Homeland Security News

A South Carolina teenager on parole after being accused of plotting terrorism has now pleaded guilty to trying to join ISIS, an affidavit says.

Zakaryia Abdin, 19, sought help online from a person he thought was affiliated with ISIS, but was really an undercover FBI agent, according to an affidavit unsealed Tuesday.

Abdin told the agent he had pledged allegiance to ISIS in 2014 and wanted help joining. He told the agent he was "very close" to doing something similar to the 2016 Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting and was willing to commit an attack on U.S. soil if needed, the affidavit says.

Abdin, who is from Ladson, was arrested in March 2017 at the Charleston International Airport by special agents of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force before he boarded an outbound flight.

Read more: WYFF 4

As many as 80 convicted terrorists will be free to roam British streets by the end of the year, including an Islamist preacher who urged people to join the Islamic State.

The extraordinary situation has arisen because about 40 per cent of the sentences for terrorism issued between 2007 and 2016 will have ended by Christmas — meaning police are powerless to stop them walking free.

Police and the government have admitted more resources will have to be pumped into keeping a close eye on the terrorists, at a time when resources are already stretched coping with a crime wave that has seen 80 killings in London so far this year.

UK Security Minister Ben Wallace said police would focus on getting them to “disengage” from extremism, but that would require a different approach than trying to prevent them being radicalised in the first place.

Read more: News.com.au (Australia)

A court in Iraq on Monday handed life sentences to German citizen Nadia Rainer Hermann and French citizen Lahcen Ammar Gueboudj after finding them guilty of joining the "Islamic State" (IS) extremist group.

The sentences can be appealed.

Hermann had earlier been given a one-year jail term for entering Iraq illegally. In January, her mother, a German of Moroccan descent, was sentenced to death for IS membership. That death sentence was later commuted to a life sentence, meaning that she wil serve at least 20 years.

Hermann and her mother were arrested in the Iraqi city of Mosul in July 2017. Mosul served as the militants' de facto capital in Iraq. Hermann claims she traveled to Iraq "to run away from the people of IS" when she appeared in court on Monday.

Read more: Deutsche Welle

The Victorian government has directed the state’s trains operator to remove Sky News from railway stations amid a sustained backlash to the broadcaster’s decision to interview the far-right extremist Blair Cottrell.

Jacinta Allan, Victoria’s transport minister, revealed in a tweet on Thursday morning that she had told Metro Trains to remove Sky News from station screens in Melbourne’s city centre.

Sky News is now shown on large screens in the underground stations of Melbourne’s city loop.

Allan told radio station 3AW on Thursday morning the government had decided to pull Sky from station screens because there had a been “number of interviews that had started to go down a slippery slope”.

Read more: The Guardian (UK)

The Cumberland County man who admitted to having ties to the Islamic State was sentenced in federal court Wednesday.

Houcine Ghoul, 44, will spend 24 months in prison, must pay $18,000 in restitution and will then be deported immediately after his release.

Ghoul pleaded guilty to lying to obtain citizenship and filing a false tax return in November 2017.

The judge in his case points out that he also had child care benefits for his two children born in the U.S., overcharged customers at a Fayetteville convenience store, and received income from drug deals.

Read more: Spectrum News (North Carolina)