Owlcation.comby FRANCIS CHUKWUEBUKA OKOYE Since the end of the Cold War, the global space in general and Africa in particular has become increasingly confronted by the scourge of terrorism. In fact, virtually every continent have played host to such incidences. Like other security challenges, terrorism has engaged policy makers and academics across national and international arena in debates focusing on the causes, consequences, facilitators and measures to be adopted to address the scourge. [1] Associated with this challenge is the need to develop and implement a counterterrorism strategy conducive to human security perspective. [2] In view of the increasing lethality and casualty figures associated with the activities of terrorists, it is not an overstatement to assert that the scourge of terrorism has emerged as one of the fundamental security challenges confronting the international community since the advent of the 21st Century [3] and Africa in particular cannot be overlooked because...

Real Clear Defense By Sofia PatelThree key factors defined the terrorist threat landscape in 2017: the international coalition’s military dismantling of Islamic State’s (IS) caliphate, and their return to a nebulous insurgency structure; increased IS activity in South East Asia catalysed by the battle for Marawi; and the potential resurgence of al-Qaeda.These developments have in turn shaped the evolution of international counterterrorism (CT) agendas at local, regional and international levels. The challenges include the prospect of returning foreign fighters, the sustained threat of lone actor attacks, and the capacity of ‘virtual attack planners’. There’s no single way to address these issues and different regions/countries have developed their own policy and operational responses that reflect local socio-political developments. In addition, factors such as proximity to conflict, porous borders, low-levels of governance and corrupt state regimes have a tangible impact on how CT policy and practice is implemented. CT in 2017–2018 has...

Clarion ProjectBy Meira Svirsky Less than a month ago and ahead of the international meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), a news outlet considered to be a mouthpiece for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamist AK party published an article titled, “What if an Army of Islam was Formed Against Israel?”The article called for the 57 member states of the OIC to come together and form a joint army to simultaneously attack Israel from every direction and finish off the Jewish state once and for all.The authors supported their proposal with impressive statistics as well as an interactive map of how this military force would proceed:    “If the member states of the OIC unite militarily, they will form the world’s largest and most comprehensive army. The number of active soldiers would be at least 5,206,100, while the defense budget would reach approximately $175 billion.”The article continued...

Washington Examiner by Paul Bedard With little fanfare, President Trump’s Homeland and Border chiefs have flown to Mexico to ink significant trade and security deals that are already leading to a better, more professional relationship between Washington and Mexico City.Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen M. Nielsen and newly-minted Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin K. McAleenan arrived in Mexico City for bilateral meetings with top Mexican officials and tomorrow with President Enrique Pena Nieto at Los Pinos, his official residence.Nielsen discussed security and trade issues with Interior Secretary Alfonso Navarrete Prida and Foreign Affairs Secretary Luis Videgaray Caso. Theirs is the second high-level trip by Trump officials to Mexico since a planned trip by Pena Nieto to Washington was nixed over tense border talks. Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner visited earlier this month. Read more: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/surprise-trip-to-mexico-by-homeland-border-chiefs...

Express ROME is on a high alert after a bomb threat sparked the evacuation of a popular shopping centre in the Italian capital this afternoon. By Tom Parfitt The security alert came after journalists at the newspaper Il Messaggero received a call claiming a bomb had been planted in a nearby car.A shocked eyewitness told local news site Roma Today: "We received the order to leave the building at around 2pm."When we saw the dogs and the police squad cars we realised that it was a bomb alert."Bomb disposal experts reportedly entered the building to carry out a sweep for any explosive devices.However, the phone call has since been confirmed as a hoax by police.Counter-terror officers have ramped up patrols in the Italian capital this weekend over fears a suspected Islamist extremist is on the loose.Italy's military police force, known as the carabinieri, are reportedly hunting for Mathlouthi Atef, 42,...

