France: A Partner In Terrorism

Lafarge Admits Funding ISIS In Syria

French company admits it gave financial support to ISIS, agrees to pay over $700 million in fines.

Washington — French cement company Lafarge has pleaded guilty to one count of providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations, admitting in court papers on Tuesday that it paid individuals designated by the U.S. as terrorists in Syria to secure the continued operation and protection of a cement plant from 2013 to 2014.

The company has agreed to pay $778 million in fines and forfeiture as part of the plea deal. 

Beginning in 2010, Lafarge operated the Jalabiyeh Cement Plant in the Jalabiyeh region of Northern Syria. According to the statement of offense, the company admitted that after civil war broke out in the country in 2011, executives and intermediaries devised a scheme to pay members of the the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and al-Nusrah Front (ANF) to secure the safe operation of the plant and generate profit. 

The payments took many forms, the Justice Department said, including "a revenue-sharing agreement" between ISIS and the company that Lafarge executives likened to paying  "taxes" to ISIS. The more cement the plant sold to its customers, the more money Lafarge would pay ISIS. 

The payments enabled Lafarge's Syrian subsidiary to get its employees and suppliers through ISIS and ANF checkpoints on the roads to the plant and block competitors from Turkey.

These funds — which secured both raw materials for production and protection for employees — violated federal law, the Justice Department said, and Lafarge was aware of their illegality. Their actions enabled the company to bring in approximately $70.3 million in revenue. 

"In its pursuit of profits, Lafarge and its top executives not only broke the law — they helped finance a violent reign of terror that ISIS and al-Nusrah imposed on the people of Syria," Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Tuesday when the plea agreement was announced, "We expect far more from companies, particularly those that operate in high-risk environments.   

Monaco added that, as public reports indicate, French authorities have already arrested executives implicated in the scheme.  

"Lafarge and its leadership had every reason to know exactly with whom they were dealing — and they didn't flinch. Instead, Lafarge forged ahead, working with ISIS to keep operations open, undercut competitors, and maximize revenue. And all the while, through their support and funding, Lafarge enabled the operations of a brutal terrorist organization," Monaco said.

Court documents also detailed numerous communications between Lafarge executives and unnamed intermediaries who acted as middlemen between the French company and the terrorists. The company admitted to paying these individuals $1,113,324 for their cooperation and covert assistance. 

On August 20, 2013, a company executives wrote in an email, "It is clear that we have an issue with ISIS and Al Nusra and we have asked our partner [Intermediary 1] to work on it," according to court documents. And in another email described in the plea papers, an intermediary wrote to a Lafarge executive that he "officially" represented ISIS "for investments." 

"The defendants negotiated and made unlawful payments at a time when these groups were gaining territory and brutalizing innocent civilians in Syria and elsewhere and were actively plotting against Americans," said Matt Olsen, head of the Justice Department's National Security Division, "There is no justification – none – for a multi-national corporation authorizing payments to a designated terrorist group." 

Lafarge's actions at issue were the subject of an independent review within the company that yielded a report and corrective measures. 

According to the Holcim Group, the Swiss multinational company that acquired Lafarge in July 2015 , "None of the conduct involved Lafarge operations or employees in the United States and none of the executives who were involved in the conduct are with Lafarge or any affiliated entities today," noting none of the employees targeted in the federal probe were found to have shared any of terrorist organizations' ideologies. 

In a written statement following Tuesday's resolution, Lafarge said, "[We] have accepted responsibility for the actions of the individual executives involved, whose behavior was in flagrant violation of Lafarge's Code of Conduct. We deeply regret that this conduct occurred and have worked with the U.S. Department of Justice to resolve this matter."

Source: CBS News

~ Clear As Mud ~ Are you confused by what's going on in the Middle East?  Let me explain: We support the Iraqi government in the fight against the Islamic State. We don't like IS, but IS is supported by Saudi Arabia, whom we do like. We don't like President Assad in Syria. We support the fight against him, but not IS, which is also fighting against him.  We don't like Iran, but Iran supports the Iraqi government against IS.  So, some of our friends support our enemies and some of our enemies are fighting against our other enemies, whom we want to lose, but we don't want our enemies who are fighting our enemies to win.  If the people we want to defeat are defeated, they might be replaced by people we like even less.  And all this was started by us invading a country to drive out terrorists who weren't actually there until we went to drive them out.  Do you understand now? By Aubrey Bailey, Fleet, Hants. Transcribed by: CZ

~ Syria: Shia Are Killing Us ~

Witness the brutality and cruelty that the Alawites of Syria, with aid from Iran's Shia, have subjected the Sunni's of Syria to.

~ Hezbollah Executes Wounded Syrian Rebels ~

Hassan Nasrallah and his Hezbollah have lambasted Syria's "Sunni takfiri fighter's" for the atrocities they committed against pow's, wounded soldiers and civilians, and that they supposedly held the moral high ground in that area, but this video proves that they are no better.

~ Al-Bayda: Anatomy Of A War Crime ~

Courtesy Of: Channel 4 News

At least 169 people, including women and children, were killed in a massacre in the Syrian town of al-Bayda earlier this year. Warning: this exclusive video contains extremely distressing footage.

Warning: the video below contains extremely distressing footage from the beginning

At seven in the morning of 2 May this year, Syrian government forces entered the village of al-Bayda, an opposition enclave nestled in the hills by the Mediterranean coast in the western governorate of Tartus, writes James Brabazon.

