Dutch Court Case Reignites Europe’s Focus on ISIS Children by Abigail R. Esman Special to IPT News Investigative Project on Terrorism He is a handsome boy, about 9 or 10 years old, with large, pale green eyes and dark hair. He speaks softly, conversing with a Western journalist. “We will kill you,” he says, as…
Child Marriage in Yemen Seen As a Means of Survival by Abigail R. Esman Special to IPT News Investigative Project on Terrorism There was no more money. There was only bread and tea for weeks. There was so much hunger, and so many children. And so the couple agreed to let the man wed their…
Lull in Terrorism Masks a Deepening Jihadist Threat, Dutch Report Warns by Abigail R. Esman Special to IPT News Investigative Project on Terrorism It’s been a relatively quiet year for jihadists in the West, with only six attacks in Europe, compared to 20 in 2017. This, combined with the military fall of the Islamic State,…
Islamist Terror Threat As Strong As Ever, Dutch Intelligence Warns by Abigail R. Esman Special to IPT News Investigative Project on Terrorism It has become “the new normal,” a structural part of 21st-century life. And the jihadist threat against the West is just as strong now as ever. These are the conclusions of “The Legacy…
French Say “Non” to Islamist Performer at Bataclan by Abigail R. Esman Special to IPT News Investigative Project on Terrorism On Nov. 13, 2015, a series of Islamist terrorist attacks shook the city of Paris. One hundred thirty people were killed and hundreds others injured in coordinated shootings and a suicide bombing that hit the…
The Horrors of Honor Violence: Terrorism At Home by Abigail R. Esman Special to IPT News Investigative Project on Terrorism She was a 15-year-old student at San Antonio’s Taft High School with a soft smile and dark eyes. Like most girls her age in Texas, she favored blue jeans. Unlike most girls her age in…
Protecting Afghan Women Is A National Security Issue by Abigail R. Esman Special to IPT News Investigative Project on Terrorism There was the woman whose husband sliced off her genitalia, and then reached inside her with his hand, damaging her inner organs. There was the woman whose husband cut off her ear. More commonly, there…
Terrorists, Victims, or Both? The Children of ISIS Return by Abigail R. Esman Special to IPT News Investigative Project on Terrorism They learn to count by attending public lashings. By the age of 9, they know how to use a gun, make a bomb, and torture prisoners. They have been raised to know that Allah…
Sophisticated Australian Airplane Bombing Plot a Warning To the West by Abigail R. Esman Special to IPT News Investigative Project on Terrorism Australia’s arrest Saturday of four men suspected of plotting a terrorist attack on a commercial airliner signals more than a resurgent terror threat to airplanes. Because the alleged weapon involved smuggling explosives and…
When Political Correctness Places Girls in Harm’s Way by Abigail R. Esman Special to IPT News Investigative Project on Terrorism Jada was looking forward to high school in her New Jersey hometown when her father, a recent convert to Islam, decided they should move to Saudi Arabia. Jada’s mother had passed away suddenly a few…
How Erdogan’s Victory Might Be Europe’s Defeat by Abigail R. Esman Special to IPT News Investigative Project on Terrorism Over lunch in Istanbul last week, a friend and I spoke about the upcoming Turkish referendum. “Many European Turks are likely to vote ‘yes,’” I cautioned my friend, whom I knew was planning to vote ‘no,’…
Beyond ISIS: Europe’s Salafists Nurturing Jihad by Abigail R. Esman Special to IPT News Investigative Project on Terrorism Before there was the Islamic State, before YouTube videos that seduce Europe’s Muslims to join in the jihad, before Twitter and Tumblr and the many tools of recruitment on the Internet, there was the local mosque. There…
Is National Guilt Making Germany More Vulnerable To Terrorism? by Abigail R. Esman Special to IPT News Investigative Project on Terrorism From the moment it became clear that the mass killings at Berlin’s Breitscheidplatz Christmas market on Monday were the actions of a Muslim terrorist, accusing fingers have pointed at German Chancellor Angela Merkel. And…
