Month: July 2022

The families of the two young victims killed by Jean-Claude Nsengumukiza in Place de la Pucelle in Rouen in 2015 are demanding that the state be held accountable. The perpetrator, who was sentenced to the maximum penalty, was a serial offender who was obliged to leave French territory (OQTF).

The double murder of 24-year-old Élise Fauvel and 31-year-old Julien Tesquet in 2015 in the middle of downtown Rouen caused a shock in people’s minds in more ways than one. After the shock, the mourning and the trial, the families have still not been able to get to grips with this terrible case, which had put the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of the Interior on the scene. The families have filed a case against the state for misconduct before the Administrative Court.

(…) Before the administrative court in Rouen on Thursday June 30, 2022, the proceedings initiated by the families are thus directed against the state, after an inspection commission of the Ministry of Justice presented its findings in 2016. Jean-Claude Nsengumukiza had already been convicted of rape by the Rouen jury courts in 2011 and released in 2015, barely a month before the double murder. At that time, he was obliged to leave French territory (OQTF).

“He was thus released on November 17, 2015, without any escort or deportation measures,” recalls the rapporteur before the Administrative Court. The question that the administrative court must answer is that of the state’s responsibility, especially since “a few weeks before the crime, the perpetrator was subjected to a police check in the Rue de la République and summoned, but never appeared before the authorities”, he continues.

On December 20, 2015, the partially naked bodies of Julien Tesquet, a 31-year-old nurse, and his 24-year-old girlfriend Élise Fauvel, a director’s assistant, were discovered in the young woman’s flat, just a few steps from the Place du Vieux-Marché in Rouen. Covered with a bed sheet, they were lying on the floor and showed a great many bruises. The couple had been strangled. The young woman, from Dieppe, was raped. The two victims met their tormentor while leaving a bar and Jean-Claude Nsengumukiza then allegedly offered to accompany the young woman home. He was arrested ten days after the crime by the Service régional de police judiciaire (SRPJ) in Rouen based on CCTV footage and DNA traces.Paris-Normandie

https://www.fdesouche.com/2022/07/01/rouen-76-un-clandestin-africain-condamne-pour-viol-et-qui-aurait-du-etre-expulse-juge-aux-assises-pour-le-double-meurtre-delise-et-julien/

 Germany’s vice chancellor said Thursday he suspects that Russia may not resume natural gas deliveries to Europe through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline after planned maintenance work in July, complicating the outlook for this winter.

Russia reduced gas flows to Germany, Italy, Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia this month, just as European Union countries scramble to refill storage facilities with the fuel used to generate electricity, power industry and heat homes in the winter.

Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom has blamed a technical problem for the reduction in gas flowing through Nord Stream 1, which runs under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany. The company said equipment being refurbished in Canada was stuck there because of Western sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

German leaders have rejected that explanation and called the reductions a political move.

Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, who is also Germany’s economy and climate minister and responsible for energy, said a “blockade” of the pipeline is possible starting July 11, when regular maintenance work is due to start. In previous summers, the work has entailed shutting the for about 10 days, he said.

https://www.stripes.com/theaters/europe/2022-07-01/germany-possible-russian-blockade-gas-pipeline-6518315.html

The proportion of poor people in Germany has reached a new high, according to the Federal Statistical Office, with the data highlighting a sea change in the German economy. The bad news is that the report only covers data up until the end of 2021 before the dramatic increase in food and energy prices in 2022, which means this trend is likely to dramatically worsen over the coming year.

“The findings are shocking, the economic effects of the pandemic are having a full impact,” said Ulrich Schneider, the director of the German Welfare Parity Association, while delivering a presentation of the “Poverty Report 2021.” The association plays a large role in helping deliver and coordinate social welfare services in the country, with 10,000 organization members and association branches in all 15 German states.

“Never before has a higher value been measured based on the official micro census, and never before has poverty spread so rapidly as during the pandemic,” said Schneider, who added that there are “more poor people than we’ve ever had.”

According to the current poverty report, 13.8 million people live on less than 60 percent of the average income. In the past two years alone, the number increased by 600,000 people.

