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In the United States, we are soon to be facing another scary condition, the release of terrorists after serving their full sentence. Now what? Well, I had the pleasure of interview Patrick Dunleavey on this very topic. (Segment 3 and 4)
NYT/WASHINGTON — The Trump White House is nearing completion of an order that would direct the Pentagon to bring future Islamic State detainees to the Guantánamo Bay prison, despite warnings from national security officials and legal scholars that doing so risks undermining the effort to combat the group, according to administration officials and a draft executive order obtained by The New York Times.
White House officials have detailed their thinking about a new detainee policy in an evolving series of drafts of an executive order being circulated among national security officials for comment. While previous versions have shown that the draft has undergone many changes — including dropping language about reviving C.I.A. prisons — the plan to add Islamic State detainees to the Guantánamo population has remained constant.
The latest version of the draft, which circulated this week, would direct Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to use Guantánamo to detain suspected members of “Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces, including individuals and networks associated with the Islamic State.”
The White House has kept similar language in the draft order despite warnings from career government national security officials that carrying out its plan would give federal judges an opportunity to reject the executive branch’s theory that the war against the Islamic State is legal, even though Congress never explicitly authorized it. The issue could arise when reviewing an inevitable habeas corpus lawsuit filed by an ISIS detainee.
The Obama administration first argued in late summer 2014 that the Islamic State was part of the existing armed conflict that Congress authorized in 2001 against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. But while the Islamic State got its start as Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq more than a decade ago, that theory is disputed because the two groups later split and went to war with each other.
“It raises huge legal risks,” said Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor and former senior Justice Department official in the Bush administration. “If a judge says the Sept. 11 authorization does not cover such a detention, it would not only make that detention unlawful, it would weaken the legal basis for the entire war against the Islamic State.”
Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, did not respond to an email seeking comment on the issue.
The Times reported on Feb. 4 that the White House had limited the draft order so that it focused on carrying out President Trump’s vow to keep the Guantánamo prison open and use it for newly captured detainees. That draft of the order dropped the ideas of reopening C.I.A. prisons and permitting interrogators to use harsher techniques than those now allowed in the Army Field Manual.
That report was based on accounts by people familiar with a version that circulated last week. But a new draft order circulated this week, titled “Protecting America Through Lawful Detention of Terrorist and Other Designated Enemy Elements,” includes some revisions. The latest version, unlike the previous one, explicitly revokes President Barack Obama’s January 2009 executive order directing the government to close the prison by January 2010, a deadline it failed to meet.
The revised text also dropped references to revitalizing the use of the military commissions system at Guantánamo for prosecuting terrorism suspects, and instead focused exclusively on detention policy — like its directive to use the prison to detain captured Islamic State suspects without trial.
In the 2012 version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act, Congress bolstered the government’s power to imprison suspected members of Al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated forces by authorizing such detentions without reference to the Sept. 11 attacks. But while it has provided funds for military operations against the Islamic State, it has never explicitly authorized combat or detention operations against it.
In summer 2014, when the group swept out of Syria and began rapidly conquering swaths of Iraq, Mr. Obama launched a bombing campaign to curtail its advances. At the time, he put forth the theory that the group’s early ties to Al Qaeda were sufficient to bring it under the Sept. 11 war authorization without new action from Congress.
Nevertheless, in 2015, the Obama administration asked Congress to enact an authorization for use of military force against the Islamic State. Lawmakers disagreed about whether it should place limits on the use of ground forces or impose an expiration date, and Congress never acted on the proposal. Congress has continued to give no sign that it has the will or the consensus to explicitly authorize war on the Islamic State.
Last year, an army captain sued Mr. Obama, arguing that the war was illegal because Congress had not authorized it. A Federal District Court judge dismissed the lawsuit without ruling on the legal merits, saying the plaintiff lacked standing to bring the case.
But any Islamic State detainee at Guantánamo would have legal standing to get a court to rule on the question of whether the group is legitimately part of the war against Al Qaeda.
Ryan Goodman, a New York University law professor who worked at the Pentagon during the Obama administration, said there were other reasons bringing an Islamic State detainee to Guantánamo for indefinite detention, as opposed to prosecuting him in civilian court, might raise problems: Foreign allies, he said, might refuse to turn over prisoners or assist in detention operations if that was the administration’s goal.
But even if that turns out not to be the case, he said, the legal risks of bringing a suspected member of the Islamic State, sometimes referred to as ISIL, are “very serious.”
