India, Pakistan used terrorist groups to attack each other, says Pakistan ex-president
March 8, 2019 Leave a comment
The government of Pakistan employed terrorist groups to attack India, according to Pakistan’s former president, Pervez Musharraf, who also accused India of doing the same. Musharraf, 75, took power in Pakistan in 1999 through a coup d’état supported by the country’s military leadership. The four-star Army general ruled as Pakistan’s 10th president until 2008, when he resigned from power to avoid being impeached. He currently lives in exile in the United Arab Emirates and is wanted in Pakistan for alleged crimes, including high treason. His critics accuse him of arresting several judges in 2007 and suspending the country’s constitution.
On Tuesday, Musharraf spoke on the flagship news program of Hum News, a 24-hour news channel headquartered in the Pakistani capital Islamabad. Speaking in Urdu on a phone line from Dubai, Musharraf praised the current Pakistani government of President Imran Khan for launching a crackdown on Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) the militant group that is believed to be responsible for killing more than 40 Indian soldiers in Indian-administered Kashmir. The attack sparked a tense standoff between India and Pakistan, as the two countries engaged in aggressive military maneuvers against each other. “This constitutes a step forward”, said Musharraf, referring to the JeM crackdown. “It is a terrorist organization and they tried to assassinate me with a suicide attack”, he added, referring to an attack on his presidential convoy in 2003, which has been blamed on JeM.
In early 2002, Musharraf officially banned the JeM and arrested some of its leaders, after the group participated in two high-profile attacks in Indian Kashmir. But all JeM leaders were eventually freed, after the courts decided that the government had failed to provide sufficient evidence of their participation in terrorism. Musharraf told Hum News that he eventually lost interest in cracking down on JeM. When asked by the reporter why his government did not take further action against the group, Musharraf said that “those were different times”. Instead of stopping groups like JeM, both Pakistan and India used them to carry out a “clandestine struggle” against each other, said Musharraf. Groups like JeM “carried out bombings in each other’s territory”, said the former president, adding that Pakistan’s “intelligence agencies were involved in it”. Both India and Pakistan thus used militant groups, including JeM to carry out “tit-for-tat” operations targeting each other, he concluded. The former Pakistani leader went on to say that he was “very pleased to see the [Pakistani] government adopting a strict policy” against JeM.
► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 08 March 2019 | Permalink
Holland said on Monday that it had recalled its ambassador from Tehran after Iran expelled two Dutch diplomats, in a deepening dispute involving the assassination of two Dutch citizens by alleged Iranian agents. In July of last year, Holland 
A computer hacking group with links to the North Korean government has a wider reach and is more sophisticated than was initially believed, according to the computer security firm McAfee. The group, dubbed Lazarus by cybersecurity experts, is believed to be connected with Guardians of Peace, the hacker team that orchestrated the 2014 attacks on Sony Pictures Entertainment. The company drew the ire of the North Korean government for producing The Interview, a black comedy based on a fictional attempt by two Americans to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Known collectively as ‘the Sony Pictures hack’, the attacks included the compromise of internal documents and unreleased copies of films produced by Sony, as well as personal attacks on Sony executives and members of their families. There were also attempts to damage Sony’s digital infrastructure, which cost the company an undisclosed amount in damages, believed to be in the millions of dollars.
Holland’s chief counterterrorism agency has warned that, despite losing its territories in the Middle East, the Islamic State continues to recruit operatives and is ready to launch attacks in the West “at a moment’s notice”. The warning is contained in a report published last week by the Dutch National Coordinator of Counterterrorism and Security (NCTV). Established in 2005 as the Dutch National Coordinator for Counterterrorism, and renamed in 2012, the NCTV works under Holland’s Justice and Security Minister. It is responsible for analyzing terrorism threats and assessing the country’s domestic terrorism threat level.
The Swedish public prosecutor’s office has confirmed media reports that a second espionage-related arrest took place in Stockholm this week. The latest arrest came just 24 hours after a man was arrested in the Swedish capital on Tuesday, allegedly for spying on behalf of Russia. As intelNews 
Authorities in Sweden have announced the arrest of a man who is accused of spying for Russia. The man was reportedly apprehended while meeting with a Russian diplomat in central Stockholm. The alleged spy, who has not been identified in media reports, is believed to be working for an unnamed technology company in Sweden. A report by Swedish police said that the man is working “in a field that is known to be of interest to the intelligence services of foreign powers”.
