Al-Shabab militant Zakariya Ahmed Ismail Hersi 'surrenders'

A top al-Shabab militant, Zakariya Ahmed Ismail Hersi, has given himself up, Somali officials say.

Mr Hersi, a leading figure in the militant group's intelligence wing, surrendered to police in the Gedo region, they add.
In June 2012, the US state department offered $3m (£1.9m, 2.5m euros) for information leading to his capture.
It comes three months after al-Shabab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane was killed in a US air strike.
A Somali intelligence officer, quoted by the Associated Press news agency, suggested Mr Hersi may have surrendered because of a dispute with al-Shabab members loyal to the former leader.
Mr Hersi fell out with Godane last year and has been on the run ever since but he is still a powerful figure, says BBC Africa editor Mary Harper.
'No fight' Police stormed a house Mr Hersi had been hiding in for six days, close to the border with Kenya, after receiving a tip off, the district commissioner of the town of El Wag told the BBC.
He said that although Mr Hersi had a pistol, he did not put up a fight.
"Al-Shabab leader Zakariya Ismail surrendered to government forces in El Wag, Gedo region. He is expected to be flown to Mogadishu tomorrow," an unnamed official told Reuters news agency.
There has been no immediate comment from al-Shabab.
Ahmad Umar was named the new leader of al-Shabab, days after Godane's killing last September.
The US has supported the African Union (AU) force that has driven al-Shabab out of the capital Mogadishu and other towns since 2011.
The al-Qaeda-linked fighters want to overthrow the UN-backed Somali government and frequently attack government targets as well as neighbouring countries that provide troops to the AU force.
Three members of the AU force and a civilian contractor were killed in an al-Shabab attack on its headquarters in the capital Mogadishu on Thursday.

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Pakistan bomb hoax man gets 26 years

A Pakistani man has been given a 26-year jail term for making two hoax bomb threats in two public places in Punjab province in July, prosecutors say.

The threats were made against a crowded market and children's park in the central city of Multan on the first day of the Islamic festival of Eid al-Fitr.
Police managed to track the man, named Rana Yousuf, via the sim card he used, which belonged to one of his friends.
They said Yousuf was trying to set up his friend over a business rivalry.
The hoax phone calls led police, bomb disposal experts and emergency workers to rush to the scene and search the area for several hours before discovering the warnings were fake.
Over 2,000 people were gathered in Shams park at the time of the call, Pakistan's Express Tribune reports.
The other man, whose sim card was used, was reportedly cleared of all charges due to lack of evidence.
In addition to the jail term, Yousuf was also fined 100,000 Pakistani rupees ($993; £638).

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Hitler's secret Indian army

In the closing stages of World War II, as Allied and French resistance forces were driving Hitler's now demoralized  forces from France, three senior German officers defected.

Legionnaires were recruited from German POW camps

 
The information they gave British intelligence was considered so sensitive that in 1945 it was locked away, not due to be released until the year 2021.
Now, 17 years early, the BBC's Document programme has been given special access to this secret file.
It reveals how thousands of Indian soldiers who had joined Britain in the fight against fascism swapped their oaths to the British king for others to Adolf Hitler - an astonishing tale of loyalty, despair and betrayal that threatened to rock British rule in India, known as the Raj.
The story the German officers told their interrogators began in Berlin on 3 April 1941. This was the date that the left-wing Indian revolutionary leader, Subhas Chandra Bose, arrived in the German capital.
Bose, who had been arrested 11 times by the British in India, had fled the Raj with one mission in mind. That was to seek Hitler's help in pushing the British out of India.

