Daniel review – terrifying tale of an Isis captive

The family of a photojournalist held in Syria must raise a multimillion-dollar ransom after the Danish government refuses to negotiate

Over the last couple of decades, Danish cinema has increasingly proved to have a strong aptitude for emotive, nuanced drama and intelligent engagement, particularly through documentary-making, with conflicts abroad. This inspired-by-a-true-story feature, from journeyman director Niels Arden Oplev (who helmed the original Girl With the Dragon Tattoo film) skilfully combines those two strands to tell the story of Daniel Rye, a young Danish photographer who was captured by Isis in Syria in 2013.

Filmed in a wiggly, handheld fashion – such a signature of the Dogma 95 years it almost feels like a retro affectation – the plot tracks methodically through Daniel’s story, holding tight on the expressive face of Esben Smed, who rises to the physical challenges of the role. For starters, he has to convincingly pass as Rye when he was young enough to be a contender for the Danish gymnastics team, although presumably a stuntman performed most of the acrobatics we see.

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At least 100 die in Niger attacks blamed on jihadists

Attacks on two villages were launched just as first-round results were announced in presidential election

“Terrorists” have killed around 100 people in two villages in western Niger, the latest in a string of civilian massacres that have rocked the jihadist-plagued Tillaberi region, a local mayor has said.

The attacks on the villages of Tchoma Bangou and Zaroumadareye occurred on Saturday just as first-round presidential election results were announced.

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Journalist dies in Afghanistan as targeted killings continue

Violence increases amid stalled Taliban peace talks, with Isis claiming it was behind earlier journalist killing

An Afghan journalist and human rights activist has been shot and killed by unidentified gunmen in western Afghanistan, the fifth journalist to be killed in the war-ravaged country in the past two months, a provincial spokesman said.

Bismillah Adil Aimaq was on the road near Feroz Koh, the provincial capital of Ghor, returning home to the city after visiting his family in a village nearby, when gunmen opened fire at the vehicle.

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Syria: dozens killed in Isis bus attack

Assault reportedly targeted Syrian regime soldiers returning to their posts in Deir ez-Zor, near Iraq border

At least 37 people in Syria have been killed in one of the biggest attacks carried out by Islamic State since the fall of the self-proclaimed caliphate last year.

The assault on Wednesday reportedly targeted a convoy of Syrian regime soldiers and militiamen returning from leave to their posts in Deir ez-Zor province, a mainly desert area on the border with Iraq.

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Javid advised of ‘hostile public sentiment’ to Shamima Begum, court told

Officials told then home secretary that withdrawing Isis recruit’s citizenship would not hurt community relations, supreme court hears

Home Office officials declared “public sentiment is overwhelmingly hostile” to Shamima Begum and argued removing her British citizenship would not affect community relations when they advised Sajid Javid to act against her last year.

The then home secretary was formally advised that “the general feeling” was that the young woman, who travelled from east London to live under Isis in Syria aged 15, had “made her decision and must now live with it”.

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US poll chaos is a boon for the enemies of democracy the whole world over


While Democrats and Republicans squabble in Washington, injustice and violence reigns from Palestine to Mozambique

Believe it or not, the world did not stop turning on its axis because of the US election and ensuing, self-indulgent disputes in the land of the free-for-all. In the age of Donald Trump, narcissism spreads like the plague.

But the longer the wrangling in Washington continues, the greater the collateral damage to America’s global reputation – and to less fortunate states and peoples who rely on the US and the western allies to fly the flag for democracy and freedom.

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More than 40 fleeing Mozambique violence feared dead after boat sinks

Children among those reported drowned as Islamist insurgency drives thousands of families from homes in Cabo Delgado

More than 40 people fleeing violence in Mozambique’s conflict-torn north are believed to have drowned after the boat carrying them to safety sank, according to reports.

At least 70 people were on board the vessel when it sank on 29 October in the Indian Ocean just north of the provincial capital of Pemba, where tens of thousands of people have sought refuge from a three-year Islamist insurgency, the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) and Reuters reported.

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Police investigate if Vienna attacker was part of wider network

Kujtim Fejzulai believed to have acted alone but known to have been an Isis sympathiser

Austrian police are investigating whether an Islamist terrorist who killed four people in Vienna on Monday night was part of a wider network and if the attack could have been prevented.

Kujtim Fejzulai, known to authorities as a sympathiser of the Islamic State group, which claimed credit for the murders, is believed to have been the lone gunman in the attack despite hours of uncertainty over whether accomplices remained at large.

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‘We live in constant fear’: Kabul buries its dead after Isis attack on university

The brutal killing of at least 35 people on Monday has left Afghanistan’s younger generation fearful of the future

At a mountainside graveyard, surrounded by dusty brown hills specked with colourfully painted houses, 20 year-old Marziah Tahery was laid to rest on Tuesday; a light breeze in the warm autumn air, echoes of children’s play in the distance.

The morning before – as on most other days – she had gone enthusiastically into Kabul University where she had been studying public administration and policy.

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Austria terror attacker ‘pretended he had given up jihadism’

Kujtim Fejzulai deceived mentors in deradicalisation programme, minister says

An Islamic State-supporting gunman who killed four people and injured 23 others in an attack in central Vienna on Monday night deliberately “deceived” his mentors in a deradicalisation programme to feign a renunciation of jihadism, Austria’s interior minister has said.

