Tag Archives: Jewish Persecution

Florida man sentenced to 25 years for attempt to blow up synagogue

(Reuters) – A Florida man was sentenced by a U.S. judge on Tuesday to 25 years in prison for trying to blow up a synagogue in the state during a Jewish holiday last year, court officials said.

James Medina, 41, will first be treated at a U.S. prison medical facility for a brain cyst and mental illness before being moved into the general prison population, U.S. District Judge Robert Scola in Miami ruled.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation began watching Medina, who had converted to Islam, after he began expressing anti-Semitic views and a wish to attack a synagogue. They launched an investigation in late March 2016, court documents showed

Medina, who faced up to life in prison, had pleaded guilty in August 2017 to charges of an attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and an attempted religious hate crime, court documents showed.

“This is a very, very serious offense,” Scola was quoted as saying in court by the Miami Herald.

Medina’s federal public defender, Hector Dopico, declined to comment when reached by Reuters on Tuesday afternoon.

Medina met with an FBI-affiliated confidential informant and explained his plan to attack a synagogue in Aventura, Florida, near Miami, the documents showed.

“Medina wanted to witness the explosion, hearing and feeling the blast from (a) nearby car,” the informant cited Medina as saying, according to the documents.

Asked why he wanted to do it, Medina said he wanted to kill Jews, adding: “It’s my call of duty.”

Medina was supplied with what he thought was an explosive device by federal law enforcement. The device was inert and posed no danger to the public, federal law enforcement said in court filings.

He was taken into custody as he approached the synagogue with the inert device and later admitted to his crimes, they said. No one was hurt.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas; editing by Bernadette Baum and Diane Craft)

Man charged with threats to Jewish groups to plead guilty: U.S. prosecutor

By Brendan Pierson

(Reuters) – A former U.S. journalist is expected to plead guilty to a cyberstalking charge related to making bomb threats against Jewish organizations in the United States in a plot to get revenge against his ex-girlfriend, prosecutors said in letter filed on Tuesday in Manhattan federal court.

Juan Thompson, 32, is set to appear in court next Monday morning to enter a guilty plea, according to the letter, submitted by Acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim in Manhattan.

Thompson’s attorneys could not immediately be reached for comment. Before his extradition to New York, he denied the charges, said he had no anti-Semitic beliefs and said he was being framed and targeted as a black man.

“Make no mistake: this is a modern-day lynching,” he said in a telephone interview from the Warren County jail in Missouri.

The prosecution’s letter did not give details about the planned plea, which will not become final until Thompson enters it in court. Thompson was arrested in St. Louis, Missouri on March 3, and has been in custody since then, charged with one count of cyberstalking.

Federal prosecutors have said Thompson engaged in a vicious, months-long harassment campaign against his ex-girlfriend, using various email accounts to accuse her of possessing child pornography, driving drunk and, finally, making bomb threats targeting Jewish groups.

Thompson made some threats in his own name and then accused his ex-girlfriend of framing him, and made other threats posing as her, prosecutors said.

U.S. authorities have been investigating a surge of threats against Jewish organizations, including more than 100 bomb threats against community centers in dozens of states in separate waves since January.

The organizations Thompson threatened included a Jewish museum in New York and the Anti-Defamation League, according to a criminal complaint in Manhattan federal court. All occurred after the first flood of phone threats in early January.

Thompson was a reporter for the Intercept news website, which fired him last year saying he invented sources and quotes.

(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by David Gregorio)

Trump calls Nazi Holocaust ‘history’s darkest hour’

U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania lay a wreath during a ceremony commemorating the six million Jews killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust, in the Hall of Remembrance at Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem May 23, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump paid tribute at Israel’s Yad Vashem memorial on Tuesday to the six million Jews killed in the Nazi Holocaust, calling it an indescribable act of evil.

Holding hands, the president and First Lady Melania Trump walked solemnly to lay a wreath together upon the ashes of Holocaust victims, buried at the site’s Hall of Remembrance.

