The FBI says it is investigating more than 2,000 cases tied to groups designated by the United States as foreign terrorist organizations, a figure that reflects the persistent threat posed by outfits such as al-Qaida and Hezbollah.There are currently 68 individual groups on the U.S. State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, the vast majority jihadi outfits such as al-Qaida. The designation allows the U.S. to freeze the groups’ and their members’ assets and investigate their activities. The FBI’s renewed focus on foreign terrorist organizations and their members partly reflects the quiet resurgence in recent years of al-Qaida, said Seamus Hughes, deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. “While the primary focus was ISIS the last few years, al-Qaida used that time to bide their time and build up a network,” Hughes said. “And so, these cases are still out there, and they’re going to have to look at them. It’s not just ISIS — there are al-Qaida, its affiliates, and then you have groups like Hezbollah.”Out of about 5,000 terrorism cases under investigation, approximately 850 are focused on domestic terrorism such as far-right violence, while the rest have a nexus to international terrorism, the FBI said in response to a query from Voice of America. The international terrorism investigations are in turn divided into about 1,000 cases each of so-called homegrown violent extremism and Islamic State. The rest are made up of “thousands of other cases associated with foreign terrorist organizations like al-Qaida and Hezbollah,” the FBI said.An FBI agent gives out information to members of the media outside of the Chabad of Poway Synagogue, April 27, 2019, in Poway, Calif. Several people were injured in a shooting at the synagogue. The FBI did not provide historical data on terrorism investigations, making it difficult to assess the aggregate figure. However, the number in several categories, including homegrown violent extremism and domestic terrorism, has hovered around 1,000 cases in recent years, according to FBI officials.In the post-9/11 era “they’re obligated to open and investigate every plausible threat,” said David Gomez, a former FBI special agent and terrorism investigator.The vast majority of the investigations do not lead to prosecution, Gomez noted, adding that the FBI opens investigations for both intelligence-gathering and prosecution purposes.The FBI’s three largest field offices — in Washington, New York and Los Angeles — are probably responsible for as much as 80% of the investigations, Gomez said.
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Month: October 2019
Quelling Robberies and Jihadists: The Vigilance Committee of Senegal
In a Senegalese border town, a committee initially designed to protect residents from robberies has taken on new a purpose in the wake of jihadist violence in neighboring Mali. In Moudery, Esha Sarai has more.
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Trump Accused of Attempting to Interfere in British Election
Accusations of attempted interference in a foreign election are being leveled at U.S. President Donald Trump after he phoned into a British radio station Thursday.During the on-air discussion with Brexit Party head Nigel Farage, Trump praised British Prime Minister Boris Johnson as a fantastic man who is “the exact right guy for the times.”Trump urged Farage to cooperate with Johnson, leader of the Conservative Party, ahead of Britain’s Dec. 12 national election, in which Brexit is a core issue.”If you and he get together, it’s, you know, an unstoppable force,” Trump declared on LBC Radio.FILE – Britain’s Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage leaves a TV studio in Westminster, London, Britain, Sept. 25, 2019.Farage, who campaigned for the 2016 referendum on Britain’s exit from the European Union, is a candidate in the upcoming snap election as the head of his party.The election campaign in Britain has not officially begun. The latest polling data show Johnson’s Tories with a comfortable lead over the opposition Labour Party, as well as the Liberal Democrats. Farage’s Brexit Party is polling in the single digits and currently has no representation in the British Parliament.Some political analysts, however, view the election outcome as unpredictable, with Farage’s party having the potential to split the Brexit vote and leave the Conservatives without a majority.Critical of Labour leaderThe U.S. president, in Thursday’s interview with Farage, went on to criticize the leader of the Labour Party, saying Jeremy Corbyn would be “so bad for your country” if he became prime minister.Corbyn immediately took to Twitter to accuse Trump of “trying to interfere in U.K. election to get his friend Boris Johnson elected.”A political correspondent of The Guardian newspaper, Andrew Sparrow, also said Trump used the interview with Farage “to intervene in the U.K. election.”BBC North America Editor Jon Sopel tweeted:Incredible statement from FILE – Britain’s Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn gestures after voting at a local polling station in his constituency in London, May 23, 2019.”There has been a long-established norm in British politics that the prime minister does not weigh in on foreign elections, and vice versa, that world leaders should not intervene in United Kingdom votes,” Riley-Smith told VOA.However, Trump’s unconventional support for the sitting prime minister might not benefit Johnson.”Most Britons have a negative view of the U.S. president, according to polls. So being hugged by Mr. Trump during an election cycle will not necessarily result in extra votes,” Riley-Smith said. “Donald Trump is unfit to hold the office of president of the United States,” said Chuka Umunna, the foreign affairs spokesman for the Liberal Democratic Party. “Boris Johnson is unfit to be prime minister of the United Kingdom. This endorsement is yet another example of the cuddly relationship between the two men. As the saying goes, you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep.”