A high-profile French jihadist was charged with terrorist offences and remanded in custody on Saturday, a day after being transferred to France from Turkey, where he had turned himself in to authorities, like reported by france24.com.

Kevin G., a 24-year-old who converted to Islam 10 years ago, was one of the UN’s most wanted jihadists and had been placed on a blacklist in 2014.

Suspected as being one of the major Islamic State group recruiters attracting young French people to join the jihadist cause in Syria and Iraq, Kevin G. rubbed shoulders with some of the perpetrators of the November 2015 Paris attacks while living in Raqqa, IS group’s de facto capital.

The former church choirboy, who was raised by a single mother in Brittany, now claims to be “reformed” — though he has also told French author David Thomson, who wrote a book about returning jihadists, that he left IS group because he was afraid of dying.

He spent four years in Syria amongst jihadists, first with former Al-Qaeda affiliate the Fateh al-Sham Front, and then IS group.

He quit Syria in June 2016 with his four French wives and six children, and went to Turkey where they were all arrested.

All four wives had already been deported to France.

Kevin G., who had been the subject of an international arrest warrant, arrived in the French capital on Friday night before on Saturday being charged with association of a criminal terrorist organisation and financing terrorism, the Paris prosecutor said.

French authorities will now try to determine whether Kevin G. is truly reformed or part of a sleeper cell aiming to carry out attacks in France at a later date.

What to do with returning jihadists — whether claiming to be reformed or not — is a major concern for many European countries.

Authorities say around 700 French people are living amongst IS group militants in either Syria or Iraq. Another 200 have been killed.

By January 1, some 350 people in France had been charged with jihadist offences while another 710 are being investigated.

Since 2012, 83 people have been sentenced over jihadist activities.

Police foiled an imminent attack, possibly on the Vienna underground, when they arrested a radicalized 18-year-old, an official with the Austrian Interior Ministry said on Saturday to eblnews.com.

There were “indications that such an attack was planned and just about to happen,” Konrad Kogler, the ministry’s general director of public security, told Austria’s ORF radio on Saturday.

The explosion of a bomb in the underground was “one of the possible scenarios,” he added.

The authorities have warned people to be particularly vigilant in crowded places.

Initial investigations indicated that the young man arrested on Friday evening, an Austrian of immigrant heritage, had been radicalized by Salafism, an ultra-conservative strand of Sunni Islam.

“There is evidence suggesting that the suspected was planning an imminent attack in Vienna that was motivated by terrorism,” a spokesman for the ministry said.

He said the young man had recently been involved with radical Albanian Islamists. Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka said the man, known to police as a petty criminal, came from the “Albanian milieu.”

Police said they had been warned about the planned attack by friendly foreign intelligence agencies.

Sobotka said the suspect had been to Germany once and had been under surveillance in the past few days. He assured people there had been no risk to the public.

The young man is being held in detention under suspicion of belonging to a terrorist organization.

Searches since Friday in Vienna and Lower Austria, the state which surrounds the capital, turned up mobile phones and other material which police have seized.

Authorities have said it will take some time to assess the items.

Further arrests could take place depending on the investigations.

Police said there would be an increased presence of uniformed officers in busy areas.

A Islamic State (ISIS) terror cell of migrants were preparing to strike Germany with a list of dates and places to blow themselves up when they were arrested, a court heard

The detailed plan was found when police swooped on a group of four Syrian men who were ready to attack Dusseldorf, the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) said in a ruling, like reported by express.co.uk .

They had planned an attack on a Friday or Saturday “because the old city centre of Dusseldorf is particularly busy on these days”, the hearing to extend custodial questioning time on the men heard.

Two of the men were going to blow themselves up in the city centre on neighbouring streets while the two other men would position themselves at the four exits of the old section of the city to “shoot as many fleeing people as possible before also blowing themselves up when their magazines were empty”, the court heard.

One of the men, Saleh A, blew the group’s cover after handing himself in to Paris authorities and telling them of the plan in February last year.

