Homeland Security News

The US has charged Venezuela's President, Nicolás Maduro, and other senior officials in the country with "narco-terrorism".

It accused them of flooding the US with cocaine and using drugs as a weapon to undermine the health of Americans.

The charges were announced by Attorney General William Barr. A $15m (£12.5m) reward is being offered for information leading to Mr Maduro's arrest.

The US move will further escalate tensions between the two nations.

Washington has long accused the Venezuelan president of leading a corrupt and brutal regime, a charge he has repeatedly rejected.

Read more: BBC News

Indonesia’s police anti-terrorism squad shot and killed one suspect and arrested two others in a raid on the main island of Java, seizing weapons and chemicals allegedly used for bomb making, officials said Thursday.

The man fatally shot by police resisted arrest by wielding a long sword, said National Police spokesman Argo Yuwono.

The suspects were linked to a banned militant organization responsible for recent attacks on police, a local affiliate of the Islamic State group known as the Jama’ah Anshorut Daulah, Yuwono said.

Read more: Washington Post

As cities and countries around the world take drastic steps to mitigate the impact of the coronavirus, extremist groups are trying to use the pandemic to radicalize people online.

According to a report released by the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness, "Supporters of domestic and international extremist groups have encouraged followers to conduct attacks during the COVID-19 pandemic to incite panic, target minorities and immigrants, and celebrate the deaths of their enemies."

Read more: CBS News

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons is not adequately keeping tabs on inmates with terrorism connections, and wasn't even aware of more than two dozen of them in its own facilities, according to an audit report released Wednesday.

The Justice Department inspector general, Michael Horowitz, said his team identified 28 inmates who met the federal definition of an international or domestic terrorist who were not on prison lists as requiring special monitoring. The report said in most of those cases, courts or law enforcement agencies didn't provide sufficient information about them.

In other cases, prison officials do not use the FBI's terrorist definition, Horowitz said, and for that reason were not monitoring most of the 462 inmates considered "sovereign citizens." The FBI considers members of that movement to be domestic terrorists and defines them as "anti-government extremists" who believe they are not subject to any government authority and sometimes target police and other officials for violent attacks.

Read more: NBC News

A man from Newcastle, northeast England, has pleaded guilty to terrorism offenses following an investigation by Counter Terrorism Policing North East.

Fatah Mohammed Abdullah, 35, pleaded guilty at a hearing at Liverpool Crown Court to engaging in conduct in preparation for giving effect to an intention to assist others to commit terrorist acts, and to inciting terrorism overseas.

Abdullah was arrested in December 2018 from his home address in Newcastle as part of an intelligence led investigation. He pleaded guilty to assisting others in Germany to commit acts of terrorism in the Federal Republic of Germany.

He purchased thousands of matches, pre-cursor chemicals, fireworks, fuses and other components to be used in the production of improvised explosives and recorded himself testing a remote control detonator he had purchased.

Read more: Homeland Security Today