Where is the Jihad? Muslim terrorism?

In or near Syria, per BBC, where ISIS is growing stronger, again.

Afghanistan

The bullshit just goes on and on.

The rise of Muslim fundamentalism got the greatest boost in its history when that knee-jerk anti-communist boob, Republican and conservative hero Ronald Reagan, gave the Taliban to the world in order to mess things up for the Russians in Afghanistan.

Russians in Afghanistan would be bad?

Oh, please.

Nowhere near as bad for us, for Afghanistan, or for the entire Muslim world as us handing that country to the Taliban.

That gave us, well, the Taliban, a much-strengthened Al-Qaeda, the attacks of 9/11, an endless war in Afghanistan, a huge rise in terrorism and jihad all over the region, ISIS, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and the ongoing wastage of trillions of dollars.

Yes, Reagan gave us that, with Bush fils not far behind him.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Meanwhile, Democrats to a man (or woman) are shocked, shocked, that Russians would subsidize military operations against US forces by enemies whom we once subsidized to carry out military operations . . . against the Russians!

A lot of Russia owns Trump claptrap, for day and days.

Everybody thinks this will happen.

Is Trump’s Syria Policy about to Loose 12,000 ISIL Terrorists on the World?

But why would the Kurds be stupid enough to release ten or twelve thousand of their most skilled, most determined, most relentless enemies, very possibly upon themselves?

So, does the smart money expect the Kurds to simply massacre these folks?

Asked about this, by the way, the Duce shrugged and said something to this effect about those ISIS fighters.

"Well, they're going to Europe, not to America. Europe is where they want to go."

Update 10/10

About 10,000 are Iraqis and Syrians, the others from various other countries, some in Europe.

Trump repeats the lies they are going to Europe, alliances are easy to make, and our NATO allies in Europe are just ripping us off, they are delinquent in their military spending and owe us hundreds of billions.

He reiterates the damning truth that the Kurds did nothing for us on D-Day, or at any time in WWII.

So this is better?

House votes to repeal Authorization for Use of Military Force

So now anything Trump does, or anyone else does, of a military nature in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, or anywhere at all against Jihaders and terrorists, even al-Qaeda itself, is without congressional sanction and hence unconstitutional?

So this is actually what Democrats want?

Or is it just posturing to satisfy, well, whom, exactly?

And how are Democrats supposed to plausibly criticize Trump for undermining US globalism while themselves pulling the rug out from under US efforts to respond to terrorists and Jihaders "over there rather than over here"?

What if ISIS does a comeback?

Not to worry.

Trump won't give a shit, nor will the Republicans in the congress.

Detention of POWs and the Forever War

Lines blur.

This is as much an opinion column as a news story.

Bear in mind these folks are all what Darth Cheney, most notorious for his love of torture, used to call "unlawful enemy combatants" solely because they were not wearing the uniform of any national army.

Justice Breyer Raises Specter of Perpetual Detention Without Trial at Guantánamo

The Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal of a man who has been held in wartime detention for 17 years with no end in sight.

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear a lawsuit by a Yemeni man who has been held in wartime detention for more than 17 years at the military’s Guantánamo Bay prison, prompting Justice Stephen G. Breyer to warn that the American legal system is on autopilot toward permitting life imprisonment without trial.

“It is past time to confront the difficult question left open by” a 2004 ruling allowing the indefinite detention of Guantánamo detainees captured after the 2001 American invasion of Afghanistan, Justice Breyer wrote in a dissenting opinion.

That difficult question: In a war that effectively has no end, is it lawful to hold a person in perpetual detention, until he dies of natural causes decades after his capture, because he was once part of an enemy force — though never charged with committing a crime?

. . . .

Under the laws of war, to prevent captured enemies from returning to the battlefield, a military can detain them without trial until hostilities end. 

In 2004, the Supreme Court declared it lawful for the Bush administration to hold detainees at Guantánamo in open-ended detention without trial, citing that wartime practice and Congress’s 2001 decision to authorize military force against those responsible for Sept. 11 attacks.

