CALIFORNIA YANKEE

Angola's Marburg Outbreak Reaches 100 Cases

More than a week after California Yankee began following the story, the New York Times finally reports on Angola's outbreak of the Marburg hemorrhagic fever.

According to Medical News Today, over 100 cases have been identified in the Angolan outbreak. 95 of those cases have been fatal.

There is no vaccine or curative treatment for the Marburg virus

Mexico Abuses Illegal Aliens

The Washington Times reports that Mexico abuses illegal aliens crossing its southern border.

According to the Washington Times report , the State Department's Human Rights Practices report, cites abuses at all levels of the Mexican government, and charges that Mexican police and immigration officials not only violate the rights of illegal immigrants, but traffic in illegal aliens:

Although Mexico demands that its citizens' rights be protected when they illegally enter the United States, immigrants who cross illegally into Mexico "are often ripped off six ways until sundown," says George Grayson, a professor at the College of William & Mary and a fellow at the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).

Last week Mexican President Vicente said that his government will sue in U.S. or international courts if the Minuteman Project break the law.

We will use the law, international law and even U.S. law to make sure that these types of groups ... will not have any opportunity to progress.

In response, Arizona's Senator Jon Kyl, said Mr. Fox's "pre-emptive threats" to file lawsuits on behalf of those crossing the border unlawfully "is hardly helpful, since it presumes that illegal aliens have more of a right to break American law than American citizens have to peacefully assist authorities in enforcing it."

Perhaps President Fox should worry more about how Mexico treats illegal aliens crossing Mexico's borders than how the U.S. treats illegal aliens crossing our borders.

Iraqi Commandos Take Insurgent Base, Kill 84

Reuters reports that Iraqi commandos backed by U.S. troops killed 84 insurgents in a battle to seize an insurgent training camp north of Baghdad:

"Special forces in the Interior Ministry attacked a training center ... and had a fierce battle with the terrorists, killing 84 of them," Sabah Kadhim, a spokesman at the Interior Ministry told Reuters.

Among the dead are Arab and foreign fighters, including Sudanese, Algerians and Moroccans, as well as other nationalities.

According to Reuters, the U.S. military confirmed a battle had taken place and that U.S. forces were involved:

"An early assessment of the site indicates a facility for training anti-Iraqi forces," said Major Richard Goldenberg of the U.S. 42nd Infantry Division, using the U.S. military's term for insurgents.

"Documentation at the facility indicates that some members of the AIF were foreign fighters."

Six police commandos were wounded, Goldenberg said.

This good news indeed. If we are to ultimately achieve our goal of a free and democratic Iraq the Iraqis must be able to carry the fight. The news is even better when you consider this New York Times report about Iraqi civilians fighting back against the insurgents:

But just before noon on Tuesday, a carpenter named Dhia saw a troop of masked gunmen with grenades coming toward his shop here and decided he had had enough.

As the gunmen emerged from their cars, Dhia and his young relatives shouldered their Kalashnikov rifles and opened fire, the police and witnesses said. In the fierce gun battle that followed, three of the insurgents were killed, and the rest fled just after the police arrived. Two of Dhia's nephews and a bystander were wounded, the police said.

"We attacked them before they attacked us," said Dhia, 35, his face still contorted with rage and excitement, as he stood barefoot outside his home a few hours after the battle, a 9-millimeter pistol in his hand. He would not give his last name.

"We killed three of those who call themselves the mujahedeen," he said. "I am waiting for the rest of them to come, and we will show them."

Angola's Killer Fever Is The Marburg Virus

The Angolan Killer Fever that California Yankee posted about here and here has been identified as Marburg hemorrhagic fever:

South Africa's News24.com reports that Angola's deputy health minister said that outbreak of haemorrhagic fever, that has claimed the lives of 96 people in northern Angola, was caused by the Marburg virus. The virus was identified by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

According to the CDC the Marburg virus is a rare, severe type of hemorrhagic fever which affects both humans and non-human primates:

Marburg virus was first recognized in 1967, when outbreaks of hemorrhagic fever occurred simultaneously in laboratories in Marburg and Frankfurt, Germany and in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now Serbia). A total of 37 people became ill; they included laboratory workers as well as several medical personnel and family members who had cared for them. The first people infected had been exposed to African green monkeys or their tissues. In Marburg, the monkeys had been imported for research and to prepare polio vaccine.

