An aid worker taken hostage by Islamic State (IS) with Briton David Haines has told the terror trial of El Shafee Elsheikh, allegedly one of the so-called “IS Beatles”, that he suffered “intense” beatings while being held captive.
Federico Motka endured 14 months of brutality after he and his colleagues were kidnapped near a refugee camp on the Turkish border in 2013.
The Italian relived his ordeal on Thursday at the trial of British national El Shafee Elsheikh, in the US.
The United Nations recently named March 15—also rather ominously known as the Ides of March—as “the International Day to Combat Islamophobia.” In doing so, they have accepted and seek to mandate the idea that whatever fear (literally, phobia) non-Muslims have of Islam is unfounded and irrational and therefore must be “combatted.”
In reality, aversion to Islam is not new or something that “just happened”; nor is it a byproduct of temporal circumstances (say, resentment towards Muslims due to the terror strikes of 9/11, etc.). Instead, it is something that all rational non-Muslims have felt from the very inception of Islam in the seventh century.
The last of 47 police officers to be investigated over their handling of historic allegations of child sex abuse in Rotherham has been cleared of misconduct.
Former Det Sgt David Walker had been accused of not following up tip-offs about grooming gangs in the town.
A misconduct panel found he had acted appropriately with any information.
Rotherham MP Sarah Champion said the result would be a “bitter disappointment” for abuse victims.
It may do well to heed one of the more reliable lessons of history.
When tyrannies are appeased, they tend to grow. That seems to be one of the more reliable lessons of history. Yet, societies continue to appease aggressors in the hope that, maybe this time, appeasement will work.
I’m not talking about appeasing Russia. A great many people are coming to the conclusion, as they should, that Putin should not be appeased. I’m talking instead about the appeasement of Islam that’s been the rule ever since the radical side of Islam reasserted itself about four decades ago.
The main suspect on trial for the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks has refused to explain his exact role in the series of suicide bombings and shootings that left 130 people dead and many more injured.
It was supposed to be the most anticipated day in the nine-month trial as Salah Abdeslam took the stand on Wednesday to explain why he had not activated his suicide vest on 13 November 2015.
However, there were groans from victims as well as friends and family present in the Paris court, when he announced: “I am exercising my right to remain silent.”
Opening statements take place on Monday in the US federal trial of an ex-British jihadist accused of hostage-taking and conspiracy to commit murder.
El Shafee Elsheikh, 33, is the last of a group of Islamic State militants – known as the Beatles for their British accents – to face justice.
The group is said to have tortured and beheaded hostages in Syria, including several journalists and aid workers.
The trial, in Virginia, is expected to last three to four weeks.
A British-born man who was one of the so-called Islamic State Beatles is on trial in a US federal court, accused of hostage-taking and conspiring to murder several Western journalists and aid workers.
El Shafee Elsheikh is alleged to be one of a group of IS fighters from Britain who tortured hostages in Syria and posted execution videos.
He is the last of the group to be brought to justice.
A man from Maine and two teenagers planned an ISIS-inspired attack on a Shia Muslim mosque near Chicago, newly unsealed court documents revealed on Friday.
The FBI said Xavier Pelkey of Waterville, Maine, and the two teens — one from the Chicago area and one from Kentucky — communicated through Instagram and other chat platforms with plans to meet in Chicago during “spring break.” The teens were not named due to their age.
The teenager in Chicago allegedly told the FBI that the plan was to “enter the Shia mosque and separate the adults from the children, then murder the adults” all in the name of ISIS, according to a court filing.
HonestReporting Canada is pleased to share that, subsequent to a complaint we lodged with CBC last year regarding an anti-Israel segment that their radio program “Unforked” broadcast, Ombudsman Jack Nagler upheld our complaint and recognized that the episode violated their Journalistic Standards and Practices.
In a report dated March 23, 2022, Ombudsman Nagler responded to our complaint about a July 5 episode of “Unforked,” a show which describes itself as “Picking apart the food that we eat to reveal the culture and politics baked into it,” which covered the topic of “gastronationalism” and hummus, the beloved chickpea dish enjoyed by peoples throughout the Middle East and around the world.
Do we really need to be funding the CBC’s diversity?
The daughter of a British man murdered by Islamic State will demand to know the whereabouts of his remains when one of his alleged kidnappers goes on trial in the US this week.
Bethany Haines, 24, will fly from her home in Perthshire, Scotland, to Virginia to confront El Shafee Elsheikh in person, nearly eight years after her father, David Haines, was killed.
Haines said she would plead with Elsheikh “to do the right thing” and reveal where the remains of her father and other western hostages lie. “Don’t do it for me,” she will tell him. “Do it for my son, so that he can finally say goodbye to his grandad.”
In light of Voice of America News’ (VOA) failure to respond to dozens of FOIA requests over alleged pro-Islamic bias in its Persian reporting, the American Accountability Foundation (AAF) filed a lawsuit last week accusing VOA of withholding communications that demonstrate the broadcasting service’s role in disseminating “messages opposed to American interest.”
Child rape gangs hotspot Rotherham is attempting to brand itself “the world’s first Children’s Capital of Culture”, attempting to distance itself from its reputation as the place where 1,400 girls were systematically groomed and raped while officials failed to act.
Millions to Muslim men, not a cent to Ukrainian women.
Question: What’s scarier for Ukrainians at present than being in Ukraine? Answer: Being in Sweden.
Because of an incident that took place early last week, according to the alternative Swedish website Samnytt, some of the Ukrainian women and children who’ve been housed at a hostel in the city of Örebro want to go back home. It began when two tall, slim black men, apparently Somalis, came knocking at the hostel’s front door at 3 A.M. and claimed to want to see a friend who was living there – but the person they named, if he or she exists at all, was not, in fact, a resident. After a third Somali man appeared, one or more of them managed to enter the hostel, by which time the women had retreated to their rooms and locked their doors. One of the Somalis knocked on one of the doors and addressed the woman inside, presumably in Somali, causing her two-year-old child to scream in fear. Then, at five A.M., some Arab men showed up and tried to force their way in.
It’s official: The United Nations, following the Muslim world’s lead, has formally accepted the concept of “Islamophobia,” a move that will undoubtedly further paralyze any measures against Islamic aggression, or, in a word, jihad.
A jailed Corsican nationalist, whose prison assault sparked protests on the French Mediterranean island, has died.
Yvan Colonna, 61, who was serving a life term for murdering Corsica’s top official, was beaten by another inmate, a Cameroonian jihadist, on 2 March.
The attack left Colonna in a coma and he had been receiving treatment in a hospital in the south of France.