But that practice developed in the context of traditional wars — the type that come to a definitive end after a few years and soldiers stop fighting and go home. 

A war against a loose-knit, evolving and transnational network of Islamist militants is different.

It is not clear anyone has the authority to halt the war declared by Al Qaeda’s founder, Osama bin Laden, and make all its members stop fighting — especially because the network has splintered into associates and successor factions, like the Islamic State, which share Al Qaeda’s ideology but have their own leaders.

Justice Breyer wrote that the Supreme Court should consider whether the legal basis to keep holding a particular person in detention can expire even if the broader conflict continues. 

“Today’s conflict may differ substantially from the one Congress anticipated when it passed” the 2001 force authorization, he wrote.

A lawyer for Mr. Alwi, Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at the City University of New York, called his client’s predicament a “cruel farce” and urged Congress or the executive branch to cap how long someone like his client can be imprisoned.

“That Moath remains behind bars although the courts found no evidence that he ever used arms against the United States shows just how inhumane both the government and the law have become in these cases,” Mr. Kassem said.

The American Taliban up for release

At the time I regarded his punishment as absurdly draconian, and it very possibly has pushed him back into a Jihadism he seemed very much to regret and perhaps to be abandoning when tried.

John Walker Lindh, Known as the ‘American Taliban,’ Is Set to Leave Federal Prison This Week

When he ran off to join the Islamists he had no way of knowing the US would choose to fight a war against the Taliban, whom he had joined when the US was at peace with them and the Afghanistan they controlled.

As an American citizen, he was tried in federal court, unlike citizens of other countries who were also picked up in Afghanistan and Pakistan but who ended up in the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. 

At his sentencing in October 2002, he condemned “terrorism on every level, unequivocally,” said he made a mistake by joining the Taliban and denounced Osama bin Laden’s terrorist attacks as “completely against Islam.”

But two leaked United States government intelligence counterterrorist assessments first published by Foreign Policy magazine in 2017 cast Mr. Lindh in a different light. 

A 2017 report by the National Counterterrorism Center titled “U.S. Homegrown Violent Extremist Recidivism Likely” said without elaboration that as of May 2016 Mr. Lindh “continued to advocate for global jihad and to write and translate violent extremist texts.”

A 2017 Federal Bureau of Prisons intelligence assessment, which included a photograph of Mr. Lindh with a shaven head and a bushy brown beard, said he had earlier made supportive statements about the Islamic State.

. . . .

Johnny Spann, the father of the C.I.A. operative who was killed in Afghanistan, remains bitter about the Lindh case and said he is distrustful of the decision to let Mr. Lindh go. 

His son is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, about eight miles from the Alexandria courthouse where Mr. Lindh was charged.

“We’ve got a traitor that was given 20 years and I can’t do anything about it,” said Mr. Spann, a real estate dealer in Winfield, Ala. 

“He was given a 20-year sentence when it should’ve been life in prison.”

Mr. Spann’s son, who went by Mike, was killed at the start of an uprising by prisoners inside a mud-walled 19th-century fortress at Qala-i-Jangi in northern Afghanistan after he questioned Mr. Lindh, videotapes at the time showed. 

But even before Mr. Lindh’s guilty plea to two charges — to providing support to the Taliban and to carrying a rifle and grenade — the government offered no evidence that he participated in the revolt.

. . . .

Karen J. Greenberg focused on the Lindh case in her 2016 book, “Rogue Justice: The Making of the Security State.”

“He devoted his years in prison to becoming a student of Islamic texts,” said Ms. Greenberg, who is the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University School of Law. 

“I think the best you can hope for him is that he finds a way to live a quiet life, along those lines, doing whatever it is he wants to peacefully do.”

