The Jim Bakker Show

NY man linked to Islamic State gets 20 years prison for New Year’s Eve plot

By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) – An upstate New York man was sentenced on Thursday to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiring to provide material support to Islamic State, in connection with his alleged role in preparing a New Year’s Eve attack in 2015 at a local club or bar.

Emanuel Lutchman, 26, of Rochester, was sentenced by Chief Judge Frank Geraci of the federal court in that city, following his August 11 guilty plea, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

The prison term was the maximum possible, and Lutchman was also sentenced to 50 years of supervised release. He has been in custody since his Dec. 30, 2015 arrest.

A federal public defender representing Lutchman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

According to his plea agreement, Lutchman admitted to having bought a machete, knives, ski masks and other items for his attack, in which he was prepared to kidnap or kill people, and planned to later release a video explaining his actions.

The defendant also admitted to having conspired with Abu Issa Al-Amriki, a now deceased member of Islamic State in Syria, hoping that a successful attack would help him gain membership into the group, the Justice Department said.

Lutchman had also expressed support for Islamic State on social media, and gathered issues of Inspire, an online magazine published by al Qaeda, designed to help people conduct “‘lone wolf’ terrorist attacks” in the United States, the department added.

The defendant was arrested soon after recording a video in which he pledged allegiance to Islamic State, vowed to “spill the blood” of non-believers, and asked Allah to “make this a victory.”

Lutchman’s lawyer had sought a 10-year prison term.

In a court filing, he said Lutchman had since age 14 had “extensive” mental health issues including bipolar disorder and depression, and was easily influenced by radical Islam, but has now “renounced” Islamic State and “seen its empty promise.”

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by David Gregorio)

Gunman in Istanbul nightclub attack may have trained in Syria

An injured woman is carried to an ambulance from a nightclub where a gun attack took place during a New Year party in Istanbul, Turkey.

By Humeyra Pamuk and Daren Butler

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – The gunman who killed 39 people in an Istanbul nightclub on New Year’s Day in an attack claimed by Islamic State appears to have been well versed in guerrilla warfare and may have trained in Syria, a newspaper report and a security source said on Tuesday.

The attacker, who remains at large, shot dead a police officer and a civilian at the entrance to the exclusive Reina nightclub on Sunday. He then opened fire with an automatic rifle inside, reloading his weapon half a dozen times and shooting the wounded as they lay on the ground.

In a statement claiming the attack on Monday, Islamic State described the club as a gathering point for Christians celebrating their “apostate holiday” and said the shooting was revenge for Turkish military involvement in Syria.

“The assailant has experience in combat for sure … he could have been fighting in Syria for years,” one security source told Reuters, saying that he was likely to have been directed in his actions by the jihadist group.

A Turkish police handout picture made avalible on January 2, 2017 of a suspect in Istanbul nightclub attack which killed at least 39 people on New Year’s Eve. REUTERS/Reuters TV/Handout

The Haberturk newspaper said police investigations revealed that the gunman had entered Turkey from Syria and went to the central city of Konya in November, traveling with his wife and two children so as not to attract attention.

Some Turkish media reported that police were seeking a 28-year-old Kyrgyz national believed to be the gunman.

Kyrgyzstan’s security service said it was in touch with Turkish authorities and that a man had been questioned by Kyrgyz police and then released.

Turkish officials have not commented on the details of the investigation. But government spokesman Numan Kurtulmus said on Monday that the authorities were close to fully identifying the gunman, after gathering fingerprints and information on his appearance.

The state-run Anadolu news agency said a total of 14 people had been detained. Two foreign nationals were detained at Istanbul’s main Ataturk airport in connection with the attack, broadcaster NTV said.

A selfie video of the alleged attacker, apparently walking around Istanbul’s central Taksim Square, was broadcast by Turkish news channels on Tuesday as police operations to track him down continued.

Kurtulmus made no reference to the Islamic State claim of responsibility on Monday but said it was clear Turkey’s military operations in Syria had annoyed terrorist groups and those behind them.

NATO member Turkey is part of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State and since August has been conducting military operations inside Syria to drive the radical Sunni militants, as well as Kurdish militia fighters, away from its borders.

Islamic State has been blamed for at least half a dozen attacks on civilian targets in Turkey over the past 18 months; but, other than assassinations, it was the first time it has directly claimed any of them. It made the statement on one of its Telegram channels, a method used after attacks elsewhere.

Haberturk cited a barman at the club as saying the gunman had thrown explosive devices several times during the shooting spree, apparently in order to disorientate people and give himself time to reload.

Several witnesses who spoke to Reuters also said there had been small explosions during the attack.

(Additional reporting by Olga Dzyubenko in Bishkek; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Mark Trevelyan and Richard Lough)

Threat of New Year attack in U.S. low but ‘undeniable’: agencies

NYPD standing guard during Christmas Eve

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. defense and security agencies said they believed the threat of militant attacks inside the United States was low during this New Year’s holiday, yet some chance of an attack was “undeniable,” according to security assessments reviewed on Friday.

