Free Republic

A Swiss court handed suspended jail terms on Tuesday to two senior officials from a Swiss Islamic group for spreading propaganda supporting al Qaeda, in a retrial which followed their earlier acquittal. Nicolas Blancho, president of the Islamic Central Council of Switzerland (ICCS), and media spokesman Abdel Azziz Qaasim Illi were sentenced by the Federal Criminal Court to 15 months and 18 months in prison respectively, both suspended for three years. Prosecutors originally charged the two men and one other ICCS official in 2017 over videos posted online two years earlier that included interviews with leaders of Jabhat al-Nusra, at...

Swiss federal prosecutors have brought charges against leading members of the country’s largest Islamic organization in a criminal probe into jihadist propaganda. Swiss media reported on Thursday that the president and two members of the governing board of the Islamic Central Council of Switzerland (ICCS) had been charged with violating the ban on groups including Al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS). The three were named as Nicolas Blancho, ICCS president, Naim Cherni, and Qaasim Illi. In a statement, the office of Switzerland’s attorney general accused the ICCS of making videos in Syria between September and October 2015 featuring a leading member...

Swiss federal prosecutors on Saturday expanded a criminal probe into jihadist propaganda to take in the leader of the country’s largest Islamic organization. The office of Switzerland’s attorney general confirmed in an email to AFP that Nicolas Blancho, of the Islamic Central Council of Switzerland (ICCS), was under investigation. The ICCS slammed the move as “political” and said it was ready to “counter the accusations in a courtroom.” Prosecutors opened the case last December, charging that an ICCS board member — German national Naim Cherni — had violated “the prohibition of groups like Al-Qaeda, Islamic State and similar organizations.” …

This week, the Globe and Mail asked General Lewis McKenzie (Retired) to write the obituary of American diplomat Richard Holbrooke. It was a good idea. The two men had crossed paths more than once on the global stage of the Great Game. McKenzie declined. Holbrooke had just died and the general knew that what he had to say would hardly produce the standard panegyric. When I caught up with McKenzie, he was shoveling snow after a spell away from home. I asked for an interview and to my surprise, he agreed. “I’m just going to tell you what I thought...