An EU report warns that a third of the estimated 5,000 European nationals who traveled to Iraq and Syria to join Takfiri terrorists have returned home, probably with a mission to launch attacks. The report, to be presented to EU interior ministers on Friday by the bloc’s counter-terrorism coordinator Gilles de Kerchove, said as many as 1,750 Takfiri terrorists may have returned home.  Fifty-percent of the terrorists remain in the battle theater, which amounted to between 2,000 and 2,500 Europeans, while between 15 to 20 percent of those who joined the terrorists have died, the report added.

There were two types of “foreign terrorist fighters” returning, the report said, identifying them as “those in the majority that will drift back, and those who will be sent back on specific missions, which are of most concern.” Even some European women and children born or raised in areas under the control of Daesh could present a security threat as they may have been influenced by the group’s Takfiri ideology, it added.

Some returnees have been convicted and serving prison sentences, while some others are being carefully monitored and some are free in their communities, the report said without giving any figures. Last month, Belgium warned that Takfiri terrorists were increasingly returning to Europe. Daesh claimed responsibility for March 22 Brussels attacks which killed 32 people. The attackers were linked to November 2015 attacks in Paris, which killed some 130 people.

According to the new report, “there is also a significant foreign terrorist fighter contingent with Daesh in Libya which might attempt to use their nationality or family connections to return to Europe.”  It said the European Takfiris remain in touch with Daesh via social media networks, and are greatly migrating from the from mainstream Twitter social networking service to Telegram end-to-end-encrypted messaging service.

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A Labour lawmaker in the United Kingdom has revealed that the Members of Parliament sexually harass young employees but can go unpunished as their victims feel helpless. Labor MP John Mann made the remarks at the House of Commons’ Standards Committee on Tuesday, saying that sexual assault by politicians at Westminster was a “major issue” to be addressed. “In here [Westminster], there are alleged sexual assaults by current members of Parliament and nowhere for people to go, or they don’t feel confident in going. That’s a major issue,” he said.

Mann called for the necessity of setting up a whistle-blowing service to help victims come forward, adding that the female employees did not feel secure to raise the issue. The lawmaker told the committee that he was aware of cases where staff had “significant issues” with the way current parliamentarians behave towards them but he was powerless to report colleagues to police because “there is no criminality” involved.

“That is not a matter of criminality but [one] that would be potentially an issue for whistle-blowing to make a complaint. The cases I am aware of, there is no criminality otherwise it would be very straightforward. I would be advising go to the police,” he said. In a shocking example, Mann said that older MPs would force young female interns to work late before “pressing” them into going home with them.

“There has been improper sexual behavior in this building that I am aware of with members of staff by Members of Parliament, including in recent times, the last two years, and I have had complaints of that, the individuals do not feel comfortable or confident, working in a political environment, of raising that issue and explicitly did not want me to raise the issue and therefore potentially have them named,” Mann noted.

UK MPs are already embroiled in other sexual scandals. In 2015 alone, reports by UK media reveled that over 247,000 attempts were made by users of the British parliament’s network to check out pornographic material.

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There are reports that the Cameroon embassy in Brussels, the Belgian capital was vandalized by unknown gunmen. Local media reports say the discovery was made by the Cameroon Ambassador to the Kingdom of Belgium, Daniel Evina Abe.

Cameroon Concord News is yet to confirm the correctness of this developing story, but a sister publication Cameroun-info.net recently reported on the incident and cited Cameroon diplomatic sources in Yaoundé.

We gathered that several embassy vehicles including very important documents were carried away. Some reports have suggested that a Cameroonian opposition group may be behind the action. Moreover, an open inquiry announced by the Belgium police has not yet revealed its findings.

By Chi Prudence Asong

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny has warned of a “vicious” approach by the EU in negotiations over Britain’s exit from the bloc. Speaking among politicians, business leaders, trade unionists and community organizations in the capital Dublin on Wednesday, the premier further assured the nation that Brexit would not limit movement between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland by setting a “hard border.”

He said he had been assured by British Prime Minister Theresa May that there would be “no return to the borders of the past” after Brexit. The prime minister also urged leaders of the European Union not to be “obsessed” with the UK’s gains and losses in Brexit negotiations, asserting that “The other side of this argument may well get quite vicious after a while, because there are those around the European table who take a very poor view of the fact that Britain decided to leave.”

