industryterm:extremist

Liens : *▻https://www.syrianarchive.org/en/collections/chemical-weapons*
*▻https://syrianarchive.org/en*

Activist group publishes database of Syria chemical attacks | Nation/World | starherald.com
▻http://www.starherald.com/news/nation_world/activist-group-publishes-database-of-syria-chemical-attacks/article_d913d0e3-d784-5f52-8280-0f4e032d01e6.html

https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/starherald.com/content/tncms/custom/image/fe715bfe-04a1-11e8-8b23-2b4c789bc3da.jpg?_dc=1517195446

An activist group on Tuesday published a database of information on suspected chemical attacks in Syria , adding to a growing collection of videos and images documenting alleged war crimes during the seven-year conflict.

The Syrian Archive, which works with human rights groups such as Amnesty International, said it has verified 861 videos covering some 212 attacks — most of them believed to have been carried out by government forces.

The material comes from 193 sources and much of it was uploaded to social media by ordinary Syrians, the group’s co-founder, Hadi al-Khatib, told an audience in Berlin.

Al-Khatib, who has lived in Germany since 2014, said the group wants to preserve sensitive material from disappearing , so that it might eventually be used to bring those responsible for war crimes to trial. But the team, which is spread across Europe and the Middle East, also wants to “add value” to the raw material, such as by determining the location where a video was taken and, most importantly, verifying that it shows what is claimed.

The Syrian Archive cooperates with the open source journalism site Bellingcat that has made a name for itself forensically examining footage from war zones.

While most of the chemical attacks documented by the group are alleged to have been carried out by forces loyal to President Bashar Assad, including most recently in the town of Douma near Damascus, a handful have been attributed to rebel forces and the Islamic State extremist group, said Abdulrahman al-Jaloud, one of the Syrian Archive’s researchers.

Al-Khatib said he and fellow activists try not to get disheartened by the fact that efforts to bring those responsible for war crimes in Syria to trial have so far been unsuccessful.

“That doesn’t mean we should stop,” he said. “We are looking forward to the day when we can use this material, because the reconstruction of Syria must include acknowledging, investigating and prosecuting crimes.”

#syrie #attaques_chimiques #syrian_archives

Alphabet Is Using Google’s Ad Technology To Take On ISIS | Fast Company | Business + Innovation
▻https://www.fastcompany.com/3063232/alphabet-is-using-googles-ad-technology-to-take-on-isis

An experimental division of Google parent Alphabet is harnessing Google’s advertising technology to help stop the spread of ISIS.

“ISIS is a terrorist group unlike any that we’ve seen before,” says Yasmin Green, the head of research and development at Jigsaw, an internal tech incubator focusing on international security issues. “They’ve been successful in capturing both physical territory and digital territory.”

The extremist group has reportedly lost physical territory in Iraq and Syria in recent months, but security experts have long warned that its sophisticated media strategy—involving videos, social media, and even glossy print publications—still enables the group to attract supporters from around the world.

“With the widespread horizontal distribution of social media, terrorists can identify vulnerable individuals of all ages in the United States—spot, assess, recruit, and radicalize—either to travel or to conduct a homeland attack,” Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey told Congress last year. “The foreign terrorist now has direct access into the United States like never before.”

Jigsaw, formerly known as Google Ideas, concluded an 8-week pilot program earlier this year, using the same technologies that let commercial advertisers target internet users most likely to be interested in their products to identify users demonstrating sympathies toward ISIS. Then, says Green, online ads pointed them toward content, in both English and Arabic, delivering alternative viewpoints in ways that can actually change their minds.

#ei #daesh

Iraqi officials : IS chemical attacks kill child, wound 600 - Business Insider
▻http://www.businessinsider.com/ap-iraqi-officials-is-chemical-attacks-kill-child-wound-600-2016-3?

U.S. and Iraqi officials said U.S. special forces captured the head of the IS unit trying to develop chemical weapons in a raid last month in northern Iraq.

The U.S.-led coalition said the chemicals IS has so far used include chlorine and a low-grade sulfur mustard which is not very potent. “It’s a legitimate threat. It’s not a high threat. We’re not, frankly, losing too much sleep over it,” U.S. Army Col. Steve Warren told reporters Friday.

Experts also say the extremist group appears incapable of launching a large-scale chemical weapons’ attack, which requires not only expertise, but also the proper equipment, materials and a supply-chain to produce enough of the chemical agent to pose a significant threat.

The coalition began targeting IS’ chemical weapons infrastructure with airstrikes and special operations raids two months ago, Iraqi intelligence officials and a Western security official in Baghdad told the AP.

Airstrikes are targeting laboratories and equipment, and further special forces raids targeting chemical weapons experts are planned, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters.

The extremist group is believed to have set up a special unit for chemical weapons research made up of Iraqi scientists who worked on weapons programs under Saddam Hussein as well as foreign experts.

The group is believed to have created limited amounts of mustard gas. Tests confirmed mustard gas was used in a town in Syria when IS was launching attacks there in August 2015. There have been other unverified reports of IS using chemical agents on battlefields in Syria and Iraq.