An implausible homegrown Muslim Jihader, foiled

Army veteran charged with plotting terror attacks in LA area

A 26-year-old former US Army soldier who served in Afghanistan has been charged with plotting terror attacks in the Los Angeles area, the Justice Department said Monday.

Mark Steven Domingo allegedly sought to detonate improvised explosive devices containing nails this past weekend at a rally in Long Beach that was organized by a white nationalist group.

He was arrested Friday night after he took receipt of what he thought were pressure cooker bombs, US Attorney Nick Hanna announced at a press conference.

. . . .

Domingo allegedly wanted to "seek retribution for attacks against Muslims" and also considered attacks on Jewish people, churches and law enforcement.

He is accused of targeting "Jews as they walked to synagogue, police officers, a military facility, and crowds at the Santa Monica Pier."

On March 2, DOJ says Domingo posted a video online professing his Muslim faith and wrote, "America needs another Vegas event," referring to the mass shooting in Las Vegas in October 2017 in which more than 50 people died.

Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain. - Asimov quoting Schiller.

Polio Vaccinator Is Shot and Killed in Pakistan

Two gunmen on motorcycle shot and killed a polio vaccinator in the southwestern Pakistani city of Chaman on Thursday, bringing the death toll among vaccinators working in the country’s anti-polio drive to at least three this week, officials said.

. . . .

Polio vaccination teams have suffered several attacks since a countrywide vaccination drive began on April 23. 
Aga
Polio workers, volunteers and their guards are frequently targeted in the South Asian country. 

Islamist militants and hard-line clerics say the vaccination drive is a foreign plot to sterilize Muslim children and a cover for western spies.

. . . .

Hayat Khan, a resident of a tribal area bordering Afghanistan who runs a shop, said he is skeptical of the polio vaccine. 

Neither he nor his parents have taken the vaccine, which can be delivered orally as drops, and they are living a healthy life, he said.

“We have doubts in our minds about this western vaccine,” he said. 

“Tribal people are not sure what they are giving to our children and what information they are collecting for spying. It’s a Western agenda, indeed.”

So civil liberties utterly vanish . . .

. . . in the most spectacular and breathtaking way so this politician who so unforgivably dropped the ball can appear effective.

Sri Lanka’s President Vows a Search of Every Home, as Violence Erupts Again

Sri Lanka will conduct a house-to-house search of the entire country to root out terrorists in the aftermath of the Easter Sunday bombings, the president said on Friday, even as fresh violence and a massive hunt for people linked to the attack continued to shake the country.

Seeking to deflect blame for the government’s failure to act on warnings that suicide bombings were imminent, President Maithripala Sirisena said that officials had not told him of the threat, and vowed a “total reorganization” of Sri Lanka’s security apparatus.

“Every household in the country will be checked,” Mr. Sirisena said in a meeting at his official residence with the heads of Sri Lankan media organizations, according to a statement released by his office. 

“The lists of permanent residents of every house will be established to ensure no unknown persons could live anywhere.”

Time for someone to tell him if he does all that "the terrorists will have won"?

The Times' writer goes on,

In a nation of 21 million people — about the same population as Florida — that would require an enormous effort.

The continuing threat of terrorism in Sri Lanka

Sunni terrorists turn their attention to Sufis.

Sri Lanka Is Rattled by New Threats

Police officials in Sri Lanka warned on Thursday of possible new attacks on religious services, as Muslim leaders urged the cancellation of Friday Prayer and the country’s highest Roman Catholic prelate suspended worship services through the weekend.

Officials said privately that the authorities were trying to find at least one person believed to be armed with explosives. 

The police said the number of people arrested in the investigation had passed 70.

A letter distributed to security officials said there was “credible information” that National Thowheeth Jama’ath, the radical Islamist group thought to have carried out the bombings on Sunday, was planning another attack “specifically targeting Sufi shrines.”

Several officials confirmed the authenticity of the letter, and the prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, said in more general terms that the security services were hunting for people believed to be planning more terrorist attacks.