“If I were in the administration, I would advise that bringing ISIL fighters to Guantánamo raises too many legal risks,” he said “If a court finds the 2001 statute does not apply to ISIL because of the extraordinarily remote links between ISIL and the original Al Qaeda, then it would put into legal jeopardy the executive branch’s basis for lethal operations as well as detention operations.”
These 3 signatures today on Executive Orders will aid the newly sworn in U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. As a matter of personal opinion, President Trump did not go far enough, he should have declared all known drug cartels and their operatives terror organizations and should have done the same with Black Lives Matter along with known gang operations and members. Yet, Trump promised to restore law and order and this is a step in the right direction.
Trump signs executive orders on crime, law enforcement
CBS: President Trump signed three executive actions Thursday aimed at bolstering law enforcement and targeting violent crime and criminal drug cartels.
The first executive order, according to what Mr. Trump outlined during the signing ceremony in the Oval Office, is meant to direct the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security to “undertake all necessary and lawful action to break the back of the criminal cartels that have spread across our nation and are destroying the blood of our youth and many other people.”
The president signed the action Thursday after swearing in Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Among other powers, the action gives broad authority to increase intelligence and lawn enforcement information sharing with foreign powers in order to crack down on “transnational criminal organizations” and their subsidiaries. It also instructs an interagency panel to compile a report on crime syndicates within four months.
“These groups are drivers of crime, corruption, violence, and misery,” the order reads. “In particular, the trafficking by cartels of controlled substances has triggered a resurgence in deadly drug abuse and a corresponding rise in violent crime related to drugs.”
Mr. Trump hinted at exercising his executive power to combat drug cartels earlier this week while talking with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly.
“We have to do something about the cartels,” the president said in the interview, a portion of which aired Monday. He said he’d spoken with his Mexican counterpart, President Enrique Peña Nieto, about working together on the issue.
“We’ve got to stop the drugs from coming into our country,” Mr. Trump told O’Reilly. “And if he can’t handle it — maybe they can and maybe they can’t or maybe he needs help — he seemed very willing to get help from us, because he has got a problem and it’s a real problem for us.”
The president signed two other actions Thursday, including one that creates a task force within the Justice Department dedicated to “reducing violent crime in America.”
The “Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety” will have administrative and financial support from the Attorney General’s office, according to the text of the order.
The last action directs the DOJ to implement a plan to “stop crime and crimes of violence against law enforcement officers.”
The order itself instructs the department to “pursue appropriate legislation…that will define new Federal crimes, and increase penalties for existing Federal crimes, in order to prevent violence against Federal, State, tribal, and local law enforcement officers.” That recommended legislation could include “defining new crimes of violence and establishing new mandatory minimum sentences for existing crimes of violence.”
The order also directs a thorough evaluation of all grant funding programs currently administered by the Justice Department.
“It’s a shame what’s been happening to our great — truly great — law enforcement officers,” the president said at the signing. “That’s going to stop as of today.”
Russian organized crime is not a new phenomenon by any stretch and does operate in the United States. In 2011:
Russian organized crime syndicates and criminally linked oligarchs may attempt to collude with state or state-allied actors to undermine competition in strategic markets like natural gas, oil, aluminum, and precious metals, the National Security Council attests. At the same time, transnational criminal networks in Russia are establishing new ties to global drug trafficking networks to raise quick capital. Nuclear material trafficking is an especially prominent concern in the former Soviet Union, the report stated, adding that the US would continue to cooperate with Moscow and the nations of the region to combat illicit drugs and organized crime.
The report singled out the Russian mob run by Semion Mogilevich. He is wanted by the US for fraud, racketeering, and money laundering and was recently added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list.
Mogilevich and several members of his organization were charged in 2003 in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in a 45-count racketeering indictment with involvement in a sophisticated securities fraud and money-laundering scheme, in which they allegedly used a Pennsylvania company, YBM Magnex, to defraud investors of more than $150 million. Even after that indictment—and being placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list—Mogilevich has continued to expand his operations. Mogilevich was arrested by Russian police on tax charges in January 2008 and was released pending trial in July 2009. Other members of his organization remain at large.
Mogilevich’s criminal empire currently operates in Europe (including Italy, Chech Republic, Switzerland and Russia) the United States, the Ukraine, Israel and the United Kingdom. He also allegedly has ties with organized crime in South America, Pakistan and Japan. Mogilevich is considered one of the smartest and most powerful gangsters in the world. More here from Forbes.
