Family lawyer says chances of Begum being sent to country are ‘vanishingly remote’
Shamima Begum could face the death penalty for involvement in terrorism if she goes to Bangladesh, the country’s foreign minister has said.
However, her family’s lawyer said the chances of her being sent to her parents’ country of origin were “vanishingly remote”.
Continue reading...Video comes weeks after Islamic State was ousted from last stronghold in Syria
The fugitive Islamic State leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has appeared in a propaganda video for the first time in five years, in which he acknowledges the terrorist group’s defeat in the Syrian town of Baghuz.
The appearance is only Baghdadi’s second on video, and comes weeks after the remnants of Isis were ousted from their last organised stronghold in the eastern Syrian desert. Looking heavier than when he proclaimed the existence of the now-collapsed caliphate in mid-2014, Baghdadi blames its demise on the “savagery” of Christians.
Continue reading...Official cites difficulty of identifying victims as reason for revision
Sri Lankan authorities have revised the death toll from Easter Sunday’s string of bombings down to 253 people from the previous estimate of 359.
The country’s director general for health services issued the correction on Thursday, citing the difficulty of identifying victims due to the nature of the bombings, some of which took place in closely confined spaces and left some bodies in pieces.
Continue reading...CCTV video shows two suspected attackers in Sri Lanka's Easter Sunday bombings carrying backpacks into the Shangri-La hotel in the capital, Colombo, before the blast.
The bombings, which killed 359 people and injured 500, shattered the relative calm that has existed in Buddhist-majority Sri Lanka over the past decade and raised fears of a return to sectarian violence.
Continue reading...Turkish police said they had arrested a Syrian national who was planning retaliation for New Zealand mosque attack
The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, has cast doubt on a possible plot to target Anzac Day commemorations at Gallipoli despite the arrest of a man with suspected links to Islamic State by Turkish police.
The suspect, a Syrian national, was arrested after a police operation in Osmaniye and was among several Isis members detained.
Continue reading...Country’s president announces major security overhaul after authorities confirm they were warned about attacks
One of the attackers who carried out the devastating suicide bombings in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday had studied in the UK and Australia, the country’s defence minister has said.
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the bombings, believed to be the most lethal ever conducted by the group.
Continue reading...Most who died were locals, but victims – including young children – came from across the world
Sri Lankan authorities have confirmed that 359 people were killed in a wave of suicide bombings on the island on Easter Sunday. Since then, the names and stories of those who died have begun to emerge. This list does not include all the victims, the vast majority of whom were Sri Lankans.
Continue reading...Bombings that killed more than 320 people have hallmarks of Isis, say security experts
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the Easter bombings in Sri Lanka that killed more than 320 people, the group’s Amaq news agency has said, with experts saying the attacks bear the hallmarks of the group.
It is the deadliest overseas operation claimed by Isis since it proclaimed its “caliphate” almost five years ago, and would suggest it retains the ability to launch devastating strikes around the world despite multiple defeats in the Middle East.
Continue reading...Death toll from Easter Sunday’s eight bomb blasts nears 300, with 500 others injured
The wave of bombings on Sunday targeting churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka is among the worst terrorist attacks carried out worldwide since September 11, in which 2,977 people died.
On Monday, police said the death toll had surged overnight to 290, with the number expected to rise further. About 500 people were injured, according to reports.
Continue reading...Hamdaniya has been reclaimed from the extremists who made it a hotbed of violence
The church ceiling was still scorched and some cherished relics missing, but after five years of war and exile, their tormentors were finally gone.
When the men and women of Iraq’s oldest Christian town gathered for Easter mass this weekend, they did so knowing that the Islamic State extremists who had chased them away were not coming back. Their battlefield defeat two months ago meant the people of Hamdaniya (also called Qaraqosh) could once again celebrate without fear.
Continue reading...New Zealand prime minister unhappy that details of Lousia Akavi’s abduction were made public by the aid agency
The revelation that a New Zealand nurse has been detained in Syria for five years has prompted tensions between the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the New Zealand government, with the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, criticising the aid agency for releasing details of the woman’s abduction.
On Monday the New York Times, in conjunction with the ICRC, revealed that New Zealander Louisa Akavi, 63, had been abducted along with two Syrian colleagues on 13 October 2013.