60 arrested in the Sri Lanka bombings

Sri Lanka Calls Bombers ‘Well Educated’ and Warns of Ongoing Threat

Nine suicide bombers from mostly educated, middle-class backgrounds carried out the attacks in Sri Lanka that killed more than 350 people on Easter Sunday, the authorities said on Wednesday as they warned of an ongoing terrorist threat and continued making arrests.

The bombers, one of whom was a woman, were all Sri Lankan, officials said. 

But the authorities were continuing to investigate whether the Islamic State, which on Tuesday claimed responsibility for the coordinated blasts, had provided more than symbolic support, such as by training the attackers or building the bombs.

The authorities said the number of people arrested had risen to 60, and that other individuals involved in the attacks remained at large. 

As the F.B.I. arrived to assist in the investigation, the American ambassador, Alaina Teplitz, said there were believed to be “ongoing terrorist plots,” and Sri Lanka’s state minister of defense said the danger had not passed.

“There could be still a few people out there,” the minister, Ruwan Wijewardene, said at a news conference. “Right now, we are asking people to be vigilant. Within the next few days, we will have the situation totally under control.”

. . . .

The Islamic State has not provided any further proof for its claim of responsibility, and Mr. Wijewardene said investigators were trying to determine whether the group had provided training or financing for the attacks. 

He said they had found no evidence to suggest that the bombers had traveled to the Middle East to fight for ISIS.

. . . .

An Indian security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said India had interrogated a man last year who was linked with ISIS, and who said he was inspired by Mr. Zaharan’s videos on social media. 

That intelligence prompted an investigation into Mr. Zaharan, and it was part of the context for an April 11 warning that the Indians sent to the Sri Lankan authorities about the possibility of church bombings.

The warning was never relayed to church officials, and the Sri Lankan authorities apparently took no action against members of Mr. Zaharan’s group, despite specific information provided by the Indians. 

The Indians repeated the warning just hours before the bombings, telling the Sri Lankans that an attack was imminent, according to an Indian official.

ISIS claims Sri Lanka Easter bombings

Suspicious that they waited two days to make the claim.

The death toll is now over 300.

Isis claims Easter attacks

Subtitle: Bombings that killed more than 320 people have hallmarks of Isis, say security experts

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the Easter bombings in Sri Lanka that killed more than 320 people, the group’s Amaq news agency has said, with experts saying the attacks bear the hallmarks of the group.

It is the deadliest overseas operation claimed by Isis since it proclaimed its “caliphate” almost five years ago, and would suggest it retains the ability to launch devastating strikes around the world despite multiple defeats in the Middle East.

The group published a statement saying its “fighters” were responsible for the attack and listing the names of the suicide bombers, who were also shown in a video swearing allegiance.

Experts said that although Isis had made false claims of responsibility in the past, it appeared likely that its involvement in the suicide bombings of three churches and three luxury hotels on Sunday would be confirmed by ongoing investigations.

. . . .

Earlier, Sri Lanka’s defence minister, Ruwan Wijewardene, said the attacks had been a response to the recent mass shooting of Muslim worshippers in Christchurch in New Zealand.


“The preliminary investigations have revealed that what happened in Sri Lanka was in retaliation for the attack against Muslims in Christchurch,” Wijewardene told a special sitting of parliament, referring to the terrorist attack by a white supremacist in March in which 50 people were killed. 

The minister did not present any evidence for his claim.

"There was an international network"

Local Group Is Blamed for Attacks, but Sri Lanka Suspects ‘International Network’

Sri Lankan officials said on Monday that the coordinated bombings of churches and hotels across the country on Easter Sunday had been carried out by National Thowheeth Jama’ath, a little-known radical Islamist group, with help from international militants.

Rajitha Senaratne, the Sri Lankan health minister, blamed the group at a news conference in Colombo, the capital, adding: “There was an international network without which these attacks could not have succeeded.”

