Violence and Security

The Diplomat: Afghanistan's Intellectuals become Islamist Targets

March 30, 2021

The Diplomat reports that the UN and Afghan human rights experts are warning that Islamist extremist groups over the past year have increased targeted assassinations, kidnappings, and extra-judicial killings of Afghanistan's intellectual class, in a campaign designed to silence debate and contestation.
Bangladesh: 14 Islamists Receive Death Sentence for PM Assassination Plot

March 30, 2021

Prosecutors in a special tribunal in Bangladesh meted out the death sentence to members of an outlawed Islamist militant group held responsible for an assassination attempt two decades ago against the country's prime minister, signaling the Dhaka government sees the Islamist group as a security threat.
Saudi Arabia Applies Islamist Totalitarian Model Abroad

March 26, 2021

According to The Guardian, UN, U.S. and NGO investigations have found that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is responsible for the murder-by-dismemberment of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the KSA Consulate in Istanbul, revealing Saudi Arabia’s efforts to extend Islamist totalitarian methods internationally, as indicated by the outgoing UN Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial Killings.
Turkey Withdraws from Istanbul Convention

March 26, 2021

NATO-member Turkey announced the country's withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, signaling the Islamist government's rejection of the Convention's commitments to prevent violence against women and to combat domestic violence, a move ceding more political and social space to Islamist and traditional nationalist parties in a country with skyrocketing rates of femicide.
Al-Shabaab Jihadists Target Children in Mozambique

March 24, 2021

NGO Save the Children is reporting that the Islamist militants fighting to gain control over all of Mozambique are now targeting children in violence that has already resulted in more than half a million internally displaced people, with al-Shabaab jihadists murdering and beheading children as part of the terror war aimed at capturing the country's natural gas resources and implementing a sharia regime.
IS Uses Turkey for Recruitment & Human Trafficking

March 23, 2021

Police and media reports have revealed that IS militants are using Turkey as a safe haven for ongoing recruitment of Islamist fighters, crossing the border between the NATO member-country and Syria, to conduct trafficking and enslavement of women and girls abducted from Syria, and cyber-financing of IS activities.
New Book Details IS Strategy for US Activity

March 17, 2021

The recently published Homegrown: ISIS in America by terrorism experts from the UK's King's College War Studies Department presents meticulous data and analysis indicating that the Islamist terror group's strategy for engagement within America does not rely on growth and expansion of domestic cells, but instead, uses cyber technologies for online radicalization and provocation of lone-wolf violence.
Turkey's News Reporters Attack Free Speech Inside U.S.

March 17, 2021

A media team from Turkey's state Anadolu News Agency (ANA) attempted to silence speech and media freedoms domestically in the United States by badgering the president of U.S.-based advocacy group Advocates of Silenced Turkey (AST) at his New Jersey home after the organization paid for a billboard in New York City’s Times Square that reads “STOP ERDOGAN.”
U.S. Federal Court Schedules Trial for IS “Beatles” Jihadis

March 17, 2021

A federal court in Virginia announced a trial date for the two British men in US custody who were part of a UK jihadi cell known as “the Beatles,” charged with torturing and beheading of American and European hostages in IS caliphate territory in Syria, images that were posted online by the perpetrators as recruitment propaganda.
Debate: Repatriation & Reintegration of IS Prisoners

March 10, 2021

Policy and political debates about the status and threat level of Islamic State (IS) fighters and families in Syrian and Iraqi detention camp are beginning to focus on lessons learned from disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) programs applied to other violent extremist groups.