**** Meanwhile, about those casinos and the fun slot machines, at least for those who cheat…
Wired: In early June 2014, accountants at the Lumiere Place Casino in St. Louis noticed that several of their slot machines had—just for a couple of days—gone haywire. The government-approved software that powers such machines gives the house a fixed mathematical edge, so that casinos can be certain of how much they’ll earn over the long haul—say, 7.129 cents for every dollar played. But on June 2 and 3, a number of Lumiere’s machines had spit out far more money than they’d consumed, despite not awarding any major jackpots, an aberration known in industry parlance as a negative hold. Since code isn’t prone to sudden fits of madness, the only plausible explanation was that someone was cheating.
Casino security pulled up the surveillance tapes and eventually spotted the culprit, a black-haired man in his thirties who wore a Polo zip-up and carried a square brown purse. Unlike most slots cheats, he didn’t appear to tinker with any of the machines he targeted, all of which were older models manufactured by Aristocrat Leisure of Australia. Instead he’d simply play, pushing the buttons on a game like Star Drifter or Pelican Pete while furtively holding his iPhone close to the screen.
He’d walk away after a few minutes, then return a bit later to give the game a second chance. That’s when he’d get lucky. The man would parlay a $20 to $60 investment into as much as $1,300 before cashing out and moving on to another machine, where he’d start the cycle anew. Over the course of two days, his winnings tallied just over $21,000. The only odd thing about his behavior during his streaks was the way he’d hover his finger above the Spin button for long stretches before finally jabbing it in haste; typical slots players don’t pause between spins like that.
On June 9, Lumiere Place shared its findings with the Missouri Gaming Commission, which in turn issued a statewide alert. Several casinos soon discovered that they had been cheated the same way, though often by different men than the one who’d bilked Lumiere Place. In each instance, the perpetrator held a cell phone close to an Aristocrat Mark VI model slot machine shortly before a run of good fortune.
By examining rental-car records, Missouri authorities identified the Lumiere Place scammer as Murat Bliev, a 37-year-old Russian national. Bliev had flown back to Moscow on June 6, but the St. Petersburg–based organization he worked for, which employs dozens of operatives to manipulate slot machines around the world, quickly sent him back to the United States to join another cheating crew. The decision to redeploy Bliev to the US would prove to be a rare misstep for a venture that’s quietly making millions by cracking some of the gaming industry’s most treasured algorithms.
From Russia With Cheats
Russia has been a hotbed of slots-related malfeasance since 2009, when the country outlawed virtually all gambling. (Vladimir Putin, who was prime minister at the time, reportedly believed the move would reduce the power of Georgian organized crime.) The ban forced thousands of casinos to sell their slot machines at steep discounts to whatever customers they could find. Some of those cut-rate slots wound up in the hands of counterfeiters eager to learn how to load new games onto old circuit boards. Others apparently went to Murat Bliev’s bosses in St. Petersburg, who were keen to probe the machines’ source code for vulnerabilities.
By early 2011, casinos throughout central and eastern Europe were logging incidents in which slots made by the Austrian company Novomatic paid out improbably large sums. Novomatic’s engineers could find no evidence that the machines in question had been tampered with, leading them to theorize that the cheaters had figured out how to predict the slots’ behavior. “Through targeted and prolonged observation of the individual game sequences as well as possibly recording individual games, it might be possible to allegedly identify a kind of ‘pattern’ in the game results,” the company admitted in a February 2011 notice to its customers.
Recognizing those patterns would require remarkable effort. Slot machine outcomes are controlled by programs called pseudorandom number generators that produce baffling results by design. Government regulators, such as the Missouri Gaming Commission, vet the integrity of each algorithm before casinos can deploy it.
But as the “pseudo” in the name suggests, the numbers aren’t truly random. Because human beings create them using coded instructions, PRNGs can’t help but be a bit deterministic. (A true random number generator must be rooted in a phenomenon that is not manmade, such as radioactive decay.) PRNGs take an initial number, known as a seed, and then mash it together with various hidden and shifting inputs—the time from a machine’s internal clock, for example—in order to produce a result that appears impossible to forecast. But if hackers can identify the various ingredients in that mathematical stew, they can potentially predict a PRNG’s output. That process of reverse engineering becomes much easier, of course, when a hacker has physical access to a slot machine’s innards.