He wanted 500 volunteers who would be trained in Germany and then parachuted into India. Everyone raised their hands. Thousands of us volunteered Lieutenant Barwant Singh

Six months later, with the help of the German foreign ministry, he had set up what he called "The Free India Centre", from where he published leaflets, wrote speeches and organised broadcasts in support of his cause. By the end of 1941, Hitler's regime officially recognised his provisional "Free India Government" in exile, and even agreed to help Chandra Bose raise an army to fight for his cause. It was to be called "The Free India Legion".
Bose hoped to raise a force of about 100,000 men which, when armed and kitted out by the Germans, could be used to invade British India.
He decided to raise them by going on recruiting visits to Prisoner-of-War camps in Germany which, at that time, were home to tens of thousands of Indian soldiers captured by Rommel in North Africa.
Volunteers
Finally, by August 1942, Bose's recruitment drive got fully into swing. Mass ceremonies were held in which dozens of Indian POWs joined in mass oaths of allegiance to Adolf Hitler.

Chandra Bose did not live to see Indian independence

These are the words that were used by men that had formally sworn an oath to the British king: "I swear by God this holy oath that I will obey the leader of the German race and state, Adolf Hitler, as the commander of the German armed forces in the fight for India, whose leader is Subhas Chandra Bose." I managed to track down one of Bose's former recruits, Lieutenant Barwant Singh, who can still remember the Indian revolutionary arriving at his prisoner of war camp.
"He was introduced to us as a leader from our country who wanted to talk to us," he said.
"He wanted 500 volunteers who would be trained in Germany and then parachuted into India. Everyone raised their hands. Thousands of us volunteered."
Demoralised
In all 3,000 Indian prisoners of war signed up for the Free India Legion.
But instead of being delighted, Bose was worried. A left-wing admirer of Russia, he was devastated when Hitler's tanks rolled across the Soviet border.
Matters were made even worse by the fact that after Stalingrad it became clear that the now-retreating German army would be in no position to offer Bose help in driving the British from faraway India.
When the Indian revolutionary met Hitler in May 1942 his suspicions were confirmed, and he came to believe that the Nazi leader was more interested in using his men to win propaganda victories than military ones.
So, in February 1943, Bose turned his back on his legionnaires and slipped secretly away aboard a submarine bound for Japan.

Rudolf Hartog remembers parting with his Indian friends

There, with Japanese help, he was to raise a force of 60,000 men to march on India. Back in Germany the men he had recruited were left leaderless and demoralised. After much dissent and even a mutiny, the German High Command despatched them first to Holland and then south-west France, where they were told to help fortify the coast for an expected allied landing.
After D-Day, the Free India Legion, which had now been drafted into Himmler's Waffen SS, were in headlong retreat through France, along with regular German units.
It was during this time that they gained a wild and loathsome reputation amongst the civilian population.
The former French Resistance fighter, Henri Gendreaux, remembers the Legion passing through his home town of Ruffec: "I do remember several cases of rape. A lady and her two daughters were raped and in another case they even shot dead a little two-year-old girl."
Finally, instead of driving the British from India, the Free India Legion were themselves driven from France and then Germany.
Their German military translator at the time was Private Rudolf Hartog, who is now 80.
"The last day we were together an armoured tank appeared. I thought, my goodness, what can I do? I'm finished," he said.
"But he only wanted to collect the Indians. We embraced each other and cried. You see that was the end."
Mutinies
A year later the Indian legionnaires were sent back to India, where all were released after short jail sentences.
But when the British put three of their senior officers on trial near Delhi there were mutinies in the army and protests on the streets.
With the British now aware that the Indian army could no longer be relied upon by the Raj to do its bidding, independence followed soon after.
Not that Subhas Chandra Bose was to see the day he had fought so hard for. He died in 1945.
Since then little has been heard of Lieutenant Barwant Singh and his fellow legionnaires.
At the end of the war the BBC was forbidden from broadcasting their story and this remarkable saga was locked away in the archives, until now. Not that Lieutenant Singh has ever forgotten those dramatic days.
"In front of my eyes I can see how we all looked, how we would all sing and how we all talked about what eventually would happen to us all," he said.

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Pakistan judge issues arrest warrant for Abdul Aziz

A judge in Pakistan has issued an arrest warrant for a cleric at a radical mosque in Islamabad who has refused to condemn the massacre of children at an army-run school.