“There are no indications of specific threats to the U.S. Homeland,” said a “situational awareness” bulletin issued to U.S. Army personnel this week by the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command. “However the threat from homegrown violent extremists (HVEs) in the United States is undeniable,” the bulletin added.

A copy of the bulletin was seen by Reuters on Friday.

A separate bulletin, issued by the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command and headlined, “New Year’s Day Celebration Threat Assessment,” rated the overall threat of attacks against U.S. Army installations and personnel as “moderate.”

The command’s intelligence operations center received “no reporting of specific or credible threats targeting U.S. Army installations or its personnel for the upcoming 2017 New Year’s celebration,” said the bulletin, a copy of which also was made available to Reuters.

The assessment, however, noted that two recent issues of Rumiyah, an Islamic State propaganda publication, did “provide information on conducting knife attacks and using vehicles to cause mass casualties in populated areas.”

Such tactics were used in recent attacks on civilians in Nice, France, and in Columbus, Ohio, said the bulletin. It did not mention the Dec. 19 truck attack on a Christmas Market in the German capital, Berlin.

U.S. Army and Pentagon officials did not immediately respond to requests for comments on the threat assessments.

A senior U.S. official familiar with government-wide analyses of New Year’s holiday attack threats said the Army assessments were consistent with those of other U.S. security and intelligence agencies.

Some specific threats have come to the attention of government agencies, but were not considered credible, said the senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

(Reporting by Mark Hosenball; Editing by Jonathan Landay and David Gregorio)

European cities ramp up security for New Year after Berlin attack

By Oliver Denzer and Geert De Clercq

BERLIN/PARIS (Reuters) – European capitals tightened security on Friday ahead of New Year’s celebrations, erecting concrete barriers in city centers and boosting police numbers after the Islamic State attack in Berlin last week that killed 12 people.

In the German capital, police closed the Pariser Platz square in front of the Brandenburg Gate and prepared to deploy 1,700 extra officers, many along a party strip where armored cars will flank concrete barriers blocking off the area.

“Every measure is being taken to prevent a possible attack,” Berlin police spokesman Thomas Neuendorf told Reuters TV. Some police officers would carry sub-machine guns, he said, an unusual tactic for German police.

Last week’s attack in Berlin, in which a Tunisian man plowed a truck into a Christmas market, has prompted German lawmakers to call for tougher security measures.

In Milan, where police shot the man dead, security checks were set up around the main square. Trucks were banned from the centers of Rome and Naples. Police and soldiers cradled machine guns outside tourists sites including Rome’s Colosseum.

Madrid plans to deploy an extra 1,600 police on the New Year weekend. For the second year running, access to the city’s central Puerta del Sol square, where revellers traditionally gather to bring in the New Year, will be restricted to 25,000 people, with police setting up barricades to control access.

In Cologne in western Germany, where hundreds of women were sexually assaulted and robbed outside the central train station on New Year’s Eve last year, police have installed new video surveillance cameras to monitor the station square.

The attacks in Cologne, where police said the suspects were mainly of North African and Arab appearance, fueled criticism of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to accept nearly 900,000 migrants last year.

The Berlin attack has intensified that criticism.

In Frankfurt, home to the European Central Bank and Germany’s biggest airport, more than 600 police officers will be on duty on New Year’s Eve, twice as many as in 2015.

In Brussels, where Islamist suicide bombers killed 16 people and injured more than 150 in March, the mayor was reviewing whether to cancel New Year fireworks, but decided this week that they would go ahead.

PARIS PATROLS

In Paris, where Islamic State gunmen killed 130 people last November, authorities prepared for a high-security weekend, the highlight of which will be the fireworks on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, where some 600,000 people are expected.

Ahead of New Year’s Eve, heavily armed soldiers patrolled popular Paris tourist sites such as the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre museum.

In the Paris metropolitan area, 10,300 police, gendarmes, soldiers, firemen and other personnel will be deployed, police said, fewer than the 11,000 in 2015 just weeks after the Nov. 13 attack at the Bataclan theater.

Searches and crowd filtering will be carried out by private security agents, particularly near the Champs-Élysées where thousands of people are expected, authorities said.

Across France, more than 90,000 police including 7,000 soldiers will be on duty for New Year’s Eve, authorities said.

On Wednesday, police in southwest France arrested a man suspected of having planned an attack on New Year’s Eve.

Two other people, one of whom was suspected of having planned an attack on police, were arrested in a separate raid, also in southwest France, near Toulouse, police sources told Reuters.

“We must remain vigilant at all times, and we are asking citizens to also be vigilant,” French Interior Minister Bruno Le Roux told a news conference in Paris, noting that the threat of a terrorist attack was high.

