Homeland Security News

A University of Washington doctoral student conducting research in Egypt has been detained on suspicion of “spreading false news” and “belonging to a terrorist group,” among other infractions, according to lawyers representing him.

Walid Salem, a UW political-science student and an Egyptian national who was researching the country’s judiciary, disappeared last week in Cairo, said attorney Mokhtar Mounir in a phone interview from the capital.

Four days later, Salem turned up in the very court system he was studying.

Egypt’s Supreme State Security Prosecution handed Salem a 15-day precautionary detention order on Sunday, Mounir said.

Read more: The Seattle Times

Source:  BBC News

Malaysia has detained 15 suspected Islamist militants including a teenager and a housewife accused of plotting separate “lone wolf” attacks on places of worship around the capital, Kuala Lumpur, police said on Friday.

Police rounded up the 15, including nine foreigners, in several security operations between March 27 and May 9, Inspector-General of Police Mohamad Fuzi Harun said in a statement.

They included a 17-year-old secondary school student suspected of being a member of Islamic State, who had allegedly planned “lone wolf” attacks on churches, entertainment centers and Hindu temples around Kuala Lumpur.

The student had made six petrol bombs and tested one of them, Mohamad Fuzi said.

“The suspect had surveyed and filmed the target locations, as well as recorded a video warning of the impending attacks,” he said, adding that the video was uploaded to four Islamic State-linked mobile chatrooms shortly before the suspect was arrested.

Read more:  Reuters

Two masked bombers walked into a crowded restaurant near Toronto and detonated a homemade explosive that wounded at least 15 people. In Belgium, a temporarily freed prisoner went on a deadly rampage, stabbing and shooting people and taking hostages before the police killed him.

In both attacks, each carried out in recent days, civilians were the victims. But it was only the Belgium attack — in which the assailant screamed “Allahu akbar!” (God is great!) — that the police quickly described as a possible act of terrorism.

The comparison cuts to the core of a protracted debate over what constitutes terrorism, who is a terrorist and what such designations actually mean. An attack viewed as terrorism in one part of the world may be seen as a common crime elsewhere. The debate has grown more complex and intense in the years since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but it dates back many years.

Read more:  New York Times