Imam Abdul Aziz has been accused of threatening protesters outside the Red Mosque.
The cleric said the charge against him was insignificant.
Last week, Taliban fighters attacked the school in Peshawar, killing 152 people, including 133 children.
Mr Aziz said that the authorities should focus on arresting people accused of more serious crimes.
"My case is very small and even a sub-inspector can grant me bail," he said.
 Mr Aziz is well known for his pro-Taliban views.
Earlier this year, a school run by the cleric renamed its library in honour of the former al-Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden.
A spokesman for the Red Mosque said they would resist the arrest of Mr Aziz.
Civil society activists had lodged the complaint against Mr Aziz, saying that they had been threatened by mosque employees during a protest about his refusal to condemn the school massacre.
The demonstrators are also being investigated for holding an unlawful protest.
Pakistan has stepped up its anti-terror operations since the attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar on 16 December.
Earlier this week, the government announced new measures to tackle terrorism, including the establishment of military courts to hear terrorism-related cases.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said on Wednesday that there was a "changed Pakistan" since the tragedy and that there would be "no place for terrorism, extremism, sectarianism and intolerance."

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Pope condemns Taliban attack on Pak students

Pope Francis issued a strident call in his Christmas day message to safeguard children who are victims “under our very eyes” of violence and trafficking, while also demanding an end to “brutal persecution” worldwide.
Killings and hostage-takings from the Middle East

to Nigeria and elsewhere must stop, he said in his annual Christmas “urbi et orbi” (to the city and the world) message.
Denouncing conflicts in Ukraine and Libya, and noting last week’s deadly attack against a school in Pakistan, the pontiff also lamented the thousands of victims of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.
“Truly there are so many tears this Christmas,” he said.
Delivering his second Christmas blessing, the popular Argentine pontiff, visibly moved and departing from his text, noted “the children massacred by bombardments, including where the son of God was born” and their “powerless silence that cries under the sword.”
Denouncing “indifference”, he explicitly condemned abortion, deploring the children “killed before seeing the light”.
“May Jesus save the vast numbers of children who are victims of violence, made objects of trade and trafficking, or forced to become soldiers.” “May he give comfort to the families of the children killed in Pakistan last week” referring to the 150 people, including 134 school-children, killed in Peshawar by the Taliban.
Speaking to a large crowd massed outside Saint Peter’s Basilica, the pope urged Ukrainians to “overcome tensions, conquer hatred and violence and set out on a new journey of fraternity and reconciliation”. He turned too to the violence wrought by Islamic State fundamentalists this year in Syria and Iraq.
“I ask him, the saviour of the world, to look upon our brothers and sisters in Iraq and Syria, who for too long now have suffered the effects of ongoing conflict, and who, together with those belonging to other ethnic and religious groups, are suffering a brutal persecution.”
There were “too many displaced persons, exiles and refugees, adults and elderly, from this region and the whole world,” he said.
He called for peace in “the whole Middle East” and continued efforts towards “dialogue” between Israelis and Palestinians.
The pope too urged peace in Nigeria “where more blood is being shed”, as well as in Libya, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He noted the victims of Ebola in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea and thanked those who were “courageously” assisting the sick.
The Pope urged people not to be indifferent to the suffering of so many around the world. Pope Francis also appealed for an end to conflicts in African countries and urged dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians.
The 78-year-old pope spoke from the same balcony of St Peter’s Basilica where he first appeared as pontiff on the night of his election on March 13, 2013.
“May indifference be changed into closeness and rejection into hospitality, so that all who now are suffering may receive the necessary humanitarian help to overcome the rigours of winter, return to their countries and live with dignity,” he said, speaking in Italian.
On Christmas eve, Francis made a surprise telephone call to comfort Christian refugees in a camp in Ankawa, Iraq. “You are like Jesus on Christmas night. There was no room for him either ...” he told them.
The pope has a busy year ahead of him, with trips planned to Asia, Africa, Latin American and the United States.
Another key project for 2015 is the reform of the Curia, the Vatican’s central administration. In Christmas greetings on Monday to the Vatican’s top administrators, Pope Francis delivered a stinging critique of Vatican bureaucracy.
In his Christmas message, which was fairly brief, the pope traditionally calls for remedies to the world’s woes.
Francis however has put an end to a longstanding tradition of popes wishing a happy Christmas in dozens of languages.
At a Christmas Eve mass, he urged Roman Catholics to have greater empathy towards family and friends, saying the world needs “tenderness” and “warmth”.
Francis sent a video message to South Koreans recalling his trip to the country in August in which he said: “The great celebration in honour of the (Catholic) martyrs (in the 18th and 19th centuries in Korea), and the encounters with young people remain fresh in my memory.”
In Bethlehem on Christmas Eve hectic preparations preceded celebrations on the West Bank town’s biggest night of the year, culminating in midnight mass at the Church of the Nativity built over the spot where Christians believe the Virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus.
Scouts playing bagpipes and drums marched to the church in a procession led by Jerusalem’s Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal, the top Catholic cleric in the Holy Land.
In his homily, Twal called for “peace in Jerusalem”, where violent clashes between Israelis and Palestinians rocked the city for months, and “equality and mutual respect” among all faiths.
He also asked for the rebuilding of Gaza, which was ravaged this summer during a 50-day war between Hamas and Israel in which more than 2,200 people died.