The government announced that it was asking other countries for help in uncovering international links, and that it was assuming emergency powers in order to investigate the attacks. A dusk-to-dawn curfew was imposed for the second consecutive night.

Social media empower stupidity and hatred and cause violence

Sri Lanka Shut Down Social Media. My First Thought Was ‘Good.’

Subtitle: As a tech journalist, I’m ashamed to admit it. But this is how bad the situation has gotten.

Good, because it could save lives. 

Good, because the companies that run these platforms seem incapable of controlling the powerful global tools they have built. 

Good, because the toxic digital waste of misinformation that floods these platforms has overwhelmed what was once so very good about them. 

And indeed, by Sunday morning so many false reports about the carnage were already circulating online that the Sri Lankan government worried more violence would follow.

It pains me as a journalist, and someone who once believed that a worldwide communications medium would herald more tolerance, to admit this — to say that my first instinct was to turn it all off. 

But it has become clear to me with every incident that the greatest experiment in human interaction in the history of the world continues to fail in ever more dangerous ways.

. . . .

I noted this in my very first column for The Times almost a year ago, when I called social media giants “digital arms dealers of the modern age” who had, by sloppy design, weaponized pretty much everything that could be weaponized.

“They have weaponized civic discourse,” I wrote. 

“And they have weaponized, most of all, politics. Which is why malevolent actors continue to game the platforms and why there’s still no real solution in sight anytime soon, because they were built to work exactly this way.”

. . . .

But while social media had once been credited with helping foster democracy in places like Sri Lanka, it is now blamed for an increase in religious hatred. 

That justification was behind another brief block a year ago, aimed at Facebook, where the Sri Lankan government said posts appeared to have incited anti-Muslim violence.

“The extraordinary step reflects growing global concern, particularly among governments, about the capacity of American-owned networks to spin up violence,” The Times reported on Sunday.

Spin up violence indeed. 

Just a month ago in New Zealand, a murderous shooter apparently radicalized by social media broadcast his heinous acts on those same platforms. 

Let’s be clear, the hateful killer is to blame, but it is hard to deny that his crime was facilitated by tech.

. . . .

New Zealand, under the suffer-no-foolish-techies leadership of Jacinda Ardern, will be looking hard at imposing penalties on these companies for not controlling the spread of extremist content.

Australia already passed such a law in early April.

Here in the United States, our regulators are much farther behind, still debating whether it is a problem or not.

It is a problem, even if the manifestations of how these platforms get warped vary across the world. 

They are different in ways that make no difference and the same in one crucial way that does. 

Namely, social media has blown the lids off controls that have kept society in check. 

These platforms give voice to everyone, but some of those voices are false or, worse, malevolent, and the companies continue to struggle with how to deal with them.

In the early days of the internet, there was a lot of talk of how this was a good thing, getting rid of those gatekeepers. 

Well, they are gone now, and that means we need to have a global discussion involving all parties on how to handle the resulting disaster, well beyond adding more moderators or better algorithms.

Sri Lanka attacks

Sri Lanka Was Warned of Possible Attacks. Why Didn’t It Stop Them?

The confidential security memo laid it all out: names, addresses, phone numbers, even the times in the middle of the night that one suspect would visit his wife.

In the days leading up to the devastating suicide attacks that killed nearly 300 people in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, the country’s security agencies had been closely watching a secretive cell of the National Thowheeth Jama’ath, a little-known radical Islamist organization that security officials in Sri Lanka now say carried out the attacks.

The security agencies had even been given specific intelligence that the group, also known by the spelling National Thowheed Jama’ath, was planning to bomb Catholic churches. 

And within hours of when three churches and three hotels were bombed, Sri Lankan security services seized at least 24 suspects, implying that they knew exactly where this group was operating and were quickly able to locate their safe houses.

Why the security agencies failed to act before the bombings — and why some top officials, including the country’s own prime minister, didn’t even know about the intelligence that the agencies possessed — are enormous questions that have created a crisis in the Sri Lankan government.

