An Islamic State fanatic has been found guilty of murdering Sir David Amess MP.
The Southend West MP was stabbed more than 20 times during a constituency surgery in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex on 15 October 2021.
A jury at the Old Bailey took just 18 minutes to convict Ali Harbi Ali of murder and preparing acts of terrorism.
The 26-year-old from Kentish Town, north London, had denied the charges and claimed he targeted the MP over his vote for airstrikes on Syria.
Habibullah, a Taliban soldier in Afghanistan, remembers setting land mines at age 17 on his first day of fighting near Kandahar. “I saw a Canadian tank explode and knew I had killed for the first time,” he remembers with remorse.
Three of his friends also died that day in 2009 — at the hands of Canadians, he says.
Habibullah, 30, says he forgives Canada for fighting the Taliban. He hopes Canadians can forgive him, too. “Now we must give our hands to each other,” he says.
After being tortured, starved and dragged through the blood of fellow prisoners, a French war photographer kidnapped by ISIS in Syria back in 2013 said he and other hostages attempted to kill themselves.
‘We found plastic bags and ropes,’ Edouard Elias tested Friday during a federal trial against one of his captors, El Shafee Elsheikh, a former British national who was sitting just a feet away in an Alexandria, Virginia courtroom. ‘We tried to find a way of suicide.’
Elsheikh is accused of leading a kidnapping plot that resulted in the killings of US aid workers Kayla Mueller and Peter Kassig and journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff.
No one’s surprised, right? Certainly you’re not surprised if you read this morning’s post.
Still, there are details here that don’t make sense to me. If these guys are part of an Iranian plot to target U.S. officials, they’d want to be as unobtrusive as possible, right? Make friends with the Secret Service, see what they’ll tell you, but otherwise don’t give your neighbors any reason to be suspicious of you.
That is some kinda weird.
A French journalist held by the Islamic State in Syria testified on Wednesday that he and other hostages were forced by their captors to sing a depraved parody of the Eagles song ‘Hotel California’ called ‘Hotel Osama.’
‘It was terrifying for us, a joke for them,’ Nicolas Henin said at the trial of El Shafee Elsheikh, a 33-year-old former British national.
Elsheikh is accused of involvement in the murders of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and aid workers Kayla Mueller and Peter Kassig.
A mass shooting in Israel left two people dead and at least 15 others wounded last night — and doesn’t appear to be an isolated incident. The attack in Tel Aviv is the fourth deadly event in three weeks that appears tied to terrorism, and raises questions as to whether Palestinians are attempting yet another intifada as Sunni nations begin aligning with Israel
Germany as a prototype:Christian symbols disappear as Europeans discard them, but there is no vacuum. Islam takes their place.
Cologne Cathedral, known as the “German Rome”, is the landmark of the city and has been declared a World Heritage Site since 1996. It is one of the most visited places in Germany and one of the most important in Christianity (it was visited by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI). The first stone of the cathedral was laid in 1248. On old black and white photos you can see how the towers of the cathedral protrude from the rubble of the historic center completely destroyed during the Second World War.
Now the city of Cologne is deleting the iconic cathedral from its new logo. “My 92-year-old mother is stunned, my 11-year-old son is crying and my friend in London doesn’t understand it,” writes sculptor and painter Cornel Wachter.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Ten gunmen kidnapped an 83-year-old American nun from her bed in the west African nation of Burkina Faso and destroyed almost everything in the house where she lived, but left four other women unhurt, a Louisiana official for the order said Wednesday.
Sister Suellen Tennyson was taken late Monday “from her room in her pajamas — no shoes, no glasses, no phone, no medicine,” Sister Ann Lacour, U.S. congregational leader for the Marianites of Holy Cross in Covington, Louisiana, told The Associated Press. Lacour provided additional details of the kidnapping a day after the AP reported it.
TEL AVIV, Israel — Israeli medics say at least two people were killed and several wounded in a shooting in central Tel Aviv.
The Thursday night attack occurred in an area with several bars and restaurants packed with people. The motive for the shooting was not immediately clear, but it came amid heightened tensions following a series of deadly attacks carried out by Palestinians.
Parents of a US humanitarian worker killed by the Islamic State begged for her life in emails to her captors, a court has heard.
Kayla Mueller, 26, was one of several people who died at the hands of a Syria-based IS terror cell dubbed the Beatles due to their British accents.
On Tuesday, her mother Marsha spoke at the federal trial of El Shafee Elsheikh, 33, known as “Jihadi George”.
ISLAMABAD (AP) — A rare video has appeared of al-Qaida’s chief praising an Indian Muslim woman who in February defied a ban on hijab wearing, revealing the first proof in months that he is still alive.
Rumors of the death of Ayman al-Zawahri have persistently circulated, but in a video released Tuesday and translated by the SITE Intelligence Group, the reclusive al-Qaida chief praises Muskan Khan who defied a ban on the wearing of the hijab in schools in India’s southwestern state of Karnataka.
As the trial against the accused Islamic State fighter El Shafee Elsheikh began this week on American soil, jurors in a northern Virginia courtroom were quickly exposed to accounts of unimaginable brutality.
Elsheikh, prosecutors alleged, carried out terrorist acts that involved the grisly deaths of four Americans – the journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, as well as the aid workers Kayla Mueller and Peter Kassig.
Elsheikh, a former British national, allegedly did so as part of a three-man cell dubbed “the Beatles” by the group’s hostages, due to their English accents. Officials have said that this cell was responsible for the kidnappings of more than 20 westerners between 2012 and 2015.
Letitia James has used her office to thwart investigative reporters while sticking up for a group with intimate ties to Hamas.
New Yorkers are currently suffering through an epidemic of violent crime that is diminishing the quality of life of the nation’s most-burdened taxpayers. And what is state attorney general Letitia James doing about it? Pushing back against the so-called bail-reform laws that every day turn violent offenders back out on the street? Devising new ways to protect tourists and residents? Conducting a forensic investigation into all that missing Covid-19 relief cash that was stolen?
The French authorities have opened an investigation into the case of a young Jewish man in Paris who was killed by a passing tram while fleeing a violent assault that his family insists was motivated by antisemitism.
The victim, 31-year-old Jérémy Cohen, lost his life on Feb. 17 after being struck by a moving tram in the Paris suburb of Bobigny. A harrowing video of the incident posted to social media over the weekend shows an individual fleeing from a violent attack by at least a dozen gang members, before running into the street where he was knocked down and killed by an oncoming tram.
American journalist James Foley’s terrorist captors never made serious attempts to negotiate for a ransom before brutally beheading the New Hampshire native in 2013, his family testified on Monday.
The revelation came during testimony from Foley’s brother at the federal terror trial of El Shafee Elsheikh — an alleged member of the British-born ISIS executioners dubbed “The Beatles” who is charged in the kidnapping scheme that resulted in the deaths of Foley and three other Americans Steven Sotloff, Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller.
