Cleveland.com By Eric Heisig, cleveland.comAKRON, Ohio — A man who tried to create a terrorist cell to carry out attacks in the U.S. in the name of the Islamic State was sentenced Monday to 15 years in federal prison, half the amount sought by federal prosecutors.Erick Jamal Hendricks, of Charlotte, North Carolina, was convicted by a jury in March of trying to recruit and train ISIS sympathizers. He vetted people to see if they were suitable to join him, espoused radical views, and instructed others to vet additional possible recruits through social media.The U.S. Attorney’s Office asked U.S. District Judge John Adams to sentence Hendricks, 38, to 30 years in prison, the maximum amount of time allowed for the two charges for which the jury found him guilty. However, Adams said a lesser sentence was warranted.Much of Monday’s hearing focused on the sentences given to five anarchists convicted in a...

Star Tribute By Liz Sly Washington Post BEIRUT – A pair of dusty villages in the Syrian desert are all that remain of the vast expanse of territory that ISIS once called its caliphate, and the complete territorial defeat of the militant group appears to be imminent, according to U.S. and Kurdish officials.A few hundred of some of the most die-hard ISIS fighters are making their last stand in the villages of Marashida and Baghuz Fawqani on the banks of the Euphrates River, a few miles from the Iraqi border in southeastern Syria. With the Syrian Army on the other side of the river, a group that once controlled an area the size of Britain is pinned down by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in a dot of land measuring 6 square miles.It is now only a matter of weeks or even days before the villages are overrun and ISIS'...

Foreign Policy Burkina Faso managed to avoid the violence that plagued its neighbors, but a combination of poverty, unstable neighbors, and weak security forces has opened the door for extremists. By James Blake Burkina Faso’s government resigned on Jan. 18, following a series of terrorist attacks. President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, who has led the country since 2015, announced a new prime minister, Christophe Joseph Marie Dabiré, three days later. But the attacks have continued: On Jan. 28, terrorists killed four soldiers and injured five others on the border with Mali, the day after terrorists killed 10 civilians.Since December, several high-profile terrorist incidents have taken place in Burkina Faso, including the kidnapping and killing of a Canadian mining worker and the kidnapping of two humanitarian staff. This terrorist activity is taking place at the same time as a growing humanitarian emergency in the country, with the United Nations Office for...

FOX 4 KC KANSAS CITY, Kan.— Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark A. Dupree Sr. announced Friday that he will seek the death penalty for the man charged with  shooting and killing two Wyandotte County sheriff's deputies if he is convicted on capital murder. The state of Kansas hasn't had an execution since 1965, but does have the sentencing option of death by lethal injection. Antoine Fielder Antoine Fielder, 30, has been charged with two counts of capital murder for allegedly killing Deputy Patrick Rohrer and Deputy Theresa King on June 15, 2018.He's also charged with aggravated robbery for allegedly stealing Rohrer's gun, which he used in the shooting.King and Rohrer were killed when a shackled Fielder allegedly took one of their guns and fired at them. District Attorney Mark Dupree said the capital murder charge is because he allegedly premeditated killing the deputies. Read more: http://fox4kc.com/2019/02/01/wyco-district-attorney-to-seek-death-penalty-for-man-accused-of-killing-2-sheriffs-deputies-if-convicted/...

By: ANITA SNOW, Associated PressPHOENIX (AP) - U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials announced Thursday their biggest fentanyl bust ever, saying they captured nearly 254 pounds of the deadly synthetic opioid from a load of Mexican produce heading into Arizona.The drug was found hidden Saturday morning inside a tractor-trailer after a scan during secondary inspection indicated something else was in the load, Nogales CBP Port Director Michael Humphries said. Agents also seized a much smaller amount of fentanyl pills and a large cache of methamphetamine and arrested the Mexican man driving the truck. Mexican traffickers have been increasingly smuggling the drug into the United States, mostly hidden in passenger vehicles and tractor-trailers trying to head through ports of entry in the Nogales, Arizona, and San Diego areas. Read more: http://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/arizona-news/us-border-officials-in-arizona-make-biggest-fentanyl-seizure_...

