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Terrorism Tag

Germany's Angela Merkel announced in her New Year's address that Islamist terrorism is the biggest threat facing Germany. Considering that this would likely not be the case if it weren't for her own open door policy, this is a startling admission.  Merkel went on to berate anyone and everyone who does not share her worldview, and insisted that all Germany needs is more laws and improved security to protect her people from the terrorist element she has welcomed with open arms. Reuters reports:
Islamist terrorism is the biggest test facing Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday in a New Year's address to the nation, and vowed to introduce laws that improve security after a deadly attack before Christmas in Berlin.

Islamic terrorists are using Europe’s open borders as a tactical tool in their Jihad against the West. Anis Amri, ISIS terrorist responsible for the last week's Berlin Christmas market attack was able to crisscross Europe, covering 5 countries in 5 days, despite Europe-wide manhunt -- German news agency dpa reports. On December 19, Amri drove a lorry into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people and injuring 50 others. Arab-Tunisian 'refugee' was shot dead by Italian police during a routine check in Milan last Friday. Last November, a ISIS terrorists involved in Paris attacks had managed to slip into Belgium. Europe's most wanted terrorist was later arrested in Brussels after four months in hiding. German intelligence agency recently confirmed that a bombmaker belonging to Paris-based ISIS terror-cell has been “smuggled out of Europe by accomplices and is now back in Syria.”

Authorities in Milan have killed the Tunisian man who drove a truck through a Christmas market in Berlin on Monday. The Wall Street Journal reported:
Italian police in the gritty Sesto San Giovanni neighborhood stopped Anis Amri just after 3 a.m. outside a train station for a routine check. When the officers asked the 24-year-old Tunisian for his identification, the man—who, according to Italian officials spoke fluent Italian—became agitated, pulled out a 22-caliber gun and began to shoot, shouting “Bastard police!”

Five individuals are in custody after Australian police thwarted an attempted Christmas Day bombing. According to the BBC:
Five men are in custody after early-morning raids on Friday, Victoria Police chief Graham Ashton said. Mr Ashton said the threat involved "use of explosives" and other weapons including "knives or a firearm".

Don't look for Phil Mudd to be joining the Trump anti-terrorism team anytime soon . . . Mudd, a CNN counterterrorism analyst, declared today that the threat of terrorism is "modest." When it comes to young people, Mudd said that he worries about gangs and drugs: "I don't worry about terrorism." Mudd also argued that tight restrictions on Muslim immigration would be giving ISIS want it wants by setting ISIS up as the counterbalance to the West and the defender of Islam. Mudd apparently believes that allowing a freer flow of Muslim refugees into the United States, as Hillary wanted, would appease ISIS rather than giving it the opening to carry out more attacks. ISIS is not interested in good relations. It wants only to destroy the West and establish its caliphate. People like Mudd, whom CNN chooses as its "expert," apparently don't understand that.

“I am horrified, shocked and deeply saddened,” Chancellor Angela Merkel told the press after 12 people were killed and at least 49 people were injured in a terror attack on a Berlin Christmas market. Police are still looking for the perpetrators after reportedly releasing a previous suspect. Tunisian identity papers were recovered from the truck used in the attack. ISIS has taken responsibility for the Monday night's attack adding to a long trail of death and carnage left behind by the Islamic terror in recent months. Following the incident, a team of 250 police officers searched a refugee housing at the old Berlin-Tempelhof airport. Details of the investigation are sketchy, but a nationwide manhunt is still underway.

The families of the Orlando nightclub shooting victims filed a federal complaint against the web giants for allegedly providing "material support" to ISIS and helping terrorist Omar Mateen "radicalize", according to an exclusive report by Fox News. Why not sue Mateen's internet service provider? Or the manufacturer of the web-enabled devises he used to "radicalize" himself? This is akin to blaming the gun for the actions of the shooter.

