Homeland Security News

The number of terrorism-related arrests in Britain hit a record high after a series of attacks around the country last year, official figures show.

In the year ending 31 March, 441 people were held on suspicion of terrorism-related activity, the highest number of arrests in a year since data collection started in 2001, and an increase of 17% on the 378 in the previous year.

The Home Office said the rise was partly due to a number of arrests made following attacks in London and Manchester last year. The number of terror-related arrests in Britain since the 9/11 attacks in 2001 has passed the 4,000 mark, standing at 4,182 at the end of March.

Assistant commissioner Neil Basu, head of counter-terrorism policing in the UK, said: “With the terrorist attacks of 2017 we saw a genuine step-change in momentum. As a result, our operational activity increased to meet the new and emerging threats we now face.

Read more: The Guardian (UK)

A 29-year-old man is suspected of planning an Islamic extremist plot to carry out an attack in Germany using the deadly toxin ricin, which was thwarted by authorities who raided his Cologne apartment, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

Sief Allah H., a Tunisian whose last name wasn’t given in line with German privacy laws, was taken into custody Tuesday during the raid on his apartment, and formally arrested Wednesday after a judge reviewed the evidence.

Authorities are still investigating exactly how the suspect planned to use the toxin, but said he was working on a “biological weapon” attack in Germany.

“We don’t know how, or how widely, the ricin was to have been distributed,” said prosecutors’ spokesman Markus Schmitt.

Read more: AP

An al Qaeda affiliate in Mali has released a video of a French aid worker and a Colombian nun kidnapped in separate incidents in 2016 and 2017, according to SITE Intelligence Group.

The video was posted late on Wednesday by Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM), which has been linked to the kidnapping of at least six Western hostages in recent years, SITE said in an email to clients that included a link to the video.

It shows a frail Sophie Petronin, a French aid worker who was kidnapped in Mali’s restive northeast in late 2016, being cared for in a tent-like structure by fellow captive Gloria Cecilia Narvaez, who was abducted in early 2017 in southern Mali near the border with Burkina Faso.

Read more:  Reuters

Two people were stabbed to death on Thursday at a mosque in South Africa’s Malmesbury in the Western Cape before the attacker was shot dead by police.

The attack comes a month after three knife-wielding men stormed a mosque north of Durban, killing one person and seriously injuring two others.

Police said that incident showed “elements of extremism” but did not otherwise comment on the motive behind the attack in Malmesbury, a small farming town 40 miles north of Cape Town.

“Police were called out to a local mosque and found two people stabbed to death and several injured,” the police said in a statement.

“The suspect, believed to be in his thirties and armed with a knife, was still on the scene and charged at the police who tried to persuade him to hand himself over. He ignored the calls and tried to attack police. He was shot and killed in the process.”

Source:  Reuters

A Wisconsin woman hacked social media accounts, including on Facebook, to recruit on behalf of the Islamic State terrorist group and to provide instruction on such terrorism basics as making explosives and biological weapons, authorities say.

Waheba Issa Dais of Cudahy, a 45-year-old mother of two, is in federal custody after being charged with providing "material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization," according to a federal criminal complaint. She appeared before a federal magistrate Wednesday and is scheduled to return to court Friday to determine bail.

Dais "helped facilitate planning for attacks in the United States on behalf of ISIS and overseas by providing instructions on how to make explosives, biological weapons and suicide vests," according to an FBI affidavit used to support the criminal complaint.

In addition, the affidavit said, she "provided detailed instructions to people interested in attacks and attack planning. Dais has also expressed a personal desire to travel overseas in support of ISIS."

Read more:  USA Today