The Guardian 24/03/2016 - During the more dangerous and consistent IRA bombing campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s, Labour and Conservative governments insisted on treating terrorism as criminal, not political. They relied on the police and security services to guard against a threat that could never be eliminated, only diminished. On the whole it worked, and without undue harm to civil liberties. Those who live under freedom know it demands a price, which is a degree of risk. We pay the state to protect us - but calmly, without constant boasting or fearmongering. We know that, in reality, life in Britain has never been safer. That it suits some people to pretend otherwise does not alter the fact. In his admiral manual, Terrorism: How to Respond, the Belfast academic Richard English defines the threat to democracy as not the "limited danger" of death and destruction. It is the danger "of provoking ill-judged, extravagant and counterproductive state responses". The menace of Brussels lies not in the terror, but in the reaction to the terror. It is the reaction we should fear.

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Vérification faite: plus d'attentats qu'avant?

Islamic State bragged that its attacks would help break up the European Union

"Moi, le Coran, je m'en tape": les jeunes djihadistes français dirigés par une révolte personnelle et l'ultraviolence, pas par l'islam

ISIL and the myth of the European jihadist hordes

 
 
Global News 17/03/2016 - It's been 10 years since a Canadian citizen was arrested and eventually sentenced to life in prison in China on widely condemned terrorism charges, and his wife and four young boys are still searching for answers. During a trip to his wife's native Uzbekistan in March 2006, Huseyin Celil - who fled to Canada as a political refugee from China in 2001 and became a Canadian citizen four years later - was arrested by Uzbek police and handed over to Chinese authorities. Rights groups said he was not given access to Canadian consular officials, faced torture in custody, a forced confession and an unjust trial simply for being an outspoken critic of China's treatment of the Uighur people - a Muslim minority group in the country's violence-prone far western region of Xinjiang. A decade later, little has been done to secure Celil's release, highlighting a gap in the federal government's system for the protection of Canadians abroad.

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CBC News 21/03/2016 - Terrorism charges laid against Libyan-Canadian Salim Alaradi, detained for nearly two years in the United Arab Emirates, have been dropped, his lawyer Paul Champ told CBC Windsor Morning on Monday. After spending 17 months in a U.A.E. prison, the Windsor businessman was charged with several terrorism-related charges in January. Alaradi had been charged with funding and co-operating with terrorist organizations, according to Champ, an Ottawa human rights lawyer hired by Alaradi's family, which calls Windsor, Ont., home. Alaradi had pleaded not guilty to all charges. Champ called Monday's news "quite a dramatic turn." "It was quite a surprise for everyone involved," Champ said. The judge on Monday did lay a new charge of collecting donations without permission of the appropriate ministry and sending them to a foreign country. Champ called it "a far less serious charge" that falls under the U.A.E. penal code. Alaradi's daughter, Marwa Alaradi, told CBC News the new charge is fabricated as well.

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Press release: ICLMG welcomes the UAE prosecution's decision to drop the terrorism charges in the case of Canadian Salim Alaradi

Monia Mazigh: Our friends the Gulf sheikhs and the case of Salim Alaradi

The Huffington Post 24/03/2016 - At least four federal agencies have used controversial information-sharing powers in Canada's new anti-terrorism law, internal government documents show. Briefing notes prepared for Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale say Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the Canada Border Services Agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and a fourth agency whose name is blacked out of the records have used the provisions. [...] The sharing law drew criticism last year from privacy commissioner Daniel Therrien, who said it could make available all federally held information about someone of interest to as many as 17 government departments and agencies with responsibilities for national security. The legislation set the threshold for sharing Canadians' personal data far too low, he said. In addition, Therrien was concerned the bill contained no clear limits on how long the information would be kept. [...] "The risk is that it's being used in ways that are going to be difficult to predict because of the overbreadth and uncertainty of that act, and it's going to be used in ways that are difficult to police," said Forcese, co-author of False Security, a book that squarely criticizes the omnibus bill."

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The Huffington Post 21/03/2016 - The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal is investigating whether the country's largest airline discriminated against an Arab-Canadian man through overzealous use of U.S. aviation security lists. The investigation of Air Canada's refusal to let him board a plane comes amid controversy about dozens of Canadian youngsters facing airport delays over security list mixups and high-level efforts by the federal government to resolve the problems in Washington. The court-like human rights tribunal will determine whether the airline discriminated against the Syrian-Canadian man on grounds of race, national or ethnic origin, or his Muslim religion by denying him service, and whether its reliance on the American lists amounted to a discriminatory practice.

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Blackwater's founder is under investigation for money laundering, ties to Chinese intel, and brokering mercenary services

What the guilty verdict of Radovan Karadzic tells us about war crimes after 9/11