Counter-terror police in Germany then arrested the other three men on June 2 after raiding refugee shelters in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Baden-Württemberg and Brandenburg.

Saleh A had been given detailed instructions to carry out the attack while he was at a meeting in the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa, Syria, where several of the terror group’s leaders were present.

A German ISIS jihadi, who had lived in Düsseldorf, gave Saleh A a sketched map of the city.

The finishing touches of the plan were meant to be discussed in the southern German city of Heidelberg, but Saleh A handed himself in before that.

The news comes at a bad time for Germany’s security services who have been criticised for being lax on security, especially after Tunisian migrant Anis Amri was allowed to slip through the gaps despite being on a terrorist watch list months before he carried out a deadly attack on a Berlin Christmas market last month.

Ralf Jäger, North Rhine-Westphalia’s interior minister, came under fire from Conservative opposition earlier this week for the slip-up which cost 12 people their lives.

Joachim Stamp, from the Free Democrats (FDP), accused Mr Jäger of “pushing away” responsibility for the security authorities’ failures after they monitored Amri for several months before deciding he did not pose any real danger.

He said Mr Jäger was “no longer qualified to investigate” the circumstances surrounding Amri.

Mr Stamp added: “We cannot allow this continued irresponsibility any longer”.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has also come under fire for backing an open-door migrant policy which let more than 1.1million migrants into Germany in 2015.

The move has caused much friction within communities, with mass sexual assaults on New Year’s Eve both in 2016 and 2015.

Authorities have also been heavily criticised after it was revealed three jihadis seen as a security threat had fallen off the radar.

Nearly 550 people in Germany are considered an Islamist terror threat, with more than a third from North Rhine-Westphalia where Cologne and Düsseldorf are located.

According to Politiken newspaper, the government will today seek majority support to insert special forces at the border between Iraq and Syria as part of the ongoing struggle against Islamic State (IS).

Politiken, which has obtained the information from unnamed sources, said that the defence minister, Claus Hjort Frederiksen, and the foreign minister, Anders Samuelsen, would bring up the issue at a foreign meeting with the Foreign Policy Committee today.

A number of parties reportedly met yesterday for a briefing at the Defence Ministry, and the briefing was of a nature serious enough to warrant asking the politicians to part with their phones before entering the meeting room.

Return fire 
The Danes have been training Iraqi forces for the last year, and in December its deployed troops were given the mandate to return fire if fired upon as a measure of defence.

Parliament has so far refused to discuss the issue ahead of today’s meeting.

Following the decision to withdraw its F16 fighter jets, Denmark’s presence in Iraq and Syria currently consists of just training and construction troops.

Throughout 2016, Europe has suffered several high-profile and high-impact terrorist attacks conducted by radical Islamist militants. France and Belgium have been the worst hit, but Germany has also increasingly become a target for extremists with direct or indirect links to the Islamic State, like reported by globalriskinsights.com.

Terrorist activity is expected to remain a major factor of insecurity in Western Europe in 2017. However, as the strategic situation shifts in Syria and Iraq, the threat posed by Sunni extremists in Europe is likely to evolve and generate new concerns for local security forces.

Shifting strategic realities for the Islamic State

The evolution of the terrorist threat in Europe is closely linked to strategic changes that are affecting the Islamic State’s position in the Middle East and North Africa. The Sunni extremist group lost control of Sirte in Libya as well as of several key locations in northern Syria and is struggling to delay the offensive in Mosul. As such, its strategy for the first months of 2017 is likely to focus on tactical offensives in Syria and attempts to expand its global operations, especially in Europe.

Throughout 2016, the Islamic State has not only lost key regions, it has also witnessed the deaths of various members of its senior leadership . In August, an airstrike killed Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, spokesperson of the Islamic State, and a key figure in planning of external operations. The killing of al-Adnani as well as other senior leaders weakened the Islamic State’s planning and coordination for global attacks and pushes the group to rely on less complex plots as well as in-country recruiting in Europe for future operations.