The proportion of those falling under the official poverty definition is an all-time high of 16.6 percent, according to the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper. Impoverishment seen among self-employed people, who suffered from the lockdown measures, is dramatic. Here, the proportion of people with insecure income rose from 9 to 13.8 percent.

Increasingly, the worse off are pensioners (17.9 percent) and children (20 percent), who are now much more likely to be affected by poverty.

Since 2006, Schneider’s association has observed a constant negative trend in Germany. While the number of poor people was 11.5 million 15 years ago, it is now 13.8 million, representing an increase of over 2 million.

With gas prices expected to rise dramatically in winter, a number of politicians and government agencies are warning of a catastrophic situation, including up to 5 million jobs lost and mass bankruptcies. If the predictions come to pass, Germany’s poverty figures will undoubtedly worsen even further.

https://rmx.news/article/the-findings-are-shocking-germans-entering-poverty-at-record-rate-as-inflation-and-covid-destroy-prosperity/

Looking ahead to the 2023 Italian general elections, the leader of the right-wing “Fratelli d’Italia” (FI), Giorgia Meloni, has called on the Italian right to unite. In the recent mayoral elections last Sunday, the right-wing and conservative parties had consistently delivered sobering results and had been overtaken by the centre-left coalition.

Now FI leader Meloni declared in a video message on Facebook: “Stop arguing. The centre-right coalition cannot risk jeopardising the outcome of the coming political elections. I will ask Matteo Salvini and Silvio Berlusconi to meet as soon as possible to avoid further divisions.”

Meloni referred to her party’s leadership role, which has “usurped the coalition” in cities where the conservatives have been able to achieve good results. Observers therefore also see Meloni’s message as a prelude to a battle for leadership in the right-wing camp, which in recent years has been claimed by former interior minister and Lega leader Salvini.

But since becoming part of a multi-party government in Rome under technocrat PM Mario Draghi, the Lega has been in decline. The new heavyweight in the right-wing camp could be the Fratelli d’Italia under Giorgia Meloni.

The rifts are also visible at the European level. While Salvini is leaning more towards a renewed European right with Hungarian head of government Viktor Orbán, Meloni is looking to Poland’s ruling PiS party and Spain’s Vox.

However, Salvini and Meloni seem to agree on their assessment of the situation – since there is not much time left until the 2023 parliamentary elections, they apparently want to bring about due decisions soon. Salvini therefore already welcomed Meloni’s request: “In my opinion, the meeting can take place tomorrow,” he is quoted as saying in the media.

https://freewestmedia.com/2022/07/01/calls-for-italys-conservatives-to-unite/

In recent years, many people from Syria have been seeking asylum in Germany to escape the terror of the “Islamic State” and the Assad regime. According to experts’ estimates, a large proportion of the refugees will gain German citizenship in the coming years.

“We observe a far above-average motivation for naturalisation among the group of refugees from Syria,” said Jan Schneider, the head of the scientific staff of the German Council of Experts on Integration and Migration (SVR). Schneider presented a forecast on the naturalisation of refugees. The expected rush could possibly even lead to bottlenecks in the administration.

For the period 2022 to 2024, according to the panel, a very conservative estimate is that 39,000 persons who have fled Syria will be naturalised. “If the current momentum is maintained, there could even be 157,000 in the same period – provided that the authorities can process such a high number of applications at all without massive delays,” said Schneider.Archiv

Comment: Well, the journey through several safe third countries to the desired destination was worthwhile, and here we are only talking about Syrians.

Are there Syrians among them who were able to prove their true identity when they entered the country, or with the self-disclosure and the lost/falsified passports who are now being given German citizenship?

https://politikstube.com/experten-gehen-von-einbuergerung-vieler-syrischer-fluechtlinge-aus/

Germany’s left-wing government plans to bring thousands of foreign workers from countries like Turkey in order to deal with travel chaos at a number of German airports, but critics of the proposal say local workers and migrants already in Germany should be used; they also point to potential security risks.

The situation at Germany’s airports remains tense, and according to Airport Association (ADV), there is a manpower shortage totaling 5,500 employees. Many of these employees, who worked in baggage-handling and other support positions, left during the pandemic and have no plans to come back.