Knowing the secret arithmetic that a slot machine uses to create pseudorandom results isn’t enough to help hackers, though. That’s because the inputs for a PRNG vary depending on the temporal state of each machine. The seeds are different at different times, for example, as is the data culled from the internal clocks. So even if they understand how a machine’s PRNG functions, hackers would also have to analyze the machine’s gameplay to discern its pattern. That requires both time and substantial computing power, and pounding away on one’s laptop in front of a Pelican Pete is a good way to attract the attention of casino security.
The Lumiere Place scam showed how Murat Bliev and his cohorts got around that challenge. After hearing what had happened in Missouri, a casino security expert named Darrin Hoke, who was then director of surveillance at L’Auberge du Lac Casino Resort in Lake Charles, Louisiana, took it upon himself to investigate the scope of the hacking operation. By interviewing colleagues who had reported suspicious slot machine activity and by examining their surveillance photos, he was able to identify 25 alleged operatives who’d worked in casinos from California to Romania to Macau. Hoke also used hotel registration records to discover that two of Bliev’s accomplices from St. Louis had remained in the US and traveled west to the Pechanga Resort & Casino in Temecula, California. On July 14, 2014, agents from the California Department of Justice detained one of those operatives at Pechanga and confiscated four of his cell phones, as well as $6,000. (The man, a Russian national, was not indicted; his current whereabouts are unknown.)
The cell phones from Pechanga, combined with intelligence from investigations in Missouri and Europe, revealed key details. According to Willy Allison, a Las Vegas–based casino security consultant who has been tracking the Russian scam for years, the operatives use their phones to record about two dozen spins on a game they aim to cheat. They upload that footage to a technical staff in St. Petersburg, who analyze the video and calculate the machine’s pattern based on what they know about the model’s pseudorandom number generator. Finally, the St. Petersburg team transmits a list of timing markers to a custom app on the operative’s phone; those markers cause the handset to vibrate roughly 0.25 seconds before the operative should press the spin button.
“The normal reaction time for a human is about a quarter of a second, which is why they do that,” says Allison, who is also the founder of the annual World Game Protection Conference. The timed spins are not always successful, but they result in far more payouts than a machine normally awards: Individual scammers typically win more than $10,000 per day. (Allison notes that those operatives try to keep their winnings on each machine to less than $1,000, to avoid arousing suspicion.) A four-person team working multiple casinos can earn upwards of $250,000 in a single week.
Repeat Business
Since there are no slot machines to swindle in his native country, Murat Bliev didn’t linger long in Russia after his return from St. Louis. He made two more trips to the US in 2014, the second of which began on December 3. He went straight from Chicago O’Hare Airport to St. Charles, Missouri, where he met up with three other men who’d been trained to scam Aristocrat’s Mark VI model slot machines: Ivan Gudalov, Igor Larenov, and Yevgeniy Nazarov. The quartet planned to spend the next several days hitting various casinos in Missouri and western Illinois.
Bliev should never have come back. On December 10, not long after security personnel spotted Bliev inside the Hollywood Casino in St. Louis, the four scammers were arrested. Because Bliev and his cohorts had pulled their scam across state lines, federal authorities charged them with conspiracy to commit fraud. The indictments represented the first significant setbacks for the St. Petersburg organization; never before had any of its operatives faced prosecution.
Bliev, Gudalov, and Larenov, all of whom are Russian citizens, eventually accepted plea bargains and were each sentenced to two years in federal prison, to be followed by deportation. Nazarov, a Kazakh who was granted religious asylum in the US in 2013 and is a Florida resident, still awaits sentencing, which indicates that he is cooperating with the authorities: In a statement to WIRED, Aristocrat representatives noted that one of the four defendants has yet to be sentenced because he “continues to assist the FBI with their investigations.”
Whatever information Nazarov provides may be too outdated to be of much value. In the two years since the Missouri arrests, the St. Petersburg organization’s field operatives have become much cagier. Some of their new tricks were revealed last year, when Singaporean authorities caught and prosecuted a crew: One member, a Czech named Radoslav Skubnik, spilled details about the organization’s financial structure (90 percent of all revenue goes back to St. Petersburg) as well as operational tactics. “What they’ll do now is they’ll put the cell phone in their shirt’s chest pocket, behind a little piece of mesh,” says Allison. “So they don’t have to hold it in their hand while they record.” And Darrin Hoke, the security expert, says he has received reports that scammers may be streaming video back to Russia via Skype, so they no longer need to step away from a slot machine to upload their footage.
