PARIS—French authorities vowed to crack down on civic groups they said were promoting radical Islam, days after an extremist beheaded a schoolteacher for showing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in class. French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin on Monday said that 51 associations, including religious schools and mosques, would be visited by security services this week, … Read more
MOSCOW—Armenia and Azerbaijan accused each other of intense shelling on Sunday, denting hopes that a Russia-brokered cease-fire announced the previous day will hold following two weeks of fierce clashes over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan said that overnight shelling by Armenian forces on the city of Ganja had left several people dead and dozens … Read more
Two British Islamic State fighters accused in the torture and killing of Western hostages were brought to the U.S. to face criminal charges in Virginia, U.S. authorities said Wednesday, after more than two years of legal limbo after their capture in Syria. The men, El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey, who had allegedly supervised Islamic … Read more
Belgian police have arrested three men suspected of involvement in the Rwandan genocide, the latest in a series of high-profile arrests amid a heightened manhunt for perpetuators of the 1994 genocide that killed almost 1 million people in the central African nation. Federal prosecutors confirmed on Sunday that three Rwandan nationals were arrested in Belgium last … Read more
A Pakistani immigrant suspected of stabbing two people outside the former offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris followed a South Asian Islamic sect that in Pakistan has become increasingly emboldened, and on occasion sparked violence, in defending the central figure in Islam from what adherents see as blasphemous insults. In a video police … Read more
ISLAMABAD—Pakistan’s top court Monday agreed to hear arguments that a death sentence should be reinstated on the British national accused of orchestrating the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl after a lower court overturned his conviction earlier this year. The Supreme Court ordered that Omar Sheikh continue to be detained for … Read more
ISLAMABAD—Pakistan’s highest court is expected to decide as soon as next week whether a British national whose conviction for killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was overturned earlier this year will be freed nearly two decades after the murder. The fate of Omar Sheikh, who was sentenced to death in 2002 for orchestrating the … Read more
PARIS—Two people were seriously wounded in a knife attack near the former office of Charlie Hebdo that prosecutors are investigating as a possible terrorist act, more than five years after gunmen opened fire in the satirical magazine’s newsroom. The assault began late Friday morning when a man wielding what appeared to be a butcher’s knife … Read more
KABUL—Deadly violence in Afghanistan has marred the first-ever direct talks between Kabul and the Taliban, underscoring the high stakes that face the warring sides as they struggle to get negotiations off the ground to end nearly two decades of fighting. Representatives of the Afghan government and the Taliban kicked off a historic first round of … Read more