Continue reading...Fayez al-Sarraj says Khalifa Haftar’s attack on Tripoli ‘will spread its cancer through Mediterranean’
Hundreds of thousands of refugees could flee the fighting caused by Khalifa Haftar’s attempt to seize the Libyan capital, Tripoli, the prime minister of the country’s UN-recognised government has warned.
The warnings by Fayez al-Sarraj – who also claimed Haftar had betrayed the people of Libya – echo those given privately to the Italian government by its intelligence services, and are clearly designed to alert EU states to the possible consequences for European migration of a prolonged civil war in the country.
Continue reading...Aid group publishes open letter to political leaders, asking them to act on their words if elected
Save the Children has called on Scott Morrison and Bill Shorten to publicly commit – if they win the election – to bringing home the children of Australian foreign fighters in Syria.
In a letter published on Saturday, the aid organisation demanded that the major parties pledge to “stop the war on children” and repatriate those who were brought to the Syrian conflict or were born there to Australians who chose to fight with Islamic State.
Continue reading...Baghdad in talks with US to receive remnants of terror group held in detention centres in Syria
Baghdad and Washington are in talks to transfer and place on trial tens of thousands of suspected Isis fighters and their families from detention centres in Syria to prison camps in Iraq, with Iraqi officials seeking a multibillion dollar fee to receive remnants of the terror group captured over five years of war.
Discussions about what to do with Isis members, among them thousands of foreign men, women and children, have been pushed intensively by US officials, who have also lobbied coalition partners to remove their citizens from two cramped detention centres in Syria’s north-east, which one former senior US official described as a “volcano”.
Continue reading...Countries fear that legal standard of states being ‘unwilling or unable’ to deal with terrorism could be used in Latin America
Latin American states are mounting a challenge to the acceptance of a legal standard promoted by the US, UK and their allies to justify military operations in the Middle East, fearing the same standard could eventually be used to justify intervention in their own hemisphere.
The Mexican government is spearheading an effort at the UN to bring greater transparency to the formal legal justifications presented by western powers for military operations in Syria and elsewhere.
Continue reading...Prosecutors said suspects arrested for allegedly plotting ‘state-endangering crime’
German police arrested 11 people in pre-dawn raids on Saturday on suspicion they were planning major attacks with stockpiled weapons and explosives, a prosecution spokesman said.
One of the 11 was confirmed as a Tajikistan national, but officials disclosed few other details about the suspects, who were detained in the early hours in western and southern parts of the country.
Continue reading...Once a magnet for would-be jihadists worldwide, Islamic State’s dominion collapsed amid infighting and paranoia
On a midwinter night in early January, the most wanted man in the world entered a home in a forsaken town near the Syrian border for a rare meeting with his surviving aides.
Continue reading...Kurdish-led group says last of militants cleared from stronghold of Baghuz
After almost five years, the battle to dismantle Islamic State’s brutal “caliphate” has ended with an announcement from US-backed forces that the militants have been driven out of their last stronghold of Baghuz.
Isis had held out for months against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the small oasis town on the Euphrates river, clinging on to an area of land less than 700 sq metres wide despite fierce coalition bombing. But on Saturday an SDF spokesperson, Mustafa Bali, tweeted that the town had been liberated.
Continue reading...Announcement appeared to catch US allies off-guard as SDF spokesman says its fighters clashed overnight with Islamic State militants
The Trump White House has declared that the Islamic State no longer holds any territory inside Syria, but the claim was disputed by Kurdish-led forces on the ground who said clashes were continuing.
Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, told reporters that the acting defence secretary, Patrick Shanahan, had briefed Donald Trump and that the Pentagon had confirmed that the last vestiges of the Isis “caliphate” had been eliminated.
Continue reading...Aid agencies struggle to cope with rise in new arrivals, with scores dying on the way to the settlements
An estimated 7,000 women and children from more than 40 nations, including the US, UK, Australia and Europe, are living in tense and chaotic conditions in camps in north-eastern Syria, where they are “not wanted” due to their supposed affiliation with Islamic State.
Among them are hundreds of unaccompanied or separated children, some just babies as young as five months, according to aid groups and other sources.
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