“Words can never describe the bottomless depths of that evil, or the scope of the anguish and destruction. It was history’s darkest hour,” Trump said in a short speech after the memorial ceremony.

“It was the most savage crime against God and his children,” said Trump, who is visiting Israel and the Palestinian Territories on the second leg of his first foreign trip since taking office in January.

Trump’s administration has drawn anger over past omissions and utterances regarding the Holocaust.

In January, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a Trump administration statement failed to mention Jews, the overwhelming majority of those who were killed in the Holocaust.

In April, White House spokesman Sean Spicer triggered an uproar when he said Hitler did not sink to the level of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by using chemical weapons on his own people. Spicer also used the term “Holocaust centers”, in an apparent reference to the Nazi death camps.

Spicer later apologized after his comments sparked an uproar on social media and elsewhere for overlooking the fact that millions of Jews perished in Nazi gas chambers.

The Anti-Defamation League said in April that anti-Semitic incidents, from bomb threats and cemetery desecrations to assaults and bullying, have surged in the United States since the election of Trump, and a “heightened political atmosphere” played a role in the rise.

Trump had been criticized for waiting until late February to deliver his first public condemnation of anti-Semitic incidents, previously speaking more generally about his hope of making the nation less “divided.”

He later called such incidents “horrible … and a very sad reminder” of the work needed to root out hate, prejudice and evil.

Trump was due to travel to Rome later on Tuesday, where he will continue a nine-day trip that began in Saudi Arabia.

(Reporting by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Mark Trevelyan)

Anti-Semitic acts spiked since Trump election win, watchdog says

DAY 33 / FEBRUARY 21: President Donald Trump delivered his first public condemnation of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States after a new spate of bomb threats to Jewish community centers and the vandalism of about 170 headstones in a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis (above). REUTERS/Tom Gannam

By Barbara Goldberg

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Anti-Semitic incidents, from bomb threats and cemetery desecration to assaults and bullying, have surged in the United States since the election of President Donald Trump, and a “heightened political atmosphere” played a role in the rise, the Anti-Defamation League said on Monday.

A sharp increase in the harassment of American Jews, including double the incidents of bullying of schoolchildren and vandalism at non-denominational grade schools, was cited in the ADL’s “Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents.”

Overall, the number of acts targeting Jews and Jewish institutions rose 34 percent in 2016 to 1,266 in 2016 and jumped 86 percent in the first quarter of 2017, the ADL said.

“The 2016 presidential election and the heightened political atmosphere played a role in the increase,” the ADL concluded in its report.

White House spokesman Michael Short said Trump consistently called for an end to anti-Semitism, as recently as Sunday in a speech on Yom HaShoah, Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“We must stamp out prejudice and anti-Semitism everywhere it is found,” Trump told the World Jewish Congress Plenary Assembly in New York.

Trump had been criticized for waiting until late February to deliver his first public condemnation of anti-Semitic incidents, previously speaking more generally about his hope of making the nation less “divided.”

He later called such incidents “horrible … and a very sad reminder” of the work needed to root out hate, prejudice and evil.

The majority of anti-Semitic incidents were not carried out by organized extremists and should be seen in the context of a general resurgence of U.S. white supremacist activity, said Oren Segal, director of the League’s Center on Extremism.

“Anti-Semitism is not the sole domain of any one group, and needs to be challenged wherever and whenever it arises,” Segal said in a statement.

Among 34 election-linked incidents cited by the ADL was graffiti posted in Denver in May 2016 that exhorted readers to “Kill the Jews, Vote Trump.”

The League also noted an incident from November when an assailant told a victim in St. Petersburg, Florida: “Trump is going to finish what Hitler started.”

Technology that makes it easier to conduct harassment anonymously contributed to the rising numbers, the ADL said.

Michael Ron David Kadar, an 18-year-old Israeli-American, has been charged with making dozens of bomb threats to Jewish community centers in the United States earlier this year.

