OUR PICKSExtremists Praise Texas Attack | Europe & the Next Jihadi Threat | Psychological Drivers of Misinformation Belief
· Extremists Praise Texas Attack, Discuss Future Threats to Jewish Community
· Officials Investigating Synagogue Attacker’s Link to 2010 Terror Case
· Two Teenagers Held in Manchester After ‘Act of Terror’ at US Synagogue
· Police and MI5 ‘Very Much Alive’ to Danger to Extremists Freed from Prison
· Sweden and France Launch Joint Task Force to Prosecute ISIS Fighters over Yazidi Genocide
· Fight Against Terrorism ‘Greater Challenge’ Than Ever Before, Says UK Police Official
· Implications of Beijing’s Re-Innovation Strategy
· China Steps Up Efforts to Ban Deepfakes. Will It Work?
· The Psychological Drivers of Misinformation Belief and Its Resistance to Correction
· Europe Is Blind to the Next Jihadi Threat
· Federal Response to SolarWinds and Microsoft Exchange Incidents
Extremists Praise Texas Attack, Discuss Future Threats to Jewish Community (Bridget Johnson, HSToday)
Al-Qaeda-supporting media dubs Akram a martyr, while neo-Nazi forum discusses targets that would deliver a “much more clear” message.
Officials Investigating Synagogue Attacker’s Link to 2010 Terror Case (Zia ur-Rehman and Michael Levenson, New York Times)
The tabloids called her Lady Qaeda. A neuroscientist who was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she was accused of trying to kill American soldiers and plotting to blow up the Statue of Liberty. Since then, Aafia Siddiqui has spent almost 12 years in a federal prison in Texas. Now, investigators are looking into whether her story may have motivated the British attacker who took four people hostage at a Texas synagogue on Saturday. Since Ms. Siddiqui’s conviction in 2010 for “terroristic events” in Afghanistan, her name has become a rallying cry among Islamists in her native Pakistan, and her defiance in the face of arrest has made her a hero to jihadist militants worldwide, experts said. “Her rejection of mainstream life makes her an empowering example for the jihadi groups who exploit her victimhood,” said Abdul Basit, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. The F.B.I. said on Sunday that the attacker, Malik Faisal Akram, spoke of Ms. Siddiqui’s case, which has been used as a pretext for previous terrorist attacks and has also garnered renewed focus since American forces withdrew from Afghanistan last summer. In October, hundreds of people marched to the U.S. Consulate in the port city of Karachi to demand that the Biden administration order her release.
Two Teenagers Held in Manchester After ‘Act of Terror’ at US Synagogue (Aine Fo, Independent)
Two teenagers have been arrested in Manchester after a British man flew to the US, bought a weapon and held people hostage in a 10-hour stand-off at a synagogue. Malik Faisal Akram, originally from Blackburn in Lancashire, was shot dead when the FBI entered the building in Texas on Saturday night. US President Joe Biden branded the incident “an act of terror” and UK police are working with authorities in America on the investigation. Greater Manchester Police (GMP) announced that officers from Counter Terror Policing North West had made two arrests in south Manchester on Sunday evening. (Cont.)
