Latest news with #extremists
Arab News
18 hours ago
- Politics
- Arab News
Somalia executes 2 soldiers convicted of helping Al-Shabab kill commander
MOGADISHU: Two Somali soldiers sentenced to death for conspiring with extremist militant group Al-Shabab to assassinate a commander were executed on Monday, military court officials said. The impoverished Horn of Africa nation is witnessing a rise in attacks by the Al-Qaeda-linked militia, fueling concerns of a jihadist resurgence. The group has seized dozens of towns and villages in an offensive that has reversed nearly all of the gains the army made in 2022 and 2023. A military court in the capital Mogadishu sentenced the two soldiers to death in August, after they were convicted of killing their battalion commander in July. One was found to have received the explosive device, while the second placed it under the bed of their commander, before it was detonated remotely. 'They were executed today for their involvement in the assassination of Commander Aided Mohamed Ali,' prosecutor Hassan Siyad Mohamed said. 'Anyone found having links with the Kharijites and proven, one day God will expose you, and you will come out, and we will find you and execute you by firing squad,' said Liban Ali Yarrow, chairman of the supreme military court, using the term officials adopt to describe Al-Shabab. Three Al-Shabab members found guilty last week of killing people in Mogadishu were executed by firing squad.
Al Arabiya
18 hours ago
- Politics
- Al Arabiya
Burkina jails 13 people for life over terror acts
Burkina Faso has sentenced 13 people to life imprisonment for 'acts of terrorism,' including a 2018 attack against the French embassy, and given lesser jail terms to more than 60 others, according to an official statement seen Tuesday. The west African nation has been battling extremist violence for around a decade that the junta which came to power in a coup in September 2022 has struggled to contain. The prison sentences were handed down at hearings between January and July, a specialist anti-terror judicial office said in the statement. 'Thirteen people were sentenced to life imprisonment' and '63 people were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 10 to 21 years,' it said. Two others were handed jail terms of one and three years. In a twin attack in March 2018, attackers struck the military headquarters and the French embassy in the capital Ouagadougou using guns and a car bomb. Eight people were killed, and scores were wounded. 'Six defendants were sentenced in these cases, three of whom received life sentences and the other three received prison terms of 21 years each,' prosecutor Lafama Prosper Thiombiano said. The conflict in Burkina has killed more than 26,000 people since 2015, including soldiers and civilians, according to monitoring group ACLED.
Free Malaysia Today
3 days ago
- Politics
- Free Malaysia Today
Terrorists kill policeman in southeast Iran
Sistan-Balochistan has been the site of frequent clashes between security forces and insurgents. (EPA Images pic) TEHRAN : Extremists killed one policeman in Iran's restive southeastern province of Sistan-Balochistan, Iranian media reported today, adding that three assailants also died. 'A policeman from Saravan was killed while terrorists were trying to enter the police station' in that area of Sistan-Balochistan, the Tasnim news agency said. The attackers were members of the Sunni extremist group Jaish al-Adl ('Army of Justice' in Arabic) based in Pakistan and active in Iran's southeast, the agency said. 'Three terrorists were killed and two were arrested,' Tasnim said. Sistan-Balochistan, which shares a long border with Pakistan and Afghanistan, has been the site of frequent clashes between security forces and insurgents or smugglers. The province hosts a significant population from the Baloch ethnic minority, which practises Sunni Islam in Shi'ite-majority Iran. On July 26, gunmen stormed a courthouse in the province's capital Zahedan, killing at least six people, in an attack that was later claimed by Jaish al-Adl. In one of the deadliest attacks in the province, 10 police officers were killed in October.
