,” he added, explaining that outbound, small private jets are not searched at that terminal, which is used exclusively by the government, including the planes in the Venezuelan search and rescue squadron.

Simon Bolivar was also the airport from which an Air France jet departed with 1.6 tons of cocaine in September 2013, the largest drug haul in the history of France. Authorities eventually arrested 27 people in that case, eight of them low-ranking military officers, according to Reuters. The suspects are still awaiting trial. 

Drug trafficking measures have turned increasingly lax in Venezuela in the last decade and a half, according to analysts consulted recently by Fox News Latino.

Just months into his presidency, late President Hugo Chavez stopped a program that allowed the DEA to fly surveillance and interdiction planes over Venezuelan airspace. In 2005, cooperation between Venezuela and the DEA came to a complete halt.

Today, the DEA estimates that 200 tons of cocaine travel through Venezuela every year. However, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the country ranks fourth in the world in terms of cocaine seizures.

The Citation 500 plane that left the government’s terminal that day is registered in Venezuela to Sabenpe, a waste-management company that has received a myriad government contracts in the past, according to the National Registry of Contractors, which is part of the country’s Central Commission of Planning.

Sabenpe appears registered, but is listed as “inactive.”

It is not the first time issues involving the first lady's relatives have arisen.

Soon after Cilia Flores was elected President of the National Assembly in 2006, she fired 46 employees from the legislative body and hired 47 relatives, either by blood or marriage, local media reported at the time. A dozen of them carried the last name Flores.

A small scandal ensued, and by 2011 most of the 47 Flores were gone, some of them elsewhere within government. One of them was Efrain Campos, who left the assembly in 2011 -- it is unclear what he is doing now.

Cilia Flores, who married President Nicolas Maduro not long after he was sworn into office in 2013, was the first woman to preside over the National Assembly in Venezuelan history.

She is also remembered for her tendency to bar the press from the premises. 

Two years into her position of first lady, she is a member of the political elite in Venezuela. She has her own television show — “Cilia en Familia,” or “Cilia in the Family.”

Even after the nepotism scandal a few years ago, a lot of her relatives still hold powerful positions, according to local media. Two of them stand out: Her son Walter Gavidia Flores is a penal judge, and her nephew Carlos Erik Malpica Flores is National Treasurer and, simultaneously, finance director of state oil company PDVSA. It is the first time that the same person holds both offices.

The arrests of the nephews come as Maduro's government is reeling from an economic crisis marked by triple-digit inflation and widespread shortages that have emboldened its opponents. Polls say Venezuelans could hand the ruling socialist party its biggest electoral defeat in 16 years in next month's legislative elections.

While very few in the top tiers of government have alluded to the arrests – typically they blame the U.S. for using “dirty tricks” against Maduro’s regime – most of the mainstream media in Venezuela has ignored news of last week’s arrest.

Only the “El Nacional” newspaper carried the news on the front page. Two of the largest circulation newspapers, “El Universal” and “Ultimas Noticias” ignored the news as did Globovisión, the country’s only all-news television network that is now under government control.

Almost a week after the arrests, members of the opposition are still demanding answers.

"The government needs to establish an official version of what is happening," said lawmaker Alfonso Marquina. "We are asking for an investigation, specifically to establish if the men arrested were holders of Venezuelan diplomatic passports and it what capacity."

The AP contributed to this report.

By  Carlos Camacho/  Published November 19, 2015/  Fox News Latino.

Gunmen seize 170 hostages at Radisson hotel in Bamako, Mali

Bamako (AFP) - Gunmen went on a shooting rampage at the luxury Radisson Blu hotel in Mali's capital Bamako on Friday, seizing 170 guests and staff in an ongoing hostage-taking, the hotel chain said.

Automatic weapons fire could be heard from outside the 190-room hotel in the city-centre, where security forces have set up a security cordon, an AFP journalist said.

Security sources said the gunmen were "jihadists" who had entered the hotel compound in a car that had diplomatic plates.

"It's all happening on the seventh floor, jihadists are firing in the corridor," one security source told

Malian soldiers, police and special forces were on the scene as a security perimeter was set up, along with members of the UN's MINUSMA peacekeeping force in Mali and the French troops fighting jihadists in west Africa under Operation Barkhane.

The Rezidor Hotel Group, the US-based parent company of Radisson Blu, said two people were holding 170 people hostage.
The company said it was "aware of the hostage-taking that is ongoing at the property today, 20th November 2015. As per our information two persons have locked in 140 guests and 30 employees".

It added in a statement: "Our safety and security teams and our corporate team are in constant contact with the local authorities in order offer any support possible to reinstate safety and security at the hotel."

- Attacks despite peace deal -

The shooting at the Radisson follows a nearly 24-hour siege and hostage-taking at another hotel in August in the central Malian town of Sevare in which five UN workers were killed, along with four soldiers and four attackers.

Five people, including a French citizen and a Belgian, were also killed in an attack at a restaurant in Bamako in March in the first such incident in the capital.

Islamist groups have continued to wage attacks in Mali despite a June peace deal between former Tuareg rebels in the north of the country and rival pro-government armed groups.

Northern Mali fell in March-April 2012 to Al-Qaeda-linked jihadist groups long concentrated in the area before being ousted by an ongoing French-led military operation launched in January 2013.

