Legal
How the Islamic State trial could change the future of US terrorism cases (LINK ONLY)
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Kurds
Children & Teens
Germany repatriates women, children from Syrian camp
(AP) Germany says it has brought home 10 women and 27 children from a camp in northeastern Syria where suspected members of the Islamic State group have been held. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said the group was repatriated from the Roj camp […]
Legal
El Shafee Elsheikh, accused of being one of the Islamic State ‘Beatles’
(AFP) El Shafee Elsheikh studied mechanical engineering in London, but now faces accusations he was a member of the notorious Islamic State kidnap-and-murder cell known as the “Beatles.” Elsheikh is on trial in federal court in Alexandria for the murders of American […]
Legal
Ex-hostages, relatives seek accountability at IS ‘Beatles’ trial
(AFP) Former hostages and relatives of victims are seeking justice, accountability and perhaps even some solace as the trial of a member of the brutal Islamic State (IS) kidnap-and-murder cell known as the “Beatles” gets underway. Jury selection began on Tuesday in […]
News: Europe
Why Belgium is still a terror risk
(Brussels Times) Six years ago, it felt like extremist terrorism would haunt us permanently. The March 2016 bombs in the Brussels metro and airport left 35 people dead. They came after the November 2015 attacks in Paris that killed 138. Jihadists claimed […]
Legal
In the wake of defence walk-out, Abdeslam and Amri testify at Paris terror trial
(Radio France) The terrorist survivor of the Paris attacks Salah Abdeslam resumed his evidence late on Wednesday, after the court had heard and dismissed claims of prejudice from some of the defence lawyers. It was as if Tuesday’s mass walk-out by the […]
Law Enforcement
IS member arrested in Germany accused of raising funds in Europe According to the German prosecutor's office, the woman traveled to Syria in 2013 with her husband to join the organization.
(Deutsche Welle) A German citizen accused of belonging to the Islamic State (IS) jihadist organization was arrested this Friday upon arrival at the Frankfurt airport (southern Germany), as announced today (03.12.2022) by the State Attorney General’s Office. The woman, who was identified […]
Demonstrations
Swiss court clears critics of Turkish president
(Swiss Info) A district court in Switzerland has acquitted four defendants accused of inciting violence against the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The judge ruled that a controversial banner shown by protesters at a 2017 demonstration in the Swiss capital, Bern, had […]
Government & Politics
Experts raise doubts over plan for Royal Navy to control Channel crossings (LINK ONLY)
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Children & Teens
German mother on terror charges after ‘joining women-only ISIS unit’ in Syria Solale M is also accused of child protection offences after taking two children with her
(National-UAE) A German-Iranian mother has been charged with terrorism offences for allegedly joining a women-only ISIS combat unit after taking her two children to Syria. The woman — identified only as Solale M — was one of three German women arrested in […]
Legal
Defense lawyers seek to restrict testimony from ISIS ‘slave’
(AP) Defense lawyers for a British national facing trial later this month for helping the Islamic State group torture and behead American hostages are seeking to block testimony from a Kurdish girl held as a slave by the group. The girl, identified […]
Government & Politics
Canada responds to claims it’s not helping citizens in Syria
(AP) Canadian officials are working with Syrian Kurdish authorities and international organizations to gather information and help Canadian citizens being detained in Syria, a Canadian government spokesman said Thursday. Sabrina Williams, spokesperson for Canada’s Ministry of Global Affairs, cautioned that her government’s […]