The Missouri and Singapore cases appear to be the only instances in which scammers have been prosecuted, though a few have also been caught and banned by individual casinos. At the same time, the St. Petersburg organization has sent its operatives farther and farther afield. In recent months, for example, at least three casinos in Peru have reported being cheated by Russian gamblers who played aging Novomatic Coolfire slot machines.
The economic realities of the gaming industry seem to guarantee that the St. Petersburg organization will continue to flourish. The machines have no easy technical fix. As Hoke notes, Aristocrat, Novomatic, and any other manufacturers whose PRNGs have been cracked “would have to pull all the machines out of service and put something else in, and they’re not going to do that.” (In Aristocrat’s statement to WIRED, the company stressed that it has been unable “to identify defects in the targeted games” and that its machines “are built to and approved against rigid regulatory technical standards.”) At the same time, most casinos can’t afford to invest in the newest slot machines, whose PRNGs use encryption to protect mathematical secrets; as long as older, compromised machines are still popular with customers, the smart financial move for casinos is to keep using them and accept the occasional loss to scammers.
So the onus will be on casino security personnel to keep an eye peeled for the scam’s small tells. A finger that lingers too long above a spin button may be a guard’s only clue that hackers in St. Petersburg are about to make another score.
What is President Clinton say in the State of the Union address in 1995 on immigration? It got a standing ovation. It is time to have this debate in a wide and deep context including the financial and social and legal consequences.
NumbersUSA: Chain Migration is the main reason that American workers have had to compete for wages and jobs with tens of millions of new immigrants who have been given lifetime work permits the last several decades.
40% IMMEDIATE REDUCTION IN ANNUAL IMMIGRATION
Sen. Cotton says his bill would reduce the number of lifetime work permits given to foreign citizens by around 40% the first year — and by around 50% in the tenth year after passage.
Ending Chain Migration is the primary way the bill would achieve that goal.
For several decades, immigrants no longer have been limited to bringing in a spouse and minor children. Chain Migration categories allow each immigrant (once a citizen) to petition for adult brothers and sisters, for adult sons and daughters, and for parents. Each of them can in turn do the same along with bringing their own spouses who can start whole new chains in their own families, and so forth in a never-ending pattern.
Sen. Cotton would stop all of that immigration which adds millions of workers each decade without any regard to their skills or how they would affect Americans competing in the same occupations.
By limiting family immigration to a spouse and minor children — including overseas adoptions and marriages by U.S. citizens — Sen. Cotton says the bill would . . .
” . . . restore historical levels of immigration in order to give working Americans a fair shot at wealth creation.”
At around one million a year since 1990, overall annual legal immigration has been some THREE times higher than the historical average before then.
A RARE OPPORTUNITY
Sen. Cotton’s bill will be the first since 1996 to challenge the Senate to eliminate future Chain Migration.
It was in 1996 that we started NumbersUSA with our Number One legislative goal being to end Chain Migration, as recommended by the bi-partisan federal commission chaired by the Civil Rights icon Barbara Jordan.
Sen. Cotton has boldly indicated today that he will assume the leadership to advance that vision of an immigration policy that first serves the interests of our national community’s workers, especially its most vulnerable.
This year represents a rare opportunity. It is the first time in nearly a hundred years that there is a President in the White House who has declared his intention to reduce the overall numerical level of immigration.
THE PROBLEM BEING ADDRESSED
Sen. Cotton is titling his bill the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment Act.
Its initials spell RAISE. It’s the RAISE bill. Sen. Cotton wants to give hard-pressed American workers a raise by allowing labor markets to begin to tighten.
Sen. Cotton described the problem his bill is attempting to address:
For over a quarter century, the United States has accepted an average of 1 million immigrants annually—the equivalent of adding the entire state of Montana each year.
When only 1 out of every 15 immigrants arrives in the United States on a skills-based visa, the majority of the remaining immigrants are either low-skill or unskilled.
This generation-long influx of low-skilled labor has been a major factor in the downward pressure on the wages of working Americans, with the wages of recent immigrants hardest hit.
Wages for Americans with only high school diplomas have declined by 2 percent since the late 1970s, and for those who didn’t finish high school, they have declined by nearly 20 percent. This collapse in wages threatens to create a near permanent underclass for whom the American Dream is always just out of reach.