(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Lisa Von Ahn)

Israel indicts U.S.-Israeli teen over bomb threats

An U.S.-Israeli teen, who was arrested in Israel on suspicion of making bomb threats against Jewish community centres in the United States, Australia and New Zealand, arrives before the start of a remand hearing at Magistrate's Court in Rishon Lezion, Israel April 20, 2017. REUTERS/ Amir Cohen

By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – An Israeli-American teenager was indicted in Israel on Monday on allegations he made thousands of hoax bomb calls, some targeting U.S. Jewish community centers, and earned $240,000 by offering to phone in threats against schools, hospitals and planes.

The arrest of the suspect, who is Jewish, in Israel on March 23 drew headlines when he was identified by police as having been behind bomb threats against the centers in the United States that had raised fears of a surge in anti-Semitism.

An indictment filed in the Tel Aviv District Court pointed to a threat-for-profit motive by the 18-year-old, who prosecutors said used electronic voice-altering equipment and a long-range WiFi antenna to cover his online tracks.

The suspect, the charge sheet alleged, had the equivalent of about $240,000 in his Bitcoin account earned via make-a-threat services he offered on the “Darknet”, which includes members-only websites that are not available to the general public.

The teen’s U.S.-born mother and Israeli father say their son, who moved to Israel aged 5 and lives with them in the southern city of Ashkelon, is autistic and suffers from a brain tumor that affects his behavior. No plea has been entered.

“He has high-level autism. I appeal to the world on his behalf for forgiveness for he does not know what he has done,” his mother told reporters. “This tumor has caused a state of some type of mental dysfunction that he is not aware of what he is doing. My son does not hate anyone.”

Israeli prosecutors said the suspect made bomb and shooting threats against some 2,000 institutions, including schools, shopping malls, police stations, airlines and airports in North America, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Norway and Denmark.

The threats forced the evacuation of many Jewish community centers, including some with facilities for infants and young children. They also prompted criticism of U.S. President Donald Trump for what some Jewish groups saw as an inadequate response from his administration. He condemned the incidents in a speech to Congress in February.

PRICE LIST

According to a price list posted by the suspect, customers could order a threat of a “massacre at a private home” for $40, a call threatening a “school massacre” for $80 and a bomb threat against an airliner for $500, the indictment said.

“The accused even asked customers to contact him if they had special requests for threats against other targets and to receive a customized quote,” according to the charge sheet.

One bomb hoax targeted a plane in which the Boston Celtics basketball team was traveling in December 2016, and another was made against Delaware state Senator Ernesto Lopez, who apparently drew the teen’s attention by denouncing threats made against JCCs, the prosecutors said.

If convicted in Israel, he faces up to 10 years in jail, prosecutor Jonathan Hadad told Reuters after charges were filed in the court. Israeli authorities withheld his name because he was a minor when some of the alleged crimes were committed.

Separate criminal complaints filed on Friday in U.S. federal courts in Florida and Georgia that linked the suspect to hundreds of hoax calls between 2015 and 2017 identified him as Michael Ron Kadar.

A judicial source said that at present, Israel had not received a formal extradition request from the United States. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation took part in the probe.

“There have been contacts regarding the matter but as of now our position is not to extradite for many reasons,” the source said. “He was a minor when he committed some of the offences, the threats were made in Israel too and in other countries, not just in the United States, and there are also claims as to his mental state.”

(Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Luke Baker and Catherine Evans)

‘Dirty’ Jakarta election looms as religious politics resurfaces

An election official prepares ballot boxes before distributing them to polling stations, in Jakarta, Indonesia April 18, 2017. REUTERS/Beawiharta

By Fergus Jensen and Tom Allard

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Luar Batang is one of the Indonesian capital’s oldest neighborhoods, founded in the 17th century to collect tolls from ships sailing in from the Java Sea when the city was the center of the Dutch East Indies spice trade.

Now, it is being demolished and many of its residents are being evicted to make way for a giant seawall meant to keep Jakarta from sinking under rising sea levels. That has made it ground zero for the election of the city’s governor, dubbed one of the most divisive election campaigns Indonesia has ever seen.