By Clarion Project A man from Toledo, Ohio was indicted January 29 for allegedly planning a mass synagogue shooting in the name of ISIS. For six months prior to his arrest, Clarion Project’s Clarion Intelligence Network alerted law-enforcement agencies to Damon Joseph, 21.Federal authorities charged Joseph with attempting to provide material support to ISIS, attempting to commit a hate crime and possessing firearms in furtherance of a crime a violence.Joseph, 21, was arrested by the FBI on December 7, 2018 and charged with attempting to provide material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization after taking possession of two rifles he believed were bought for him for the attack, KEPRtv.com reported.At the time of Joseph’s arrest U.S. Atorney Justin E. Herdman said:    “This man spent months planning a violent terrorist attack on behalf of ISIS here in the United States, and eventually targeted a Jewish synagogue in the Toledo area....

Terrorism claims against Amalia compound suspects will stay on record By: KRQE Media ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) - A judge ruled terrorism allegations against the Amalia compound suspects will stay in court documents. The five defendants were arrested last August when deputies found them living on a Taos County property with 11 malnourished kids and the buried body of a 3-year-old. Investigators say they found high-powered weapons and ammunition, and court documents claim the adults were training the kids to carry out violent attacks on government institutions. However, that's not what the suspects are charged with, so their attorneys pushed to have any mention of terrorism thrown out. But the state argued the claims show evidence of a larger conspiracy and it's likely they will file terrorism charges as the investigation progresses. Read more: https://www.krqe.com/news/crime/terrorism-claims-against-amalia-compound-suspects-will-stay-on-record/1737981013...

TIME By Tara Law Casey QuackenbushTwo suspects are dead and five police officers were injured in a gunfire exchange in Houston on Monday, police say.The suspects were killed amid a shooting that erupted while a narcotics team attempted to serve a search warrant in a southeast Houston neighborhood, Police Chief Art Acevedo said in a Monday night briefing. He added that black tar heroin was being sold at the residence.According to Acevedo, the gunfire began when the officers forced the home’s door open.“We’re not sure how many other suspects fired at this time,” he said.Four of the officers sustained gunfire wounds, while a fifth was also injured on the scene. Two officers who were hit in the neck are in “critical but stable condition,” according to Acevedo. The other three are expected to make a full recovery. Read more: http://time.com/5515060/houston-police-shooting/...

ABC News The active duty and National Guard missions are estimated to cost $682 million. By Elizabeth McLaughlinApproximately 2,000 additional active duty U.S. service members are expected to deploy to the southern border, many of whom will be used to build and reinforce about 160 miles of concertina wire, a U.S. official told ABC News.At a Pentagon news conference on Tuesday, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan told reporters "several thousand" more troops would head to the U.S.-Mexico border, joining about 2,350 already deployed across Texas, Arizona and California. Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/pentagon-sending-2000-additional-us-troops-southern-border/story?id=60725790...

  by David Brown  •  Gatestone Institute Much of the coverage of the same problem in Great Britain said that Jay had accused the Rotherham council and police of failing to tackle sexual exploitation because of misplaced "political correctness." Yet Jay says those are not the words she would use: "I have an aversion to phrases like that," she said. Instead, she believes the Labour-dominated council turned a blind eye to the problem because of "their desire to accommodate a community that would be expected to vote Labour, to not rock the boat, to keep a lid on it, to hope it would go away." What hits hardest in the little town of Oulu in Finland is a disturbing sense that history is repeating itself here and nothing has been learned from the well-documented lessons of the past. Instead there seems to be a hope that with a few overdue...

