Towards the end of 2026, the new book by ITSTIME Senior Fellow Professor Miron Lakomy, entitled Understanding Media Jihad, will be released. The volume will offer a comprehensive examination of how Salafi-Jihadi groups exploit the Internet as an instrument for strategic communication and propaganda dissemination.
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For Islamist extremist actors, attacking religious targets serves a strategic purpose due to the symbolic value and the victimization impact caused. While Christmas-related attacks have more frequently concerned European security authorities, Easter-related threats are not unprecedented.
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The latest issue of the journal Perspective on Terrorism features a paper written by our Senior Analyst A. Bolpagni and our Senior Fellow Analyst Dr A. Fisher. The paper presents the first-ever analysis of the stream of URLs within the pro-Islamic State (IS) server TechHaven on Rocket.Chat. The analysis collected URLs shared from the server’s creation in December 2018 up to October 2024.
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Dopo quasi due anni di silenzio, lo Stato Islamico torna a ‘far sentire la propria voce’, più precisamente quella del suo portavoce ufficiale Abu Hudhayfah al-Ansari. A seguito dell’arresto di Abu Omar al-Muhajir, nell’agosto del 2023, al-Ansari fa la sua comparsa in qualità di nuovo portavoce ufficiale, annunciando la proclamazione di Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Quraishi quale (allora) nuovo amir al-munimin (“comandante dei fedeli”) dello Stato Islamico.
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The ENGLISH version follows below.
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Martedì 11 febbraio, la polizia olandese ha arrestato 16 persone nei Paesi Bassi con l’accusa di diffondere propaganda dello Stato Islamico (IS), glorificare il martirio e incitare ad attacchi terroristici online, in particolare su TikTok. Le indagini sono iniziate nell’agosto 2025, quando l’unità di polizia dell’Aia ha individuato un account TikTok che condivideva propaganda dello Stato Islamico sottotitolata in lingua olandese. Di conseguenza, le indagini sono state estese a livello nazionale e hanno portato all’arresto di 16 persone sparse in tutto il paese. Prima degli arresti di oggi, il 20 gennaio 2026, la polizia olandese aveva arrestato il principale sospettato dell’indagine, considerato il ‘leader’ del network. Di età compresa tra i 16 e i 53 anni, tra cui 4 minori, le persone detenute sono 3 cittadini olandesi e 13 siriani, che sono (dopo gli ucraini) il secondo gruppo di rifugiati più numeroso nei Paesi Bassi.
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On 16 December 2025, at a Russian school in the town of Odintsovo, near Moscow, Timofey Vladimirovich Kulyamov, a 15-year-old student, carried out a knife attack, killing a 10-year-old Tajik student. After some resistance, during which the attacker held another student hostage, Timofey was arrested by the authorities. The attack was livestreamed.
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ITSTIME speeches at the VOX-Pol online seminar “Under the Radar: Understanding the Salafi-Jihadi terrorist online information ecosystem” (Part 3)
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ITSTIME speeches at the VOX-Pol online seminar “Under the Radar: Understanding the Salafi-Jihadi terrorist online information ecosystem” (Part 2)
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ITSTIME speeches at the VOX-Pol online seminar “Under the Radar: Understanding the Salafi-Jihadi terrorist online information ecosystem” (Part 1).
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From January 2025 to October 2025, G. L. Giardini and A. Bolpagni have been monitoring and analysing the presence of the pro-Islamic State (IS) ecosystem on TikTok, especially focusing on the dissemination of IS propaganda within the social network platform. Through day-by-day monitoring using Digital Human Intelligence (Digital HUMINT) techniques, more than 270 seed accounts have been identified. The latter, which are pro-IS accounts actively sharing propaganda material, have been functional to the reconstruction of a network characterised by more than 100,000 users.
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The study, published in Security Journal, focuses on the role played by search engines in accessing Salafi-jihadi terrorist content on the surface web and beyond. It argues that due to the very nature of the World Wide Web, search engines may be exploited as primary gateways to harmful content, allowing followers of Salafi-jihadi violent extremist groups to find and law enforcement to detect crucial communication channels maintained by terrorist organisations easily.
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