Bon à savoir : il y a chimique (qui franchit la ligne rouge) et chimique (qui n’empêche pas de dormir).
#We're_not_losing_too_much_sleep_over_it

FRIDE - Corridors of Militancy: the Sahel-Sahara Border Regions

▻http://fride.org/publication/1270/corridors-of-militancy:-the-sahel-sahara-border--regions

The Sahel-Sahara faces a multitude of security challenges. The biggest threats mushroom at the periphery of national boundaries where government writs rarely run. The permeability of borders, along with the proliferation of zones of political vacuums and economic marginalisation in the hinterlands, has transformed border communities into epicentres of radicalised ethnic claims, cross-border militancy, and organized crime. Understanding the dangerous interplay between structural forces like dispossession, region-specific exclusion and group discrimination on the one hand, and the pull exercised by extremist networks and inspirational ideologues on the other, is necessary for tackling the underlying causes of militancy in the Sahel/Saharan border regions.

#sahel #migrations #asile #frontières #corridors

To Its Citizens, ISIS Shows A Softer Side Too
▻http://www.vocativ.com/world/isis-2/to-its-citizens-isis-also-shows-a-softer-side

https://media.vocativ.com/photos/2015/03/IsisPropaganda-graph2.r2.png

Our analyses of #ISIS propaganda indicates that only 55 percent of the Islamic State’s publications are violent or negative, while the remaining 45 percent attempts to show the extremist network’s positive social efforts.

#OEI #Infoguerre via @opironet

Egyptian Army Kills 17 Militants in #Sinai After Kidnapped Officer’s Death
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/egyptian-army-kills-17-militants-sinai-after-kidnapped-officer%E2

The Egyptian army killed 17 militants, including members of #Ansar_Beit_al-Maqdis extremist group, in the Sinai Peninsula, Egyptian media reported Wednesday. Witnesses told Egyptian daily Al-Ahram that the clashes between the Egyptian army and extremist militants has been continuous since Monday, but escalated after the army found the body of a police captain, who was reportedly kidnapped in Sinai. Early on Wednesday, security forces launched an attack on terrorist cells, killing 17 militants. Some members of Ansar Beit al-Maqdis were reportedly among them. read more

#Egypt

UN: ISIS depriving 670,000 Syrian children of education | Al Akhbar English
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/un-isis-depriving-670000-syrian-children-education

An estimated 670,000 children in Syria are being deprived of education after the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) extremist group ordered the closure of schools until the curriculum is made to conform with its medieval reading of the Islamic Sharia, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said Tuesday.

(...)

“In December there was a decree of the Islamic State [ISIS] ordering the stoppage of education in areas under its control,” UNICEF spokesman Christophe Boulierac told a news briefing.

The militant group decreed that schools be closed until the school curriculum had been made “compliant with the religious rules,” he told Reuters, adding that children enrolled in primary and secondary schools in Raqqa, and rural areas of Deir al-Zor and Aleppo provinces are affected by the closures and teachers are forced to undergo “retraining.”

Prior to 2011, Syria had one of the best rates of basic education enrollment in the Middle East with 96%. The number is currently estimated to be lower than 40%, according to a 2014 report by the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA).

#Algeria says head of jihadist group behind slain Frenchman killed
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/algeria-says-head-jihadist-group-behind-slain-frenchman-killed

An Algerian television network reported on Tuesday that the army has killed the head of the extremist group, #Jund_al-Khilafa, behind the beheading of a Frenchman in September. Abdelmalek Gouri, whose faction has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of #Iraq and #syria (ISIS) group, was killed in Sidi Daoud, about 80 kilometres (50 miles) from Algiers, Nahar TV said. The army killed two other members of Jund al-Khilafa in the same operation, the channel said. The security services confirmed Gouri’s identity, according to the report, which could not be immediately confirmed. read more

#ISIS

Suicide Bomber in Syria Was U.S. Citizen, Officials Say
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/29/world/middleeast/us-citizen-in-suicide-act-in-syria-officials-say.html

A United States citizen working in Syria with a militant group backed by Al Qaeda conducted a suicide bombing there Sunday, in what is believed to be the first time an American has been involved in such an attack, American officials said Wednesday.

The suicide attack first surfaced on Tuesday in Twitter messages from the Nusra Front, an Islamist extremist group in Syria aligned with Al Qaeda in the fight against the government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

#Saudi_Arabia arrests three over #Twitter remarks
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/saudi-arabia-arrests-three-over-twitter-remarks

Three Saudi men have been charged over comments they made on Twitter, the first such cases since a decree imposed long jail terms for supporting extremist groups and “atheists,” a local newspaper reported on Tuesday. The three have been accused of sedition, incitement and breaching obedience to the king, the newspaper al-Eqtisadiah reported on its website. read more

#dictatorship #freedom_of_expression #Top_News

Obama preparing to send lethal arms to Syrian opposition, officials say - The Washington Post
▻http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-preparing-to-send-lethal-arms-to-syrian-opposition-officials-say/2013/04/30/3084d0d4-b1a6-11e2-bbf2-a6f9e9d79e19_print.html

Disputes among those countries, particularly between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, over which rebel military faction to back has led to rising U.S. concern that sophisticated weapons, including surface-to-air missiles, are being sent directly to Islamist extremist groups. The administration is not prepared to send missiles itself, but believes it can gain more control over others’ supplies if it puts what an official called “more skin in the game” by sending its own lethal equipment.

...

U.S. hopes have waned that the political opposition would coalesce around a political program and substantive actions on the ground that could persuade the population that it is capable of governing and weaning fence-sitters away from supporting Assad.

At the same time, rebel fighters with the U.S.-backed Syrian Free Army led by Gen. Salim Idriss are seen as increasingly cohesive. Idriss, one of the few leaders who is acceptable to both the opposition and its range of international backers, impressed Kerry and other foreign ministers who attended a meeting with the opposition in Istanbul last weekend and pledged he would keep weapons out of the hands of extremists.