Category Archives: Islamic State

Police treated us like criminals, say families of girls trafficked to Islamic State in Syria

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British authorities accused of interrogating parents who came seeking help when their daughters went missing

Details of how police attempted to criminalise British families whose children were trafficked to Islamic State (IS) in Syria are revealed in a series of testimonies that show how grieving parents were initially treated as suspects and then abandoned by the authorities.

One described being “treated like a criminal” and later realising that police were only interested in acquiring intelligence on IS instead of trying to help find their loved one. Another told how their home had been raided after they approached police for help to track down a missing relative.

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Mali: militants fire on bus, killing at least 31 people

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Insurgents shoot villagers going to a market on the same day UN peacekeeping convoy attacked, killing one person

Militants have killed at least 31 people in central Mali when they fired upon a bus ferrying people to a local market and attacked a UN convoy in the north of the country in a region racked by a violent insurgency.

The bus was attacked on Friday by unidentified gunmen as it travelled its twice-weekly route from the village of Songho to a market in Bandiagara six miles (10km) away, said Moulaye Guindo, the mayor of the nearby town of Bankass.

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Uganda police kill five men after suicide bombings, including Muslim cleric

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Authorities accuse the five of having ties with the extremist group blamed for bomb blasts in the capital Kampala

Ugandan authorities have killed at least five people, including a Muslim cleric, accused of having ties to the extremist group responsible for Tuesday’s suicide bombings in the capital.

Four men were killed in a shootout in a frontier town near the western border with Congo as they tried to cross back into Uganda, police said on Thursday. A fifth man, a cleric named Muhammad Kirevu, was killed in “a violent confrontation” when security forces raided his home outside Kampala, police spokesperson Fred Enanga said.

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‘Honest mistake’: US strike that killed 10 Afghan civilians was legal, says Pentagon

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US investigation finds civilian deaths did not violate law of war as strike attempted to target Islamic State

A US drone strike in Kabul in August that killed 10 Afghan civilians was a tragic mistake but did not violate any laws, a Pentagon inspector general said after an investigation.

Three adults, including a man who worked for a US aid group, and seven children were killed in the 29 August operation, with the target believed to have been a home and a vehicle occupied by Islamic State militants.

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Islamic State in Afghanistan could have capacity to strike US next year

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Pentagon says Afghan-based group and al-Qaida have intention to attack US and Taliban’s ability to fight them is ‘to be determined’

The US intelligence community has assessed that Islamic State in Afghanistan could have the capability of attacking the United States in as little as six months – and has the intention to do so, a senior Pentagon official has told Congress.

Colin Kahl, under secretary of defense for policy, also said it was still “to be determined” whether the Taliban – which is an enemy of Islamic State – has the ability to fight Islamic State effectively following the US withdrawal in August.

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‘A lull not a loss’: Islamic State is rebuilding in Syria, say Kurdish forces

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Those who fought the so-called caliphate fear a US withdrawal could help the terrorist group to rise again

On a blazing afternoon in Syria’s eastern desert this month, a Kurdish commander was hot under the collar. An American raid had just taken place against remnants of Islamic State (IS), and Lukman Khalil, the region’s most senior military leader, had known nothing about it.

The US forces had flown across the wasteland of the terrorist group’s last redoubt. Three years ago it was teeming with diehard IS members, but when thousands of holdouts emerged from the decimated town of Baghuz, the war against the so-called caliphate was won, or so it seemed.

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UK ‘colluding in torture’ by leaving women and children in Syria camps

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Rights watchdog accuses Britain of turning a blind eye to degrading treatment of those who lived under IS

Britain is colluding in torture and degrading treatment by refusing to repatriate women and children held in indefinite detention in Syrian prison camps, according to a report from a human rights watchdog.

The assessment by Rights and Security International (RSI) accuses the UK and others of turning a blind eye to lawless and squalid conditions in two camps that contain 60,000 women and children, many held since the collapse of Islamic State.

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Canada drops charges against man who claimed to be IS executioner

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Shehroze Chaudhry, who featured in New York Times podcast, had been charged under terrorism hoax laws

Canadian prosecutors have dropped charges against a man who claimed to be an Islamic State executioner after he admitted fabricating his tales of violence.

In September 2020, Shehroze Chaudhry was charged under Canada’s rarely used terrorism hoax laws, which carry a maximum sentence of five years in prison. Prosecutors withdrew those charges on Friday, after Chaudhry admitted that his account of travelling to Syria was fictitious. His trial was due to begin in February.

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Civilians killed in deadliest Kabul attack since US withdrawal

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Islamic State suspected of carrying out bombing outside mosque in Afghan capital

At least five civilians have been killed in a bomb blast at the entrance to a Kabul mosque on Sunday, a Taliban official said, the deadliest attack in the Afghan capital since US forces left at the end of August.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but suspicion fell on Islamic State extremists, who have stepped up attacks on the Taliban in recent weeks, particularly in the IS stronghold in eastern Afghanistan.

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‘Living in a cave is no life’: Pakistani villagers trapped by Taliban and poverty

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Seven years after fleeing army clashes with militants, 100 families eking out an existence on a hillside near the Afghan border are unable to return home

“Don’t talk to me about the government. They don’t help.”

Ninety-year-old Shah Mast is angry. He has been living in the cave he calls home for seven years, ever since an offensive by the Pakistan army against the Islamist militant group Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) destroyed his home.

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Three killed in explosions in Jalalabad, eastern Afghanistan

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Initial reports suggest a Taliban convoy may have been targeted in the ISKP’s stronghold region

At least three people have been killed and more than 18 people injured in three explosions in Jalalabad in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province.

