This ends our live blogging for January 10. Check back tomorrow when Joanna Paraszczuk will resume her coverage of Islamic State.
There has been a call for an urgent security review of how the Paris attacks ringleader took a ferry to Britain, The Guardian reports:
The Home Office is facing calls to launch an urgent review of security at ferry terminals after it emerged the Islamic State commander who planned the terror atrocities in Paris travelled undetected through Dover earlier last year.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud was a wanted terrorist at the time of his visit, in which he was able to visit fellow jihadis under the noses of Britain’s security services and police. While in the UK, Abaaoud also took pictures of British landmarks on his phone.
The shadow home secretary, Andy Burnham, has urged Theresa May to hold an urgent review of security at UK ferry terminals. "This adds to the growing questions about about border security at our seaports," he said.
The man shot dead in a Paris police station stayed in a German asylum center, our news desk reports:
German investigators say a man who attacked a police station in Paris had lived in a center for asylum-seekers in Germany.
The man tried to storm a police station in northern Paris on January 7, the first anniversary of the deadly attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in the French capital.
Police shot and killed the man, who brandished a meat cleaver and wore a fake suicide vest.
German investigators assisting the probe raided an apartment at a shelter for asylum-seekers in Recklinghausen, in the west of the country, on January 9.
Their statement gave no other details.
The news website Spiegel Online reported that the man had already been classified by German police as a possible security threat after he posed with an Islamist State flag at the refugee center.
He reportedly disappeared from the shelter in December.
French investigators tentatively identified the suspect as a Tunisian named Tarek Belgacem. (AFP, dpa)
That concludes our live blog for today. Please check tomorrow for more news.
From AP:
Iraqi refugee's brother shocked by terrorism arrest
HOUSTON (AP) — The brother of an Iraqi refugee who had settled in Texas said he is in shock after learning that his sibling — who had come to the U.S. to escape the violence in their homeland — is now facing charges that he tried to help the Islamic State group.
Federal authorities allege 24-year-old Omar Faraj Saeed al-Hardan of Houston was coordinating efforts with another Iraqi refugee living in Sacramento, California, Aws Mohammed Younis al-Jayab, to get weapons training and eventually sneak into Syria to fight alongside the terrorist group.
Both men remain jailed after initial court appearances on Friday. Al Hardan was indicted on three charges, including attempting to provide material support for terrorists, and faces up to 25 years in prison. Al-Jayab faces up to eight years in prison on charges of traveling to Syria to fight and lying to U.S. authorities about his travels.
Saeed Faraj Saeed Al Hardan, Omar Al Hardan's older brother, said he was surprised by the charges against his sibling because neither Omar nor anybody in their family had ever expressed any support for the Islamic State.
"Nobody likes ISIS at all. Nobody supports ISIS at all," Saeed Al Hardan, 37, who also lives in Houston, told The Associated Press on Friday. Saeed Al Hardan, who speaks Arabic, spoke in English during the interview but also had a friend translate for him.
Al Hardan said he believes his brother is innocent and that his sibling denied wrongdoing during a Friday telephone call from the Federal Detention Center in Houston.
Authorities say Omar Al Hardan and Al-Jayab used social media to discuss their support of the terrorist group. Al-Jayab and Al Hardan communicated in April 2013, and Al Hardan expressed interest in fighting in Syria, authorities said.
Saeed Al Hardan said the FBI showed him copies of pages from Facebook in which his brother Omar had made comments but that there was nothing that indicated Omar was talking to someone from the Islamic State.
Omar talked to cousins and friends on Facebook but he didn't talk to them about the Islamic State, Saeed Al Hardan said.
"ISIS is no good," he said. "ISIS is not Muslim."
Omar Al Hardan and his parents came to Houston in 2009, with Saeed Al Hardan and his wife arriving a year later. The family had lived in Baghdad but their ancestry is Palestinian. The two brothers as well as their parents were born in Iraq.
Saeed Al Hardan, who is Sunni, said his family left Iraq because the country had become too dangerous for them. His family was scared they would be killed and he had several cousins who died because of the violence, Saeed Al Hardan said.
"After Saddam Hussein, no good for anybody in Iraq," he said.
