5:
Turkey releases recording of ‘warning’ to downed jet
The Turkish army has released what it said was audio recordings of warnings to a Russian warplane before it was shot down along the Syrian border.
A voice in one of the recordings can be heard saying in English: “You are approaching Turkish airspace, change your heading”.
According to the Turkish armed forces, the warnings were issued by the Diyarbakir airbase and not by pilots.
The release of the recordings late on Wednesday came after the rescued pilot of the Russian jet said that the plane had received no warnings from the Turkish air force.
“There was no warning, not by radio exchange nor visually. There was no contact at all,” pilot Konstantin Murakhtin told Russian journalists at Moscow’s airbase in Syria after being rescued by special forces Aljazeera
4:
Islamophobic Attacks Have Spiked in the US Since the Paris Attacks
Muslims in America are experiencing an unprecedented level of discrimination, threats, and violence following the Paris attacks, according to a new report by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization that advocates for Muslim civil liberties.
CAIR says it has received more reports on acts of discrimination, intimidation, threats, and violence targeting American Muslims and Islamic institutions in the past week and a half than during any other period since the September 11 attacks.
“We have not received this many complaints about hate crimes and acts of discrimination against the Muslim community before,” Robert McCaw, government affairs manager at CAIR, told VICE News.
The report listed 26 incidents between November 13, when coordinated attacks in Paris claimed by the Islamic State left 130 people dead, and November 24. The majority of the incidents were against places of worship, where mosques were vandalized or threatened through phone calls or letters. The events ranged from someone spray painting an image of the Eiffel Tower on a mosque in Omaha, Nebraska, to armed protesters staging a demonstration outside an Islamic center in Irving, Texas.
Vice News
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Police in Toronto Are Accused of Doing the ‘Dirty Work’ of Immigration Officials
When Jared, a man living without legal status in Toronto, saw a random act of violence in early June, he did what the average person would do and dialed 911. But now, looking back at the incident months later, he says he wouldn’t have made the same call.
The 20-something man, who asked to only be identified by his first name as he waits for his status application to go through, says he overlooked his fear of being caught for living in Canada illegally, and immediately phoned the police after his cousin was shot in the leg. Jared went to the police station, provided a statement, and waited for an officer who offered to give him a ride back to his car. It was a long wait.
When the officer did finally return, he was accompanied by a man holding a piece of paper. Jared says the officers told him they had discovered an outstanding immigration warrant against him. Canadian border enforcement officials were already on their way to pick him up. Jared, who had lived in Canada for about 10 years, thought of his wife and child, and broke down in tears.
A new report released by No One is Illegal, a group that advocates on behalf of migrants, on Wednesday has found that in Toronto, stories like Jared’s are not uncommon. Police regularly call Canadian border authorities to check immigration statuses, violating Toronto’s Sanctuary City policy, adopted in 2013.
Vice News
2:
ISIS RECRUITMENT THRIVES IN BRUTAL PRISONS RUN BY U.S.-BACKED EGYPT
FOR NEARLY TWO YEARS, Mohamed Soltan, a 26-year-old citizen of both Egypt and America, endured torture, deprivation, and cruelty while locked in the prisons of Egyptian military dictator Abdul Fattah al-Sisi. In 2013, he was among thousands arrested in a country-wide crackdown on civil society activists, journalists, and members of the deposed government following Sisi’s coup and massacre of protestors in Cairo’s Raba’a Adawiya Square.
Soltan was released this year after a 400-day hunger strike in which he lost over 130 pounds and nearly died, saved only by the intervention of the American government on his behalf. Despite bending to pressure in his case, the Egyptian regime continues to imprison as many as 41,000 other political prisoners, recent Human Rights Watch estimates suggest. And Soltan worries that extremism is incubating in those facilities, where he witnessed and experienced torture. Today, he says that, through its oppressive practices, the Sisi government is effectively acting as a “recruiting agent” for extremist groups like the Islamic State.
“The regime is fostering an environment in their prisons that makes them a fertile ground for that kind of ideology to flourish,” Soltan says. “The brutality and the overwhelming loss of hope is creating a situation which fits [the Islamic State’s] narrative, and they’re using it to try and recruit people and spread their message.”
Despite Soltan’s ordeal, some of his own relatives support Sisi. Like many families in Egypt today, they are starkly divided between support for Sisi’s military regime and for the deposed government of Mohamed Morsi. Soltan’s father, Salah, who was also taken into custody, was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and served in Morsi’s government, although Soltan himself remained aloof from the party. “I was against the policies of Morsi, but I would’ve liked to have seen a referendum or early elections instead of a coup,” Soltan says.
The Obama administration has taken a similarly mixed stand, occasionally criticizing Sisi’s human rights abuses even as it continues to send him roughly $1.5 billion in mostly military aid each year.
The Intercept
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Kunduz hospital attack: US military took 17 minutes to act on MSF warnings
US military commanders in Afghanistan took 17 minutes to act after being warned by Médecins Sans Frontières that their aircraft was firing on a medical centre full of doctors and civilians, an internal investigation has found.
By the time officers made contact with an AC-130 gunship, which had mistaken the facility in Kunduz for a Taliban-controlled building several hundred metres away, it was too late. Thirty staff, patients and assistants were killed and 37 injured in one of the worst incidents of civilian casualties in the 14-year war.
The US military said on Wednesday the report demonstrated its commitment to accountability and that some of those most closely involved had been suspended from duty pending disciplinary action. But MSF dismissed it as raising more questions than answers and blamed the frightening catalogue on “gross negligence”.
The medical charity has previously condemned the airstrike as a “war crime” and demanded an international investigation. The US has been accused of changing its version of events four times in the days after the incident, which is now the subject of three probes – by the US, Nato and Afghanistan.
The Guardian
