A Madison, Wisconsin man has been arrested on charges that he tried to travel to the middle east to join Islamic terrorist group ISIS.
Joshua Van Haften, 34, made his first appearance in federal court Thursday and did not attempt to contest his being held without bond.
Van Haften was arrested Wednesday night at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago and returning from Turkey. Federal investigators said that Van Haften talked to people about his desire to join ISIS before he left for Instanbul, Turkey in August.
The federal complaint says that Van Haften posted on Facebook that he was not able to cross the border from Turkey into Syria. He also said that the people who claimed to be able to help him just stole his money and left him on a country road.
Van Haften has a long criminal record, including convictions for battery and sexual assault. He spent over seven years in prison on the sexual assault conviction after his eight year probation was revoked in 2000.
Van Haften’s lawyer says that his client looks forward to “having all the facts brought to light.”
A group of monks, watching the Islamic terrorist group ISIS advancing on their monastery, acted quickly to save an ancient Christian library.
The monks collected all the works, including handwritten books of Christian manuscripts, and rushed them into nearby areas that were firmly under the control of Kurdish militia.
The manuscripts are being held in an apartment with no indication of the historical treasure inside its walls. Christians who have fled the terrorists are standing guard over the documents.
The Associated Press viewed the library and reported copies of Bibles and Bible commentaries, most of them written in a form of the ancient Aramaic. The oldest item in the collection is a copy of letters from the Apostle Paul that date back 1,100 years.
ISIS has been systematically destroying historical locations and documents of religions as part of their campaign to “cleanse” the region.
The terrorists were eventually stopped before they could reach the monastery and the road to the site is now protected by Kurdish forces.
“Thank God they were unable to reach the monastery,” said Raad Abdul-Ahed, a local Christian who helped transport the library. But “we will keep it here until the crisis is over, until the situation is stabilized.” Abdul-Ahed, who fled his hometown near Mosul, now lives in the apartment with the manuscripts.
The Islamic terrorist group ISIS surprised observers by releasing over 200 Yazidis after keeping them hostages for eight months.
Most of the freed captives were elderly, in poor health and bore signs of abuse and neglect. General Hiwa Abdullah told the Associated Press that 40 of the freed captives were children.
The terrorists reportedly gave no reason for the captive’s release.
The captives who were able to speak with reporters shared stories of their captivity and kidnapping. Jar-Allah Frensis, 88, said the terrorists stormed his home in Sinjar and took him along with his wife and son.
“The militants took all of our money and jewelry. We have been living under constant fear till our release,” Frensis told The Associated Press.
Frensis says he doesn’t know what happened to his son.
ISIS released 200 prisoners in January and the Kurdish military said the believed the release was because the prisoners were too much of a burden for their captors.
A horrifically painful and potentially fatal skin disease is reportedly breaking out among the members of the terrorist group ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
Leishmaniasis is spread through the bite of female sand fleas. It causes open lesions on the skin that eat away at flesh. Without medical treatment, the disease can be fatal. The final stages of the disease attack the spleen and liver along with destroying red blood cells.
Medical centers in the region have closed because of the terrorists. Doctors Without Borders had clinics in the region to treat the disease that was almost at epidemic levels before their departure but it was deemed unsafe for their staff to continue operations.
However, the London Daily Mirror reported that many of the terrorists are refusing to accept medical help for their infections, contributing to the spread among the terrorists fighting the Iraqi army.
The disease is common in areas where people suffer from extreme poverty, malnutrition and deforestation. The disease gained international exposure in 2008 when a British TV host contracted it on a shoot and was hospitalized for three weeks to fight the disease including rounds of chemotherapy.
The Iraqi army has declared victory in their battle to retake the city of Tikrit from the Islamic extremist group ISIS.
Troops are working to clear out the last pockets of terrorist support within the city but Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi went to the city and raised an Iraqi flag over the city’s center.
“Most of Tikrit today is liberated, only small parts remain [outside our control],” Interior Minister Mohammed al-Ghabban told reporters.
The Prime Minister attributed their success to taking the terrorist group by surprise.
“We managed to take (ISIS) by surprise,” the Prime Minister said. “And our air force … in addition to coalition air force, helping Iraqi forces, managed to deal severe blows to ISIS and the enemies of Iraq. And our ground forces with the blood of Iraqis, Iraqis alone with their own blood, were able to liberate this land.”
The battle for the hometown of Saddam Hussein has taken a month and been the biggest offensive against the terrorist outfit. The attack had been stalled until the United States launched an air offensive against terrorist headquarters and weapons storage centers in the city.
