Over the weekend, CEG published a new report examining the terror threat Europe has faced over the fifteen-month period since ISIS relinquished control of the last part of its Caliphate in Syria in Iraq. The report, ‘Europe and the Fall of the Caliphate’, can be read here. Its findings were featured in this Sunday Telegraph story. The headline – ‘Jihadists attempted terror attacks every fortnight in Europe since ISIS fall, study finds’ – sums up one of the report’s key findings. Despite the fall of the Caliphate, Islamist plotting continues. For further proof of that, just at look at what has happened in Europe...

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On May 22, 2017, Salman Abedi carried out a suicide bombing at Manchester Arena that killed 22 and injured over 100 others. He was assisted by his younger brother, Hashem Abedi, who was jailed for 55 years for his involvement. The sentencing judge in that trial described the motivation behind the attack as “ to advance the ideological cause of Islamism”. This week, a public inquiry began investigating those deaths. The purpose of the inquiry is to determine what happened and to learn where mistakes were made to prevent it from happening again. As the chairman of the inquiry Sir...

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In the latest edition of CTC Sentinel, Robin Simcox and Hannah Stuart examines the threat posed by jihadi prisoners in Europe from two different angles: (1) terror plots and attacks that occurred inside and outside prisons in Western Europe from 2014 in which at least one of the attackers/plotters had been convicted in Europe of a previous terrorism offense; and (2) various forms of recidivism from a comprehensive database relating to U.K. jihadi terror activity. Read the full article here.

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The Times today reports that Counter Terrorism Policing have been asked by advocacy group the National Association of Muslim Police (NAMP) to use alternative terminology when describing Islamist terrorism, in order that it does not “have a direct link to Islam and jihad”. Some context: this type of extremism continues to be the largest terrorist threat to the UK. Currently, Counter Terrorism Policing is working on 800 live investigations and attempting to monitor up to 43,000 current and historic ‘subjects of interest’ - the vast majority inspired by Islamism (approximately 80%). Yet this is not the first time that the notion...

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It is 15 years to the day since the July 7, 2005 suicide bombings in London. These were the first Islamist terror attacks that the UK had experienced, leaving 52 dead and around 700 injured. Since then we have had a Labour Prime Minister declare that “the rules of the game are changing” and –  after suffering a spate of Islamist terror attacks in 2017 – a Conservative Prime Minister warn that “enough is enough”. Yet neither party was quite able to back up tough words with policies to match. A persistent threat remains. The stabbing in Reading last month that...

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