It is reported that the intended target may have been a passing convoy of the Taliban in the provincial capital. It is the first attack in the province since the Taliban came into power in mid-August.

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‘Tragic mistake’: Pentagon admits Kabul strike killed 10 civilians – video

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A US drone strike in Kabul last month killed as many as 10 civilians, including up to seven children, Gen Frank McKenzie, the head of Central Command, told reporters on Friday. Senior officers had said the 29 August strike which took place as foreign forces completed the last stages of their withdrawal from Afghanistan targeted an Islamic States suicide bomber who posed an imminent threat. 'At the time of the strike, I was confident that the strike had averted an imminent threat to our forces at the airport,' McKenzie said. 'Our investigation now concludes that the strike was a tragic mistake.'

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US admits Kabul strike killed 10 civilians and not Islamic State militants

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Gen Kenneth McKenzie says ‘it was a mistake’ and that it was unlikely those who died posed a direct threat to US forces

A US drone strike in Afghanistan last month killed 10 civilians – including seven children – and not an Islamic State extremist as first claimed, the Pentagon has admitted.

In a briefing on Friday, the commander of US Central Command, Gen Kenneth McKenzie, said he now believes it was unlikely that those who died were Islamic State militants or posed a direct threat to US forces at Kabul’s airport.

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Shamima Begum, regardless of her new image, remains the UK’s responsibility | Gina Vale

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She was groomed as a child and has endured trauma – and to say she now ‘looks western’ is an insult to British Muslims

  • Dr Gina Vale is a senior research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation

In her first live interview since joining Islamic State (IS), on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, 22-year-old Shamima Begum made her latest appeal to return to the UK. She is one of over 6,000 minors who became affiliated with IS, but ever since the grainy CCTV pictures emerged of her leaving the UK with two east London schoolmates in 2015, her case has captured international media attention.

Begum’s case first raises the issue of accountability of minors who become radicalised. At first, media reporting described the three girls as being “lured” into IS, comparing their childhood innocence to the monstrosity of their recruiters. The then education secretary, Nicky Morgan, wrote to their school saying, “We hope and pray for the safe return of the pupils”. In the rush to explain the fact that young girls could turn away from their lives in Britain to join a terrorist organisation, the “jihadi bride” narrative took hold – a catch-all phrase that focuses on girls’ romantic motives.

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France says it has killed Islamic State leader in Greater Sahara

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Emmanuel Macron claims ‘another major success’ after death of Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi

Emmanuel Macron has said French military forces have killed the leader of Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi, claiming “another major success” in the fight against terrorist groups in the Sahel.

The French president, who recently moved to reduce French troop deployment in the troubled sub-Saharan region amid broad consensus that the intervention was not achieving its aim, gave no further details in his statement on Wednesday night, though he mentioned French casualties.

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Syria cement plant at centre of terror finance investigation ‘used by western spies’

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Jordanian intelligence officer tells Guardian Lafarge factory was used by intelligence agencies to gather information on IS hostages

A cement plant in Syria at the centre of a terror financing investigation in France was used by western intelligence agencies to gather information on hostages held by Islamic State, sources connected to the operation have said.

A Jordanian intelligence officer who was central to the spying effort has confirmed to the Guardian that the Lafarge factory, which continued operating after the terrorist group overran eastern Syria, in one of the most controversial episodes of the war, was the regional hub of a failed effort to rescue up to 30 hostages. Those IS held included the American journalist James Foley, British photographer John Cantlie and Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh, two of whom were later confirmed to have been killed.

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US airstrikes killed at least 22,000 civilians since 9/11, analysis finds

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Figures based on reported number of US airstrikes highlight the human cost of the 20-year ‘war on terror’

US drone and airstrikes have killed at least 22,000 civilians – and perhaps as many as 48,000 – since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, according to new analysis published by the civilian harm monitoring group Airwars.

The analysis, based on the US military’s own assertion that it has conducted almost 100,000 airstrikes since 2001, represents an attempt to estimate the number of civilian deaths across the multiple conflicts that have comprised aspects of the “war on terror”.

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British-born Islamic State terror suspect pleads guilty to multiple charges

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Alexanda Amon Kotey, one of a gang of four IS militants, admits to hostage taking and conspiracy to murder in US court

A British terrorist accused of beheading western hostages for Islamic State has pleaded guilty to multiple charges in a US federal court.

Alexanda Amon Kotey, 37, was one of the gang of four IS militants nicknamed “the Beatles” by their captives due to their British accents.

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Some slept, some cried, all were now refugees: inside one of the last Afghan airlifts

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Those on board the cramped military plane weren’t granted a last glimpse of their homeland before the difficult journey ahead, while all knew thousands still waited desperately below

The American marine shouted “push!”. And hundreds of people did, shoving inside the Boeing C-17 military aircraft; tumbling over, then pulling their bodies into tight huddles on the floor to let as many others in as possible.

As the rear door closed and the deafening engines started, lifting the heavy plane off the runway at Kabul’s international airport, people broke down wailing; crying. Now refugees.

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British-born Islamic State suspect set to plead guilty to charges in US

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Alexanda Amon Kotey is accused of conspiring to torture and behead US and European hostages in Syria

One of two British-born men charged in the US with joining Islamic State and conspiring to torture and behead American and European hostages in Syria is scheduled to plead guilty to criminal charges.

Court records show a change of plea hearing has been scheduled for Thursday in a district court in Alexandria, Virginia, for Alexanda Amon Kotey, one of four IS members who were nicknamed “the Beatles” by their captives because of their British accents.

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