Clarion Project By Shireen Qudosi The campaign for “see something, say something” is an effective strategy in having citizens stop terror attacks. In the years after 9/11, the campaign to activate citizen participation in stopping terror attacks had a simple narrative. That narrative centered around people from Middle East / North Africa; and it usually involved watching for people leaving a backpack unattended. Watching for unattended backpacks is still a narrative, but it’s part of a much bigger narrative now because what qualifies as terror has drastically broadened in the last two decades. In U.S. theme parks for example, there are security officers dressed as tourists who are looking out for exactly these scenarios, but security protocols at large have widened to account for different types of scenarios. Major U.S. attractions, tourist hot spots, communal watering holes like malls and shopping centers and now even schools and online spaces are...

Daily Nation By JAINDI KISERO As investigations into the recent terrorist attack on 14 Riverside Drive that left 21 people dead and scores injured continue, I am astonished by the revelations coming out of the court proceedings, especially regarding money laundering and terrorism financing. It seems the criminals are ahead of us in targeting weak links in the financial systems. Until recently, the most popular money laundering technique was smurfing, that is, placing small amounts of dirty money into financial institutions in ways that do not trigger suspicious reporting requirements. PRIORITIES The court proceedings show that these criminals have now become adept at exploiting loopholes in our mobile money, the fastest-growing segment of our financial systems, to dodge reporting. Read more: https://www.nation.co.ke/oped/opinion/Banks-must-report-suspicious-transactions-to-beat-terrorism/440808-4956990-15cv0m1/index.html...

Washington Post By Benjamin LessingJust one day after his inauguration, Brazil’s right-wing populist President Jair Bolsonaro faced his first public-security crisis. On Jan. 2, prison gangs launched a terrorism campaign throughout Ceara state, paralyzing the capital city, Fortaleza. Although he has deployed federal troops, violence continues: 278 attacks in 55 cities over 26 days (and counting), with bridges and overpasses bombed, electricity knocked out in some neighborhoods, schools and gas stations set on fire, and dozens of buses burned.What triggered the attacks? Another New Year’s inauguration: Ceara’s newly reelected Gov. Camilo Santana installed a hard-liner as secretary of prisons, who promised to end segregation of prisons by gang, proclaiming he would not “recognize” them.In response, the gangs unleashed their attacks and made specific demands, as in this “Public Notice” to Santana:    … We want this new secretary out of our state … All we want is for our rights to...

Daily Express KOTA KINABALU: Sabah police will seek the help of their Philippine counterparts to confirm a Daily Express report that Malaysians were among foreign terrorist fighters spotted with a wanted Abu Sayyaf sub-leader and believed involved in the neighbouring nation’s first suicide bombing in Basilan which took 10 lives.“We will get assistance from the Philippine authorities to confirm the matter and we’ll update later,” said Sabah Police Commissioner Datuk Omar Mammah (pic).A Philippine terrorism expert, Prof. Rommel Banlaoi said seven foreign terrorists, including Malaysians, were spotted recently with an Abu Sayyaf sub-leader who is wanted by the Eastern Sabah Security Command (Esscom) in a Sulu village.Prof. Rommel, who is Chairman of the Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research, said the foreign fighters were waiting for financial support to make improvised bombs.“The Abu Sayyaf faction headed by sub-leader Hatib Hajan @ Sawadjaan with seven suspected foreign terrorists, including...

Newsweek By Cristina Maza As Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro faces the biggest challenge to his rule since coming to power in 2013, Russia has quite literally come to the strongman leader’s defense.On Friday, Reuters reported that Kremlin-linked military contractors from the Wagner group had traveled to Venezuela in the past several days to provide security for Maduro. At least one source told Reuters that there were around 400 Russian military contractors in the country. After the head of Venezuela’s National Assembly, Juan Guaido, declared himself president of Venezuela on Wednesday, Russian officials have offered their full-throated support for the embattled Maduro. President Donald Trump and other leaders from the European Union and Canada, however, have recognized Guaido as Venezuela’s interim president and have backed the position of Venezuelan opposition leaders who say Maduro’s presidency is illegitimate.Maduro’s approval rating is currently hovering at around 20 percent, but experts say Russia is...