THE ‘RAISE’ SOLUTION
Sen. Cotton describes the key elements of his bill like this:
Eliminate Outdated Diversity Visa Lottery: The Lottery is plagued with fraud, it advances no economic or humanitarian interest, and it does not even deliver the diversity of its namesake. The RAISE Act would eliminate the 50,000 visas arbitrarily allocated to this lottery.
Place Responsible Limit on Permanent Residency for Refugees: The RAISE Act would limit refugees offered permanent residency to 50,000 per year, in line with a 13-year average. (This is the same annual refugee cap in Pres. Trump’s executive order. It is also the cap recommended in the 1980 Refugee Act, which is current law but which Presidents have routinely exceeded.)
Prioritize Immediate Family Households. The RAISE Act would retain immigration preferences for the spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents.
Eliminated would be green card categories for foreign citizens who are:
Adult parents of U.S. citizens
Adult brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens
Unmarried adult sons & daughters of U.S. citizens
Married adult sons & daughters of U.S. citizens
Unmarried adult sons & daughters of legal permanent residents
Create Temporary Visa for Parents in Need of Caretaking: For U.S. citizens who wish to bring elderly parents in need of care-taking to the United States, the RAISE Act creates a renewable temporary visa on the condition that the parents are not permitted to work, cannot access public benefits, and must be guaranteed support and health insurance by their sponsoring children.
The difference in this being a wonderful bill and it being an incredibly helpful law is likely to be the degree to which the 8 million members of NumbersUSA’s online grassroots army make it clear to their Members of Congress and to Pres. Trump that this is a TRUE PRIORITY.
The Guardian takes huge exception to what President Trump said. There is merit in the Guardian’s rebuke. What could be in question however, is the outcome of the estimated thousand domestic cases the FBI is or was investigating, and this does remain unclear. Yet, it could be too that President Trump and his team are conflating the definition of terror attacks as there are cases of murder, too many to list done at the hands of illegals across the homeland.
TIMELINE: September, 2014 – December, 2016
NUMBER OF ATTACKS: 78
It is not clear why these dates were chosen. A December 2016 cut-off excludes the Québec City mosque attack from the list. There were more than 78 terrorist attacks in that period – the ones selected by the White House are almost exclusively those linked – or rumoured to be linked – to Islamic State. The White House text is reproduced in bold and its errors have been kept.
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA September, 2014
TARGET: Two police officers wounded in knife attack
ATTACKER: Abdul Numan Haider
Global media organisations including the Guardian, BBC, CNN and Fox News were among those who covered this story.
TIZI OUZOU, ALGERIA September, 2014
TARGET: One French citizen beheaded
ATTACKER: Jund al-Khilafah in Algeria
OTTAWA, CANADA October, 2014
TARGET: One soldier killed at war memorial; two wounded in shootings at Parliament building
ATTACKER: Michael Zehaf-Bibeau
People place flowers in remembrance of Cpl Nathan Cirillo after he was killed by a gunman in Ottawa. Photograph: Andrew Burton/Getty Images
NEW YORK CITY, NY, USA October, 2014
TARGET: Two police officers wounded in knife attack
ATTACKER: US person
This is vague but seems to refer to Zale Thompson, also known as Zaim Farouq Abdul-Malik, described as a “self-radicalised” Muslim convert. He was killed by police.
RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA November, 2014
TARGET: One Danish citizen wounded in shooting
ATTACKERS: Three Saudi Arabia-based ISIL members
TRIPOLI, LIBYA January, 2015
TARGET: Ten killed, including one US citizen, and five wounded in bombing and shooting at a hotel frequented by westerners
ATTACKERS: As many as five ISIL-Libya members
The Corinthia hotel comes under attack in Tripoli. Photograph: AP
RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA January, 2015
TARGET: Two US citizens wounded in shooting
ATTACKER: Saudi Arabia-based ISIL supporter
It’s not clear to which incident this refers. It could be two employees of Vinnell Arabia who were attacked by a former colleague in Al Ahsa, not Riyadh, that month; or the killing in October 2014 of another US VA employee, which did take place in Riyadh.