Germany’s largest far-right party, Alternative for Germany, has won a lawsuit against the country’s domestic intelligence agency, which is now barred from collecting intelligence on the group’s activities. Known by its German initials AfD, which stand for Alternative für Deutschland, the party was founded in 2013 on an anti-immigration, Eurosceptic, German-nationalist, and in some cases 
Intelligence officials warn that Iraq’s fragile stability may be at risk, following reports that as many as a thousand armed Islamic State fighters have entered Iraq from Syria in recent weeks. The organization calling itself the Islamic State (known also as the Islamic State of Iraq an Syria, or ISIS) is on its last legs in Baghouz, a Syrian village located on the banks of the Euphrates River near the Syrian-Iraqi border. Its fighters are 
The former director of Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency has been stripped of his military pension and associated benefits for co-authoring a controversial book about intelligence with his Indian counterpart. Lieutenant General Asad Durrani (ret.) served as director-general of Pakistan’s Directorate for Military Intelligence between 1988 and 1989. From 1990 to 1992 he was director of the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, which is arguably Pakistan’s most powerful government institution. Durrani, 78, has been severely criticized in some Pakistani nationalist circles for co-authoring a book entitled The Spy Chronicles: RAW, ISI and the Illusion of Peace, with his Indian counterpart, A.S. Daulat. Daulat, 79, headed India’s Research and Analysis Wing from 1999 to 2000.
The role of women inside the Islamic State is growing, as the Sunni militant group is transmuting into an underground organization, according to a Harvard University terrorism expert. Since its meteoric rise in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State has been known for advocating for strict segregation between men and women. In the early stages of the group’s emergence, combat roles were exclusively performed by men, while women’s roles were limited to childbearing and housework. But according to Vera Mironova, Visiting Scholar in the Economics Department at Harvard University, and former Associate of the International Security Program at Harvard’s Belfer Center, the Islamic State’s policy on gender roles is shifting rapidly.
A senior intelligence advisor to Libya’s late ruler Muammar al-Gaddafi has reportedly told French investigators that the Libyan government gave $8 million to the election campaign of France’s ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy’s 30-year political legacy has been marred by a series of financial scandals, for which he is currently under investigation. In March of last year, the former French president issued strong denials of accusations that he accepted an illicit multi-million monetary donation from Gaddafi during his 2007 campaign for the presidency. During a 20-minute television interview, Sarkozy described the investigation into the allegations that he acted as an agent of influence for Libya as “a waste of time”, arguing that it was over an alleged donation of less than $45,000, which represented a tiny fraction of his campaign budget.
A growing number of individuals are in custody in Lithuania, as the Baltic state continues a probe into an alleged Russian espionage ring whose members reportedly included a former diplomat and member of one of the country’s most revered political families. On Tuesday, government prosecutors 
A senior counterintelligence official in Belgium’s external intelligence service is under house arrest on suspicion of sharing classified documents with Russian spies, according to a Belgian newspaper. Additionally, the chief of the agency’s counterintelligence directorate has been barred from his office while an internal investigation is underway on allegations that he illegally destroyed government documents. These allegations surfaced last Thursday in a leading article in De Morgen, a Flemish-language daily based in Brussels.
An investigative website has linked a graduate of an elite intelligence academy in Moscow with the attempted assassination of a Russian former double spy in Britain last year. Reports last year identified Dr. Alexander Yevgenyevich Mishkin (cover name ‘Alexander Petrov’) and Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga (cover name ‘Ruslan Boshirov’) as the two men that tried to kill Sergei Skripal in the English town of Salisbury in March 2018. Skripal, a former officer in Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU, was resettled in Salisbury in 2010, after spending several years in a Russian prison for spying on behalf of Britain. But he and his daughter Yulia almost died last March, after they were 
intelNews.org 
US warns Germany it will end intelligence sharing if Huawei is given 5G contract
March 12, 2019 by Ian Allen 3 Comments
But some American allies, including Spain, France and Germany, are not satisfied with Washington’s arguments and claim that the United States is eyeing the financial benefits that would arguably come from its domination of the global digital superhighway. German officials, in particular, have told their American counterparts that Berlin has not seen any evidence that Huawei’s telecommunications hardware come with hidden interception features. Moreover, Germany says that it plans to subject Huawei’s systems to rigorous security tests before using them. On Friday, Washington increased its pressure on Berlin by informing German officials that intelligence cooperation between the two allies would be severely impacted if Chinese telecommunications manufacturers are given the green light to build Germany’s 5G infrastructure.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the warning was included in a letter signed by Ambassador Richard Grenell, America’s top diplomat in Germany. It was allegedly sent to Peter Altmaier, Germany’s Minister of Economic Affairs and Energy. The paper says that Grenell suggests in his letter that Berlin should consider rival bids by companies belonging to American allies, such as the Swedish telecommunications equipment manufacturer Ericsson, Finland’s Nokia Corporation, or the South Korean Samsung Corporation, which is the world’s leading telecommunications hardware manufacturer. The Wall Street Journal did not reveal how it acquired Grenell’s letter, nor did it say whether the German government responded to it.
► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 12 March 2019 | Permalink
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with China, Germany, Huawei Technologies, intelligence cooperation, News, Richard Grenell, United States