• Brazil's police arrest 10 ISIS sympathizers suspected of Olympics terror plot

    With two weeks to go to the opening of the Olympic Games in Brazil, the Brazilian police have arrested ten alleged ISIS sympathizers in the states of São Paulo and Parana on suspicion of planning acts of terrorism during the games. Two other suspects are still at large. Brazil’s intelligence agency ABIN has worked with foreign intelligence services to provide the information that led to the arrests.

  • Nice terrorist had accomplices, was planning the attack for a year

    Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the truck driver who killed eighty-five people in Nice on Bastille Day, had accomplices – and he had been planning his attack for months, the prosecutor leading the investigation said. Prosecutor Francois Molins said five suspects were facing terrorism charges for their alleged roles in helping the driver.

  • Baton Rouge gunman was a member of black “sovereign citizen” group

    Gavin Long, the 29-year old former Marine who on Saturday killed three Baton Rouge police officers, was a member of a black antigovernment sovereign citizen group whose members believe they are indigenous to the United States and beyond the reach of the federal government. Members of the Washitaw Nation believe that they are descendants of black people who occupied the North American continent tens of thousands of years before white Europeans arrived, and, therefore, they fall outside federal authority.

  • Indonesian security forces kill country's most wanted Islamist militant

    Abu Wardah Santoso, Indonesia’s most wanted Islamist militant, was killed in a shootout with security forces. Santoso, who was the leader of the East Indonesia Mujahideen militant group which, in 2014, claimed allegiance to ISIS, had eluded capture for more than five years.

  • Updated 2015 Global Terrorism Database release

    The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) has released an update to its Global Terrorism Database (GTD), an open-source database including information on terrorist attacks that took place around the world between 1970 and 2015. Among the findings: The total number of terrorist attacks and total deaths due to terrorist attacks worldwide decreased by 12 percent in 2015, compared to 2014. This was largely due to fewer attacks and deaths in Iraq, Pakistan, and Nigeria. This represents the first decline in total terrorist attacks and deaths worldwide since 2009.

  • U.K. reviews security measures for large outdoor events

    Amber Rudd, the new British home secretary, told the House of Commons that she has ordered a full review of the security measures taken to protect large outdoor events such as festivals and other public gatherings. The review comes in the wake of the attack in Nice on revelers celebrating Bastille Day. Rudd said that additional security measures will be put in place, including what is known as the “national barrier asset” when police assess that there is a risk of vehicle attacks.

  • Brazilian Jihadist group pledges allegiance to ISIS on eve of Olympic Games

    A Brazilian Jihadist group called Ansar al-Khilafah, has pledged allegiance to ISIS less than a month before the opening of the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. It is the first pledge of allegiance to ISIS to come from South America. Portuguese and Spanish versions of ISIS’s Nashir have also been launched on the encrypted Telegram messaging app.

  • Shooter motivated by 1960s-era Black Nationalism

    Gavin long, 29, who shot and killed three policemen in Baton Rouge before being fatally shot by the police, appears to have been motivated by 1960s-era Black Nationalism, which called on African Americans to take a strong, even violent, stance against mistreatment by authorities. Long left a long trail of on-line material, both postings and videos. In another video, referring to Native Americans, Long said, “When they were extincted [sic] by the same people that run this country, my question to you, just something you can think about: At what point should they have stood up?”

  • Was the Nice attacker really an IS "lone wolf"?

    The Bastille Day terror attack on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice has been claimed by the Islamic State Group – sort of. With no clear connection to Jihadi groups (and merely a record as a petty criminal), French officials are trying to ascertain whether Bouhlel was a lone actor terrorist or a mentally ill person with whom IS is opportunistically associating. The idea that a mass casualty perpetrator is likely to be suffering from mental illness is consistent with the research on lone actors. My research on suicide terrorism has demonstrated that affiliation with a group is quite different from the research of Criminal Justice professor Adam Lankford of the University of Alabama who insists that many terrorists are suicidal and not sacrificing themselves for a greater cause or for some underlying altruistic motivation of self-sacrifice. The implications for policy and the potential for backlash from terrorists and counter terrorists vary greatly depending on which scenario ends up being accurate for Bouhlel, whether he was in fact radicalized or possible mentally ill matters.

  • Turkish military seizes power in Turkey

    The Turkish military announced a few hours ago (Friday afternoon, EST) that it has seized power, and that the government of President Tayyip Erdogan, in power since 2003, has been deposed. Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, however, said in a hastily arranged press conference that while it was not clear who was in chare in Turkey, he was confident the attempted coup would be put down. There is no information about Erdogan and his whereabouts, but the Turkish sister channel of CNN said he was “safe” in an unknown location. The military has declared martial law in the country, imposed a 10:00 p.m. (Turkey time) curfew, and placed soldiers in the offices of all TV stations and major newspapers.

  • At least 84 killed, more than 200 injured, by a terrorist driving a truck into 14 July crowd

    At least eighty-four people were killed Thursday when a 31-year old Tunisian plowed into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, France. He accelerated, and continued to drive for about 1.5 miles, running over people who crowded the boulevard. More than 200 were injured, some of them are in critical condition. Police shot and killed the driver, Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who had a residency permit to live and work in France.

  • The perpetrator: Unstable loner with a history of petty crimes, interest in “girls and salsa”

    The driver of the truck was identified as Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Tunisian, who had a residency permit to live and work in France. He was a divorced father of three, and neighbors said he had become depressed after the breakdown of his marriage. The neighbors said that Bouhlele was not particularly interested in religion, adding that he preferred girls and salsa.

  • France has a long history of violence and terrorism

    France has a long history of violence carried out by different groups with different ideologies and goals. Until the rise of Islamist terrorism in the last twenty years, most of the violent and terrorist acts in the post-World War Two era belonged to three categories: Separatist movements; terrorism related to the Algerian War; and terrorism by various groups in the Middle East and North Africa.

  • Austrian court sentences an Islamist hate preacher to 20 years in prison

    A criminal court in Graz, Austria, on Wednesday sentenced an Islamist hate preacher, who has adopted the name Ebu Tejma, to twenty years in prison — the harshest sentence so far for convicted Islamists in Austria. He was sentenced on one count of membership in a terrorist organization and one of promoting terrorist activities.

  • A faction of Colombian FARC rebel group rejects peace deal, refuses to disarm

    The Armando Rios First Front, a unit of Colombia’s FARC rebel group, has said it will not disarm or demobilize, as it is required to do under the peace deal reached between the FARC and the government of Colombia. The deal, which ends the 52-year guerrilla war between the FARC and successive Colombian governments, was signed in Havana, Cuba, three weeks ago. The announcement by the First Front is the first public sign of opposition to the from within the rebel ranks. Colombian government sources said that other FARC factions could also reject the peace agreement, and that if enough of them did so, it would throw the peace process into doubt.