A seriously huge clusterfuck.

A very thorough article.

Much further down we see this.

The National Thowheeth Jama’ath group emerged around 2015 in the aftermath of attacks against Muslims. 

A majority Buddhist nation, Sri Lanka has been mostly spared the religious-driven bloodshed of other South Asian nations, such as India and Pakistan.

But in recent years some Buddhist monks have turned militant and incited followers to attack Muslims, their places of worship and some of their businesses, such as slaughterhouses. 

The Sri Lankan government’s security services appeared to have turned a blind eye, allowing Buddhist mobs to act with impunity.

In 2014, scores were injured and three people were killed in Buddhist-Muslim clashes. In response, some Muslims joined radical Islamist groups that they believed would defend their faith.

. . . .

The group [National Thowheeth Jama’ath] had never attempted such a devastating, coordinated attack, with numerous suicide bombers striking different places nearly simultaneously.

“The target selection and attack type make me very skeptical that this was carried out by a local group without any outside involvement,” said Amarnath Amarasingam, a specialist in Sri Lankan extremism at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a counterterrorism research group in London. 

“There’s no reason for local extremist groups to attack churches, and little reason to attack tourists.”

Easter bombings in Sri Lanka work of "religious extremists".

Seven [update: now thirteen] people arrested, but no one is giving any further information, either who they were or what was their purpose.

It appears the government is terrified it may spark a huge wave of sectarian violence.

More than 200 dead in church and hotel bombings across country

At least 207 people were killed and hundreds more wounded in a series of bomb blasts that hit luxury hotels and churches across Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, leaving the entire country in a state of lock-down.

The first wave of attacks struck at the heart of the country's minority Christian community during busy Easter services at churches in the cities of Colombo, Negombo and Batticaloa on Sunday morning.

Additional blasts ripped through three high-end hotels, the Shangri La, Cinnamon Grand and Kingsbury, all in capital city Colombo.

The violence punctured a decade of relative peace in the country following the end of its civil war in 2009 -- where attacks were common during the 25-year struggle. 

Sri Lanka has since turned itself into a popular tourist destination, winning the title of best place in the world to visit in 2019 by travel guide publisher Lonely Planet.

"These are certainly acts of terror," the High Commissioner of Sri Lanka to the UK Manisha Gunasekera told CNN on Sunday, suggesting that suicide bombings had been "carried out."

"This is an attack against the whole of Sri Lanka because Sri Lanka is [a] multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-cultural country and the whole country comes together in celebration of Easter Sunday."

. . . .

Here's the full list of blast sites reported so far:
St. Anthony's Shrine, Colombo
St. Sebastian's Church, Negombo
Zion Church, Batticaloa
Cinnamon Grand, Colombo
Shangri-La Hotel, Colombo
The Kingsbury Hotel, Colombo
Near Dehiwala Zoo in Dehiwala-Mount Lavinia
A house in Mahawila Gardens, Dematagoda

For Sri Lanka, a Long History of Violence

About 22 million people live in Sri Lanka, in communities that are often diverse and mixed. 

More than 70 percent of the population is Buddhist.

Smaller ethnic and religious groups include Hindus, at over 12 percent, Muslims at under 10 percent, and Catholics at about 6 percent. 

At least three churches were targeted by Sunday’s bombings.

Despite their clear majority, Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists have recently been stoking fears that the minority groups, particularly the Muslims, are increasing in numbers and influence. 

The nationalist fervor has led to violent clashes.

A long history of disenfranchisement among minority Tamil groups, who are largely Hindu, at the hands of the Sinhalese Buddhists led to a civil war in the 1980s.

The Tamil Tigers, an armed insurgent group that identified itself as secular, launched deadly attacks, including some of the earliest use of suicide bombings as a tactic of insurgency. 

In response, the Sri Lankan Army carried out brutal campaigns, largely focused on the Tamil stronghold in the northeast.