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Targeted by the right, Britain's asylum hotels are places of fear and disorder. Bad political decisions made it so
A broad section of Britain's right has spent the summer behaving as if it would like a repeat of last year's racist riots. As politicians and commentators cry 'tinderbox Britain' – are they warning us, or willing it on? – far-right extremists have been actively trying to stoke violence. This year, they have pinned their hopes on asylum hotels, an issue where public fears over crime, immigration and the welfare state conveniently converge. In some places, far-right activists have piggybacked on protests prompted by local grievances. The most significant this year was in Epping, Essex, after an alleged sexual assault by an asylum seeker led to demonstrations that turned violent when they were joined by members of various far-right groups. A similar pattern has unfolded in London's Canary Wharf, after untrue rumours that some of the Epping hotel residents were being moved there. In other cases, far-right activists have themselves organised the protests. A call has gone out among their online networks for gatherings this weekend in several parts of England. It is unlikely – though not impossible – that the end result will be on the scale of the riots we saw last summer, since that was triggered by a shocking act of murder followed by widespread misinformation and conspiracy theories about the identity of the killer. But anti-fascist campaigners I've spoken to believe it may cause lower-level disturbances like those seen in Epping and in Knowsley, Merseyside, in 2023, and it will certainly help ensure that asylum hotels remain a contentious topic for many months to come. One question, however, often goes unanswered: why are asylum seekers being accommodated in hotels in the first place? Before 2020, the phenomenon hardly existed, yet by its peak in 2023 there were more than 55,000 people in hotels, waiting many months to have their asylum claims processed. (Today the number has dropped to about 30,000.) For some, the answer will be: 'because there are too many people seeking asylum in the UK and we don't have the resources to support them'. This is misleading. Although Britain has seen higher numbers of asylum applications in recent years, according to Oxford University's Migration Observatory they are not exceptional when compared with those of other European countries. Yet the UK relies on costly hotel accommodation far more heavily than any of its neighbours. A series of actions by both Labour and Conservative governments since the turn of the century has brought us to this point. The first was the decision by Tony Blair's government to make people seeking asylum heavily reliant on state support. Until mid-2002, asylum seekers could take up jobs if they had to wait more than six months for an initial decision on their asylum claim. Much of the press disliked this, saying it allowed asylum seekers to take other people's jobs. So the government in effect banned them from working. (In many other European countries, people seeking asylum are still allowed to work after a waiting period.) If a government bans people from working then it needs to provide them with essential support, unless it is happy for them to starve to death on the streets. At first, accommodation was largely provided by local councils' housing departments. But politicians took a second decision, which was to privatise the accommodation. This began in the late 2000s, but the really important step was taken by David Cameron and Nick Clegg's coalition government. In 2012, as part of the coalition's wider austerity drive, asylum accommodation was outsourced to the same profit-driven contractors that now run many of our public services. The contractors often failed to provide decent housing or value for money and the government had to rewrite the contracts. Even then, problems persisted: by the end of the decade, it was becoming increasingly common to house asylum seekers in 'contingency accommodation' such as short-term lets and hotels. The third decision, taken by the governments of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, was to sabotage the asylum system itself. During the first Covid lockdown in 2020, people seeking asylum were placed in hotels – which, at the time, were largely empty anyway – for public health reasons. This coincided with a rise in the number of people crossing the Channel by small boat, as opposed to stowing away in lorries as they had largely done previously. (Many people who choose such routes do so because they do not have the option of a safe resettlement scheme, such as the one the UK has offered to Ukrainian refugees.) The Conservative government encouraged hostility towards small boat journeys, describing them as an 'invasion'. Instead of moving asylum seekers out of hotels and into more suitable accommodation when the pandemic subsided, it kept them there while it built prison-like encampments as an alternative. (These schemes mostly never got off the ground.) At the same time, it allowed a backlog of asylum applications to grow – and then tried to ban many asylum seekers from claiming asylum at all, saying it would instead deport them permanently to Rwanda. (That scheme never