Homeland Security News

Thirty-one active pipe bombs were discovered in Person County Monday and now the FBI is investigating a person of interest.

Person County Sheriff's Office officials said 30 PVC-style pipes were found filled with explosive materials.

They were initially discovered when someone was surveying land off Lucy Garrett Road.

About 20 neighbors were alerted after they were found.

At least three residents had to be evacuated.

Since then, multiple law enforcement agencies have been searching the area with dogs.

Read more: ABC 11 (Raleigh, NC)

Ukraine has a growing problem with far-right extremists, a new report revealed Wednesday.

Far-right extremist groups have existed on the margins of society since Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. But a new report by Washington, D.C.-based think tank Freedom House suggests that these groups have recently become more active and are hurting the country’s fledgling democracy. Far-right extremists still lack the popular support needed to be a meaningful force in organized politics, but law enforcement officials in Ukraine are allowing them to threaten civil society groups and operate with impunity, according to the report.  

“In the last few months, extremist groups have become increasingly active. The most disturbing element of their recent show of force is that so far it has gone fully unpunished by the authorities," according to the report, written by Kiev-based historian and political scientist Vyacheslav Likhachev. "Their activities challenge the legitimacy of the state, undermine its democratic institutions, and discredit the country’s law enforcement agencies.”

Read more: Newsweek

U.S. officials intend to return and release an American citizen accused of supporting the Islamic State back into Syria against his will, after holding him for nine months in U.S. military custody without charges.

The plan was revealed Wednesday night in a brief federal court notice in Washington in a case that has tested whether U.S. citizens captured on a battlefield as suspected “enemy combatants” have the right to challenge their detentions.

The planned release would take place in 72 hours and would be done over the objections of the man, who has not been named publicly, the government said. A longer sealed court filing also was entered in court.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which has been representing the man, said it will ask a court to block the release, which it condemned as “disgraceful” and a de facto “death warrant.”

Read more: Washington Post

An Uzbek man who drove a stolen truck into a crowd in Stockholm, killing five people and wounding 14 others, was convicted Thursday of terror-related murder and given a life sentence. Rakmat Akilov had said he wanted to punish Sweden for joining a coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

In January, he was charged with terror-related murder and attempted murder for the attack with a beer truck on April 7, 2017.

Those killed were a British man, a Belgian woman and three Swedes, including an 11-year-old girl.

Read more: CBS News

Counterterrorism policies aiming to make America safe from homegrown Islamic radicalism may in fact do the exact opposite — sending some Muslim Americans to seek out ISIS, researchers reported Wednesday.

They found that in communities where people express strong anti-Muslim sentiment, someone — it’s not clear who — is also making internet searches about how to join the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

The findings support arguments that cracking down on Muslim communities can backfire, stoking a vicious cycle of hatred, the team at Duke University and the University of California, Berkeley, argued.

“Although elected officials routinely promote counterterrorism policies that target Muslims more than other groups, our findings indicate that these policies may make communities more vulnerable to radicalization if they are interpreted as discriminatory or unfair,” sociologist Christopher Bail and colleagues wrote in their report published in Science Advances.

Read more: NBC News