NICE, FRANCE February, 2015
TARGET: Two French soldiers wounded in knife attack outside a Jewish community center
ATTACKER: Moussa Coulibaly
COPENHAGEN, DENMARK February, 2015
TARGET: One civilian killed in shooting at a free-speech rally and one security guard killed outside the city’s main synagogue
ATTACKER: Omar Abdel Hamid el-Hussein
Flowers are placed at the site of the shooting in Copenhagen. Photograph: Scanpix Denmark/Reuters
TUNIS, TUNISIA March, 2015
TARGET: 21 tourists killed, including 16 westerners, and 55 wounded in shooting at the Bardo Museum
ATTACKERS: Two ISIL-aligned extremists
In fact 22 people were killed, not including two perpetrators. Mention of “16 westerners” presumably excludes the Tunisian, Japanese and Colombian victims. Isis did claim responsibility but the Tunisian government blamed an al-Qaida splinter group. The story was carried live by many news outlets.
KARACHI, PAKISTAN April, 2015
TARGET: One US citizen wounded in knife attack
ATTACKERS: Pakistan-based ISIL supporters
PARIS, FRANCE April, 2015
TARGET: Catholic churches targeted; one civilian killed in shooting, possibly during an attempted carjacking
ATTACKER: Sid Ahmed Ghlam
Sid Ahmed Ghlam is charged with the attack and is awaiting trial.
ZVORNIK, BOSNIA April, 2015
TARGET: One police officer killed and two wounded in shooting
ATTACKER: Nerdin Ibric
It is true there are few English-language reports on this attack. Here is one.
Officers secure an area near to a police station following a shooting in Zvornik. Photograph: Amel Emric/AP
GARLAND, TX, USA May, 2015
TARGET: One security guard wounded in shooting at the Prophet Muhammad cartoon event
ATTACKERS: Two US persons
The “two US persons” were Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, both killed in the attack.
BOSTON, MA, USA June, 2015
TARGET: No casualties; one police officer attacked with knife
ATTACKER: US person
Very vague but could refer to Usaama Rahim, who was shot dead by police after officers said he “threatened” (not “attacked”) them with a knife. He was under counter-terrorism surveillance.
EL GORA (AL JURAH), EGYPT June, 2015
TARGET: No casualties; camp used by Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) troops attacked in shooting and bombing attack
ATTACKERS: Unknown number of ISIL-Sinai members
Few reports on this in mainstream press, possibly explained by the “no casualties”.
LUXOR, EGYPT June, 2015
TARGET: One police officer killed by suicide bomb near the Temple of Karnak
ATTACKER: Unidentified
This could be wrong. A police officer sustained minor injuries in an attempted suicide bombing at Karnak in which two would-be assailants were killed and one injured. Possibly muddled with an earlier attack near Giza pyramids in which two police officers were killed.
SOUSSE, TUNISIA June, 2015
TARGET: 38 killed and 39 wounded in shooting at a beach frequented by westerners
ATTACKERS: Seifeddine Rezgui and another unidentified attacker
The Sousse massacre was extensively covered. Inquests into the deaths of British victims are ongoing.
CAIRO, EGYPT July, 2015
TARGET: One Croatian national kidnapped; beheaded on August 12 at an unknown location
ATTACKER: Unidentified ISIL-Sinai operative
The kidnapping and beheading of Tomislav Salopek received worldwide attention.
PARIS, FRANCE August, 2015
TARGET: Two civilians and one US soldier wounded with firearms and knife on a passenger train
ATTACKER: Ayoub el-Khazzani
Passengers who helped subdue the attacker were awarded the French legion of honour. Barack Obama personally called the three Americans involved to thank them.
EL GORA, EGYPT September, 2015
TARGET: Four US and two MFO troops wounded in IED attack
ATTACKER: Unidentified
MERCED, CA, US November, 2015
TARGET: Four wounded in knife attack on a college campus ATTAKER: US person
Faisal Mohammad, whom the FBI called an Isis-inspired “lone wolf”, was shot dead. But why highlight this and the Ohio State University attack and not, say, these other campus attacks?
PARIS, FRANCE November, 2015
TARGET: At least 129 killed and approximately 400 wounded in series of shootings and IED attacks
ATTAKERS: Brahim Abdelslam, Saleh Abdeslam, Ismail Mostefai, Bilal Hadfi, Samy Amimour, Chakib Ahrouh, Foued Mohamed Aggad, and Abdelhamid Abaaoud
The White House surely cannot include the Paris attacks in the “most” on this list that it thinks were under-reported. It omits the names of three of the 11 men involved in the attack, and spells Chakib Akrouh’s name wrong. The death toll for the attacks stands at 130.
