Another new piece for Free Rad!cals, this time adding my two cents to the Hasan Malik story. More on this later when I finally get around to completing my larger piece on Lone Wolves.
Lone Wolf Malik
Filed under: North America, Radicalisation
While I recognize that I still owe a piece on Prevent in the UK, the events in Fort Hood have sparked off a different line of thought which I thought I would quickly scribble down – this is the aspect of Major Nidal Malik Hasan as a Lone Wolf.
Let me quickly emphasize two things, one I do not have some sort of morbid fascination with the concept of Lone Wolves, and two, I am not by any means prejudging what might later come out about Hasan Malik.
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Filed under: Free Rad!cals | Tags: Europe, Italy, lone wolves, radicalization, terrorism
Well, for those of you who are avid followers, good news! I will now be producing more regularly over at the FreeRad!cals website run by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (tidily abbreviated to ICSR) – in fact, I have now already gotten started, here is a brief bio/introductory piece and below is my first article. I am hoping to regularly cross post between the two, and welcome any thoughts on either site.
(One final comment, I am hoping that Lone Wolf Pack will become part of the canon of radicalization-speak – anyone see it anywhere else, please give me a heads-up!)
http://icsr.info/blog/Lone-Wolves-Pack-stalks-Milan
Lone Wolves Pack stalks Milan
View more articles by Raff Pantucci
Filed under: Europe, Radicalisation
A couple of weeks have passed since 35-year old Libyan Mohamed Game attempted, in an alleged revenge for Italian involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, to carry out a suicide attack on the Santa Barbara army barracks in Milan, where forces going to Afghanistan are based.
Using a fertilizer-based explosive concealed in a tool box, Game detonated his bomb in the morning of October 12, apparently as a reference to 12 November 2003 when a suicide bomber blew up an Italian military police base in Iraq killing 19 Italians. The bomb failed to completely explode, mutilating Game (his hand was amputated, he was blinded by shrapnel and remains on life support), while only injuring one guard at the base.
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It has been a while since anything has come out, but a couple of longer pieces in the pipeline and working on a tough thing in a foreign field have kept me from publishing much. But don’t worry avid followers, more is forthcoming to keep you sated…In the meantime, here is a shorter piece for HSToday about the downgrading of the threat in the UK.
http://www.hstoday.us/content/view/9594/152/
UK recalibrates terror threat level
by Raffaello Pantucci
Thursday, 30 July 2009
Lowering of threat level by British authorities reflects increasing fragmentation of terror networks.
As the UK passed the fourth anniversary of the July 7, 2005 bombings, Home Secretary Alan Johnson announced that the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) had decided to lower “the UK threat level from international terrorism from severe to substantial.” He went on to clarify that this meant that in the government’s eyes, “a terrorist attack is a strong possibility” but “based on the very latest intelligence, considering factors such as capability, intent and timescale,” it was now lower than before.
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