Jewish Journal BY Aaron Bandler Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) called for a more lenient sentence for nine Somalian men in Minnesota who were convicted of attempting to join ISIS in November 2016.Omar, then a Minnesota assemblymember-elect, wrote in a letter to the judge presiding the case, Michael Davis, about “the ramifications of sentencing young men who made a consequential mistake to decades in federal prison.”“Incarcerating 20-year-old men for 30 or 40 years is essentially a life sentence. Society will have no expectations of the to be 50 or 60-year-old released prisoners; it will view them with distrust and revulsion,” Omar wrote. “Such punitive measures not only lack efficacy, they inevitably create an environment in which extremism can flourish, aligning with the presupposition of terrorist recruitment: ‘Americans do not accept you and continue to trivialize your value. Instead of being a nobody, be a martyr.’” Read more: https://jewishjournal.com/news/nation/292824/rep-omar-called-for-lighter-sentence-for-men-who-tried-to-join-isis/...

By Daniel Hoffman | Fox News What should the U.S. do about our approximately 2,000 troops in Syria? Withdraw? Stay? We’ve heard conflicting ideas from President Trump and some of his top advisers about what should happen. The president said in a video posted on Twitter Dec. 19 – titled “After historic victories against ISIS, it’s time to bring our great young people home!” – that the ISIS terrorist group has been defeated. “Our boys, our young women, our men, they’re all coming back and they’re coming back now,” he said. Democrats and Republicans in Congress criticized the withdrawal as premature, warning that with U.S. troops gone, ISIS terrorists could regroup and gain strength to become a more powerful force in Syria.Defense Secretary James Mattis and Brett McGurk – the U.S. envoy to the coalition fighting ISIS – resigned after the president’s withdrawal announcement. Read more: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/what-should-america-do-about-syria-and-isis...

11/21 CBS DFW SUGAR LAND, Texas (CBSDFW.COM) – A former Sugar Land resident was arrested and detained for attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), according to the Federal Bureau of Investigations.A federal grand jury returned a sealed indictment against Warren Christopher Clark, 34, on Jan. 23, 2019. Clark was captured in Syria by the Syrian Democratic Forces, transferred to U.S. law enforcement custody this week and arrived yesterday in the Southern District of Texas.“The arm of American Justice has a lengthy reach,” said Patrick. “The number one priority of the Southern District of Texas, along with the FBI and our other national security partners, is to keep America safe. The protection of life is the most sacred job law enforcement has,” said U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Patrick.Clark is charged with attempting to provide himself as material support to ISIS, which the Secretary...

Gov.UkA new eight-week Communities Defeat Terrorism advertising campaign has been launched in cinemas. CT Policing have launched an eight-week Communities Defeat Terrorism cinema advertising campaign today timed to coincide with Oscars season. Using cinemas will allow us to deliver our messaging with fewer distractions, more impact, and to more hard to reach audiences such as young people.We need to keep the public alert and confident enough to come forward and report their concerns. Their actions can help us save lives. Previous national campaigns, which have been amplified at a local level, have helped increase intelligence reports by up to 50 percent. Currently over a fifth of public reports to the Anti-Terrorist Hotline and online through gov.uk/ACT result in useful intelligence for CT officers.The spread of cinemas covers all nine CT regions For forces where there isn’t a cinema showing the advert, we will be producing bespoke social media content. Read...

WJLA Washington D.C. by KRISTINE FRAZAO, Sinclair Broadcast Group WASHINGTON - It’s billed as one of this countries top priorities: fighting terrorism. But the key place government agencies once went to track all things terror-related, The Global Terrorism Database, is a research collection service that was recently de-funded. Those behind the program say that cheaper bid could lead to a higher price for the way this country fights terrorism. Whether it’s tracking an attack at a military base in Kandahar, Afghanistan carried out by the Taliban, a mass killing at a college in Nigeria by Boko Haram or the truck attack in New York City that killed eight people riding their bikes carried out by an Islamic State supporter, this information for more than a decade has been collected and stored in one place - the Global Terrorism Database - used by government agencies like The State Department, The National...