Ireland’s foreign minister, Charlie Flanagan, who also attended the Dublin conference along with all leaders of the nationalist political parties on the island, said London was being pushed over maintaining the “invisible” border after Brexit.

“It is vitally important in the context of the [Brexit] negotiations next year that the matter of the invisibility of the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland is not only featured but is both preserved and maintained,” Flanagan said. On June 23, nearly 52 percent of Britons voted in a referendum to end their country’s 42-year membership in the EU. Nearly 56 percent of the voters in Northern Ireland voted in favor of remaining an EU member.

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British Prime Minister Theresa May is facing growing criticism over her comments about Brexit at a leaked private speech to Goldman Sachs. The premier, who has publicly made the case for a hard Brexit following a June referendum, speaks of the “benefits” of being an EU member in the hour-long session, whose audio file was leaked to the Guardian on Tuesday night, drawing harsh criticism on Wednesday.

“I think the economic arguments are clear. I think being part of a 500 million [population] trading bloc is significant for us. I think, as I was saying to you a little earlier, that one of the issues is that a lot of people will invest here in the UK because it is the UK in Europe,” she is heard saying. “If we were not in Europe, I think there would be firms and companies who would be looking to say, do they need to develop a mainland Europe presence rather than a UK presence? So I think there are definite benefits for us in economic terms.”

The leader of the rival Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, attacked the prime minister for having failed to address her own concerns about leaving the European Union. Corbyn has previously been calling on the Tory-held government for a clear plan to exit the bloc.

“The prime minister has given her private views on Brexit to Goldman Sachs bankers, but refuses to give the British people a clear plan for negotiations,” said the Labour leader. “It shouldn’t take a leaked tape for the public to find out what she really thinks.”

The former Labour leader and leading member of the Open Britain campaign group, Ed Miliband, also reacted to the comments, saying, the leaked comments prove that May shares the concerns of all the Britons on Brexit. “If private warnings are to be matched by proper public debate, it is essential that the government is not allowed to hoard vital analysis of the impact on our economy of leaving the single market. This work is being done in government and it must now be published,” he said, asserting that May’s comments “demonstrated that the prime minister was just as worried privately as the rest of us are publicly about the economic impact of the hard, destructive Brexit her government seems set on.”

According to the Guardian, the audio file was leaked as May was “prioritizing cutting immigration over staying in the single market, while refusing to elaborate any further on her plans for taking the UK out of the EU.”

In an unpublished newspaper column written before the June 23 referendum for the Telegraph, UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Boris Johnson, who is another Leave campaigner in the public, also defended remaining an EU member.

“This is a market on our doorstep, ready for further exploitation by British firms. The membership fee seems rather small for all that access. Why are we so determined to turn our back on it?” he wrote, calling the EU a “boon for the world and for Europe.”

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The British bank National Westminster has decided to close down the accounts of the Russian broadcaster RT without offering any explanation.“They’ve closed our accounts in Britain. All our accounts. ‘The decision is not subject to review.’ Praise be to freedom of speech!” the network’s Editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan said in a tweet on Monday.

In a letter to RT’s London office, NatWest announced that it would no longer count the channel as a client, but stopped short of specifying the reason. “We have recently undertaken a review of your banking arrangements with us and reached the conclusion that we will no longer provide these facilities,” the bank’s letter read, adding that the entire Royal Bank of Scotland Group, which owns NatWest, will never service RT.

NatWest said the decision was final and that it was “not prepared to enter into any discussion in relation to it.”Despite the initial statement, Simonyan wrote in tweet on Tuesday that the both parties had agreed to discuss the issue.

She even joked that the bank may simply blame the whole thing on a “computer glitch” and resume its normal business with the network.

No matter the outcome, the RT press office noted that its UK branch “will continue its operations uninterrupted.” NatWest’s decision elicited angry reactions from Russian MPs, the foreign ministry and human rights officials, who unanimously blasted the British government for violating freedom of the press and exercising double standards. “It seems that freedom of speech is completely lost in Albion’s Russophobic fog,” said Konstantin Dolgov, Russia’s foreign ministry commissioner for human rights.