The army now plans to focus on recapturing Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq.
A family that escaped from ISIS in Mosul is relating stories of the terrorist group’s brutality toward children.
The family showed a video to a reporter with the news organization Rudaw a video of a pre-teen child being executed because the child was starving and stole food. Mosul has been suffering a food storage since the terrorist group took control of the village.
The boy who recorded the video, identified only as Ibrahim, says that the father of the child was begging loudly before the shooting of his child for the group to spare the child’s life.
In addition to the execution, the group has cut off the hands of children accused of stealing.
“Yesterday they cut off the hands of four kids, ages 12, 11, 13 and 16,” the family’s daughter, SA, told the reporter. “One of the kids stole a toy bird, another stole an electric cable.”
The family also said that the terrorists routinely go into the schools and abduct girls to force them into marriages. Girls as young as 8 have been taken by the terrorists.
A group of Islamic extremists attacked a Christian church in Egypt because the church planned to honor 21 Christian martyrs killed by the extremist group ISIS.
“I called the police many times and asked them to come to guard us but they came late and after their arrival they didn’t guard the church. They stopped in the entrance of the village. Even still they allowed the cars of the attackers to enter the village and attack us and the church without any intervention from them to protect us,” Fr. Makar Issa told the International Christian Concern.
Daily News Egypt reported that the attackers are connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, the former political party that is now outlawed in the country as an Islamic terrorist organization.
The Virgin Mary Church is the only Christian church in Al-Our for the village’s 2,500 Christians.
“They shot guns at the church and pelted the church with stones and blocks,” Fr. Issa said.
“They smashed the sign of the church, destroying the ground of the church yard and breaking the widows of the service buildings of the church. They also burned a car that was parked in the front of the church.”
ISIS has destroyed another historic Christian site in their attempts to cleanse the region of all remnants of other faiths.
In addition to the monastery, the terrorists also blew up the homes of 10 Christian families in Ninevah.
The terrorist group released photos on their social media accounts showing their destruction of the ancient Christian Bar Behnam Monastery in the town of Qaraqosh. The monastery had contained the most valuable Syrian library in Iraq.
The bombing also blew up tombs of people lead to Jesus by the apostle Matthew.
The bombing comes a week after their destruction of a 10th century Catholic monastery in Mosul.
Human Rights Watch has released reports on the destruction in the region during the terrorist offensive.
Iraqi Special Forces are advancing on Tikrit, driving out the terrorist group ISIS from what had been considered a major win for the terrorists.
The advance has been assisted by the U.S. airstrikes against key parts of the terrorist’s defense network within the city. The attacks were the first major air assault by U.S. forces in several weeks.
“The Iraqi and coalition air forces conduct strikes in order to remove the enemy and then our forces advance,” said General Tahsin Ibrahim Sadiq. “When the attacking forces advance, they clear any pockets of resistance and allow for the rest of our forces to move in and barricade further ahead.”
Officials say the airstrikes are also targeting ISIS leadership’s command locations.
More than 20,000 Iraqi troops and paramilitary groups are involved in the Tikrit offensive.
The assault came as two Shi’ite militias withdrew from the battle because the United States demanded that Iranian officials and Iranian troops withdraw from the battle. The militias are protesting that U.S. is forbidding Iranian involvement.
A Syrian Christian captured by ISIS that was released after five months said that he had to call his family while he was being electrocuted because the terrorists wanted to force his family to pay a $80,000 ransom.
The man, who wished to remain anonymous, spoke with New York Magazine and related his story of torture.
He said that he was in Beirut and returning to Syria with a co-worker when they stopped at what they believed to be a checkpoint for the Syrian army. Instead, it was the terrorists who took them to a location and chained them to the wall.
“Anyway, we were blindfolded and chained, and every day they would torture us. They would come in, one at a time, and electrocute us or beat us with anything they could find,” the man said. “But they didn’t kill me because they wanted to ransom me. One time, they made me speak to my family on the phone as they were electrocuting me. Then, they made me call a friend, who told them he would pay.”
He said the same day he was forced to call his family, they took the other Christian hostage into the room next to him and shot him to death.
“Then one day, they told me and my friend, the man from Aleppo, that our families had paid and we were to be released,” he explained. “They threw us in the streets of Aleppo, near the Turkish border. My God, it was the most wonderful feeling I’ve ever had. There were Free Syrian Army soldiers. We went to them, and they took us to a church. I saw the cross and I thought, I’m alive.”