The re-designation of this iconic building as a mosque was not just a sop to the Turkish President’s Islamist fans – but another blow at the memory of the statesman whose legacy haunts and frustrates him.
The absence of pro-EU opposition parties from the Serbian legislature for the first time in two decades testifies to long-term trends in the country that have worrying implications.
Anti-government protesters in Bulgaria are growing impatient with Prime Minister Boyko Borissov’s unwillingness to resign – but are also aware that they are in this for the long haul.
A Russian diplomat said on Monday a group of more than 30 suspected Russian mercenaries detained in Belarus last week were only passing through Minsk and were on their way to an unnamed Latin American state.
Prosecutors say Albania has transferred to Germany a Tajik man accused of being part of a cell of the Islamic State group that allegedly planned to attack U.S. military facilities in Germany.
Saeb Erekat’s continued lies and fabrications about Israel promote anti-Semitism and embolden terrorists.
French personality, Bernard Levy, arrived Saturday in Libya on a private jet on an unannounced visit, whose purpose was considered mysterious by many Libyans.
Read MoreA Syria-based Russian security company – in collusion with the Syrian government- recruited no fewer than 3000 Syrians, both civilians and fighters, from various provinces as mercenaries to transfer them to Libya, where they are to fight alongside Khalifa Haftar’s forces against the Government of National Accord (GNA), Syrians for Truth and Justice Organization said.
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The Syrian regime under President Bashar Al-Assad has announced that it will build a miniature replica of the Hagia Sophia, in opposition to the Turkish government’s reversion of the building from a museum into a mosque.
After the emergence of the Islamic State in the Sahel (or the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara) in 2015, the group existed in an uneasy alliance with al-Qaida’s various franchises in the region. Proving to be an exception to the rule that al-Qaida and the Islamic State fight each other in whichever territory they co-inhabit, the Sahel was for several years spared from such jihadi-on-jihadi fighting, in part because of personal relationships between jihadis in the rival groups. However, in recent months, this trend has been bucked by fighting between the two jihadi forces in Mali and Burkina Faso. As the two forces expand in the Sahel, a number of factors explain the growing tensions between the two sides, including the hardening of ideological divisions, pressure from Islamic State Central for its regional satellite to take on a more confrontational approach toward its rival, and tensions created by the growing ambition of the Islamic State affiliate in the Sahel.
Read MoreTwo databases maintained by the authors shed light on the nature and scale of the threat posed by jihadi prisoners and prison leavers. Drawing from a database on terror activity in Europe, a new qualitative analysis of 12 alleged terrorist plots or attacks in Europe involving jihadi prisoners and prison leavers helps explain the nature of the threat, finding that both those thwarted in their attempts to participate in foreign terrorist fighting and those who returned from actually doing so were—from this limited sample—commonly involved in such attacks. This often manifested itself in specifically targeting the police or prison guards.
Read MoreThe U.S. Embassy in Libya reported that its Chargé d’Affaires, Joshua Harris, visited Benghazi yesterday. The visit follows his 28 July visit to Misrata.
The embassy reported that Harris visited Benghazi ‘‘to consult with a range of Libyan officials about achieving a demilitarized solution at Sirte and al-Jufra, enabling the National Oil Corporation (NOC) to resume its vital work nationwide, and seizing the opportunity presented by UN-facilitated dialogue to finalize a lasting ceasefire and roadmap for the withdrawal of all foreign forces and mercenaries’’.