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Pope Francis makes Christmas call to Iraqi refugees

Pope Francis has spoken by telephone to Iraqi refugees in a camp near Irbil before celebrating Christmas Eve Mass.

The Pope urged the refugees - forced to flee their homes by the militant group Islamic State - to "persevere", and said he was close to them in his heart.
At a Christmas Eve midnight Mass at St Peter's Basilica, the Pope called on believers to show more empathy towards family and friends.
On Christmas Day, the Pope will deliver his "Urbi et Orbi" Christmas address.
The call to refugees at a camp in Ankawa was made by satellite phone and broadcast live on Italian TV.
"Dear brothers, I am close to you, very close to you in my heart," he told them, saying he was thinking particularly of children and the elderly.
"Innocent children, children who have died, exploited children... I am thinking, too, about grandparents, about the older people who have lived their lives, and who must now bear this cross."
He told them they were like Jesus, forced to flee because there was no room for them. "I embrace you all and wish for you a holy Christmas," he said.
Advances in Iraq by Islamic State have forced tens of thousands of Christians and people from other religious minorities to flee to Kurdish controlled areas.
Later in his homily during Christmas Eve Mass, the Pope said the world needed more tenderness and warmth.
"The question put to us simply by the infant's presence is: 'Do I allow God to love me?'" he said.
"Do we have the courage to welcome with tenderness the difficulties and problems of those who are near to us?"

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Father urges IS to show mercy for captured Jordan pilot

The father of a Jordanian pilot seized by Islamic State militants in Syria

has renewed a plea for his release.
Describing his son as "a guest among brothers of ours in Syria Islamic State", Youssef al-Kasaesbeh urged his "hosts" to "treat him well".
Lt Moaz al-Kasaesbeh was captured after his jet crashed in north-eastern Syria on Wednesday during a bombing mission.
Jordan is one of four Arab states in a US-led coalition that has launched air strikes on IS in Syria.
So far, the militants have not commented on the fate of the 26-year-old pilot.
'Hospitality' It is still unclear what caused his plane to crash near the IS stronghold of Raqqa.
IS said it shot it down with a heat-seeking missile. However, the US says "evidence clearly indicates" that this is not true.
On Thursday Moaz al-Kasaesbeh's father said: "I direct a message to our generous brothers of the Islamic State in Syria to host my son... with generous hospitality."
In a statement issued on Wednesday, the Jordanian military said it held IS and its supporters "responsible for the safety of the pilot and his life".
The air forces of Jordan, the US, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain have carried out hundreds of air strikes on IS in Syria in the past three months.
Many of the targets have been in and around Raqqa, which is the de facto capital of the "caliphate" whose creation IS proclaimed in June.
Correspondents say that IS is assumed to have a limited air defence capability.
However, IS fighters have downed Iraqi and Syrian government planes in the past, and the group's full capabilities are not known.