‘Background noise’This is not the first time Trump has weighed in on British politics, according to Amanda Sloat, senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution.Trump “has previously expressed similar views, including his preference for Boris Johnson, concerns about Jeremy Corbyn and advice on Brexit negotiations,” Sloat told VOA. “Trump’s interventions are largely background noise at this stage, given the current dysfunction of British politics and the president’s well-known view, and have little effect on domestic debates.”FILE – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson leaves the podium after addressing a news conference at an EU summit in Brussels, Oct. 17, 2019.Johnson views the December election as a way around the parliamentary impasse on the British exit from the EU, something voters decided to pursue three years ago.In the radio interview, Trump said Johnson, by aggressively pursuing Brexit, is “willing to do what no one else would do.”Trump also warned that conditions to which London and Brussels might agree following Brexit could make it impossible for a bilateral trade deal between the United States and Britain.”Under certain ways, we would be precluded, which would be ridiculous,” Trump said.The U.S. president also told LBC Radio listeners that during trade negotiations between London and Washington, his administration would not seek to tamper with Britain’s national health system.Corbyn is warning that would not be the case.”It was Trump who said in June the NHS is ‘on the table,’ ” the Labour Party head tweeted. “And he knows if Labour wins, U.S. corporations won’t get their hands on it. Our NHS is not for sale.”Trump spoke with Farage on a day in which his public schedule was blank. The interview was conducted just after the House, controlled by the opposition Democrats, voted to formalize its impeachment inquiry against the president.Trump, in the radio interview, noted that with the 232-196 tally, “I didn’t have one negative Republican vote, which is a very unusual thing.”
The president, immediately after the House vote, declared on Twitter that the impeachment inquiry was “The Greatest Witch Hunt in American History.”
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Quelling Robberies and Jihadists: The Vigilance Committee of Senegal
In the Senegalese border town of Moudery, a committee initially created to protect residents from robberies has taken on a new purpose in the wake of jihadist violence in neighboring Mali. In 2010, when Moudery inaugurated its “Committee of Vigilance,” the goal was mostly to identify unknown people who might rob homes in the wealthy Senegalese river town. Zakaria Ndiaye, one of the committee’s founding members, said robberies had decreased since the committee was set up, because members perform nightly patrols and criminals are aware of the committee’s presence on the ground.
Fousseynou Diallo, now the mayor of Moudery, served in the army for more than 30 years before moving back and helping in the founding of the committee. He said because Moudery is uniquely positioned along the river that separates Senegal from Mauritania, criminals can flee from one side of the border to the other without being prosecuted. This position, along with its proximity to Mali, has made the town sensitive to criminal activity.
The system for reducing crime in the village worked so well that members of the U.N.’s migration organization identified the program as a model for more border towns to secure their communities against the threat of jihadist violence.
Six years after the committee was founded, officials of the International Organization for Migration reached out to Diallo and explained how they thought his committee could serve to identify potential jihadists entering the country. Not a militia
The committee is also registered with Senegal’s interior ministry, partially to keep it accountable. Diallo was firm that his committee is not law enforcement or a militia and that his members simply keep an eye on the town and ask any suspicious people for identification.
But as ethnic tensions and jihadist violence in nearby Mali worsen, the city is also welcoming immigrants. After VOA interviewed the mayor, he left for a meeting with the Malians of Moudery to discuss a recent festival honoring that country’s independence day.
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Hong Kong Protests Raise Concerns for Gay Community
Anti-government protesters in Hong Kong, now in the fifth consecutive month of demonstrations, say they are seeking greater rights and freedoms amid what they perceive as growing repression by Beijing. That’s a call that resonates with the city’s sexual minorities, who are looking across the South China Sea to Taiwan, a self-governing Chinese territory that has challenged China’s strict legal — and social — views prohibiting gay marriage. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from Hong Kong.
