Exclusive: A Russian Pantsir air defence missile system captured on a Libyan battlefield was flown intact to a US air base in Germany in a covert mission, The Times has learnt.
The operation involved sending a team on a US air force C-17 Globemaster cargo plane to Zuwara airport, west of Tripoli, last June to load the battery and transport it back to the Ramstein base
A Russian official said Moscow was aware the US removed the Pantsir but suggested its capture would be of limited intelligence value..Export versions..are stripped of a carefully guarded identification friend or foe database with the transponder codes for Russian air force jets
After its capture from Watiya airbase on May 18 2020 fighters transported the Pantsir to Zawiya where it was seized by a notorious militia commander called Mohamed Bahroun, nicknamed the Rat...However, forces under the interior minister forced Bahroun’s fighters to hand it over
Observers said the episode reflected favourably neither on Russia nor the UAE, which brought the Pantsir to Libya.
“It’s remarkable that a state which is a major importer of US weapons would then hand a sophisticated weapons system to a warlord who handles it so recklessly that it then falls into the hands of a potentially dangerous militia leaders on the other side,” said @W_Lacher
The US had a score to settle with Russia because it believed a Pantsir battery operated by Wagner shot down one of its Reaper drones while it carried out a surveillance flight. The US military demanded to have the wreckage back but Marshal Haftar claimed ignorance of its location
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Exclusive interview with Libyan NOC chairman Mustafa Sanallah:
London hub to play central role in Libya's oil expansion, and will award hundreds of millions in consulting and services contracts to British companies
It dips every now and then, but production has risen to about 1.3 million barrels a day. Several more fields will be refurbished or go on line by April, adding about 80,000 bpd and raising production to 1.4 million, Sanalla said.
But a dilapidated infrastructure has placed a ceiling on production.We reach 1.3 million barrels a day, and then sometimes we return to 1.2 million and 1.25 million barrels a day, because we are always doing maintenance repairs. The ceiling is a big problem for us” Sanalla said
Crazy times, though this pic wasn't from Jan 25 but later. On January 25, no tents were set up. Several thousand protesters converged on Tahrir square and were dispersed at midnight sharp.
I'm sure many in retrospect say they saw it coming, but frankly, if you'd spent time in Egypt before that, the idea of a Facebook event revolution was laughable and many of us were busy writing analysis on how there would be no revolution.
January 25 didn't necessarily change that assessment. Maybe ten thousand people made it to the square. Police let them and were mostly on their best behaviour, barring brief clashes in Qasr al Nil (in which a conscript died) and some brief tear gassing.
A well meaning (and partially true) tweet that nonetheless simplifies a very real problem that Muslim jurists (and counter extremist thinkers) have yet to address properly
It's an issue that came to a head with ISIS, which on a daily basis committed unspeakable atrocities in the name of religion. At the time I was particularly interested in how traditional Islamic scholars who denounced those acts would respond.
The main problem was the following: for each atrocity, ISIS was able to reproduce citations from the Quran, sunnah and scholarly works justifying the deed. The denunciations (by Azhar for example) were sparse on proofs.
*a highly repressive regime overthrown by protesters who faced death and torture* one could add. Including dozens massacred at a protest sit in.
Sudanese political forces on Wednesday called on authorities to accept a US offer to normalize relations with Israel in exchange for removing the country from the US list of countries supporting terrorism.
"According to two Sudanese officials with knowledge of the talks, they faltered partly because Sudanese negotiators feared a rushed recognition of Israel, without a large-enough economic relief package to sweeten the deal, could turn popular support against Sudan's ...government"
"Linking the lifting of Sudan from the terror list with Israel normalization is pure blackmailing," said one of the two Sudanese officials, a senior member of the civilian government. "The U.S. administration is potentially undermining the transitional government."
This wasn't the first subject to lie in a story for the paper. One lied about *not* having taken part in executions, Abu Huzayfah apparently lied about having taken part in them.
Ps I haven't witnessed firsthand an execution nor obviously conducted one, but like many reporters who worked on ISIS, can describe them in detail because they featured so often in ISIS propaganda vids.
But to the main point, re lying: even bona fide ISIS members lied alot--including members who were free at the time of interviews and where they thought they were safe. One fairly enterprising ISIS member spent weeks concocting fables of things he'd witnessed to me.