Due to territorial and manpower losses, the Islamic State is trying expand its global operations and develop stronger recruitment and support networks in Western Europe and Turkey. The senior militants that have replaced those killed frequently call for attacks against economic, civilian, military and institutional targets in a bid to boost the radicalisation of specific segments of European societies. The objective of expanding global operations is also an attempt to score key propaganda victories aimed at facilitating the group’s expansion in regions where it so far has a relatively weak penetration, such as Germany.

Growing risk of single-assailant attacks

As the Islamic State tries to expand its offensive operations in Europe, the group is likely to implement a shift in strategy. While in January and November 2015, radical Islamists conducted complex and coordinated attacks in Paris, it is almost certain that extremists will pivot toward operationally simpler assaults. The usage of single-assailants attacks provides the Islamic State with a less demanding planning phase and a higher likelihood of success.

Recent messages issued by Islamic State officials increasingly point toward the group’s willingness to boost its sympathisers in order to conduct carry out a high number of attacks. By launching a high volume of low-to medium-scale attacks the Islamic State aims at creating an overall feeling of insecurity and instability in Europe. These attacks may cause limited damage, especially if conducted by single-assailants armed with knives, but the overall psychological and political impact is likely to remain high. The Islamic State has also developed a strategy of claiming responsibility for attacks in which the connection between the perpetrator and senior Middle East-based militants is weak in a bid to create the illusion of possessing far-reaching capabilities.

Single-assailant operations in which the perpetrators use firearms, explosives, vehicles or other readily available means are more difficult to detect by European intelligence agencies due to the limited level of planning necessary. In addition, the gap between the risk mitigation measures put in place by authorities and the investment needed by militants to plan attacks grows, leading to higher counter-terrorist costs. To successfully respond to the heightened risk of single-assailant attacks, European countries are increasingly required to reform their intelligence and security structures leading to a situation that increases the risk of internal political rivalries.

Enhanced concerns over social and economic implications

As the Islamic State continues to try to conduct a high volume of attacks in Europe, terrorist incidents are likely to have an increasing impact on the national economies of affected countries. The feeling of insecurity and the relative weakness of the public response to the threat negatively affects key sectors of Western European economies. France and Belgium suffered major declines in tourism in the last months of 2015 and throughout 2016. The latest attack in Berlin further solidifies concerns over the security of crowded public places. Hotel occupancy rates as well as restaurant reservation rates are the first indicators of the economic downturn caused by terrorism activity. However, any upcoming attack in Europe is likely to further solidify the ‘new normal’ in which citizens feel less safe in public environments thus leading to a generalised drop in expenditures in public places such as train stations.

Terrorist activity is also highly likely to continue to heavily weigh on national political landscapes. This generates a heightened political risk, as 2017 will see major elections in the Netherlands, France, Germany, and other European countries. As security features among the top concerns of European citizens, militants may try to carry out attacks in a bid to discredit ruling parties and institutions leading to an overall distrust by the populace in the capacity of public officials to respond to threats.

This creates a situation in which there is a moderate risk of increased social tensions as far-right groups may try to conduct small-scale reprisal attacks by targeting Muslims (mosques, community centres, Muslim-owned businesses, and migrant centres). Any additional terrorist attacks in 2017 are expected to lead to a further radicalisation of nationalist extremists, thus also increasing the risk of clashes between far-right and far-left groups.

Albanian police said they had arrested a female teacher for making statements supportive of the Islamic State extremist group, according to ap.org.

The teacher, whose name was not given, is being questioned at the anti-terror offices in the capital, Tirana, according to a spokesman who declined to be identified as the investigation is ongoing.

A private television station, TVKlan, broadcast the previous evening footage of the woman telling her young students at a Muslim school in Shkodra, 120 kilometers (75 miles) north of Tirana that IS “are good people but the state wants to fight them.”

She described the IS as “a Muslim organization protecting Syria’s Muslim population, or that of Palestine, or that of Egypt.”

The station did not identify the person who recorded the footage, and said only that it was recorded “some time ago.”