Children & Teens
France violated rights of children held in Syria camps: UN experts
(AFP) France has violated the rights of French children by leaving them for years in inhuman and life-threatening conditions in Syrian camps for family members of suspected jihadists, a UN watchdog said Thursday. The UN child rights committee ruled that “France has […]
Children & Teens
Rights group: Canada blocking return of citizens from Syria
(AP) Canadian authorities are preventing a Canadian woman and a child detained in a camp in Syria from returning home to get life-saving medical treatment, contradicting policies that allow such repatriations, a prominent rights group said Tuesday. Human Rights Watch identified the […]
News: North America
It’s been 3 years since this Canadian woman was arrested in Syria. She may never leave
(CTV) The end of January was an anniversary of sorts for Kimberly Polman. Time counted in despair, sickness, fear, suicide attempts, searing desert heat in the summer, howling wind and swirling dust in the winter. Hepatitis, broken teeth and tent fires. It […]
Children & Teens
German woman charged with membership in Islamic State group
(AP) Federal prosecutors in Germany said Friday they have formally charged a German woman with membership in a foreign terrorist organization for traveling to Syria with her young son to join the Islamic State group. Prosecutors said Verena M., whose surname wasn’t […]
Government & Politics
Swiss authorities lose trace of two jihadists in Syria
(Swiss Info) The Swiss foreign ministry says it has “no definite information” on the whereabouts of two terror suspects who had been detained in northern Syria. The two jihadists — originally from Geneva and Lausanne — have been missing since a rescue […]
Government & Politics
Canada’s secretive policy on ISIS detainees closes door to repatriation
(Global News) The federal government has quietly adopted a policy that all but closes the door to repatriating Canadians from detention facilities in Syria for captured ISIS members and their families. The secretive policy document on the detainees obtained by Global News […]
Citizenship
UK handing ‘propaganda gift to Isis’ by refusing to repatriate detainees from Syria (LINK ONLY)
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Legal
Germany: Suspected ‘IS’ wife charged with war crimes The German national is believed to have married several members of the 'Islamic State' terrorist organization. One of her alleged husbands had kept a Yazidi woman as a slave.
(Deutsche Welle) German authorities have pressed war crimes charges against a suspected member of the so-called “Islamic State” (IS), the federal prosecutor general in Karlsruhe announced Wednesday. What do we know so far? The German national, Jalda A., is believed to have married several members of […]
Children & Teens
Dutch pick up 5 mothers, 11 kids in Syria; women to be prosecuted for ISIS ties
(NL Times) The Netherlands collected five Dutch women and their 11 children from a Kurdish refugee camp in northern Syria. They’ll be brought to the Netherlands so that the women can be prosecuted for participation in terrorist organization ISIS, insiders told NOS. […]
Children & Teens
Sweden repatriates women, children from northeast Syria Sweden repatriated two women and four children from northeast Syria on Thursday, the day after the area's Kurdish-led authorities announced the end of a prison stand-off which left scores dead.
(New Arab) Sweden repatriated two women and four children from northeast Syria on Thursday, the day after the area’s Kurdish-led authorities announced the end of a deadly prison stand-off in the city of Hasakeh. The six Swedes were met at Stockholm’s Arlanda airport […]
Legal
German woman faces crimes against humanity charges after joining IS as a teen A German woman who went to Syria to join the extremist IS group as a 15-year-old is in the dock in the eastern city of Halle. She and her jihadi husband are suspected of having enslaved a Yazidi woman.