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Nigeria Non-profits Take Cancer Awareness to the Streets
Nigeria accounts for the highest cancer mortality rate in Africa according to the World Health Organization. Low awareness, late detection and high cost of treatment are major factors contributing to increasing cancer mortality in the west African nation. But in October, also world cancer awareness month, several non-profits in Nigeria are taking information about the disease to the streets and sponsoring underprivileged patients for treatments. Timothy Obiezu reports from Abuja.
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Putin was ‘Conscientious and Disciplined’ Spy: KGB Documents
Declassified KGB documents on display in Russia describe future President Vladimir Putin as a “conscientious and disciplined” spy at the start of his career.”Comrade Putin… is constantly raising his ideological, political and professional level,” said the one-page document released to Russian media, written while the intelligence agent turned politician was in his 20s.Now 67, Putin worked for the secret service from the mid-1970s and was posted in Dresden, then East Germany, from 1985 to 1990, as Soviet power was crumbling.In the Kremlin he has surrounded himself with many former employees of the secret service and the FSB, the successor to the KGB, remains a powerful agency.The KGB profile is part of an exhibition at the Central Archive of Historical and Political Documents in Russia’s second city of Saint Petersburg, featuring other declassified files.The young Putin also received “congratulations from his seniors” in the organization “for his well organized work and results,” the document said.In 2016, Putin, who has been in power as president or prime minister for two decades, revealed he had kept his USSR Communist Party membership card for sentimental reasons.
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Facebook Moves to Curb Russian Interference in African Politics
This week’s takedown of Facebook and Instagram accounts that were used to interfere with African political affairs has provided new insight into the extent to which a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin is engaged in the continent, analysts say.Facebook announced Wednesday that, after a weeks-long investigation, it was FILE – Kremlin-linked businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin gestures on the sidelines of a meeting at the Konstantin palace outside St. Petersburg, Russia, Aug. 9, 2016. “We believe that this is consistent with Russian commercial-linked activities, and to some extent with Russian state political interests as well,” Grossman told VOA in an interview this week.Prigozhin, commonly called “Putin’s chef” in Russia media, was A screenshot shows a Facebook page found to be part of a Russian disinformation campaign. (Courtesy – Stanford Internet Observatory researchers)For example, in Mozambique, sites supported Frelimo, the country’s longtime ruling party, in advance of elections. In Sudan, Facebook pages initially supported former dictator Omar al-Bashir and then switched to the Transitional Military Council following his ouster.In Libya, the pages supported both rogue General Khalifa Haftar and his potential political rival, Saif al-Islam, son of autocrat Moammar Gadhafi, killed in 2011 during Arab Spring uprisings. “These pages were interesting in part because many of them posted a lot of Moammar Gadhafi nostalgia content,” Grossman said. “So trying to get Libyans to think about the positive parts of living under Gadhafi’s rule and then throwing in posts that were supportive of his son.”Often the pages are linked to activity conducted by the Wagner Group, Prigozhin’s military arm, which supplies contractors in several African countries. Wagner is A screenshot shows a Facebook post found to be part of a Russian disinformation campaign. Pictured is Saif al-Islam, son of the late Libyan autocrat Moammar Gadhafi. (Courtesy – Stanford Internet Observatory researchers)“Russia is willing to do business with a lot of unsavory actors,” he told VOA. “It is willing to do business with regimes that are seeking to hold onto power through unconstitutional methods. It is willing to do business with military governments, governments that Western democracies might not be so quick to embrace. Russia sees itself as having an advantage in going after those markets.”Hudson said Russia’s aim is to make its presence felt in the same way it did during the Cold War, but with a much smaller investment.“Russia doesn’t have the political clout, it doesn’t have the ideological clout and it certainly doesn’t have the financial backing to play the role that it played during the Cold War, where it was a heavy investor in development projects in Africa — where ideologically it was bringing African leaders to study the communist model,” he said.The country believes cyber interference in the affairs of other countries gives it the most bang for its buck, according to Hudson.“So how does it have its influence felt? Well, it can do it through things like social media and online influence, which is a relatively low-cost way to have the impact on the world stage that they’re looking to have,” he said. “Anything that they can do to undermine the free press, democratic institutions and to sow doubt in the minds of those of populations, I think, probably plays into their broader vision.”
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