Omar Al Hardan had worked as a limousine driver for the past year and before that had worked in a mechanic shop. He is married and has an 8-month-old son. His brother works in a hotel performing maintenance, is married and has two children.
Saeed Al Hardan said he and his brother are legal permanent residents and that he's applying for U.S. citizenship.
Saeed Al Hardan said with his brother's arrest, he and his family are afraid for their safety. He said his brother's wife and parents have been threatened with eviction from their apartment complex.
From the RFE/RL Newsroom:
The arrest on terror charges this week of two Iraqis who entered the United States as refugees is fueling sentiment in Congress against the program for resettling refugees from the Middle East.
Legislation to prevent any further resettlement of refugees was considered in Congress last year after the terrorist attacks in Paris, but was set aside when the White House agreed to more limited curbs on visas for people who traveled to Syria, Iraq, Iran, or Sudan.
But on January 8, after two Iraqi refugees were charged with planning terrorist attacks, some legislators called for a revival of the more punitive legislation.
"How many ticking time bombs are we going to bring in in this refugee program without a proper vetting system in place?" Representative Michael McCaul, chairman of House Homeland Security Committee, asked.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Republican-California) urged the Senate to vote on legislation that passed the House of Representatives in November that would require new FBI background checks and other steps before any refugee could come to the United States from Iraq or Syria, where the Islamic State group is based.
Based on reporting by AP and AFP
From the RFE/RL Newsroom:
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey needs to keep troops in northern Iraq after they thwarted a planned attack on its military training camp there this week by Islamic State (IS) militants.
The assertion on January 8, which Iraq denied, renews a dispute with Baghdad that erupted last month after Turkey deployed a force protection unit of around 150 troops to an area hear Bashiqa where its soldiers have been training Iraqi militia to fight IS militants.
Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul that Turkey killed 18 IS fighters who were planning to inflitrate Bashiqa and attack the camp, in a pre-emptive strike against the IS forces.
"None of our soldiers were wounded," he said, but "this incident shows what a correct step it was" to station additional troops in Bashiqa. "They are doing what needs to be done at the right time, and will continue to do so," he said.
Baghdad has insisted that the troops weren't authorized, violate international law, and must be removed.
Ankara has taken its case to the United States, the United Nations, and other forums to try to force an immediate withdrawal.
But after pulling out some troops under pressure from the United States, Erdogan has ruled out a total withdrawal.
In response to Erdogan's remarks January 8, Iraq's Joint Operations Command in Baghdad issued a statement asserting there was no IS assault on Turkish forces "in Bashiqa or any other areas."
While that conflicted with Erdogan's account, media reports coming out of northern Iraq confirmed that 18 IS fighters were killed there this week.
Some reports said they were killed by coalition air strikes, however, rather than Turkish or Iraqi troops.
Erdogan said he believes Russia is behind Iraq's sudden objection to Turkish troops in the last month.
Relations between Ankara and Moscow took a nosedive at the end of November after Turkey shot down a Russian plane that it says strayed over its border with Syria.
"They [Iraq] asked us to train their soldiers and showed us this base as the venue. But as we see, afterwards, once there were problems between Russia and Turkey...these negative developments began," Erdogan said.
Turkey has pointed out that Baghdad can't protect its military trainers because Iraqi security forces have had no presence in the northern Nineveh Province since they collapsed in June 2014 in the face of a sweeping advance by IS.
With reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP
From RFE/RL's Newsroom:
Gunmen have shot dead a police officer and a soldier as they traveled to work in their car west of the capital, Cairo.
The Interior Ministry said the traffic police district commander and the conscript died on January 9 after coming under fire in the Giza area.
The Islamic State (IS) group claimed responsibility for the attack.
Egypt has seen a wave of terrorist attacks since the army toppled Islamist President Muhammad Morsi in July 2013.
Two armed assailants attacked a hotel in the resort town of Hurgada on January 8, wounding three foreign tourists -- two Austrian guests and a Swede. One assailant was killed and the other injured.
In October, IS militants claimed responsibility for bombing a Russian airliner over Sinai that killed all 224 people on board.
Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters