Cyprus: Parliamentary vote puts far-right in parliament

Via Cyprus Mail (h/t glykosymoritis):

Cyprus’s ruling conservatives took the lead in Sunday’s general election, results showed, while a far-right party won its first seats in the legislature amid voter disillusionment after a 2013 financial meltdown.

With the voting tally at 100 percent, and an unprecedentedly high abstention rate, the right-wing Democratic Rally party was ahead with 30.6 percent of the vote followed by Communist AKEL with 25.6 percent.

Compared to the previous elections of 2011, those two main parties on the Cypriot political scene suffered setbacks. AKEL’s Communists lost up to seven percentage points while Democratic Rally lost 3.7 percentage points.

By contrast ELAM, an extremist party forged on the coat-tails of Greece’s Golden Dawn, scraped past a newly-imposed 3.6 percent electoral threshold and won up to two seats, according to preliminary estimates.

“It’s sort of a kindergarten version of Golden Dawn,” said political analyst Hubert Faustmann, referring to the party formed in 2008. “All the big parties lost.”

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Will Europe put an end to Hizballah’s operations on Its soil?

The Lebanese terror group continues to operate in Europe despite warnings from the EU. What will Brussels do about it?

Daily Beast via Mosaic Magazine:

Last week, Hussein Bassam Abdallah pled guilty to involvement in a terrorist plot in Cyprus, where he was hiding 8.2 tons of ammonium nitrate intended for attacking Israeli and Jewish targets on the island and smuggling the remainder to Hizballah operatives throughout Europe. Matthew Levitt cites this as evidence of how little has been accomplished by EU’s July 2013 ban on Hizballah’s military wing but not on the organization in general:

Not only did Hizballah actively maintain an explosives stockpile in Cyprus, the group retained the operatives, infrastructure, and reach to engage in operations across Europe. Over the course of the time Abdallah maintained this explosives stockpile, Hizballah remained active across Europe, from a 2012 bombing thwarted in Greece to the arrest and deportation of a Hizballah operative in Denmark in 2013 who arrived on a commercial ship for purposes still unknown. . . . 

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency recently reported that Hizballah maintains some 950 active operatives in the country. . . .

When the EU banned Hizballah’s military wing, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius pledged, “There’s no question of accepting terrorist organizations in Europe.” Now, as Europe marked the third anniversary of the July 18 Hizballah bus bombing in Bulgaria, there is abundant evidence that Hizballah is doing just that: engaging in terrorist activities in Europe.

In other words, the EU banned part of Hizballah and warned it to cease activities in Europe, and Hizballah promptly called Brussels’ bluff. Which leaves us with a question for Fabius: will the EU accept a terrorist organization operating in Europe?  More.

Cyprus: Man arrested suspected of planning attack on Israeli interests

The Jerusalem Post reports:

Israeli security sources are closely monitoring the arrest and investigation of a Lebanese citizen in Larnaca, Cyprus, who is suspected of being a Hezbollah operative caught in possession of a massive quantity of explosive material.

Cypriot police suspect a man arrested on Wednesday was planning an attack on Israeli interests on the island after they found almost two tons of ammonium nitrate in his basement, newspapers on the island reported on Friday.

The 26-year-old man is Lebanese-born and has a Canadian passport. He was detained by police after authorities discovered the stockpile.

Security sources in Israel assess that the apartment in which the suspect was captured was a Cyprus-based explosive material storeroom that belonged to Hezbollah, and which was supposed to constitute an outlet for carrying out a large-scale series of terror attacks across Europe against Jewish, Israeli, and Western targets. More.