got off the ground either.) All the above has led to more asylum seekers living in more hotels for longer, in more parts of the country. At its root, it is a story of public penny-pinching and market forces causing a problem that is then made worse by politicians promising a quick fix or finding a convenient scapegoat. If that sounds familiar then perhaps it's because it's a story we also find in our hospitals, schools and wider communities. This could be an occasion to ask what has gone wrong with the state more generally, and to talk about what could be done to make it work better for everyone. Keir Starmer's government has promised to end the use of hotels by 2029, by investing in the asylum system and reducing small boat journeys. But if it is unwilling to have that wider conversation, then the right is ready with its own seductive, destructive answers. Daniel Trilling is the author of Lights in the Distance: Exile and Refuge at the Borders of Europe and Bloody Nasty People: The Rise of Britain's Far Right
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Fact Check: Kristi Noem said 'only the liberals and the extremists' make fun of women's looks
Claim: U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said, 'It's so lazy to just constantly make fun of women for how they look. It's only the liberals and the extremists who do that. If they wanted to criticize my job, go ahead and do that, but clearly they can't." Rating: In early August 2025, internet users shared a rumored quote attributed to U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem, who reportedly stated that "only the liberals and the extremists" make fun of women's looks, allegedly in response to an episode of a television show that satirized her job and physical appearance. Users shared the alleged quote across social media platforms including X (archived), Instagram (archived) and Reddit (archived). Some posters (archived) stated their lack of sympathy for Noem, writing, "Spare us the crocodile tears. You are inflicting untold pain and misery on millions of families across the country." Noem allegedly stated, "It's so lazy to just constantly make fun of women for how they look. It's only the liberals and the extremists who do that. If they wanted to criticize my job, go ahead and do that, but clearly they can't." The quote in question was correctly attributed to Noem. She made the statement during an Aug. 7, 2025, appearance on conservative commentator Glenn Beck's podcast. The episode is available to listen to on podcast platforms as well as YouTube. The quote in question can be heard at the 14:47 mark in the YouTube clip. Noem made the statement in response to Beck steering the conversation toward a satirical portrayal of Noem on the Aug. 6, 2025, episode of Comedy Central's "South Park." Snopes reached out to DHS for further comment on Noem's appearance in "South Park" and will update this article if we receive a response. The episode in question, "Got a Nut," featured the animated show's satirization of Noem and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is part of the department Noem oversees. The episode included a scene in which Noem was depicted with her face sliding off due to heavy makeup and Botox injections. The relevant part of Noem's conversation with Beck began when Beck referred to a 2009 episode of "South Park," titled "Dances with Smurfs," that poked fun at him by having character Eric Cartman mock Beck's commentary style while reading the morning announcements at school. "I ended up, years later, watching it with my son and we both laughed over it," Beck said, adding, "Welcome to the club." In response, Noem said: Well, I guess so. I didn't get to see it. I was going over budget numbers and stuff, but you know, it never ends. It's so lazy to just constantly make fun of women for how they look. It's only the liberals and the extremists who do that. If they wanted to criticize my job, go ahead and do that, but clearly they can't. They just pick something petty like that. "South Park" took aim at the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, drawing public ire from the president himself, during the show's 27th season, which debuted in July 2025. In "Got a Nut," the show's fictionalized Noem made multiple references to shooting dogs, a nod to Noem's memoir in which she admitted to shooting her own "untrainable" dog. In another scene, Noem directed ICE to "only detain the brown ones" during an ICE raid in Heaven. Further, the South Park Studios YouTube channel changed the page's avatar to the show's rendition of Noem with a melting face. This was not the first claim related to Noem we've investigated. For further reading, see our collection of eight rumors about her we've looked into. - YouTube. Accessed 8 Aug. 2025. ---. Accessed 8 Aug. 2025. France, Lisa Respers. "'South Park' Mocks Kristi Noem and the Trump Administration in Its Latest Episode." CNN, 7 Aug. 2025, "South Dakota Governor, a Potential Trump Running Mate, Writes in New Book about Killing Her Dog." AP News, 26 Apr. 2024, "'South Park' Co-Creator Jokes He's 'Terribly Sorry' over Premiere That Drew White House Anger." AP News, 25 Jul. 2025, Stelter, Brian. "'South Park' Gets High Praise from New Paramount Boss amid Trump Feud | CNN Business." CNN, 8 Aug. 2025,