The incumbent governor, Basuki “Ahok” Purnama, was cruising toward a decisive election victory last September when he allegedly criticized a verse from the Koran that warns Muslims against allying with Christians and Jews.

Hardline Islamist groups responded with mass protests demanding that Purnama, an ethnic Chinese and Christian, be prosecuted. Police eventually did charge him with blasphemy.

It was Purnama who ordered the evictions from Luar Batang’s slums to make way for one of his many infrastructure projects aimed at modernizing this clogged and chaotic city.

Many of those who filled the streets of Jakarta to protest against him late last year were among the displaced, and violence broke out in Luar Batang after one of those demonstrations.

Luar Batang residents had just about given up their fight against evictions when the controversy over the Koran comments erupted, said one woman who did not want to be named, sitting outside a small shack amid the rubble.

“We see it as a gift from God,” she said, describing the slur as a means to bring down Purnama.

NECK AND NECK RACE

Opinion surveys show Purnama running neck and neck with his challenger Anies Baswedan, who, like some 85 percent of Jakartans, is a Muslim.

Purnama, 50, inherited the governorship after Joko Widodo was elected president in 2014. His brash talking style, a contrast with the soft-spoken Javanese politicians who dominate the ruling class, has grated on some voters.

Purnama won the first round of voting in February in a three-way race with 43 percent of the ballots to set up Wednesday’s second round with Basedan, who won 40 percent.

The campaign has been “the dirtiest, most polarizing and most divisive the nation has ever seen,” the Jakarta Post said in an editorial on Tuesday.

Calling the capital “the barometer of Indonesia’s political pulse”, the daily said the election would have a bearing on the next presidential election in 2019.

Police on Monday blocked plans by hardline Islamist groups to guard polling booths, citing the risk of clashes after a campaign fraught with religious tensions, and said around 66,000 police and military personnel will be deployed on voting day.

‘VOTER FRAUD’

Prabowo Subianto, head of the Gerindra Party that Baswedan represents, said in a video message recorded over the weekend that “religious people need a leader who respects their beliefs”. Prabowo lost the 2014 election to President Widodo.

Purnama faces up to five years in jail if convicted of blasphemy. His trial will resume on Thursday, when prosecutors will submit their sentence request.

Prabowo said he was concerned about potential voter fraud.

“Cheating is a common enemy to us. We don’t want to cheat,” he said. “However, we will not hold back if we are cheated.”

Hardline Islamic cleric Habib Rizieq, who helped organize the anti-Purnama demonstrations during the campaign, last week urged Muslims to travel to Jakarta and be ready to “finish” their opponents.

“This is not a battle between Anies and Ahok. This is a battle between … defenders of Islam and those who blaspheme against Islam,” Rizieq said at an event in the city of Surabaya.

“Those who can come to Jakarta better have the guts to do so and prepare a will for your family,” he added, as the crowd roared in response.

At Luar Batang, where Prabowo’s party has set up tents for those evicted from their homes, the woman at the street cafe said people are tired of politicians’ false promises and warned that frustration could boil over if Purnama wins the vote.

“If (Purnama) is elected again something extraordinary will happen,” she said.

(Editing by Bill Tarrant)

Ex-journalist pleads not guilty to threatening U.S. Jewish groups

The residence of Juan M Thompson is seen after it was searched by police in connection with his arrest on charges of bomb threats made against Jewish organizations across the United States, in St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. March 3, 2017. REUTERS/Lawrence Bryant

By Brendan Pierson

(Reuters) – A former U.S. journalist pleaded not guilty on Monday to making bomb threats against Jewish organizations in the United States while posing as his ex-girlfriend in retaliation for her breaking up with him.

Juan Thompson, 32, entered his plea at a brief hearing before U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel in Manhattan. He is charged with one count of cyberstalking, according to a court document.

Federal prosecutors have said Thompson engaged in a vicious, months-long harassment campaign against his ex-girlfriend, using various email accounts to accuse her of possessing child pornography, driving drunk and, finally, making bomb threats targeting Jewish groups.