The government is scrambling to deal with bottlenecks and delays that are piling up, especially as the summer holiday season fast approaches. Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing told the Welt TV channel on Monday that a solution was within reach: “I hope that we can now get specialists from abroad with security clearances (…) here at short notice so that this very, very unsatisfactory situation for citizens can be resolved.”

German airports and their ground service providers want to employ thousands of foreign “guest workers” directly. The workers are to come from Turkey and some Balkan countries, among others, for a limited period of up to three months. Talks are currently underway within the federal government to clarify the prerequisites for this, according to Finanzen.net.

The plan is being described as similar to Germany’s decision to invite nearly a million Turkish guest workers following the Second World War. However, many of those “guest workers” never left the country. Furthermore, those migrants were invited at a time when Germany had virtually no non-European migrants in the country and following a catastrophic war that had severely reduced the working male population in Germany.

The CDU/CSU parliamentary group has called for domestic workers to tackle the shortage of staff at German airports. They argue that the chaos that is currently prevailing can only be dealt with in the long term with local workers, said their spokesman for transport policy, Thomas Bareiß.

According to the chairman of the federal police union, Heiko Teggatz, it will no longer be possible to prevent chaos at the airports in the short term even if foreign workers are recruited. He also said that Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD), who helped initiate the plan, has nothing to do with ensuring internal security. He noted that security assistants need certification that meets the requirements of the EU directive, and there is a big open question whether foreign nationals from Turkey could meet these standards in the short or long term. According to him, aviation security is increasingly about fighting terrorism.

Given the sensitive security situation at airports, Germany’s left-wing government is making the case that all the workers can be both vetted and employed in time to alleviate the mounting pressure.

With regard to the chaotic conditions at airports, Wissing spoke of an unsatisfactory situation. “People want to go on vacation, they’re happy to finally be able to travel again after such a long time. And that air travel isn’t working right now right now is frustrating travelers, so it annoys me too.”

The foreign workers would probably be employed directly by ground-handling service providers, said the general manager of the airport association ADV, Ralph Beisel, on Monday to the German Press Agency. 

The federal government signaled its approval of the industry plan. However, a final decision in coordination with the ministries of Labour, the Interior and Transport is still pending. A spokesman for the Ministry of Labor said on Monday that talks within the government were still ongoing. Above all, it is about the waiver of the so-called priority check, whether domestic employees are not also available for the jobs.

However, it may still be a few weeks before the first workers recruited from abroad start working at German airports. The Federal Ministry of the Interior expects that they can still be used during the summer vacation period. The workers recruited at short notice could, for example, work in baggage handling, said the spokesman for the ministry, Maximilian Kall, on Monday in Berlin. “In the case of security checks, this is out of the question because of the training required there and the security standards that apply there,” he added.

The spokesman emphasized that anyone who works in baggage handling must also go through a security check. This review by the respective state authorities takes about two weeks. The aim of the federal government is to enable the additional workers to be deployed quickly “so that the companies can quickly compensate for this massive shortage of staff that they have at the airports after the coronavirus period.” This measure is also about creating relief for travelers “this summer.”

Over the weekend, there were again problems in the terminals of several airports at the start of the holiday season in the most populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Due to a lack of staff, there were long waiting times at the passenger controls, and a lot of luggage was initially left behind. In Düsseldorf, even the airport fire brigade had to help, as several media outlets reported. 

The ADV had put the total requirement of the airports, including at check-in and air security checks, at around 5,500 workers for this summer. Shortly before the start of the main holiday season, numerous airlines had canceled flights. Lufthansa canceled a total of almost 3,000 flights at its Frankfurt and Munich hubs, also because more and more crews are calling in sick due to coronavirus. The low-cost subsidiary Eurowings also canceled hundreds of flights in July. At Berlin Airport alone, market leader easyJet cut its program for the summer months by around 1,000 flights.

https://rmx.news/germany/as-airports-descend-into-chaos-germanys-left-wing-government-pushes-controversial-plan-to-bring-in-foreign-workers/

A clandestine drug laboratory has been discovered on a military base in Belgium where NATO nuclear weapons are stored. The synthetic drug Ecstasy was being mass produced on a large scale at the site.