(Deutsche Welle) A German woman accused of aiding and abetting crimes against humanity while a member of the extremist “Islamic State” (IS) group in Syria went on trial behind closed doors in the eastern city of Halle on Tuesday. Leonora M., who went to […]
Government & Politics
Iraq says almost 4,000 repatriated from Belarus borders
(AFP) Baghdad has repatriated almost 4,000 of its citizens stuck on the Belarus borders with European Union members Poland, Lithuania and Latvia in recent weeks, Iraq’s foreign minister said Sunday. Since November 18, the Iraqi government has organised “10 flights from Baghdad […]
Law Enforcement
Calgary mother freed from ISIS detention camp now under investigation for terrorism, war crimes: court docs Defence lawyer says RCMP should not be monitoring and investigating the woman
(CBC) A Canadian woman who was held for two years at an ISIS detention camp in Syria is now under investigation for terrorism offences and war crimes. However, her lawyer has suggested RCMP officers are exploiting their powers by both monitoring and investigating the […]
Government & Politics
Justice min. says Wilders dodged her call after his tweet about her heritage
(NL Times) The new justice minister, Dilan Yeşilgöz, still has not received a response from PVV leader Geert Wilders, after she tried to call him about a tweet in which he critically mentioned her Turkish-Kurdish origin. “A VVD member of Turkish descent at […]
Law Enforcement
Canadian ISIS sniper broke 2 anti-terrorism laws, RCMP alleges in unsealed document
(Global News) A Toronto man violated two Canadian anti-terrorism laws when he travelled to Syria and joined an ISIS sniper team, the RCMP alleged in a top secret document unsealed by the Ontario court. In the document, the RCMP told a judge […]
Immigration
Migrants push past outnumbered French police to make perilous Channel crossing
(Reuters) In the early hours of Thursday on a beach in northern France, a small group of police with torches tries to stand in the way of dozens of migrants heading for the sea carrying a grey dinghy. It’s tense. The police […]
Legal
Canadian who became ‘voice of ISIS’ pleads guilty, admits he conducted executions
(Global News) A Toronto man known as the voice of ISIS pleaded guilty to terrorism on Friday, admitting in a U.S. court he executed two Syrian soldiers. Mohammed Khalifa faces a possible life sentence after pleading guilty to providing material resources to […]
Legal
Alleged terrorist group leader planned 2017 attack, ISIS gun trafficking, says prosecutor
(NL Times) The Public Prosecution Service (OM) suspects former Hofstadgroep member Samir A. of asking terrorist organization ISIS for explosives or weapons for an attack in the Netherlands in 2017. That became clear in the court of Rotterdam on Friday. The 35-year-old […]
Crime
Smugglers who made a hefty profit from transporting migrants jailed
(Radio France) Three people smugglers were handed between one- and four-year jail terms by a court in Boulogne-sur-Mer in the north of France on Monday. According to the France [Bleu] Nord news site, the three smugglers were handed jail terms for their […]
Children & Teens
Sisters repatriated to Switzerland from Syrian prison camp
(Swiss Info) The Swiss authorities have negotiated the release of two half-sisters, aged 15 and nine, from a Kurdish-controlled camp in Syria back to Switzerland. They were taken from Geneva to Syria by their mother in 2016 when she joined the Islamic […]
Children & Teens
Police treated us like criminals, say families of girls trafficked to Islamic State in Syria (LINK ONLY)
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Citizenship
Jihadi Jack’s parents say he’s no terrorist
(Toronto Sun) The family of a man currently held in a Kurdish prison in northern Syria is disputing the description of him as a terrorist. A spokesperson for John and Sally Letts took issue with the term terrorist being applied to Jack […]
Immigration
French police evict migrants from camp on Channel coast
(Reuters) Police on Tuesday tore down a makeshift camp near the northern French port of Dunkirk where scores of migrants who say they are fleeing war, poverty and persecution in the Middle East were hunkered down with hopes of reaching Britain. Armed […]
Citizenship
Jihadi Jack’s parents ask Canada to bring the Brit here
(Toronto Sun) The parents of British-born terrorist Jihadi Jack are seeking the help of politicians in this country to get him sprung from a Syrian prison to live a life of freedom in Canada. Emails obtained exclusively by the Toronto Sun show […]
Academics & Education
Finland’s secret school for children of IS fighters
(AFP) At home in the Finnish capital, Ilona Taimela scrolls through hundreds of WhatsApp chats with her former pupils — pictures of animals, maths sums and simple sentences in English and Finnish. The teacher last year gave lessons to Finnish children imprisoned […]
