PM deplores jihadist brutality
Maliki defiant in face of pressure
Canberra – A shocking image believed to show a Sydney boy holding a decapitated head in Syria showed the ‘‘barbaric’’ nature of the terrorist organisation the Islamic State, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has said.
The image posted on Twitter shows a young boy, believed to be the son of Sydney jihadist Khaled Sharrouf, holding up the head of a slain Syrian soldier.
The image was taken in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa and was posted last week on the Twitter account of Sharrouf, who fled to Syria last year and is now an Isis fighter.
Abbott said yesterday that Australia would ‘‘gladly join the humanitarian airlift’’ in supplying aid to ten of thousands of Yazidi people and Christians trapped by the ‘‘terrorist army’’ in Iraq.
He said Isis was trying to establish a ‘‘terrorist state’’ in Iraq Baghdad – A bloc comprising Iraq’s biggest Shi’ite parties is close to nominating a prime minister, the deputy speaker of parliament said yesterday, directly challenging Nouri al-Maliki who has refused to give up his bid for a third term.
Haider al-Abadi’s comments in a tweet came after police sources said special forces and Shi’ite militias loyal to Maliki had been deployed in strategic areas of Baghdad after he made a defiant speech on television suggesting he would not cave in to pressure to drop his bid for another term.
Abadi is one of the people mentioned as a possible successor to Maliki. In his tweet Abadi said government forces were moving around the capital in anticipation of security breaches.
Maliki accused Iraq’s Kurdish President Fouad Masoum of violating the constitution by missing a deadline for him to ask the biggest political bloc to nominate a prime minister and form a government.
‘‘I will submit today an official complaint to the federal court against the president of the Republic for committing a clear constitutional violation for the sake of political calculations,’’ Maliki said in the televised speech.
Serving in a caretaker capacity since an inconclusive election in April, Maliki has defied calls by Sunnis, Kurds, some fellow Shi’ites, regional power broker Iran and Iraq’s top cleric to step aside for a less polarising figure.
Critics accuse Maliki of pursuing a sectarian agenda which has sidelined Sunnis and prompted some of them to support Islamic State militants, whose latest sweep through northern Iraq has alarmed the Baghdad government and its Western allies.
Islamic State militants have capitalised on the political deadlock and sectarian tensions, making fresh gains after arriving in the north of the country in June from Syria. The group, which sees Iraq’s majority Shi’ites as infidels who deserve to be killed, has ruthlessly moved through one town after another, using tanks and heavy weapons it seized from soldiers who have fled in their thousands.
Islamic State militants have killed hundreds of Iraq’s minority Yazidis, burying some alive and taking women as slaves.
Human rights minister Mohammed Shia alSudani accused the Sunni Muslim militants of celebrating what he called ‘‘a vicious atrocity’’.
The US Central Command said drones and jet aircraft had hit Islamic State armed trucks and mortar positions near Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region which had been relatively stable throughout the past decade until insurgents swept across northwestern Iraq this summer.
That marked a third successive day of US air strikes, and Central Command said that they were aimed at protecting Kurdish peshmerga forces as they face off against the militants near Arbil, the site of a US consulate and a US-Iraqi joint military operations centre.
The Islamists’ advance in the past week has forced tens of thousands to flee, threatened Arbil and provoked the first US attacks since
‘‘We see more and more evidence of just how barbaric this entity is. ’’ Tony Abbott
and posed ‘‘extraordinary problems not just for the people of the Middle East but for the wider world’’.
‘‘We see more and more evidence of just how barbaric this entity is,’’ Abbott told ABC Radio.
‘‘I believe there are more photographs in the newspapers in Australia today of the kind of hideous atrocities this group is capable of,’’ he said.
The photo shows a boy, wearing a cap, checked pants and a blue shirt, struggling with both arms to hold up the head of the slain soldier. Washington withdrew troops from Iraq in late 2011, nearly nine years after invading to oust Saddam Hussein.
Consolidating a territorial grip that includes tracts of Syrian desert and stretches toward Baghdad, the Islamic State’s local and foreign fighters have swept into areas where non-Sunni groups live. The group wants to establish
The caption reads: ‘‘That’s my boy!’’
It is one of several photos posted by Sharrouf, who security agencies believe travelled to Syria with his family.
Another photo shows Sharrouf also holding the decapitated head, while in another photograph, he is dressed in camouflage fatigues and posing with his three young sons who are holding guns.
Defence Minister David Johnston said yesterday the photographs underlined why the government was moving to introduce tougher counterterrorism laws.
‘‘I’m obviously revolted by that and it underscores the importance of the counterterrorism laws we are seeking to enact,’’ Johnston told ABC Radio.
Sharrouf, a convicted terrorist, is wanted by Australian Federal Police over crimes in Syria and Iraq, which include the shooting religious rule in a caliphate straddling Syria and Iraq and has tapped into widespread anger among Iraq’s Sunnis at a democratic system dominated by the Shi’ite Muslim majority following the US invasion of 2003.
Iraqis have slipped back into sectarian bloodshed not seen since 2006-2007 – the peak of a civil war.
The Sunni militants routed execution of a captured Iraqi official in the desert outside the Iraqi city of Mosul.
The 31-year-old previously was sentenced to five years and three months in prison in Australia for his role in the 2005 Pendennis plot. He pleaded guilty to possessing items, six clocks and 140 batteries, connected with the preparation of a terrorist act.
Late last year, Sharrouf left for the Middle East on his brother’s passport.
He recently sent an extraordinary manifesto to Fairfax Media, threatening a terrorist attack on Australian soil and revealing he had been ‘‘on the path they hate’’ since he was 19.
He also criticised the government’s hypocrisy in allowing Jews to fight for the Israeli Defence Force while banning Muslims from fighting in the Syrian or Iraqi conflicts. Kurds in their latest advance with tanks, artillery, mortars and vehicles seized from fleeing Iraqi troops.
The militants are now just 30 minutes’ drive from Arbil. In their latest sweep through the north, the Sunni insurgents seized a fifth oil field, several more villages and the biggest dam in Iraq – which could give them the ability to flood
‘‘They fight us and harm us we will retaliate we will dedicate our lives to your unrest,’’ he wrote.
‘‘We r not mad men or dysfunctional as they portray us to be [sic]. By Allah, we are the sane. Anyone who sees what is happening to the muslims [sic] around the world . . . and sits back and does nothing, he is insane.’’
He demanded the release of 12 Muslim prisoners and claimed he played the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation for fools while he was under surveillance.
Terrorism experts have cast serious doubt on the seriousness of Sharrouf’s threats but say he has a tight social media network of followers who may be swayed.
After serving a four-year sentence for his role in the Pendennis terrorism plot, Sharrouf became a debt collector and claims he fooled authorities into believing he was not a jihadist. cities or cut off water and power supplies – hoisting their black flags along the way.
After spending more than US$2 trillion on its war in Iraq and losing thousands of soldiers, the United States must now find ways to tackle a group that is even more hardline than al Qaeda and has threatened to march on Baghdad.