In the wake of yesterday's terror attacks, including the one in Berlin in which 12 people were killed and many more injured, Donald Trump tweeted that the civilized world must "change thinking." A disdainful Joe Scarborough reacted on today's Morning Joe: "I don't know exactly what the civilized world is going to do about trucks, unless we're going to ban trucks. But again, some of the deadliest attacks have been with vehicles."

A truck ploughed through a Christmas market in Berlin today evening, killing at least twelve people and injuring 50 others. The attack took place on the Breitscheidplatz square, near Berlin's iconic Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church along the Kurfürstendamm shopping area. According to Associated Press, Berlin police have arrested the suspected driver, another accomplice reported died during the ramming attack. Authorities are treating the incident as a terror attack. German state-run DW News reports:
Nine people are reported to have died as a result of the incident; however, unconfirmed reports state that there may be more fatalities to come. Up tp 50 people have been reported as injured, according to the daily newspaper "Berliner Morgenpost." The police are treating the event as an apparent terror attack. The driver of the truck is believed to have fled the scene; however, no arrests have been made so far.

Just six days after a bombing in Cairo killed six policemen, another bomb explodes at Saint Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral, killing 25 and wounding another 35 people.  The victims are believed to be mostly women and children. Hasam, a terrorist group linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, claimed responsibility for the first Cairo bombing, but no one has yet claimed responsibility for Sunday's bombing Saint Mark's. CBS News reports:
A bombing at Egypt’s main Coptic Christian cathedral killed 25 people and wounded another 35 on Sunday, in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory.

EU counter-terrorism coordinator Gilles de Kerchove will tell the EU interior ministers on Friday that experts have found 1,750 ISIS jihadists have come back to Europe to perform terrorist attacks:
Up to 35 percent have returned - some with 'specific missions' - and 50 percent remain in the battle theatre, which amounted to between 2,000 and 2,500 Europeans.

`Last week, U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel granted Dylann Roof's request to represent himself at his trial for murdering nine black people at a church in Charleston, SC, in the summer of 2015. But now Roof wants his lawyers back during the guilt phase:
After a two-sentence formal motion filed by his advisory lawyers, Roof hand-penned a note to the federal judge overseeing his case. In block letters on lined notebook paper, he wrote: "I would like to ask if my lawyers can represent me for the guilt phase of the trial only. Can you let me have them back for the guilt phase, and then let me represent myself for the sentencing phase of the trial?"

On Monday, Ohio State University student Abdul Razak Ali Artan, 18, plowed his car into a crowd of people. He exited the car and stabbed bystanders, injuring eleven people, before a cop shot and killed him. Authorities have not found a specific motive, but they have started an investigation into Artan's social media posts. It appears he considered American-born Anwar al-Awlaki a hero:
"America! Stop interfering with other countries, especially the Muslim Ummah. We are not weak. We are not weak, remember that," Abdul Razak Ali Artan reportedly wrote on Facebook, using the Arabic term for the world's Muslim community.

I was off the grid traveling much of the day, so I didn't follow in live time the apparent terror incident at Ohio State University where a Somali legal immigrant rammed his car into pedestrians on the sidewalk, then attacked with what is variously described as a butcher knife or machete. As in many such incidents, initial reports were confused and inaccurate. As Mary detailed in her live coverage, the story started as a shooter on the loose, until the facts sorted themselves out in the media. Here is the latest from NBC News, Suspect Identified in Ohio State Attack as Abdul Razak Ali Artan:

Last summer, Dylann Roof opened fire at the historic Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, murdering nine black people during a meeting. The court started jury selection this month, but U.S. Distric Judge Richard Mark Gergel stopped the process when Roof and his defense team filed a motion "concerning the young man's competency to stand trial." A psychiatrist examined Roof and presented the findings to Judge Gergel, who released his decision today:
After carefully considering the record before the Court, the relevant legal standards, and the arguments of counsel, the Court now finds and concludes that the Defendant is competent to stand trial.