The civil war ended in 2009 after a large-scale operation by the army that defeated the Tamil Tigers and killed its leader.

There is no exact casualty toll, but the United Nations has suggested that as many as 40,000 civilians were killed in the last stage of the war alone.

. . . .

With the rise of Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism, sectarian divides have continued to grow — and the country has experienced new waves of violence. 

A rise in intolerance has been attributed in part to the postwar triumphalism of some Sinhalese majority politicians.

Last year, officials declared a state of emergency in the central district of Kandy after Buddhist mobs attacked businesses and homes belonging to minority Muslims.

Blasts at Churches and Hotels in Sri Lanka Kill More Than 200

Coordinated bombings ripped across Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, striking hotels and churches, killing more than 200 people, wounding hundreds and shattering the relative calm that the war-torn nation had enjoyed in recent years.

The targets were members of Sri Lanka’s small Roman Catholic minority attending Easter Mass and guests at high-end hotels popular with foreign tourists. 

By Sunday afternoon, soldiers had shut down roads across the country, and a jittery government had imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew.

The government temporarily blocked major social media and messaging services, including Facebook and WhatsApp, to prevent the spread of misinformation online, according to the president’s secretary, Udaya Seneviratne.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks in Colombo, the capital; Negombo, a city about 20 miles north of Colombo; and the eastern city of Batticaloa.

At least 207 people were killed and at least 450 wounded, said Ruwan Gunasekera, a police spokesman. 

Ravinatha Aryasinha, the secretary to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said 27 foreigners were among the dead. 

. . . .

The country has struggled with sectarian divisions, including last year, when the government temporarily shut down Facebook and WhatsApp in an effort to curb anti-Muslim violence. 

The prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, warned the public not to believe false information circulating online about the bombings on Sunday.

Sri Lanka imposes curfew after at least 207 killed in attacks

Ruwan Wijewardena, the minister of defence, said investigations had established that suicide bombers were responsible for the majority of the morning’s bombings and that the wave of attacks was the work of a single group.

Sri Lanka explosions: what we know so far

• At least 207 people have been killed and 450 more injured in a series of explosions targeting churches holding Easter services and hotels in Sri Lanka.

• Most of the dead are believed to have been Sri Lankans, but officials say about 30 people from other countries have lost their lives. Three UK nationals and two US-UK dual nationals were among the dead. One Dutch, one Chinese, one Portuguese and two Turkish nationals have been killed, their respective foreign ministries have confirmed.

• No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks but Sri Lanka’s defence minister, Ruwan Wijewardene, said the culprits had been identified and were religious extremists. He said suicide bombers were responsible for the majority of the morning’s bombings and that the wave of attacks was the work of a single group.

• Thirteen people have been reported to have been arrested so far.

ISIS on trial in Berlin

German Woman Goes on Trial in Death of 5-Year-Old Girl Held as ISIS Slave

Devoted followers of the Islamic State, a man and woman bought a 5-year-old Yazidi girl in Iraq to use as a slave, then let her die of thirst in the scorching heat, the German authorities contend in the trial of the woman, which began on Tuesday — one of the highest-profile cases against a female member of the terrorist group.

. . . .

But the Yazidi girl’s mother, whose identity has not been released, is expected to testify, providing both key evidence and the emotional heart of the case. 

The mother, who says she was also held as a slave by the German woman and her husband, is serving as a co-plaintiff in the trial but was not in court for the opening proceedings.

“Our client would like to see justice served, as well as the opportunity to finally give a full account of her suffering and that of her daughter,” one of the woman’s lawyers, Natalie von Wistinghausen, said in a statement. 

The girl’s mother is also represented by Amal Clooney, an international human rights lawyer.

When ISIS overran northern Iraq in 2014, thousands of Yazidi women and girls were abducted and sold to ISIS members as slaves. 

They also became victims of brutal sexual assault.

According to the indictment, Jennifer W. and her husband “bought a 5-year-old girl in summer 2015 from a group of prisoners of war and kept her in their home as a slave.”

