Islam Hates Girls and Women > Prolific online child sex abuser from Pakistan gets 17 years in Aussie prison; CIA says teens plotting to kill tens of thousands at Taylor Swift concert

 

Update on Islam Hates Girls and Women > Muhammad impersonated YouTube star to sexually extort and abuse 286 girls in 20 countries

Pakistani man sentenced to 17 years in jail for sexual abuse of hundreds of victims

NewsDrum Desk

28 Aug 2024 20:40 IST

Melbourne, Aug 28 (PTI) A Pakistani-origin man has been sentenced to 17 years in jail for over one of the worst online child sexual abuse schemes in Australia, targeting hundreds of victims in the country and overseas by pretending to be a 15-year-old social media influencer with a large following.

Muhammad Zain Ul Abideen Rasheed, 29, pleaded guilty to 119 charges, relating to 286 people from 20 countries, including the UK, the US, Japan and France. Two-thirds of his victims were aged under 16, BBC News reported.

A Perth court heard Rasheed coerced them into a cycle of increasingly extreme abuse by threatening to send explicit messages and images of them to their loved ones.

Rasheed pretended to be a teenage YouTube star and blackmailed hundreds of children into performing sexual acts.

Rasheed will be eligible for parole in 2033, when he will be aged 38, ABC News reported.

In handing down her sentence in the District Court of WA on Tuesday, Judge Amanda Burrows said the volume of offences was of such magnitude there was "no comparable case … I can find in Australia".

He approached children online in that guise, sent them pictures of the online star and initially asked innocuous questions to gain their trust.

He then asked the victims for pictures that he could "rate" and later threatened to send screenshots of their responses to friends and family unless they performed increasingly extreme sexual acts – including those involving family pets and other young siblings or children in the home.

In sentencing, Judge Burrows said those offences were "of a degrading, humiliating nature [and] the conduct involving a family pet was particularly abhorrent".

The court heard Rasheed would set a "countdown" timer, threatening to distribute the responses and further images he had made of them if they didn't comply with his demands, the report said.

Judge Burrows said Rasheed's offending was aggravated by the fact he abused a number of the victims with groups of other adults, inviting other paedophiles to watch live streams while he directed children to perform the distressing acts.

In other cases, he continued to bully and coerce the children despite their "obvious distress" and "extreme fear", with some telling him they were suicidal.

"The callous disregard this man had for his victims around the world and their distress, humiliation and fear make it one of the most horrific sextortion cases prosecuted in Australia," said Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner David McLean.

"This type of online exploitation and abuse is devastating and causes lifelong trauma," it said.

Rasheed was first charged by the Australian Federal Police in 2021 after they were contacted by Interpol and police in the United States raising concerns about a person, believed to be in Australia, who was targeting young girls through social media.

He is already serving a five-year jail term for a separate crime in which he sexually abused a 14-year-old child in his car on two separate occasions at a Perth park, which the judge noted was during the same period he was committing the online offences.

The court heard Rasheed spent hundreds of hours engaged in a sex offender treatment programme while in prison, however, a psychiatrist found he still represented a "well above average risk" of reoffending.

A report prepared by a psychiatrist for the court detailed how Rasheed moved to Australia from Pakistan at a young age and how his parents were "traditional, conservative and strict".

He was sent to an all-boys private school where he and his brothers were the only Muslim students, which led to him feeling socially isolated.

Like the hundreds of Pakistani child rapists in England, Rasheed was most likely schooled in strict Islam where any woman or girl 'in your right hand', that is 'under your control', is fair game for being sexually abused, if she's not a Muslim. Straight out of the Quran as spoken by Mohammed himself. 

Terror plot at Taylor Swift concert aimed

to kill thousands: CIA official

By Stefanie Dazio  The Associated Press

Posted August 29, 2024 5:55 am

 3 min read

The suspects in the foiled plot to attack Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna earlier this month sought to kill “tens of thousands” of fans before the CIA discovered intelligence that disrupted the planning and led to arrests, the agency’s deputy director said.

The CIA notified Austrian authorities of the scheme, which allegedly included links to the Islamic State group. The intelligence and subsequent arrests ultimately led to the cancellation of three sold-out Eras Tour shows, devastating fans who had traveled across the globe to see Swift in concert.

CIA Deputy Director David Cohen addressed the failed plot during the annual Intelligence and National Security Summit, held this week in Maryland.

“They were plotting to kill a huge number — tens of thousands of people at this concert, including I am sure many Americans — and were quite advanced in this,” Cohen said Wednesday. “The Austrians were able to make those arrests because the agency and our partners in the intelligence community provided them information about what this ISIS-connected group was planning to do.”

Austrian officials said the main suspect, a 19-year-old Austrian man, was inspired by the Islamic State group. He allegedly planned to attack outside the stadium, where upwards of 30,000 fans were expected to gather, with knives or homemade explosives. Another 65,000 fans were likely to be inside the venue. Investigators discovered chemical substances and technical devices during a raid of the suspect’s home.

That doesn't sound like a plan to kill tens of thousands to me?

2:15

Teen terror suspects plotted ‘bloodbath’ at Taylor Swift’s Vienna concerts, says Austrian chancellor

Austria’s interior minister, Gerhard Karner, previously said help from other intelligence agencies was needed because Austrian investigators, unlike some foreign services, can’t legally monitor text messages.

The 19-year-old’s lawyer has said the allegations were “overacting at its best,” and contended Austrian authorities were “presenting this exaggeratedly” in order to get new surveillance powers.

That sounds much more likely. The CIA actually works like that, I believe.

Swift broke her silence about the cancellations last week after her London shows had concluded.

“Having our Vienna shows cancelled was devastating,” she wrote in a statement posted to Instagram. “The reason for the cancellations filled me with a new sense of fear, and a tremendous amount of guilt because so many people had planned on coming to those shows.”

She thanked authorities — “thanks to them, we were grieving concerts and not lives,” she wrote — and said she waited to speak until the European leg of her Eras Tour concluded to prioritize safety.

“Let me be very clear: I am not going to speak about something publicly if I think doing so might provoke those who would want to harm the fans who come to my shows,” she wrote.

Concert organizer Barracuda Music said it canceled the three-night Vienna run that would have begun Aug. 8 because the arrests made in connection to the conspiracy were too close to showtime.

The main suspect and a 17-year-old were taken into custody on Aug. 6, the day before the cancellations were announced. A third suspect, 18, was arrested Aug. 8. Their names have not been released in line with Austrian privacy rules.

The shows in London, the next stop after Vienna, came on the heels of a stabbing at a Swift-themed dance class that left three little girls dead in the U.K. In a statement issued after the Southport attack, Swift said she was “just completely in shock” and “at a complete loss for how to ever convey my sympathies to these families.” News outlets reported that Swift met with some of the survivors backstage in London.

The Vienna plot also drew comparisons to a 2017 attack by a suicide bomber at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, that killed 22 people. The bomb detonated at the end of Grande’s concert as thousands of young fans were leaving, becoming the deadliest extremist attack in the United Kingdom in recent years.

Cohen on Wednesday praised the CIA’s work in preventing the planned violence, saying that other counterterrorism “successes” in foiling plots typically go unheralded.

“I can tell you within my agency, and I’m sure in others, there were people who thought that was a really good day for Langley,” he said, referring to the CIA headquarters. “And not just the Swifties in my workforce.”

The record-smashing tour is on hiatus until the fall.