by Gary Detman ORLANDO, Fla. (CBS12) — The father of Pulse gunman Omar Mateen worked for more than 10 years as an FBI informant and faced an FBI investigation for money transfers to Turkey and Afghanistan last year, according to a court filing by attorneys for Mateen's widow, Noor Salman.Her attorneys filed the paperwork Sunday to dismiss the charges against her or grant a mistrial based on the new information.Salman's attorneys say the government violated her Fifth Amendment right to due process and Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial.The motion contained text of an email from Asst. US attorney Sara Sweeney to Salman's defense team, on Saturday.It stated:     I have just received authorization to disclose the following information about Seddique Mateen. If you should call S. Mateen to the stand, the government will not seek to elicit any of this information from him.    Seddique Mateen was a FBI...

By Hilary Clarke and Nicole Chavez, CNN (CNN) A police officer who swapped places with a female hostage during an attack by an ISIS supporter on a supermarket in southern France has died of his wounds, French authorities said. Lt. Col. Arnaud Beltrame, 45, was shot in the neck Friday after offering to take the place of a woman during a gunman's assault on the Super U supermarket in Trèbes. Police found two unexploded homemade bombs, a 7.65 mm pistol and a hunting knife when they searched the market after the attack, a French judicial source told CNN. The attacker, Radouane Lakdim, 26, a Moroccan-born French national, was a petty criminal already on the radar of French police for his links to radical Salafist networks, authorities said.When he burst into the supermarket Friday, he shouted he was a soldier from ISIS, witnesses said, before opening fire and killing a worker...

American Military News An unauthorized vehicle crashed at Travis Air Force Base in California on Wednesday. by Peter Reid An unauthorized vehicle crashed into a ditch at the main gate of the Air Force base after breaching the security gates on Wednesday.The vehicle, loaded with propane tanks, erupted into flames and killed the driver while military personnel were making their way to the vehicle, according to CBS.Authorities said the driver ignited himself, which is why investigators initially treated the incident as an act of terrorism, CBS reported.The FBI joined the investigation, and Task & Purpose reported that a spokeswoman would not confirm the CBS report that the incident is being treated as terrorism.The driver of the vehicle has been identified, but their name has yet to be released by law enforcement.Read more: https://americanmilitarynews.com/2018/03/car-bomb-explosion-at-travis-air-force-base-ruled-terrorism/...

By Kathleen Joyce, Lucia I. Suarez Sang | Fox News The gunman who killed at least 2 people before barricading himself inside a supermarket in southern France, has been fatally shot by police. The announcement came just minutes after French President Emmanuel Macron said the incident appears to be a terrorist attack. The unidentified gunman took shelter inside a supermarket in Trebes around 11 a.m. local time after reportedly shooting at a group of police officers who were returning from a job in nearby Carcassonne. One police officer was shot in the shoulder and his injury was considered non-life-threatening. The man then entered the Super U market in Trebes, opening fire and killing at least two other people, and injuring about a dozen.Local media reported that another body was found with a gunshot wound to the head behind the police barracks in Carcassonne. Sources said the gunman is believed to...

By mohamed sharuhaan, associated press  Authorities charged the Maldives longtime former dictator and top judges and police officials with terrorism Tuesday as the government deals with political turmoil that prompted a weeks-long state of emergency.The nine people charged at the criminal court included Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, the 30-year ruler of the Indian Ocean archipelago state; Supreme Court Chief Justice Abdulla Saeed and Justice Ali Hameed; four lawmakers including Gayoom's son; and a former police commissioner.Prosecutors did not specify the grounds on which they are charged with terrorism. If convicted, they could be jailed for 10 to 15 years. All three also were charged with obstruction of justice on suspicion of refusing to hand over their phones to investigators.Saeed, Hameed and another judicial officer were charged with receiving bribes to help overthrow the government.Gayoom and the judges were arrested last month following a Supreme Court order to release several of President...