CAIRO, EGYPT January, 2016
TARGET: Two wounded in drive-by shooting outside a hotel frequented by tourists
ATTAKERS: Unidentified ISIL operatives
Another unclear one. There was a drive-by shooting outside a Cairo hotel that month, though no injuries were reported. A police officer and a soldier were shot dead in a separate incident in the following days.
PARIS, FRANCE January, 2016
TARGET: No casualties; attacker killed after attempted knife attack on Paris police station
ATTAKER: Tarek Belgacem
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA January, 2016
TARGET: One police officer wounded in shooting
ATTAKER: US person
The case of Jesse Hartnett, the police labor union said after the White House claim, was covered adequately and fairly.
HURGHADA, EGYPT January, 2016
TARGET: One German and one Danish national wounded in knife attack at a tourist resort
ATTAKER: Unidentified
As with the Cairo incident cited above, this is not clear. Three people – two Austrians and a Swede – were stabbed at a Hurghada resort. One perpetrator was shot dead.
MARSEILLES, FRANCE January, 2016
TARGET: One Jewish teacher wounded in machete attack
ATTAKER: 15 year-old Ethnic Kurd from Turkey
The coffins of 12 German tourists arrive back at Berlin’s Tegel airport. Photograph: Axel Schmidt/AP
JAKARTA, INDONESIA January, 2016
TARGET: Four civilians killed and more than 20 wounded in coordinated bombing and firearms attacks near a police station and a Starbucks
ATTAKERS: Dian Joni Kurnaiadi, Muhammad Ali, Arif Sunakim, and Ahmad Muhazan bin Saron
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM March, 2016
TARGET: At least 31 killed and 270 wounded in coordinated bombings at Zaventem Airport and on a subway train
ATTAKERS: Khalid el-Bakraoui, Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, Najim Laachraoui, Mohammed Abrini, and Osama Krayem
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN June, 2016
TARGET: 14 killed in suicide attack on a bus carrying Canadian Embassy guards
ATTAKER: ISIL-Khorasan operative
Although mostly covered in Canada, the attack was reported globally. The victims were Nepalese.
ISTANBUL, TURKEY June, 2016
TARGET: 45 killed and approximately 240 wounded at Ataturk International Airport
ATTACKERS: Rakhim Bulgarov, Vadim Osmanov, and an unidentified ISIL operative
Another deadly attack in Turkey dominated news headlines. The two identified perpetrators are reported to be Russian.
DHAKA, BANGLADESH July, 2016
TARGET: 22 killed, including one American and 50 wounded after hours-long siege using machetes and firearms at holy Artisan Bakery
ATTACKERS: Nibras Islam, Rohan Imtiaz, Meer Saameh Mubasheer, Khairul Islam Paye, and Shafiqul Islam Uzzal
Officers secure the area around a police building in Charleroi. Photograph: Virginie Lefour/AFP/Getty Images
QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA August, 2016
TARGET: Two killed and one wounded in knife attack at a hostel frequented by Westerners
ATTACKER: Smail Ayad
Smail Ayad has been charged but not brought to trial; proceedings have been suspended and referred to the mental health court. Police and the mother of one of the victims have said extremism was not a factor.
COPENHAGEN, DENMAKR September, 2016
TARGET: Two police officers and a civilian wounded in shooting
ATTACKER: Mesa Hodzic
PARIS, FRANCE September, 2016
TARGET: One police officer wounded in raid after VBIED failed to detonate at Notre Dame Cathedral
ATTACKERS: Sarah Hervouet, Ines Madani, and Amel Sakaou
NEW YORK, NY; SEASIDE PARK AND ELIZABETH, NJ, US September, 2016
TARGET: 31 wounded in bombing in New York City; several explosive devices found in New York and New Jersey; one exploded without casualty at race in New Jersey; one police officer wounded in shootout
ATTACKER: Ahmad Khan Rahami
HAMBURG, GERMANY October, 2016
TARGET: One killed in knife attack
ATTACKER: Unknown
The story that a 16-year-old boy had been killed attracted global attention. Isis claimed responsibility but police say a motive has not been confirmed.
MANILA, PHILIPPINES November, 2016
TARGET: No casualties; failed IED attempt near US Embassy
ATTACKERS: Philippine nationals aligned with the Maute group
Police said there were no explosives in the package.
COLUMBUS, OH, US November, 2016
TARGET: 14 wounded by individuals who drove a vehicle into a group of pedestrians and attacked them with a knife
ATTACKER: US person