“After the girl fell ill and wet her mattress, the defendant’s husband punished the girl by chaining her up outside in the searing heat and leaving her in great agony to die of thirst,” prosecutors said. 

“The defendant let her husband do as he liked, and took no action to save the girl.”

. . . .

Germany is struggling with how to handle dozens of women who left the country for Syria and Iraq, many of whom married ISIS fighters, and now have children who are German citizens. 

While they are legally allowed to return home, many Germans do not want to see them allowed back without being tried for their roles in supporting the terror organization.

But German law requires concrete proof of wrongdoing, so without evidence like photos showing them posing with weapons, or social media accounts where they spread propaganda or sought to recruit others, it can be difficult to bring charges against them.

In the case of Jennifer W., prosecutors were helped by her own eagerness to tell the man who offered to drive her as far as Turkey about her life in ISIS. 

American intelligence officials had tipped off their colleagues in Germany about the woman, allowing the Germans to set her up with a driver, whose car was bugged, German news media reported.

She told the driver about leaving her home in northwestern Germany in August 2014, and making her way through Turkey and Syria to Iraq. 

Once she arrived, prosecutors said, she joined the Islamic State and swiftly rose through the ranks, becoming a member of the Hisbah, the morality police, patrolling the parks of Falluja and Mosul, Iraq.

“Her job was to make sure that women were upholding the terror organization’s dress and behavior codes,” they said. 

“To intimidate them, she carried an AK-47 machine gun, a pistol and an explosive vest.”

The Utrecht killer

Suspect in Utrecht Tram Shooting Confessed, Prosecutors Say

The primary suspect in the shooting aboard a Dutch tram that left three people dead and five wounded confessed on Friday to the attack, and said that he acted alone, prosecutors said.

The public prosecutor’s office has said that it intends to bring terrorism charges against the suspect, Gokmen Tanis, in the attack Monday morning in the city of Utrecht, the Netherlands, but it is also investigating whether he had other motives.

Mr. Tanis confessed in a closed court hearing on Friday, the office said — his first appearance in court since he was arrested hours after the shooting. 

The judge ordered him held for 14 days, the maximum allowed in an initial hearing, but pretrial detention can be extended up to 90 days.

“The 37-year-old suspect admitted to a judge the criminal facts he was suspected of. He also testified that he acted alone,” prosecutors said in a statement. 

“It is in the best interest of the investigation not to say anything further about his testimony.”

. . . .

Mr. Tanis, a native of Turkey who reportedly has lived most of his life in the Netherlands, was reportedly facing a rape charge at the time of the shooting and has an extensive history of arrests.

Acquaintances, neighbors and co-workers have described him as erratic and sometimes violent, and said that he had recently espoused a radical form of Islam.

. . . .

Despite initial speculation that the shooting stemmed from a domestic dispute, the authorities say they have found no evidence that Mr. Tanis knew any of the victims.

Three dead in Netherlands

Active shooter on a streetcar. Ongoing.

Likely a Muslim terrorist.

Apparently a Chechen known to police for prior connections with Islamic extremism.

Gunman Aboard a Tram Kills at Least 3 in Utrecht, the Netherlands

Three people died and nine were injured on Monday in a shooting on a tram in the Dutch city of Utrecht, which the authorities called a possible terrorist attack, and a manhunt was underway for a gunman who escaped the scene.

. . . .

By midafternoon there had been no arrests, but the Utrecht Police said they were looking for Gokmen Tanis, 37, who was born in Turkey, and posted a security camera image of him online. 

They did not call him a suspect, but said he was “associated with the incident” and warned people not to approach him.

Is Trump abandoning Afghanistan to the Taliban?

Afghanistan's Ghani says 45,000 security personnel killed since 2014

And how do you suppose that will work out?

The man who lied that he had totally defeated ISIS when no one else could is about to let the Taliban triumph when no one else would, it seems.