Despite the peace deal, large swathes of Mali remain beyond the control of government and foreign forces.

The website of the Radisson Blu in Bamako says it offers "upscale lodging close to many government offices and business sites", serving as "one of the city's most popular conference venues" with "a stunning 508-square-metre ballroom and meeting rooms".

Radisson Blu, an upscale brand of the Radisson hotel chain, has more than 230 luxury hotels and resorts worldwide.

AFP

Family: Dad Shoots Twin Babies to Death in Mom's Arms, Critically Injures Her, Kills Her Father

A mother lies hospitalized in critical condition after the father of her twin baby girls shot them to death in her arms, and then killed the woman’s dad, according to her family.

Ultimately, Gawain Rushane Wilson turned the weapon on himself and died at the scene, authorities said.

The carnage took place in the Jacksonville, Florida, home of Travis Hiatt, the twin’s grandfather. His daughter, Megan, and her five-month-old girls Hayden and Kayden, had been living him, authorities said, according to local reports.

Wilson allegedly entered the home and forced his estranged girlfriend to pick up the babies.

“He wanted to destroy her world,” the woman’s mother, Melissa Bateh, told First Coast News about last week’s devastation. “He wanted her to watch it be destroyed.”

Bateh said her 22-year-old daughter told her, “Mama, he killed them. He killed them in my arms. He made me hold them when he killed them. He made me watch.”

Jacksonville Sheriff’s deputies declined comment when reached by INSIDE EDITION Thursday evening.

Bateh said her daughter had to crawl through her infants’ blood to reach her father, who was dying on the floor. “He wanted her to tell her brother that he was the best son ever and he loved him.”

The mother said she had misgivings about her daughter’s relationship with Wilson, who she described as threatening and controlling.

He would limit Megan’s contact with family and friends and take away her cell phone, Bateh said.

“As a parent, you know,” she said. “I knew in my gut their relationship was not healthy.”
 
INSIDE EDITION

União Africana aplaude continuação de força de estabilização "ECOMIB"

O Conselho de Paz e Segurança da União Africana saudou hoje a prorrogação do mandato da força militar e policial "Ecomib" na Guiné-Bissau e com o apoio financeiro da União Europeia (UE) para a missão, anunciou em comunicado.

"O Conselho felicitou a decisão da Comunidade Económica dos Estados da África Ocidental (CEDEAO) com vista a prorrogar o mandato da Ecomib até junho de 2016 (...) e igualmente a decisão da União Europeia de contribuir financeiramente para esta missão", refere-se no documento.

A Ecomib é uma força policial e militar de cerca de 500 homens dos Estados da África Ocidental, estacionada na Guiné-Bissau desde o golpe de estado de abril de 2012, para estabilização do país.

Dada a instabilidade política no país, os parceiros internacionais têm optado por manter o efectivo no país, mas a CEDEAO já tinha pedido que outros parceiros internacionais apoiassem a acção.

O comunicado de hoje surge depois de o Conselho de Paz e Segurança da UA se ter reunido a 10 de novembro para debater a situação da Guiné-Bissau.

Aquele órgão classificou como positivo o desfecho da crise política que eclodiu em Bissau, depois de o Presidente da República ter demitido o Governo em agosto.

O comunicado apela ainda à "estreita colaboração" dos políticos da Guiné-Bissau para conseguirem encontrar soluções para seis desafios que o país enfrenta.

"A reconciliação nacional e a boa governação, por um lado, a gestão transparente dos recursos naturais, o respeito pelos direitos humanos" e "a luta contra a impunidade e o tráfico de droga" são os quatro pontos que encabeçam a lista elencada pelo conselho.

Aquele órgão da UA pede ainda entendimentos sobre "a reforma do setor de defesa e segurança" e acerca do "desenvolvimento económico do país", tudo com vista "a garantir, a longo termo, a estabilidade e o bem-estar da população".
bissauresiste

Homenagem guineense às vítimas de Paris

Várias homenagens têm sido realizadas por todo o mundo. Esta quinta-feira foi em Bissau, a capital guineense, que uma centena de pessoas se reuniram para prestar uma homenagem às vítimas de Paris e condenar todas as formas de atentados por todo o mundo. 

Cerca de uma centena de pessoas, entre líderes religiosos, diplomatas, líderes sindicais, políticos e jovens, prestaram hoje uma homenagem às vitimas dos atentados de Paris.
A iniciativa baptizada "3 minutos de reflexão", é de um grupo de cidadãos guineenses amigos da França.

Decorreu na Praça Mártires de Pindjiguiti, no centro de Bissau, e contou com a presença do presidente da Câmara Municipal da capital guineense, Adriano Ferreira, entre outras individualidades políticas.

Adriano Ferreira afirmou, num breve discurso, que a França e a sua capital, Paris, merecem a homenagem de todos os amantes da paz no mundo e que os atentados do género que ocorreu em Paris devem ser sempre condenados.

O grupo coral da Sé Catedral de Bissau foi quem animou a homenagem com cânticos da igreja católica, hinos da Guiné-Bissau e da França.
RFI
Artigo publicado em 19 de Novembro de 2015 - Actualizado em 19 de Novembro de 2015