Women Form A Growing Threat To West In New ISIS Strategy by Abigail R. Esman Special to IPT News Investigative Project on Terrorism This is Laura Hansen’s story. It may also be the story of the future of Islamic terrorists in the West. Born and raised in the quiet Dutch city of The Hague, Laura…
Paris Jihadist Manages to Grow More Radical in Prison by Abigail R. Esman Investigative Project on Terrorism One year after jihadist commandos massacred 130 people in coordinated attacks across Paris, France remains under a state of emergency. Heavily armed gendarmes patrol the city streets, prepared for the next attack that even politicians admit is sure…
Europe’s Terror Challenges: The Returnee Threat by Abigail R. Esman Special to IPT News Investigative Project on Terrorism Another week, another barrage of headlines illustrating the depth of Europe’s terror threat. The following examples came during a 24 hour window earlier this month: “Schiphol Airport Was Possibly A Target Of Terror Cell That Attacked Paris;”…
Raids, Arrests Show 9/11’s Lessons Are Global by Abigail R. Esman Special to IPT News Investigative Project on Terrorism They are known as “the 102 minutes that changed America.” Fifteen years later, it is increasingly clear that the 102 minutes of the Sept. 11 attacks also reshaped and changed the world. Indeed perhaps even more…
With The Terror Threat Growing, Europe Changes Course by Abigail R. Esman Special to IPT News Investigative Project on Terrorism Sixteen years ago, when Dutch commentator Paul Scheffer published his “Multicultural Drama” declaring that multiculturalism in the Netherlands had failed, the response was swift and angry. Critics across Europe called him racist, bigoted, nationalistic. Others…
Arrests Show Jihadists Infiltrating Syrian Refugees by Abigail R. Esman Special to IPT News Investigative Project on Terrorism When Europe agreed to open its borders to Syrian refugees in response to one of the greatest humanitarian crises of our age, officials assured the Western world: we’ve got this. There will be no jihadists among them;…
How Radicalization Was Allowed to Fester in Belgium by Abigail R. Esman Special to IPT News Investigative Project on Terrorism These are the numbers, the hard facts: Twenty months. Three terrorist attacks. One hundred seventy dead. And almost all the killers grew up in or at one time lived in Belgium. Squeezed into a corner…
Europe’s Young ISIS Recruits: Should They Stay or Should They Go? by Abigail R. Esman Special to IPT News Investigative Project on Terrorism For weeks, Farid Bouamran, a Dutch-Moroccan immigrant who has lived 30 years in Amsterdam, watched as his son Achraf became increasingly radicalized, tuning in to videos and Twitter accounts online. Within two…
Belgian Breeding Ground Fuels New Terror Wave by Abigail R. Esman Special to IPT News Investigative Project on Terrorism Time was, thoughts of Belgium led to thoughts of rich, dark chocolate, of Old Master painters and delicate, handmade lace. Now it brings a different image: of Islamic jihad and men armed with Kalashnikovs, and of…
ISIS Rapes Women Toward Allah by Abigail R. Esman Special to IPT News Investigative Project on Terrorism Women sold as slaves. Women beaten in the streets. Women raped for sport. Girls as young as 8 or 9 years old forced into marriages with strangers, and bound to sexual servitude. The reports of the atrocities perpetrated…
Women Also Kill For Honor: Phyllis Chesler Study by Abigail R. Esman Special to IPT News Investigative Project on Terrorism There was a time when most people believed that honor killings – if they had even heard of them – took place far away, in places like Afghanistan and Algeria and Iran. These days, we…
A Call to Formally Label ISIS Attacks on Christians, Yezidis as Genocide by Abigail R. Esman Special to IPT News Investigative Project on Terrorism They buy and sell the women, using them as slaves. They kidnap children, even infants, and detonate them as bombs. As the Islamic State tightens its grip on Syria and Iraq,…
Erdogan vs. the New York Times, and Democracy by Abigail R. Esman Special to IPT News Investigative Project on Terrorism For 13 years, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has worked to impose his Islamist vision on Turkey’s proud secular democracy, reshaping the country into a neo-Ottoman republic. His success can be credited in no small measure to…
