Terrorism

So, what do you reckon then about the jihadi bride, Shamima Begum, unearthed by the Times’ Anthony Loyd in a refugee camp in Syria? Should she be brought back home for an NHS delivery for her imminent baby – with the cops hovering backstage – or left to stew in a Syrian refugee camp, to give birth in the same conditions as other mothers-to-be? I may be misjudging my readers here, but I fancy I can discern which way most of us would want to go. But the first thing to say about all this is that this wretched 19-year old is about the least important aspect of the Isis

The story of Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan is an interesting one, I think, for what it tells us about the right, the left and human nature. These two youngish people — both 29, one of them a vegan, the other a vegetarian — jacked in their wonkish jobs in Washington DC in order to experience the world in all its glory. Their itinerary included dangerous areas — or at least areas deemed dangerous by western governments with an axe to grind. As Jay put it: ‘People, the narrative goes, are not to be trusted. People are bad. People are evil. I don’t buy it. Evil is a make-believe concept

What happens to Brits who’ve returned from fighting for Islamic State in Syria and Iraq? Most would expect that they’d immediately fall into the criminal justice system, and wouldn’t then emerge for a very long time. Today it emerged that Home Secretary Sajid Javid had dropped Britain’s blanket opposition to the death penalty so that two Isis fighters from the group dubbed the ‘Beatles’ could be sent to the US. But in most cases, the question isn’t where someone will face justice, but whether they can face justice at all. We know that there are hundreds of people who have returned from fighting for Islamic State. But what is less

The government will launch its new counter-terrorism strategy next week, I write in The Sun today. It’ll also introduce a new bill to ensure longer sentences for terrorists. This strategy will see more resources for the Prevent programme in high priority areas such as London, Manchester, Birmingham and Bradford. There’ll are plans too, to recruit over a thousand more staff to the security services so that a greater number of suspects can be kept under close surveillance at any one time. There’ll be steps taken to ensure that those released from prison are monitored more closely once they have been released. There’ll also be a fresh push to get the

On the anniversary of the Manchester Arena bombing all the talk has been of hugs and hearts; of healing and hope; of handholding and heroism. Newsreaders have spoken in self-consciously faltering tones about the resilience and defiance of those who have suffered so much. A choir sang Somewhere over the Rainbow. A minute’s silence, followed by a mass sing-a-long. Trees were decked with messages of hope as Dr Rev David Walker, the bishop of Manchester observed, somewhat obtusely, that “Part of the horror … is that [the arena] appeared to have been deliberately chosen as a venue full of young people”. On Radio 4’s Today programme, Nick Robinson sounded in almost

They range in age from toddlers to teenagers and all will inevitably have been traumatised by what they have experienced. On the face of it, then, who wouldn’t want to show kindness to the children who, through no fault of their own, have grown up and been born in the Islamic State? But as Commander Dean Haydon, the head of the Met’s counter-terrorism command, warned last week, diligence must come before compassion in the way Europe deals with the hundreds of children waiting to return from Syria and Iraq. ‘We look at them on a case-by-case basis and they may be arrested’, said Haydon. ‘Some terror groups are training children to

Today’s report into the Manchester and London terror attacks makes for devastating reading, spelling out as it does the horrors of the murderous events in which 51 people lost their lives. The details are further daunting for making it clear just how great the threat facing Britain from Islamist terror continues to be. Much of the focus today though has rested on a question: could the attacks have been prevented? The answer is not clear but there are certainly reasons to think that at least one of the attacks could have been stopped. While there is little evidence to suggest that the Westminster Bridge attack could have been thwarted, the

It’s been nearly two weeks since Stephen Paddock committed mass murder in Las Vegas and the FBI is still casting about pitifully for clues. Why did he do it? Not even his girlfriend knows, though it’s said he claimed to have been simply ‘born bad’. Plans are afoot to put up billboards urging anyone who ever met Paddock to come forward. There’s something touching about billboards in the internet age. Perhaps because there are no answers in the offing, in place of them has swelled a great wave of outrage, not, oddly, about America’s gun laws, but about race. The strong feeling among America’s celebrity class — the pop stars,