Homeland Security News

A 26-YEAR-OLD Sydney man was allegedly trying to travel to a foreign conflict zone to engage in terrorist acts, a court has heard.

The New South Wales counter-terrorism squad swooped on Nowroz Rayed Amin at his Ingleburn home in the city’s southwest on Saturday morning, said the Australian Federal Police.

He was taken to Campbelltown Police station and charged with three offences — two of them terror related.

Court documents show the man was allegedly preparing and planning for a terrorist act between September 2015 and February 2016.

It is also alleged that during April 2015 and February 2016 Amin was having conversations about travelling to declared areas to engage in hostile activities as well as enquiring about getting weapons and material on how to make weapons, court papers show.

Read more: News.com.au (Australia)

Dutch authorities said DNA traces of three men arrested on Monday had been found on weapons discovered at an Islamic State-linked hideout in Paris.

The investigation dates back to the Brussels airport and metro bombings of March 2016 which killed 32 people. Two days later, French police discovered the apartment in Argenteuil, which had been rented by French jihadist Reda Kriket.

Read more: Deutsche Welle

A Maryland woman pleaded guilty on Monday to participating in a scheme to use identification data stolen in a massive 2015 data hack of a U.S. government agency to get fraudulent personal and vehicle loans through a Virginia-based credit union, the Justice Department said.

Karvia Cross, 39, and others she recruited used the identities to get loans from Langley Federal Credit Union, according to a Justice Department statement. She pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud and aggravated identity theft and faces a maximum of 30 years in prison when she is sentenced on Oct. 26 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, it said.

A co-defendant, Marlon McKnight, pleaded guilty to the same charges on June 11.

The charges and guilty plea are among the first to result from the hack of sensitive personal information from the Office of Personnel Management on more than 22 million federal employees, contractors and job applicants disclosed in May 2015.

Read more:  Reuters

An Islamic State fanatic plotted to kill Theresa May in a suicide attack, "by blade and explosion", on Downing Street, a court has been told.

Naa'imur Zakariyah Rahman, 20, from London, has gone on trial accused of two terror charges, which he denies.

The court heard his plan to inflict "lethal violence" was uncovered by an MI5 agent, who posed as an IS official and chatted to him on a messaging app.

The court heard he said in one chat the Manchester Arena bomber "did well".

The trial at London's Old Bailey was also told that Mr Rahman believed he was "just days away" from the attack before he was arrested in November last year.

Mr Rahman, of Finchley, north London, is charged with preparing terrorist acts by conducting reconnaissance, recording a pledge of allegiance, and delivering a rucksack and jacket to be fitted with explosives.

Read more:  BBC News

Authorities fear ISIS may have assigned one of its top bomb makers to a deadly new mission: arming unmanned aircraft with miniaturized bombs, possibly with an eye toward civilian targets.

A new book suggests the terror group, crippled and now on the run, may be trying to develop drones packed with explosives, capable of attacking crowded targets in the United States and Europe.

The Russian Defense Ministry said 13 drones – including some which appeared to have small bombs on them – attacked two of their bases in Syria earlier this year.

"They are developing the capability of having drones that explode on impact," said Aimen Dean, a former bomb maker for al-Qaida. "The discussion within the ranks is that they are going to use these in Western contexts against aircraft, whether landing or parking or taking off, against sporting venues, against VIP motorcades."

Dean once swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden, and at one time was one of al-Qaida’s most accomplished bomb makers.

He said the horrific 1998 terror attacks against the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania turned him against the terror group, even though he hadn't made the bombs for those attacks.

Read more:  WSFA