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what colour was Jesus?

Jesus has been named the top black icon by the New Nation newspaper. Their assertion that Jesus was black has raised eyebrows in some quarters - so what colour was he?

Just as no one will ever produce proof for the existence of God, the question of Jesus's colour may always be a matter for personal belief.
Was he white, white-ish, olive-skinned, swarthy, dark-skinned or black? There are people who believe he was any one of those shades, but there seem to be only two things about the debate that can be said with any degree of certainty.
First - if the past 2,000 years of Western art were the judge, Jesus would be white, handsome, probably with long hair and an ethereal glow.
Second - it can almost certainly be said that Jesus would not have been white. His hair was also probably cut short.

I think the safest thing is to talk about Jesus as 'a man of colour' Dr Mark Goodacre

Yet the notion that Jesus was black - highlighted this week in a survey of black icons by the New Nation newspaper which ranked him at number one - is genuinely held by some. One school of thought has it that Jesus was part of a tribe which had migrated from Nigeria. And Jesus probably did have some African links - after all the conventional theory is that he lived as a child in Egypt where, presumably, his appearance did not make him stand out.

Blue-eyed Robert Powell, left, and brown-eyed Jim Caviezel

The New Nation takes it further: "Ethiopian Christianity, which pre-dates European Christianity, always depicts Christ as an African and it generally agreed that people of the region where Jesus came from looked nothing like Boris Johnson," the paper says. As light-hearted evidence that Jesus was black, it adds that he "called everybody 'brother', liked Gospel, and couldn't get a fair trial". But the truth, says New Testament scholar Dr Mark Goodacre, of the University of Birmingham, is probably somewhere in between.
"There is absolutely no evidence as to what Jesus looked like," he says. "The artistic depictions down the ages have total and complete variation, which indicates that nobody did a portrait of Jesus or wrote down a description, it's all been forgotten."
Traditional depictions
Dr Goodacre was involved in the reconstruction of a Middle Eastern first century skull for the BBC's Son of God programme in 2001, which resulted in a suggestion of what a man like Jesus might have looked like. He advised on hair and skin colour.

People - even mullet-wearers - project their ideal on to Jesus

"The hair was the easiest - there's a reference in Paul which says it's disgraceful for a man to wear long hair, so it looks pretty sure that people of that period had to have reasonably short hair. The traditional depictions of Jesus with long flowing golden hair are probably inaccurate." Deciding on skin colour was more difficult, though. But the earliest depictions of Jews, which date from the 3rd Century, are - as far as can be determined - dark-skinned.
"We do seem to have a relatively dark skinned Jesus. In contemporary parlance I think the safest thing is to talk about Jesus as 'a man of colour'." This probably means olive-coloured, he says.
'Fascinating' debate
Professor Vincent Wimbush, of California's Claremont Graduate University, who is an expert on ethnic interpretations of the Bible, says the matter of the historical colour of Jesus seems to him a "flat, dead-end issue".
"He's of Mediterranean stock, and it's quite clear what that means. We see people like that in the world today, and that should end the matter." The fact that the debate rages on regardless is fascinating, he says, because of what it says about people's other issues.
The artistic representations of Jesus which are so familiar are not necessarily a negative thing, Dr Goodacre says. There is "theologically something quite profound" in the fact that throughout history people have tried to depict Jesus in their own image.
"This is not a rough image of themselves people have been depicting. It's an ideal image of themselves, painting Jesus as something they are aspiring to.
"Things have changed a bit in recent culture because people are conscious of the need to be challenged by him and shocked. I think that's why in more contemporary representations, even those coming from a white, western background, people will think very carefully about the representation."
Even the world of film is catching up, albeit slowly. Robert Powell had famously piercing blue eyes in Jesus of Nazareth in 1977. And although Jim Caviezel, who played the lead in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, also has piercing blue eyes, by the time the film was shown they had miraculously become brown.

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