[. . .]

Recorded cases of the disease are rare, and have appeared in only a few locations. While the 1967 outbreak occurred in Europe, the disease agent had arrived with imported monkeys from Uganda. No other case was recorded until 1975, when a traveler most likely exposed in Zimbabwe became ill in Johannesburg, South Africa – and passed the virus to his traveling companion and a nurse. 1980 saw two other cases, one in Western Kenya not far from the Ugandan source of the monkeys implicated in the 1967 outbreak. This patient’s attending physician in Nairobi became the second case. Another human Marburg infection was recognized in 1987 when a young man who had traveled extensively in Kenya, including western Kenya, became ill and later died. In 1998, an outbreak occurred in Durba, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Floods Kill Over 200 In Afghanistan

Reuters reports that torrential rains coupled with melting snow have killed more than 200 people and destroyed thousands of houses in several parts of Afghanistan.

The worst hit areas are Deh Rawud district in the rugged central Uruzgan province and the western provinces of Farah and Herat:

"The deaths of 115 have been confirmed ... while thousands of homes have been destroyed," Uruzgan's governor Jan Mohammad Khan said, adding that many more people were missing.

U.S. military Chinook and Black Hawk helicopters rescued around 250 people in the Deh Rawud District, 70 kilometers (40 miles) northeast of the U.S. base at Kandahar, after the Helmand river burst its banks.

In Farah 68 people died as a result of floods, its governor, Assadullah Falah, said.

[. . .]

"We have reports of total destruction of 7,800 houses in Farah," Falah said, adding that large numbers of livestock had been killed.

Some 2,500 houses had collapsed in Herat province. Most houses in Afghanistan are built from mud and are highly vulnerable to flooding.

The good news is that Afghanistan's six year drought may be over.

Rowland Sentenced To One Year

The Associated Press reports that John Rowland, Connecticut's former Governor, was sentenced today to a year in prison.

Rowland was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Peter C. Dorsey after Rowland pleaded guilty to a corruption charge in December:

Dorsey sentenced Rowland to a year plus one day in prison, four months of home confinement and three years of supervised release. He ordered Rowland to report to prison on April 1 in Fort Devens, Mass.

"Officials are expected to serve not his own interest or the interest of his friends, but the highest interest of the community," Dorsey said. "Gratuities were accepted as if they were his due."

New London's The Day reports that Federal prosecutors accused Rowland of violating the terms of his plea agreement by hiding a $417,000 retirement account from his probation officer, and would seek a longer prison term.

According to the Associated Press, Assistant U.S. Attorney Nora Dannehy urged Dorsey to give Rowland a harsher sentence:

If that person, John Rowland, is not held accountable, than the people's trust simply isn't that important." Honest government matters, it has to matter. Send that message, send it loud and clear. Without that rule of law, we are all lost.

What a shameful end to a public service career.

Angolan Killer Fever Outbreak Update

Ebola has been ruled out in the Angolan mystery illness California Yankee posted about on Wednesday. That might be the bad news because we don't know what it is.

The World Health Organization refers to it as Suspected Acute Haemorrhagic Fever Syndrome, and provides this information in a press release:

From January to 15 March 2005, 39 deaths of suspected acute haemorrhagic fever syndrome have been reported to WHO from Uige Province in northern Angola.

A task force has been put in place at the national level and laboratory samples have been collected for analysis. The WHO country office is supporting the Ministry of Health. Active surveillance and retrospective analysis is in place.

The WHO Regional Office for Africa (AFRO) has alerted members of the AFRO rapid response network and staff from the AFRO Inter-country Programme for Southern Africa are planning to bring supplies of protective equipment for the investigation and management of suspected cases.

Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), part of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), provides more information:

An as yet unidentified illness, characterised by fever, severe coughing and vomiting, has killed 64 people in Angola's northern Uige province, prompting a team of investigators from the health ministry and the World Health Organisation (WHO) to investigate the outbreak.

Most of the dead are children under five, but two medical personnel working at the hospital in the provincial capital, also known as Uige, have also fallen victim to the disease.

The Angolan health ministry said in a statement that it had sent an epidemiologist to the province to try and determine the cause of the sickness. With support from WHO, experts have also collected eight blood samples to be analysed by a laboratory in South Africa.

[. . .]

Investigations to date indicate that the killer bug appeared in November 2004, with four deaths that month, seven in December, 16 in January 2005 and 23 in February. The health ministry said on Tuesday there had been 13 deaths in March so far, but Radio Ecclesia, the local Catholic radio station, reported on Thursday that three more people had died overnight.

Reuters reports that at least 76 died in the outbreak that travel to the area should be avoided:

Health Ministry spokesman Carlos Alberto said officials had ruled out the Ebola virus -- a type of haemorrhagic fever and one of the world's deadliest diseases -- but were urging people to avoid travel to Uige, about 225 km (140 miles) north of Luanda.

"Most of the city has been affected, but some areas are worse hit than others. We ruled out Ebola on Monday," Alberto said.

Diplomatic sources in Luanda said they understood the airport in Uige had been closed.

These outbreaks always worry me. Anybody remember the book The Hot Zone or the movie Outbreak.

Syrians Charged With Impersonating Americans

The Arizona Republic reports that a federal grand jury indicted two Syrian men on charges of impersonating U.S. citizens after Border Patrol agents stopped them in southern Arizona and found an undocumented Mexican immigrant in their car:

According to a criminal complaint, Ala Salem Mamoud Al-Kurdi and Mohamed Tamman Nakchgandi, both citizens of Syria, were pulled over by Border Patrol agents on Feb. 18 on Arizona 86, a highway that runs through the Tohono O'odham Nation, a vast reservation southwest of Tucson.

In the back seat of the Cadillac, driven by Kurdi, agents spotted a Mexican man who later admitted to crossing the U.S.-Mexican border illegally three days earlier, according to Border Patrol reports. Kurdi and Nakchgandi, the passenger, said they were naturalized U.S. citizens born in Syria, but agents found they were in the country illegally, according to court records.

The agents reported that a second Cadillac was spotted traveling in tandem with Kurdi's along the highway, but got away. The Mexican man later told authorities he crossed the border with five other undocumented immigrants, who were in the second car, the Border Patrol reported.

A check of immigration records showed that Nakchgandi had entered the country legally in 1999 with a temporary visitor's visa, but overstayed, according to the Border Patrol. The agency reported that Kurdi also entered legally with an employment-authorization card that recently was canceled.

According to the Arizona Republic, authorities have not established a link between the pair and the undocumented Mexican man, "except that they were all in the same vehicle." So maybe I'm jumping to unwarranted conclusions when I worry that this incident is evidence that illegal aliens from a country that is a charter member of the "state sponsors of terrorism" are smuggling other illegal aliens into the U.S.

Thanks to Power Line for the tip.

Terrorists Training Scuba Divers To Attack Ships

The Associated Press reports that two al-Qaida-linked groups in Southeast Asia are training terrorists in scuba diving for seaborne terror attacks.

In the past year, the Indonesia-based Jemaah Islamiyah has given Abu Sayyaf militants in the Philippines at least $18,500 for explosives training alone, the report said.

The report comes a month after the U.S. Coast Guard announced it is seeking to better protect the nation's ports from terrorist attacks by scuba divers by developing a sonar system that can distinguish human swimmers from dolphins.

Concerns about terrorist strikes by scuba divers were raised three years ago after the FBI announced it was investigating whether al-Qaida operatives took scuba training to help blow up ships at anchor, power plants, bridges, depots or other waterfront targets.