According to the Belgian public prosecutor’s office of the province of Limburg on Tuesday, the laboratory was discovered at the Kleine Brogel base in the northern part of the country. It was then examined with the help of experts from the Federal Police of the Criminological Institute and the Civil Defense, it said.

The two arrested suspects have already been released, the prosecutor’s office said. They were not employed by the Belgian Ministry of Defense, it said. It is not known whether further investigations would be undertaken against the suspects. In addition to the Belgian Air Force, the military base is also used by the US Air Force.

Belgium notorious as drug manufacturing hotspot

According to investigators, the province of Limburg, which borders on the Netherlands, is frequently used by criminals for narcotics warehouses and drug laboratories.

Belgium in particular has long been known as a center for the production of drugs, especially ecstasy, in Europe. The two provinces of the same name in Belgium and the Netherlands have repeatedly been the focus of investigations while huge quantities of cocaine also enter the country via the port of Antwerp.

The production of this drug is a lucrative enterprise since it apparently costs less than 50 euro cents to manufacture one pill – while the street value in Belgium and the Netherlands is around 5 euros. In Australia, however, they can be sold for at least 20 euros.

Trafficking in this type of drug in Belgium often takes place via the Internet. In 2017, material for the production of one billion ecstasy pills was found in the Netherlands, on the border with Belgium. And already in 2013, a huge laboratory had been discovered on a secluded farm, which had the capacity to produce millions of ecstasy pills.

At the time, it was the largest such facility in Europe. However, it is less confidence-inspiring that synthetic drugs are being handled in, of all places, the heart of Western nuclear deterrence, in military bases and in the vicinity of weapons arsenals.

Belgian police downplay the link to NATO

The drug lab that was discovered last Wednesday was manufacturing MDMA, a raw material for ecstasy.

The local Kempenland police had raided the production area on June 22. The lab turned out to be on a military domain called Burkel, they say. The site is barely 95 acres, the size of a football field. It is a remote place along the street of the same name Burkel between the center of the municipality of Peer and Linde. Due to the many trees and dense vegetation, the site is well shielded and barely visible from the street.

Colonel Koen Vanheste said in response to questions that the NATO military airport of Kleine-Brogel was in no way directly involved in the drug investigation.

Burkel is said to be a domain of the Belgian Pipeline Organization (BPO) that is responsible for the supply of kerosene to airports. Colonel Boudry, responsible for BPO, commented on the military nature of the site: “It serves to close off any sections of the pipeline network in the event of a disaster. Our main mission is to supply fuel to NATO forces in Europe.” The Colonel was notified of the inquest. He emphasized that no BPO employees were involved.

The two suspects were released after being questioned by investigators, but the prosecutor’s office refused to say whether they had been charged. This has led to speculation that the suspects may have diplomatic immunity.

Nuclear base

The subject is very rarely mentioned by the Belgian Defense or the executive, but this military domain in Kleine-Brogel is located in the municipality of Peer and is known in the country to host American nuclear weapons within the framework of the defense system of the NATO, with other bases in Europe.

A leaked NATO document from 2019 confirmed that American nuclear weapons were housed at Kleine Brogel. Although it had been presumed for decades that the airbase was being used as a base for American nuclear weapons, up until tehn no official source had ever confirmed that this was the case.

According to the document, a total of 150 nuclear bombs are being housed at military bases in several European countries and Turkey. A draft of the leaked document, entitled ‘A New Era for Nuclear Deterrence?’ was originally distributed to members of NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly at the time.

Notably, American soldiers provided the “necessary extra surveillance” at the base. The US Air Forces in Europe – Air Forces Africa (USAFE-AFAFRICA), the Third Air Force, the 52nd Fighter Wing, the 52nd Munitions Maintenance Group and the 701st Munition Support Squadron are stationed there.

https://freewestmedia.com/2022/07/01/drug-lab-unearthed-at-nato-nuclear-base/