The 20-year-old dual Austrian and North Macedonian citizen, named as Kujtim Fejzulai, was shot dead by police nine minutes after opening fire in the Austrian capital’s first district at 8pm.

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Does Vienna attack signal new wave of jihadist terrorism?

Fact that Isis attacks have declined in EU does not mean threat has disappeared, says expert

Does the attack in Vienna on Monday night presage a return to the darkest days of the wave of terrorist violence that shook Europe between 2012 and 2017?

Over that five-year period, hundreds died in lethal stabbings, attacks with cleavers, bombings of stadiums and airports, as well as assaults by multiple gunmen in city centres with AK-47s that bear horrible resemblance both to that still being investigated in the Austrian capital and the spate of attacks in France in recent weeks.

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‘The militias are not allowing us back’: Sunnis languish in camps, years after recapture of Mosul

At least 400,000 people who fled Isis are still interred in the north of the country, fearing they are not wanted in postwar Iraq

On a midsummer morning six years ago, Ziad Abdulqader Nasir’s short walk to Friday prayers at Mosul’s Great Mosque of al-Nuri, one of Iraq’s oldest shrines, was abruptly interrupted by the arrival of stern men carrying guns.

Nasir and his neighbours were ushered inside, some of the newcomers set up cameras, and others sat the puzzled worshippers in neat lines on the carpet.

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Jihadists kill 14 soldiers in attack on Nigerian army base

Islamic State West Africa Province fighters fired machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, sources say

Jihadists linked to the Islamic State group have killed 14 Nigerian soldiers in an attack on an army base, military sources have said.

Two sources told Agence France-Presse on condition of anonymity that fighters from the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) group had attacked the base in Jakana on Friday evening, firing machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

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‘A threat from within’: Iraq and the rise of its militias

Shaped by the fight against Isis and a fateful US drone strike, the factions now pose a danger to Baghdad’s weak government

The dust had barely settled on the fall of Iraq’s second city when the call came. It was June 2014 and Islamic State had just captured Mosul, the prize in a fight for control of a country already scarred by more than a decade of war.

Just four days after the city’s capture, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Shia cleric in Iraq, issued a fatwa urging Iraqis to volunteer in the fight against the militants. Tens of thousands of mostly young men from the poor Shia south and Baghdad suburbs flocked to recruiting centres, military camps and militia headquarters.

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British-born pair charged in US over murder of Isis hostages

El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey, held in detention for two years, transferred to America and charged with terrorism offences

Two British-born citizens alleged to have members of an Isis execution squad infamous for beheading hostages have been flown to the US to face trial after two years in detention.

Related: The jihadist 'Beatles': Britons who became the face of Isis cruelty

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Charges against UK-born Isis pair shed light on brutality of terror group

Hostage-taking and multiple murder among charges levelled against Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh

The grisly allegations of hostage-taking, brutality and multiple murder in the lengthy charge sheet against Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh represent more than just a summary of US case against the British-born Isis followers.

It amounts to an indictment of Isis, the brutal terror organisation that drew murderous strength from adherents who came from around the world, and its dead leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

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Orphaned girl freed from Syrian detention camp to join family in Canada

  • Five-year-old found after Canadian parents killed in airstrike
  • Parents were believed to have been Isis members

A five-year-old girl who spent more than a year in a Syrian detention camp after her family were killed in an airstrike on Isis members has been released and will soon join her family in Canada.

Officials announced on Monday that the girl, known as Amira, had been released into the care of a consular officer who will accompany her to Canada – a country she has never visited.

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Did the ‘Caliphate executioner’ lie about his past as an Isis killer?

Shehroze Chaudhry charged with inventing identity as a ruthless killer as saga prompts debate over repatriation and de-radicalization

For months, unbeknown to his classmates and neighbours, a self-professed executioner was living freely in Canada’s largest city.

But in 2018, his exploits were made public on a blockbuster podcast produced by the New York Times, in which the man who called himself Abu Huzaifa al-Kanadi confessed to a string of grisly crimes as a member of the Islamic State’s religious police.

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At least 11 people killed in attack on convoy in Nigeria

President urges greater checks for sabotage before displaced people are returned

Suspected Islamist militants have killed at least 11 people in north-eastern Nigeria in an attack on a security convoy that was taking people displaced by an insurgency back to their homes, police and security sources said on Saturday.

Islamic State, to whom a breakaway faction of Nigerian militant group Boko Haram pledged allegiance in 2016, said on its Amaq news agency that 30 police officers and soldiers were killed in the attack on Friday on a road leading to the strategic fishing town of Baga in Borno state.

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Canada arrests man for lying about joining Islamic State under terrorism hoax law

Shehroze Chaudhry, 25, gained notoriety from the podcast, Caliphate, but his account of grisly murders for Isis have been questioned

Police in Canada have arrested a man for lying about his participation with the Islamic State, while charging another for joining the terror group in Syria.

Police announced on Friday charges against Shehroze Chaudhry, 25, who operated under the name Abu Huzayfah al-Kanadi. He was charged under the country’s terrorism hoax laws, which carry a maximum sentence of five years.

In 2016 Chaudhry had claimed to have travelled to Syria to join Islamic State, alleging he was a member of the terror group’s religious police. On social media, he claimed to have conducted at least two executions on the group’s behalf.

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