Thompson made some of the threats in his own name and then accused his ex-girlfriend of framing him, and made other threats posing as her, prosecutors said.

Thompson did not seek bail at the hearing. Jullian Harris, his lawyer, told reporters she could not say whether or when he might do so. He is scheduled to appear before Castel again on May 18.

Thompson was a reporter for the Intercept news website until he was fired last year for allegedly inventing sources and quotes.

He has been in police custody since his arrest in St. Louis, Missouri on March 3. Before his extradition to New York, he said he was being framed and targeted as a black man.

“Make no mistake: this is a modern-day lynching,” he said in a telephone interview from the Warren County jail in Missouri.

He said he had no anti-Semitic beliefs.

U.S. authorities have been investigating a surge of threats against Jewish organizations, including more than 100 bomb threats against community centers in dozens of states in separate waves since January.

The organizations Thompson threatened included a Jewish museum in New York and the Anti-Defamation League, according to a criminal complaint in Manhattan federal court. All occurred after the first flood of phone threats in early January.

(Reporting by Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Andrew Hay)

Suspect in threats against Jewish groups appears in U.S. court

The residence of Juan M Thompson is seen after it was searched by police in connection with his arrest on charges of bomb threats made against Jewish organizations across the United States, in St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. March 3, 2017. REUTERS/Lawrence Bryant

By Brendan Pierson and Jonathan Allen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A former journalist charged with making a wave of bomb threats to U.S. Jewish organizations by telephone while posing as his ex-girlfriend appeared in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday afternoon.

Juan Thompson, 31, was arrested in St. Louis earlier this month and arrived in New York on Wednesday morning. He appeared wearing beige prison garb and flanked by two public defenders at a brief hearing before Magistrate Judge James Francis.

The public defender assigned by Francis to represent Thompson, Mark Gombiner, did not seek bail at the hearing and declined to say afterward when he might. Thompson will remain in custody for now.

Thompson is scheduled to appear again before U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel on April 6.

Prosecutors say Thompson used fake email accounts to impersonate his ex-girlfriend when he sent the bomb threats. The threats were the culmination of months of harassment against the ex-girlfriend that began after she broke up with him last July, they said.

Thompson was a reporter for the Intercept news website until he was fired last year for allegedly inventing sources and quotes.

Before his extradition to New York, he said he was being framed and targeted as a black man.

“Make no mistake: this is a modern-day lynching,” he said in a telephone interview from the Warren County jail in Missouri. “The allegations are false.”

Thompson said he had no anti-Semitic beliefs.

U.S. authorities have been investigating a surge of threats against Jewish organizations, including more than 100 bomb threats against community centers in dozens of states in separate waves since January.

The threats have stoked fears of a resurgence in anti-Semitism and forced the evacuation of many Jewish community centers, including some with daycare for young children.

The organizations Thompson threatened include a Jewish museum in New York and the Anti-Defamation League, according to a criminal complaint in Manhattan federal court. All occurred after the first flood of phone threats in early January.

Last week, an 18-year-old dual Israeli and U.S. citizen was arrested in Israel on suspicion of making dozens of hoax bomb threats to Jewish centers in the United States, Australia and New Zealand. His name was not disclosed.

His motives were not immediately clear. At a court hearing near Tel Aviv, the suspect’s defense lawyer, Galit Bash, said the young man had a growth in his head that causes behavioral problems.

(Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Matthew Lewis)

Investigators say threats to Jewish groups in U.S. and UK are linked

An American flag still stands next to one of over 170 toppled Jewish headstones at Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in University City, Missouri. REUTERS/Tom Gannam

By Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Scotland Yard and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are investigating more than a hundred bomb threats made to Jewish groups in the United States and Britain since Jan. 7, U.S. and UK law enforcement and Jewish community officials said.

Investigators said there is evidence that some of the U.S. and British bomb threats are linked. According to people in both countries who have listened to recordings of the threats, most of the them have been made over the telephone by men and women with American accents whose voices are distorted by electronic scramblers.

