Elsheikh’s defence attorneys argued that the government had failed to prove he was one of the “Beatles” but the 12-person jury disagreed, convicting him of all charges.
A US federal jury in Virginia convicted on Thursday, after an 11-day trial, an ex-British jihadist over his involvement with a notorious Islamic State (ISIS) terror cell.
Dutch ISIS recruits held pivotal roles in the terrorist group — not the minor roles they have claimed — and they should be held fully accountable for their crimes, a report from the Counter Extremist Project think tank says.
Claims that they were radicalised and groomed online have also been dismissed after evidence has emerged that many were members of extremist group Sharia4Holland — an offshoot of Britain’s Anjem Choudary’s banned Al-Muhajiroun group.
Commander of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s military wing Abu Hassan al-Hamwi sparked widespread controversy among rival jihadis in Idlib after attending the final game in the soccer league recently organized for HTS fighters.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine spotlights seemingly widening differences between the United States and its closest Middle Eastern allies, sparking eulogies for an era of bygone American regional dominance.
“America’s Middle East Friendships are Dying a Natural Death” predicted foreign policy analyst Steven A. Cook this week after countries like Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, to varying degrees, rebuffed US requests to help reduce energy prices and join sanctions against Russia.
Ukraine is using its Turkish-made armed drones to deadly effect against Russian forces. Turkey’s president benefits too.
Given its effectiveness against Russian forces, it should come as no surprise that Turkey’s Bayraktar TB-2 armed drone has its own Ukrainian ‘war song’ on YouTube, with more than half a million clicks.
The Russian army has expanded its military operations in the Syrian desert region since early April, following the decline of its operations in March and late February, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).
The Observatory indicated that the Russian fighter jets launched 240 air raids on the Syrian desert since early April.
Along with China, Iran, and North Korea, Russia is one of a handful of strategic competitors posing a substantial threat to U.S. strategic interests.
Russia has now interfered to some extent in at least three democratic elections in the United States. Russian hackers are probably responsible for the recent SolarWinds attack on U.S. government agency networks. Russia has been aggressively undermining U.S. interests in proxy wars in Syria, Libya, and across the African continent, and it is backing the Taliban against the United States in Afghanistan.
Turkish minister Cavusoglu also raised the question of whether the sanctions against Russia will be lifted in the event that the Kremlin withdraws its soldiers from Ukraine.
On Thursday, Foreign Affairs Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu announced that Turkey will not join the sanctions of the European Union against Russia and will only apply the sanctions determined by the United Nations.
Iran’s future should not be dependent on the success or failure of negotiations to revive the nuclear agreement with the world powers, the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told senior officials on Tuesday, according to state television. Khamenei said that the negotiations, reported to be stalled for the last month over a few remaining issues on which both Iran and the United States blame the other side for intransigence, “are progressing well,” but added that the officials “absolutely do not wait for nuclear negotiations in planning for the country and move forward.” He also called on his country’s negotiators to remain steadfast in “resisting America’s excessive demands.” Some of Iran’s demands include removing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from the US terror list and an American promise that there will be no repeat of former US President Donald Trump’s 2018 withdrawal from the deal.
Then there was what turned out to be a myth about the success of Turkish drones used by the Ukrainian army inflicting “huge” damage on the invading Russian columns. Drones, regardless of their capabilities, cannot be game-changers in a conflict with such vastly asymmetrical military might. The West must send jets, tanks, anti-aircraft, anti-armor and anti-ship missiles, and other weapons to Ukraine to repel Russia’s Chinese-backed aggression — fast — or the US and Europe will soon find themselves enmeshed in wars even messier to fight.