In Vienna, police handed out more than a thousand pocket alarms to women, eager to avoid a repeat of the sexual assaults at New Year in Cologne in 2015.

“At present, there is no evidence of any specific danger in Austria. However, we are talking about an increased risk situation,” Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka said.

“We are leaving nothing to chance with regard to security.”

In Ukraine, police arrested a man on Friday who they suspected of planning a Berlin copycat attack in the city of Odessa.

(Additional reporting by Maria Sheahan in Frankfurt, Kirsti Knolle in Vienna, Teis Jensen in Copenhagen, Isla Binnie in Rome, Sarah White in Madrid, Robert Muller in Prague, Bate Felix and Johnny Cotton in Paris; Writing by Paul Carrel; Editing by Louise Ireland)

N.Y. man admits planning Islamic State-inspired New Year’s Eve attack

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A New York man pleaded guilty on Thursday to planning a New Year’s Eve attack last year inspired by Islamic State, the U.S. Department of Justice said, and faces up to 20 years in federal prison when he is sentenced in November.

Emanuel Lutchman, 25, of Rochester, pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support to Islamic State.

Lutchman expressed support for Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, on social media, including videos and images distributed by the violent extremist group, according to court documents.

In December 2015, Lutchman contacted Abu Issa Al-Amriki, an Islamic State member in Syria, after reading an online guide on how to carry out attacks on non-believers, prosecutors said.

Al-Amriki, who was killed in a drone strike earlier this year, instructed Lutchman to kill civilians on New Year’s Eve in the name of Islamic State, according to the government.

Lutchman and an informant secretly working with federal agents purchased a machete, knives, ski masks and other materials on Dec. 29, 2015, in preparation for the attack, prosecutors said.

Lutchman was arrested on Dec. 30, shortly after recording a video in which he pledged allegiance to Islamic State and vowed to “spill the blood” of non-believers.

Local media in Rochester quoted his grandmother as saying Lutchman converted to Islam while previously imprisoned, and he suffered from mental issues in the past, according to his family.

The Justice Department has brought more than 90 Islamic State-related cases since 2014.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Dan Grebler)

In The New Year~ There is Power in the Turn!

A warm and loving crowd filled Morningside this New Year’s Eve to ring in 2016 with praise and worship to God!

Music by the Morningside Singers and Band lifted hearts and hands towards heaven filling the room with fellowship. This night was dedicated to the Lord and the inspired messages given through His prophets, preaching a testimony of the power of turning BACK to God!

Pastor Jim Bakker, proclaiming this year as the year of the Bible, stressed the absolute necessity for America and Christians everywhere to come back to God’s Word! His powerful message was a reminder of the promises that God has made, the paths that we have wandered off as Christians and what the Church MUST be teaching straight from the Lord’s heart.

As the evening progressed, the Mt. Calvary Praise Team sealed Pastor Jim’s compelling message with voices brimming with God’s Glory illuminating the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit on Main Street.

Bishop Ron Webb continued the countdown to the new year with a spirit led message recognizing the difficulties of the past year for many people and the cost to our faith.
“Because of what difficult things you have been through you have lost your faith in the majestic power of God. Your value of God. Your estimation of God Your expectation of God. Your opinion of God. You must raise your Faith in HIM!”

Speaking on the true power of prayer, Bishop Webb underscored the urgent need to turn back to talking and listening to the Lord; the powerful and mighty act of truly communicating again with Him.

“Let your light shine and glorify the Lord. The darker the world gets, the brighter our lights are going to shine. Stay on your face before God! Pray and talk to the Father. Stay under the spiritual covering of the Lord!”

2016 came upon the worshiping crowd with thanksgiving, prayer and devotion to following God’s proclamations and His Word with an additional message from Bishop Ron Webb.

“God has been GOOD to YOU!! God has BLESSED YOU!! Make up your mind who you are going to serve. Seek the face of God! As for me and my house we will serve the Lord!”

Happy New Year from everyone here at Morningside! Our prayers are with you in the coming days as we strengthen our Faith in our Lord Jesus Christ!

Israeli Attacked In Germany By Man Singing Anti-Semitic Song

German police are investigating an attack on an Israeli man in Berlin on New Year’s Eve by Germans who were singing anti-Semitic songs.

Witnesses say a group of young men were shouting anti-Semitic slogans and singing songs on a subway train. Shahak Shapira, 26, is an Israeli citizen who lives in Berlin and asked the group to stop singing the hate songs.

When the men refused to stop spewing their hate, Shapira recorded their actions on his cell phone.

He exited the train car at the next stop only to be followed by the men who shouted at him in both German and Arabic. They demanded that Shapira delete the video from his phone. When Shapira refused, the gang spat on him, beat him and then kicked him in the head when he fell to the ground.

Police say they are still looking for the attackers.

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