Waves of threats against U.S. Jewish groups – including community centers, schools, and offices of national organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) civil rights group – have been followed within hours by similar but smaller waves against Jewish organizations, mainly schools, in Britain, Jewish community representatives in both countries said.

FBI officials in Washington confirmed that the agency is investigating the threats against U.S. Jewish organizations. Sources in Britain’s Jewish community said London’s Metropolitan Police, otherwise known as Scotland Yard, is conducting its own investigation and collaborating with the FBI.

Scotland Yard did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.

Some of the most recent threats were called in Tuesday to ADL offices in Atlanta, Boston, New York, and Washington. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said President Donald Trump’s administration would “continue to condemn them and look at ways to stop them.”

NO BOMBS FOUND

The threats, 140 of them in the United States alone, according to Jewish community leaders, usually have involved callers claiming that improvised explosive devices have been placed outside the buildings that have been threatened.

However, no homemade bombs have been found outside any of the threatened premises in either the United States or the UK, community officials said.

Earlier this month, all 100 U.S. senators signed a letter to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and FBI Director James Comey expressing concern that the wave of threats will put innocent people at risk and threaten the finances of Jewish institutions.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan filed charges against Juan Thompson, a former writer for the investigative website The Intercept, earlier this month alleging that he was responsible for at least eight threats emailed to Jewish community centers as “part of a sustained campaign to harass and intimidate” a woman with whom he had a romantic relationship.

The Intercept, a news website, had fired Thompson months earlier for allegedly fabricating quotes.

Jewish community officials in the United States and Britain said they think the threats that investigators linked to Thompson were not related to the larger campaign against Jewish organizations in their countries.

(Reporting By Mark Hosenball; Editing by John Walcott and Jonathan Oatis)

New bomb threats made against Jewish centers across U.S., Canada

A firefighter rolls up a hose after a threat made to the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre was deemed a hoax in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, March 7, 2017. REUTERS/Chris Helgren

By Laila Kearney

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A new round of bomb threats against Jewish community centers across the United States and in Canada forced lockdowns and evacuations on Tuesday, and all 100 U.S. senators asked the federal government to help them enhance security.

Threats were phoned in or emailed to JCCs in states including New York, Wisconsin, Illinois and Florida overnight and early on Tuesday. Centers in Toronto and elsewhere in Ontario also said they were threatened.

U.S. federal authorities have been investigating a surge of threats against Jewish organizations, including more than 100 hoax bomb threats in five separate waves in January and February against JCCs in dozens of states.

The Trump Administration denounced the newest round of threats “in the strongest terms,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer told a news briefing.

“As long as they do continue, we’ll continue to condemn them and look at ways in which we can stop them,” Spicer said.

Tuesday’s incidents appeared unconnected to the majority of previous threats, according to the Secure Community Network, which provides security expertise to Jewish groups.

A letter signed by all 100 U.S. senators was sent on Tuesday to top U.S. law enforcement officials asking that they help Jewish groups enhance security.

“We are concerned that the number of incidents is accelerating and failure to address and deter these threats will place innocent people at risk and threaten the financial viability of JCCs,” the letter said.

One arrest was made last week, when a former journalist was charged in St. Louis with using fake email accounts to threaten to bomb Jewish sites while posing as his ex-girlfriend. But he is not believed to be responsible for the majority of threats.

Threats came in to Jewish centers and day schools on Tuesday in cities including Chicago, Milwaukee and the greater Rochester area in upstate New York.

The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights organization, also said it received bomb threats at four of its locations.

In addition to violent threats, some Jewish organizations received harassing phone calls. At the East Midwood Jewish Center in Brooklyn, police said, an anonymous caller threatened to spray the center’s synagogue with pig’s blood.

“We’ve never seen such a period of concentrated threats against the Jewish community,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio told a news conference. “The last few weeks are more troubling than anything I’ve seen in many, many years.”

(Additional reporting by Joseph Ax in New York and Timothy McLaughlin in Chicago; Editing by Dan Grebler and Jonathan Oatis)