Editor John Peter

While charing a virtual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), Modi said, "Terrorism may be in any form, in any manifestation and we have to fight together against it."  PM Narendra Modi NEW DELHI: In a veiled reference to Pakistan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday told leaders of the SCO nations that the grouping must not hesitate to criticise countries supporting cross-border terrorism as an instrument of state policy and there must not be any “double standards” in combating terrorist activities. With Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin listening, Modi said at a virtual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) that “decisive action” is required to deal with terrorism and terror financing. Chairing the summit, Modi talked about the growing importance of the SCO and said, “It is our shared responsibility to understand each other’s needs and sensitivities and resolve all challen...

  Italian aid worker spent 14 months in captivity and experienced brutality at the hands of ISIS members Federico Motka’s abductors greeted him in English after he and his colleagues were kidnapped near a refugee camp on the Turkish border, telling him: “Welcome to Syria , you mutt.” El Shafee Elsheikh is shown on a screen during an online hearing in a court in Virginia For the Italian aid worker, it was the beginning of 14 months of brutality at the hands of ISIS . Mr Motka gave evidence about the ordeal on Thursday at the terrorism trial of El Shafee Elsheikh , a British citizen charged with taking a leading role in an ISIS kidnapping scheme that took more than 20 westerners hostage between 2012 and 2015. Four Americans — journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller — were among them. Foley, Sotloff and Kassig were decapitated. Mueller was forced into slavery and raped repeatedly by ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi before s...