Daily Intel Brief
Three found guilty of murder in the downing of MH17, a U.S. CBP agent is killed in a shootout off the Puerto Rican coast, and Turkey detains another suspect linked to the Istanbul bombing...
Counterterrorism
A German man was sentenced Thursday to nearly six years in prison for sending threatening letters to politicians, lawyers and journalists signed with the acronym of a neo-Nazi group. A court in Frankfurt found the 54-year-old man guilty on a range of charges including inciting…
Turkish security forces have detained a suspect wanted in connection with the deadly bombing in Istanbul in an operation in a Turkish-controlled area in northwestern Syria, Turkey’s state-run news agency reported. Other suspects detained following the bombing will appear before…
Military & Defense
A Dutch court has found three men guilty of murder for shooting down a passenger jet over eastern Ukraine in 2014, killing 298 people. The court found that a Russian-made missile supplied from Russia and fired by an armed group under Russian control brought down flight…
Russian airstrikes targeted Ukraine’s energy facilities again Thursday as the first snow of the season fell in Kyiv, a harbinger of the hardship to come if Moscow’s missiles continue to take out power and gas plants as winter descends. Separately, the United Nations announced the…
Cybersecurity
The Justice Department announced charges on Wednesday against two Russian nationals accused of running a popular pirated e-book site used by thousands of students, professors and more across the world. In a statement, the DOJ said 33-year-old Anton Napolsky and…
The Defense Department has largely won out in a long-running bureaucratic battle with the State Department over retaining its expansive powers to launch cyber operations without significant input from other government agencies, according to two sources familiar with the…
Counterintelligence & Espionage
The European Union on Monday imposed sanctions on eight more Russian nationals, consisting of high ranking agents of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and chemical weapon experts, over their alleged involvement in the poisoning of opposition figure Alexei…
The expulsion of more than 400 suspected Russian spies from across Europe this year has struck the "most significant strategic blow" against Moscow in recent history and taken Vladimir Putin by surprise, Britain's domestic spy chief said. In his annual update on the…
Transnational Organized Crime
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent and a suspected smuggler died during a shootout Thursday off the Puerto Rico coast, authorities said. Two other U.S. officers were injured. CBP’s Air and Marine Operations unit was on routine patrol around 8 a.m. Thursday when…
A Syrian group is claiming to have captured one of Europe’s most-wanted drug traffickers back in March, just days after Italy’s justice minister thanked the United Arab Emirates for its role in his arrest and extradition to Italy this week. The circumstances surrounding the arrest…