Al-Bayda was a sleepy place. Not much happened there, and until this spring was unremarkable except for one defining fact: it was a predominantly Sunni village, entirely surrounded by pro-regime Alawite and Christian territory.

The Syrian government didn't consider al-Bayda to be a threat. In May 2011 they rounded up all the men in the village square and beat many of them up to remind them President Assad was in charge - and then more or less left it alone.

There was no permanent Syrian army force there, no big checkpoint and no fighting. Regime forces came and went as they pleased. No-one attacked them.

SHOOTOUT

  The only function that al-Bayda played for the opposition was to help smuggle out individual deserting government soldiers who'd run away from their bases on the coast and were trying to reach rebel-held territory.

So when the Syrian army arrived in May - to arrest a group of three Syrian army deserters who were being hidden in the outskirts village by supporters of the opposition to President Assad - no-one could have guessed what would happen.

First, there was a shootout. The deserters and a group of around a dozen opposition fighters who went to their assistance - local men with light weapons - opened fire on the army. Residents said that later they saw the bodies of at least a dozen dead Syrian Army soldiers, their corpses trapped in the burned-out remains of their ambushed vehicle.

Taking no chances, the regime forces called in reinforcements. By 1pm the firefight was over. The deserters were either killed, or fled along with the opposition fighters up into the caves far outside the village.

MASSACRE

  Now government fighters massed around al-Bayda: regular Syrian Arab army units; uniformed national defence force paramilitaries (the so-called shabiha); and Syrian army special forces operators.

From the outskirts where the skirmish had taken place, the army and paramilitaries moved in. From three axes, in coordinated deployments, they swept through al-Bayda, moving from house to house.

At 1.30pm the killing began. Men and women were separated in the houses. The "men" - which included teenage boys - were either executed immediately, or marched to the village square to be killed en masse. Most were shot. Some were hacked to death with long knives or cleavers. At least one young boy, Luqman al-Hiris, was beheaded - in front of his mother.

In the house of Mustafa Biyasi, 30 women and children were herded into one room and then executed - shot at point blank. Saffa Biyasi cuddled her baby boy, Hamza Biyasi. They lay dead next to each other, serene despite their injuries. Afnan Biyasi and another small child spooned each other on the bed they were shot on, perhaps holding each other for comfort in the last moments before the bullets ripped through their tiny bodies.

By 5pm the massacre was over. The Syrian army had killed at least 169 civilians in four hours. The verified final death toll is likely to reach beyond 250.

BURNED

  Bodies were stacked up in the local cellphone shop and burned, making them hard to identify. Um Mohammed, an eye witness to the massacre, was able to identify the charred remains of her son only by the chipped fingernail he'd broken earlier.

The next day government forces returned and burned al-Bayda. The sleepy village which once had a population of around 5,000 people was empty. Refugees fled to rebel-held areas of Syria and then on to Turkey and Lebanon.

If the government's strategy has been to cleanse al-Bayda of its Sunni Muslim residents then they were successful: with the exception of a few elderly people too old to leave, only the Christian quarter remains inhabited.

Thirteen members of Fattou family, who did try to return were wiped out in their home by Syrian security forces on 21 July.

'THE BLACK VILLAGE'

  While the investigation into the regime's alleged use of nerve gas continues, the 2 May massacre in al-Bayda remains the single, most extensive verified act of the killing of civilians carried out by government forces since the war began.

But what perhaps is as shocking as the eyewitness accounts of murder by uniformed government troops is that the massacre at al-Bayda was almost entirely unreported in the mainstream media: a few short news pieces, a lot of web traffic and a report and brief overview at the time in the western press is really all the attention that al-Bayda received.

"Sara" - a 12-year-old girl who survived the massacre and who was interviewed for this programme, found the body of her tortured and murdered father. When asked if there was anything she'd like to say to the people abroad who might see this film she replied:

"The world should pay attention about what is happening in al-Bayda. Why is everyone asleep? Why don't they do something?

"We had one nursing baby who died in his mother's lap. What has he done? Did he overthrow the president? People should stand up to them, to our enemies.

"You cannot just keep quiet. This is not right. They have slaughtered all of us. They have emptied al-Bayda. There is no-one there any more. It used to be called al-Bayda – the white village. Now they call it al-Sawda – the black village."

~ Iranians Fighting In Syria ~ A Syrian rebel group has released video it says it found after a battle with Iranian fighters in Aleppo. It is said to show an Iranian-run camp, which is also home to Syrian troops. Al Jazeera's Jamal Elshayyal reports.

~ Birds Of A Feather, Flock Together ~ Egypt's Dictator and Usurper: Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, Is Supplying Syria's Dictator : Bashar Al-Assad With Weapons Egyptian blood wasn't enough to quench Sisi's thirst, so he turns his attention to Syrian blood 1. One of the causes that made Sisi overthrow President Morsi, was Morsi's readiness  to permit Egyptian's to go to Syria and aid the resistance, and that's unacceptable. But it's totally acceptable for Sisi to aid Bashar. 2. The usurpers accused Turkey of sending a ship filled with weapons to the Muslim Brotherhood, and that's unacceptable. But it's totally acceptable for Egypt to send weapons to Bashar 3. The usurpers were furious when Erdogan refused to recognize their illegitimate government and accused Turkey (Mauritius, South Africa, Ecuador and others) of meddling in Egypt's internal affairs, and that's unacceptable. But it's quite acceptable for the usurpers to meddle in Syria's internal affairs.