🇦🇫❗️🏴Major Talib and prominent member of the Haqqani Network, Khalil-ur-Rahman Haqqani, Minister of Refugee Affairs of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, was killed in a suicide explosion that occurred in the ministry office today.

No immediate group has claimed the explosion so far.

🇸🇾❗️🇷🇺 Assad and family safely arrived in Moscow, have been granted asylun in Russia.

There are reports that suggest Assad left for Moscow earlier on sunday in a RuAF aircraft.

No updates on the alleged crashed IL-76 said to be carrying Assad.

🇸🇾 — Statement No. (1)

O free sons of Syria,

After long years of injustice, tyranny and oppression, and after great sacrifices made by the sons and daughters of this dear homeland, we announce today to the great Syrian people and the entire world that the regime of Bashar al-Assad has fallen, and that he has fled the country, leaving behind a legacy of destruction and suffering.

On this historic day, we announce that the forces of the revolution and opposition have taken control of affairs in beloved Syria, and we affirm our commitment to building a free, just and democratic state in which all citizens are equal without discrimination.

We pledge before God and before the people the following:
1. Preserving the unity and sovereignty of Syrian territory.
2. Protecting all citizens and their property, regardless of their affiliations.
3. Working to rebuild the state and its institutions on the foundations of freedom and justice.
4. Striving to achieve comprehensive national reconciliation, and returning refugees and displaced persons to their homes in safety and dignity.
5. Holding accountable all those who have committed crimes against the Syrian people, in accordance with the law and justice.

We call on all the Syrian people to unite and stand together at this historic stage, and we affirm that the new Syria will not be the monopoly of anyone, but rather a homeland for all.

Long live a free and proud Syria,
And peace, mercy and blessings of God be upon you.

National Transitional Council
Damascus, 08.12.2024

🇸🇾⚡️Heavy gunfire heard in Central Damascus

❤️ Thanks everyone for your support and love!

Last month I got interviewed by police for 4 days after arriving in Paris. I was told I may be personally responsible for other people’s illegal use of Telegram, because the French authorities didn’t receive responses from Telegram.

This was surprising for several reasons: 

1. Telegram has an official representative in the EU that accepts and replies to EU requests. Its email address has been publicly available for anyone in the EU who googles “Telegram EU address for law enforcement”. 

2. The French authorities had numerous ways to reach me to request assistance. As a French citizen, I was a frequent guest at the French consulate in Dubai. A while ago, when asked, I personally helped them establish a hotline with Telegram to deal with the threat of terrorism in France.

3. If a country is unhappy with an internet service, the established practice is to start a legal action against the service itself. Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach. Building technology is hard enough as it is. No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be personally held responsible for potential abuse of those tools. 

Establishing the right balance between privacy and security is not easy. You have to reconcile privacy laws with law enforcement requirements, and local laws with EU laws. You have to take into account technological limitations. As a platform, you want your processes to be consistent globally, while also ensuring they are not abused in countries with weak rule of law. We’ve been committed to engaging with regulators to find the right balance. Yes, we stand by our principles: our experience is shaped by our mission to protect our users in authoritarian regimes. But we’ve always been open to dialogue.

Sometimes we can’t agree with a country’s regulator on the right balance between privacy and security. In those cases, we are ready to leave that country. We've done it many times. When Russia demanded we hand over “encryption keys” to enable surveillance, we refused — and Telegram got banned in Russia. When Iran demanded we block channels of peaceful protesters, we refused — and Telegram got banned in Iran. We are prepared to leave markets that aren’t compatible with our principles, because we are not doing this for money. We are driven by the intention to bring good and defend the basic rights of people, particularly in places where these rights are violated.

All of that does not mean Telegram is perfect. Even the fact that authorities could be confused by where to send requests is something that we should improve. But the claims in some media that Telegram is some sort of anarchic paradise are absolutely untrue. We take down millions of harmful posts and channels every day. We publish daily transparency reports (like this or this ). We have direct hotlines with NGOs to process urgent moderation requests faster.

However, we hear voices saying that it’s not enough. Telegram’s abrupt increase in user count to 950M caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform. That’s why I made it my personal goal to ensure we significantly improve things in this regard. We’ve already started that process internally, and I will share more details on our progress with you very soon. 

I hope that the events of August will result in making Telegram — and the social networking industry as a whole — safer and stronger. Thanks again for your love and memes ?

??❗️?? Irish carrier Ryanair has reportedly canceled all flights to & from Tel Aviv until late October.

??❗️Some sources & media reports suggest that Bidja refused to share revenues derived from human & drug smuggling with rival militias in Tripoli and Zawiya starting a fierce rivalry.

There is an alleged European hand said to be involved in the assassination.

Visual evidence from the scene shows him driving a Toyota Land Cruiser while leaving the academy when multiple Toyota pickup trucks suddenly blocked & opened fire killing him instantly.