Albania’s Muslim Community, or KMSH, which is in charge of the school in Shkodra, immediately reacted, saying that “what this teacher has said does not represent the official line of the madrassa as an educative institution of the KMSH and is totally against what our school offers.”

It added that the school’s staff “unanimously distances itself from that teacher” who was temporarily replacing a colleague.

About two-thirds of Albania’s 3 million people are Muslims. Mainstream religious leaders have urged believers not to join rebel groups in Syria and Iraq but scores of Albanians are believed to have done so.

The Interior Ministry claims, however, that no new fighters from Albania have gone during the last year.

The head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency is warning that Europe needs to remain vigilant against the threat of Islamic extremist attacks, according to ap.org

Hans-Georg Maassen told reporters in Berlin Thursday his agency has 548 extremists considered potentially dangerous enough to carry out an attack under surveillance.

He says: “We have to assume that there will be more attacks in Europe and that means also more in Germany.”

Though Tunisian Anis Amri had been under surveillance, he was able to hijack a truck in December and drive it into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people and wounding dozens of others – the first mass-casualty Islamic extremist attack in Germany.

Maassen says overall some 9,700 people in Germany are part of the radical Islamic Salafist scene, but not all are violent.

Authorities have lost track of three people who may post a threat, MP said

Authorities are investigating 547 asylum seekers who may pose a security threat to Germany, according to the country’s interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, Reuters reported in according to politico.eu.

De Maizière told parliament Wednesday that a joint terrorism task force would look into the migrants to determine whether they ought to be deported or taken into custody.

Social-Democrat MP Burkhard Lischka said authorities had lost track of three of those people already.

“They are playing with fire, and every wrong calculation can be deadly,” Lischka said after an internal affairs committee meeting Wednesday.

The investigations were launched in the aftermath of the December Christmas market attack in Berlin. The alleged perpetrator, Anis Amri, entered Germany in 2015 and sought asylum. While his request was denied, he was never deported.

De Maizière and Justice Minister Heiko Maas agreed earlier this month on tougher measures for asylum seekers who are deemed a security threat after Chancellor Angela Merkel said hours after the December 19 attack that authorities needed to reexamine current measures.

The appointment was revealed at a recent fans’ forum, and Press Association Sport understands the role will be filled by a former inspector from Greater Manchester Police’s specialist search unit, according to belfasttelegraph.co.uk .

The development comes at a time when Old Trafford’s security is under increased scrutiny.

United saw the final match of the 2015-16 season against Bournemouth called off after what proved to be a fake bomb, left behind following a training exercise, was found in a toilet.

There was another incident in November when two individuals managed to break off from a stadium tour and stay overnight at Old Trafford ahead of the match with Arsenal.

On the whole, security has been beefed up around the club since the Paris attacks in November 2015 when the Stade de France was targeted on a night when 130 were killed.

Vehicles are now routinely checked as they enter the premises, while individuals heading into the stadium are searched.

More security supervisors have been deployed after fans complained at the time it took for searches at turnstiles.

Ammar Ramadan Mansour Mohamad al-Sabaawi used fake Syrian passport to enter Europe, like reported by politico.eu

French authorities had confirmed the identity of one of the men who targeted the Stade de France in Paris in a terror attack in November 2015, according to a declassified intelligence report seen by Le Parisien.

According to the report, from early 2016, intelligence services believe the man was Ammar Ramadan Mansour Mohamad al-Sabaawi, an Iraqi national from Mosul.

Authorities believe Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the attack, paid al-Sabaawi’s family the equivalent of $5,000 (about €4,670) in Iraqi dinar and a flock sheep after his death.

Investigators could not confirm al-Sabaawi’s age, but believe he was in his twenties. He had used a fake Syrian passport, which was found near the French stadium in the aftermath of the attacks, to enter Europe among refugees via the Greek island of Lesbos in October 2015.

Authorities said al-Sabaawi had attempted to get into the stadium during a football match between Germany and France, but was denied entry, subsequently detonating a bomb near the entrance and killing himself and another person.