AFP Jordan and the United States unveiled a counterterrorism training centre south of Amman on Thursday aimed at boosting the capacity of local forces in a region beset by conflict.The centre connected to the Jordanian Police Academy was opened in Suwaqah, 70 kilometres (43 miles) from the Jordanian capital.It aims to prepare security forces to cope with crisis management, hostage-taking, cyberterrorism and the detection of explosives."The anti-terrorism assistance programme for Jordan is ongoing and very important to us," Michael T. Evanoff, the US deputy secretary of state for diplomatic security, told reporters at the opening ceremony."The training saves lives and helps build the capacity of the host country. I am very happy to open this centre, and I look forward to its expansion and use as a central hub," he said.It is the second centre of its kind to be launched by the US and Jordan, one of the strongest...

Amor Ftouhi faces an additional charge of 'committing an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries'The Associated Press U.S. federal prosecutors have added a terrorism charge to the case of a Montreal man who is accused of stabbing a police officer at a Flint, Michigan airport last June.Amor Ftouhi is a native of Tunisia.He's charged with stabbing an officer in the neck at the Bishop International Airport while yelling "Allahu Akbar," the Arabic phrase for "God is great."The U.S. government added a charge Wednesday: committing an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries. The maximum penalty is life in prison.A message seeking comment was left for Ftouhi's attorney.Ftouhi, who lived in Montreal's Saint-Michel neighbourhood with his wife and three children, legally entered the U.S. at Champlain, New York.Five days later, investigators say he arrived at the Flint airport by van and stabbed Lt. Jeff Neville, who survived.Last November, a U.S. judge agreed to...

  The Hill   By Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, opinion contributor   The Islamic State has suffered setbacks, horrendous terrorist attacks on the scale of 9/11 and the Nov. 26, 2010 attacks in Mumbai are few and far between these days and lone wolf operations are frequently thwarted by vigilant authorities. So, have we triumphed over terrorism and can we declare mission accomplished? Sadly, no. While we all agree that this requires concerted action from authorities and citizens alike, including countering immediate threats to our safety and welfare, targeting combatants, bringing to justice those who harbor and assist attackers, cutting off terror financing, and so on, the root causes of terrorism must also be addressed if we are to truly make headway against this scourge. It is no secret that the militants of ISIS, al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations are indoctrinated in hate at a very young age. When children...

ABC NewsBy Mark Osborne, Josh Margolin, Bill Hutchinson, and Aaron Katersky An unexploded package bomb was discovered today at the FedEx facility in Austin, Texas, two sources briefed on the investigation told ABC News, bringing the total number of devices connected to a serial bomber terrorizing the area to six.The string of explosions in Austin, which left two dead and injured others, has the city on edge and sparked hundreds of law enforcement to descend on the area. Earlier on Tuesday, a package detonated at a FedEx facility near San Antonio, injuring one.The Houston branch of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives confirmed Tuesday evening all six bombs -- five package bombs and one involving a tripwire -- were related.The intact package was discovered by FedEx workers, the company said in a statement, and could yield major clues in the hunt for the serial bomber terrorizing Austin."We have...

7News by Belinda Tasker Malaysia's prime minister has warned Australia and its Southeast Asian neighbours that the Rohingya refugee crisis in Myanmar could explode into a serious security threat for the region. As a major counter-terrorism conference at the special ASEAN summit in Sydney wrapped up on Saturday, Najib Razak warned that thousands of desperate Rohingya people in Myanmar's troubled Rakhine state could easily be potential recruits for Islamic State."Because of the suffering of Rohingya people and that of displacement around the region, the situation in Rakhine state and Myanmar can no longer be considered to be a purely domestic matter," he told his fellow ASEAN leaders.They included Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi and summit host, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull."In addition, the problem should not be looked at through the humanitarian prism only because it has the potential of developing into a serious security threat to the...