According to the Associated Press, this development is outlined in a Philippine military report and is based upon the interrogation of a recently captured "guerrilla:"

According to the Philippine report, an Abu Sayyaf suspect in a February 14th bus bombing in Manila, Gamal Baharan, described how he and other seasoned guerrillas took scuba diving lessons as part of a plot for an attack at sea.

Abu Sayyaf leaders Khaddafy Janjalani and Abu Sulaiman initiated the training, Baharan said, adding that Janjalani claimed to speak directly with al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden via satellite phone. Authorities couldn't verify any such conversations and said Janjalani may have been boasting, according to Philippine military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Baharan, 35, said he was told in October to undergo the scuba training in southwestern Palawan province, where he periodically received cell phone messages from Janjalani and Sulaiman "asking him how many fathoms he would be able to dive," the report said.

The training was in preparation for a Jemaah Islamiyah bombing plot on unspecified targets outside the Philippines that require "underwater operation," Baharan is quoted as saying.

Fatwa Text

A number of readers have requested that I post the full text of the fatwa against Osama bin Laden by the Islamic Commission of Spain. I have been looking for it since I posted Fatwa Issued Against Bin Laden last Thursday.

The original Spanish-language text "La Comisión Islámica de España emite una fatua condenando el terrorismo y al grupo Al Qaida," is available at WebIslam.com.

Liza Sabater translated the fatwa into English and posted it at Cu l t u r e k i t c h e n.

The fatwa strikes me as a powerful weapon in the War Against Terrorism provided it gets enough publicity. I encourage you to read the whole thing.

The fatwa points out that not only are Muslims prohibited from committing crimes against innocents, but Muslims are obligated to stop those that intend to commit such crimes. The fatwa condemns the terrorists acts of bin Laden and al-Qaida:

In light of these and other Islamic texts, the terrorist acts of Osama ben Laden tree Laden and his organization Al Qaida --who look to fill with fear the hearts of defenseless people; who engage in the destruction of buildings or properties thus involving the death of civilians, like women, children, and other beings-- are strictly prohibited and are the object of a full condemnation within Islam.

Therefore, the accomplishment of terrorist acts under the pretext "to defend to the pressed nations of the world or the rights of Muslims" does not have any justification in Islam.

[. . .]

Given all of this, it is necessary to point our that terrorism and extremism contradict human nature and the lessons of Islam.

Muslims must know that terrorism is a threat against Islam and that it's damaging to our religion and to Muslims. A correct Islamic formation in madrasas and Islamic universities will allow everybody understand Islam is a religion of peace, that repudiates all acts of terrorism and indiscriminate death.

The fatwa declares that by committing terrorist acts bin Laden and his organization are apostates:

That those who commit terrorist acts violate Koranic teachings and thus turn apostates who have left Islam.

That the duty of every Muslim is to fight actively against terrorism, in accordance with the Koranic mandate that establishes the obligation to prevent corruption from overtaking the Earth.

[. . .]

As long as Osama ben Laden and his organization defend the legality of terrorism and try to base it on the Sacred Koran and the Sunna, they are committing the crime of istihlal and they have become ipso facto apostates (kafir murtadd), who should not be considered Muslim nor be treated as such.

Finally the fatwa asks the Spanish government and mass media to stop describing the al-qaida terrorists Islamic:

Based on this fatwa, we have requested to the government of the nation and the Spanish mass media that they stop using the word Islam or islamic to describe these malefactors, given they are not Muslim nor have any relationship with our Umma or Islamic Community. They need to call them instead Al Qaida terrorists, but without using Islamic as an adjective, since as it has been declared above, they are not legally so.

Likewise, we ask those in charge of mass media to acknowledge what has been stated here and to proceed from now on under the criteria exposed above. In particular, to not tie Islam nor Muslims with any terrorist acts; especially if they come dressed with any Islamic language or pretension.

Many thanks to Liza Sabater for translating and posting the document.