Government & Politics
Belarusian leader accuses Lithuania of dumping dead migrants
(AP) Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Monday accused Lithuanian authorities of dumping the bodies of migrants on the border between the two countries — a claim rejected by Lithuania amid soaring border tensions between Belarus and its European Union neighbors. Lukashenko also […]
Government & Politics
France to offer Johnson EU deal on migrants
(AFP) France’s Prime Minister Jean Castex is preparing to write to British counterpart Boris Johnson with proposals for a new post-Brexit deal on migration with the EU after the disaster in the Channel last week that left 27 migrants dead, a minister […]
Government & Politics
Belarus leader tells migrants they have ‘right’ to go to EU
(AFP) Belarus’s strongman leader Alexander Lukashenko told migrants on the border with Poland Friday that he would not try to stop them from reaching the European Union, urging Germany to take them in. In footage released by state media, Lukashenko was shown […]
Legal
Hearing set to determine if there are fears Canadian woman poses terrorism threat
(Calgary Herald) A Canadian woman who returned to Canada from Iraq earlier this week will face a two-day hearing in March to determine if there are grounds she may pose a terrorism threat. Lawyer Yoav Niv appeared in Calgary provincial court Friday […]
Government & Politics
Central European nations back Poland in migration dispute
(AP) The leaders of three Central European countries on Tuesday expressed their solidarity with Poland in an ongoing migration crisis on its eastern border with Belarus, and urged the European Union to increase its support for the protection of the bloc’s external […]
Crime
France holds 15 after breaking Channel people-smuggling network: police
(AFP) French police have detained 15 suspected members of an international migrant smuggling syndicate that helped people illegally cross the Channel to Britain. The announcement comes as tensions grow between London and Paris over the record numbers of migrants crossing the Channel, […]
Children & Teens
Canadian woman freed from ISIS detention camp reunites with daughter in Canada She does not face charges, but a peace bond imposes restrictions on her activities
(CBC) A Canadian woman who was held in an ISIS detention camp in northeast Syria has arrived back in Canada to reunite with her five-year-old daughter — who was allowed to leave ahead of her last spring in the company of a former U.S. […]
Citizenship
Shamima Begum: IS bride insists she ‘didn’t hate Britain’ when she fled to Syria — and now wants to face trial in UK She left home in London aged 15 for the promise of paradise, instead she found 'hell, hell on Earth.' Begum rejects accusations that she carried out atrocities as part of IS as 'all completely false.'
(Sky News) Shamima Begum, the Bethnal Green schoolgirl who fled to Syria and joined IS, has told Sky News she was groomed by friends and older men she met online before joining the terror group. Speaking from a prison camp in Syria, […]
Government & Politics
Belarus’s Lukashenko tells BBC: We may have helped migrants into EU
(BBC) Belarus’s authoritarian leader has told the BBC it is “absolutely possible” his forces helped migrants cross into Poland but denies they were invited. Thousands of migrants, mainly from the Middle East, have been trying to get into the EU via Belarus […]
Government & Politics
Iraqi migrants caught in border crisis in Belarus fly home
(AP) Hundreds of Iraqis returned home Thursday from Belarus after abandoning their hopes of reaching the European Union — a repatriation that came after tensions at Poland’s eastern border, where thousands of migrants became stuck in a cold and soggy forest. Many […]
Government & Politics
Belarus brings some migrants in from cold at Polish border
(AP) Hundreds of migrants who were camped in the cold on the Poland-Belarus border have been moved to a nearby warehouse in Belarusian territory, reports said Wednesday, with some still harboring hopes of entering the European Union. The move came a day […]
Crime
French police evacuate migrants from makeshift camp
(AP) French police on Tuesday have evacuated migrants from a makeshift camp near Dunkirk, in northern France, where at least 1,500 people gathered in hopes of making it across the English Channel to Britain. The prefecture of the region said more than […]
Immigration
Migrants stuck on Poland-Belarus border vow to stay put
(AFP) Aryan Wali Zellmi, a 25-year-old Iraqi Kurd, had tried twice to enter the European Union through Belarus. This time, he got stuck on the freezing border with Poland, joining hundreds in a crisis that the EU blames on Minsk. Zellmi is […]