PublicTechnology.net by Dr Charles Kriel The rapid rise of fake news, terrorist propaganda and malicious communications means that the internet has never been a more uncertain and dangerous place for vulnerable minds. With the ability to quickly create, and spread, false and inflammatory content at the touch of a button, online radicalization is a problem set to get much worse before it gets better. The internet is proving to be a highly effective tool for extremism. Recent studies have suggested that half of British jihadists are radicalized and recruited online. In the last five years, it has been estimated that 53% of the UK’s Islamist terrorists were inspired by extremist content on the web over that period, compared to just 22 per cent before that. The murder of Labour MP Jo Cox by a white supremacist was also believed to have been inspired by extremist content online. The Government’s Counter...

USA Today by John Bacon A student gunman opened fire Tuesday at a high school in southern Maryland, injuring two students before an armed school resources officer intervened, authorities said.The gunman, identified as Austin Wyatt Rollins, 17, was killed, but St. Mary's County Sheriff Tim Cameron said it was not immediately clear whether the school officer fired the fatal shot or whether the gunman killed himself.The attack began shortly before classes were scheduled to start at Great Mills High, a 1,500-student school 65 miles south of Washington, D.C. Cameron said Rollins was armed with a Glock, semiautomatic handgun when he shot a 16-year-old female student in a hallway. A 14-year-old male student also was shot."Our school resource officer was alerted to the events," Cameron said. "He engaged the shooter and fired a round; subsequently the shooter fired a round as well."Cameron said it was not clear whether the gunman shot...

9news.com.au By Mark Saunokonoko There are growing signs that Islamic State cells are preparing for violent insurgencies in southern Philippines to build a prized so-called caliphate on Australia's backdoor.The establishment of an entrenched caliphate in the Philippines, at worst, brings the risk of suicide bombers and chemical weapons attacks in Australian cities, a leading Australian expert has warned.Alan Dupont, chief strategist and defence analyst for The Cognoscenti Group, told nine.com.au that he expects the Islamic State threat in the Philippines to worsen over the next two years.Would-be Australian jihadis and other foreign fighters drawn to a self-styled caliphate would pose a serious and deadly risk to national and regional security, Dupont said."Those fighters would be upskilled in all kinds of bombmaking and other activities we saw in Iraq and Syria, and those skillsets could then be brought back to Australia and used here," Dupont said."The core problem is it is relatively...

February kidnapping of 110 girls seems similarly intended to bring funds and fame to a new, more dangerous faction The Wall Street Journal By Joe Parkinson, Drew Hinshaw and Gbenga Akingbule DAPCHI, Nigeria—As evening prayers resounded across this northeastern Nigerian town last month, camouflage-clad jihadists drove up to a local girls’ school and kidnapped 110 students in a replay of one of the world’s most infamous abductions: Boko Haram’s 2014 seizure of 276 girls, hours away in Chibok. But the Feb. 19 attack was different in an important and unsettling way, according to U.S. and Nigerian officials. The culprit wasn’t Boko Haram, but a breakaway faction that is allied with Islamic State and, in the eyes of Washington, the biggest terrorist threat in Africa’s most-populous nation. This splinter group, known as Islamic State West African Province, is better trained and more focused on Western targets, American officials say. It is...

Spencer Fernando Assessment finds that Abdulahi Hasan Sharif – a Somali refugee claimant who reportedly supported ISIS – will not be able to use the ‘Not Criminally Responsible’ designation to avoid trial.Sharif allegedly tried running down five people in Edmonton, and ran into, then stabbed a police officer.An ISIS flag was found in a vehicle allegedly used by Sharif in the attack, and there were reports that people who knew him mentioned his support for ISIS.Now, he has been found mentally fit to stand trail. As reported by the Edmonton Journal, “Abdulahi Hasan Sharif, 31, does not meet the threshold to be deemed not criminally responsible following the completion of a court-ordered assessment. Medical professionals preparing reports on criminal responsibility assess whether an accused person understood their actions, right from wrong, and their ability to control their own behaviour at the time of an offence.” Read more: https://www.spencerfernando.com/2018/03/14/report-edmonton-terror-attack-suspect-found-mentally-fit-stand-trial/...