The backlash was so severe that London weighed in on the issue, denying any role in the bank’s decision. “It’s a matter for the bank and it’s for them to decide who they offer services to based on their own risk appetite,” UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s spokesperson told reporters.

The UK Treasury also insisted that the decision was made independently by the bank. This is not the first time that a network is being subjected to double policies by the British. In 2012, Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, banned Press TV’s broadcast in the UK and removed the channel from the Sky platform.

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French National Front Party Leader Marine Le Pen says the EU is responsible for the crisis in Syria, because it has been trying to bring down the government instead of battling terrorism. “You’ve done everything to bring down the government of Syria, throwing the country into a terrible civil war, while accusing Russia which is actually fighting Daesh,” she said while addressing the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Wednesday.

Russian air force fighters have been striking armed terrorists, including the Daesh and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham terror groups, across Syria at the official request of the government of President Bashar al-Assad since September 2015.

She stressed that the EU and US policies had directly contributed to Syria’s current crisis, which has claimed the lives of some 400,000 people since March 2011. “You cannot hide your responsibility […] for plunging this part of the world into an absolutely monstrous chaos,” noted Le Pen, who intends to run for president next year.

Le Pen also censured the EU’s “irresponsible” approach towards the refugee crisis in Europe.

“No real measures are taken to curb the crisis. Your irresponsible policy, on the contrary, brings us more and more economic migrants,” she said.

Europe is facing an unprecedented influx of refugees, who are fleeing conflict-ridden zones in North Africa and the Middle East, particularly Syria.

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Belgian police have reported a stabbing attack on two officers as counter-terror investigators begin a probe into the incident, which could spark fresh public fears over terrorism in the country.

Prosecutors said a man wielding a knife stabbed the two police officers in Schaerbeek area in the north of Brussels on Wednesday before being shot in the leg.

Eric Van Der Sypt, a spokesman for the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office, said suspicions were high that the attacker had terrorist motives.

“We have elements to believe that the incident was a terrorist attack,” said Van Der Sypt, adding that the suspect was in police custody.

Other police officials said the officers, who were wearing plain clothes, were not seriously injured. They said another police officer was also injured as he tried to stop the attacker, who attempted to escape the scene.

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The German interior minister has denounced as a national “disgrace” a surge in the number of violent attacks targeting asylum seekers, which are carried out by far-right extremist amid growing anti-refugee sentiment in the European country.

Thomas de Maiziere made the remarks in an address to an event called ‘To think home anew – more security on the ground,’ in the capital, Berlin, on Friday. “Last year we investigated and counted criminal offences carried out against asylum seekers and asylum seekers’ institutions, with shocking results, which you all know. Increase of arson, increase of attempted murder, increase of bodily harm, and so on, from the right-wing extremist sector. This too is a disgrace for our country,” he said.

The minister further stressed that the level of crimes committed by asylum seekers was not out of the ordinary. He also put forward changes to the residence permission law in Germany, noting that the reforms would see many more applicants “voluntarily” leave the western European state.

Over 700 cases of attacks against refugee accommodation centers have been registered so far this year, ranging from swastikas, spray-painted outside the door, to arson and other forms of property damage, according to the latest police figures.

In 2015, there were a total of 1,047 attacks on planned and completed refugee shelters across Germany. The eastern German town of Bautzen has become a flashpoint for anti-refugee sentiment. A refugee home in Bautzen was set on fire in February while onlookers applauded and chanted right-wing slogans.

Germany, one of the most popular destinations for refugees, opened its borders to the refugees last summer with a welcoming mood, but it gradually shifted away from the policy.  The country registered about 1.1 million of them refugees in 2015.

Germany has not experienced the deadly attacks that France and Belgium have, but it has witnessed a string of sexual assaults and robberies on New Year’s Eve in Cologne. Prosecutors say the assaults were committed largely by foreigners.

The country has recently seen the rise of far-right groups opposing the entry of refugees, most of whom are fleeing conflict zones in Africa and the Middle East, particularly Syria. Many blame major European powers for the unprecedented exodus, saying their policies have led to a surge in terrorism and war in the violence-hit regions, forcing more people out of their homes.

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