Arab world

    Isis jihadists are planning "large scale" terror attacks and focussing primarily on European targets, Europol has said. The police agency launched a new Europe-wide counter-terror intiative on Monday, and warned that the threat from Isis was the worst the continent has faced in more than 10 years. Rob Wainwright, the director of Europol, said militants had developed a new combat strategy to attack major European cities, and the agency also cited the growing number of Isis foreign fighters as a “posing new challenges for EU members states”. But amid growing attempts to link such challenges to the intake of more than one million refugees into Europe last year, the police agency said in a report that there was no concrete evidence to suggest this was the case. Releasing the f...

    In 2011, activist Esraa Abdel-Fattah helped ignite revolution on the streets of Egypt and was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Five years after the fall of autocrat Hosni Mubarak, she is shunned or insulted by Egyptians on those same streets. "They say I am a traitor and foreign agent and that we are the people who destroyed the country. I hear it when I am passing people in the streets," said Abdel-Fattah. "Some people still ask "what was wrong with Mubarak?". Abdel-Fattah and a small circle of fellow activists were once seen by many in Egypt as the best hope for an end to corruption and repression and the dawning of an era of free speech and respect for citizens by the state. Nowadays, she cuts a lonely figure in her small apartment, hoping Egyptians will rise up again...

    UK jihadi jack sunday times jack letts The first white British man has been publicly identified as joining ISIS in Syria, according to The Sunday Times. The paper reports that Jack Letts, a 20-year-old man originally from Oxford, joined the radical Islamist group and secretly traveled to Syria two years ago. Letts apparently converted to Islam while living in Oxford, and attended the Madina Masjid mosque in the city. He comes from a non-Islamic background: His family is reportedly secular, his father working as an organic farmer and archaeobotanist, and his mother as a books editor. He studied at Cherwell school, supported Liverpool football club, and allegedly drank alcohol and smoked cannabis before his conversion. Letts was reportedly nicknamed "Jihadi Jack" by his peer...

This map, showing the areas Isis plans to have under its control by 2020, was widely shared in 2014 (Picture: [copyright]) Isis have threatened attacks on Spain in their latest propaganda video, declaring: "We will recover our land from the invaders." A map was previously shared showing the areas Isis plans to have under control by 2020, including Spain and large parts of Asia and Africa. The video shows an ancient map of the Iberian Peninsula turning red, the Daily Express reports, as part of the militant group's goal to expand its boundaries into Europe. Spain was ruled by Muslims after it was invaded in 711 by largely Moorish armies from North Africa, later becoming part of the Umayyad caliphate. Muslim rule declined after the 10th century and ended in 1492. Three Moroccan-born men wer...

    They called me a Salafist, a radical, a public enemy. And then two of them held my arms while another one shaved half of my beard. Djovid Akramov says he was stopped by Tajik police outside his house, along with his seven-year-old son, last month - and taken to the police station in Dushanbe where he was forcibly shaved. He became one of hundreds of thousands of men in Tajikistan arrested in recent years for wearing a beard. Shaving beards is part of a government campaign targeting trends that are deemed "alien and inconsistent with Tajik culture". Earlier this week, police in Tajikistan's Khatlon region said that they had shaved the beards of nearly 13,000 men as part of an "anti-radicalisation campaign". The BBC spoke to nine other men who described similar experiences -...

    The so-called Islamic State is feeling the economic toll of waging wars on a number of fronts as more countries join the fight against it. ISIL, the world’s wealthiest terrorist group, is halving the wages for its fighters, according to a leaked document by ISIL’s treasury obtained by Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, a research fellow at the Middle East Forum. The document states: Because of the exceptional circumstances that the Islamic State is passing through, a decision was taken to cut the salaries of the mujahedeen in half. No one will be exempt from this decision, no matter his position, but the distribution of food assistance will continue twice a month as usual. The memo also liberally quotes verses from the Koran and hadiths that downplay the importance of wealth, but emp...

    Islamic State is holding an estimated 3,500 women and children as slaves in Iraq, the United Nations says. Those being held are primarily women and children from the Yazidi community, but a number are from other ethnic and religious minority groups, according to a report issued in Geneva. The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq and the UN's human rights office have documented widespread abuses that "in some instances amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide". They also say that IS militants have imposed a harsh rule marked by gruesome public executions. Methods of execution include shooting, beheading, bulldozing, burning people alive and throwing them off the top of buildings. The UN also said it had verified reports on child soldiers, saying that 8...

    The UN says the violence suffered by civilians in Iraq remains staggering, with at least 18,800 killed between 1 January 2014 and 31 October 2015. Some 3.2 million people have also been displaced internally over the same period, according to a new report. The UN accuses so-called Islamic State of systematic and widespread violence, including holding some 3,500 mainly women and children as slaves. Alleged abuses by troops, militiamen and Kurdish forces were also recorded. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein said the report "starkly illustrates what Iraqi refugees are attempting to escape when they flee to Europe and other regions. This is the horror they face in their homelands". Gruesome spectacles The report, by the United Nations Assistance Mission...

    Egyptian minister of antiques Mamdouh Damati (L) and Mahdi Tiopi, director of Heritage Preservation and Innovation Center in Paris, speak during a press conference in the Grand Egyptian Museum near the pyramids in Cairo… Experts revealed Sunday new findings at two of Egypt's famed pyramids, boosting efforts to unravel whether the ancient world's iconic monuments contain secret chambers. For the past three months a team of researchers from Egypt, France, Canada and Japan have been scanning four pyramids with thermal cameras to see if they contain unknown structures or cavities. Operation ScanPyramids began on October 25 to search for hidden rooms inside Khufu -- also known as the Great Pyramid -- and Khafre in Giza and the Bent and Red pyramids in Dahshur, all south of Cair...

    Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Sunday hailed the lifting of international sanctions on his country following the entry into force of last July's momentous nuclear deal with major powers. "We Iranians have reached out to the world in a sign of friendliness, and leaving behind the enmities, suspicions and plots, have opened a new chapter in the relations of Iran with the world," the official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying. Iran took a huge step toward ending its international isolation Saturday after the United Nation's atomic watchdog confirmed Iran was carrying out measures agreed under the deal. "The implementation of the JCPOA is not a loss for any country," Rouhani said, referring to the "Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action", the official name for Tehran's nuc...