Hong Kong
Nine people, including six secondary school students, were arrested in Hong Kong on Tuesday for allegedly plotting to set off homemade bombs in courts, tunnels and trash cans as political tensions rise in the city where China is tightening its grip.
Police said they were detained on suspicion of engaging in terrorist activity under a harsh national security law Beijing imposed a year ago as a crackdown on dissent in the former British colony long enjoyed freedoms not seen on the Chinese mainland.
Hong Kong authorities have used the law, enacted in response to anti-government protests that rocked the city in 2019, to arrest the city’s prominent activists. Others have fled abroad as a result.
If the allegations are true, the group appears to represent a more radical fringe of the protest movement, which has demanded broader democratic freedoms for Hong Kong just as its liberties are under threat. Police said the group was attempting to make the explosive triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, widely used in bombings in Europe and elsewhere, in a makeshift lab in a hostel.
Russia thwarts planned IS terrorist plots
Moscow
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said it has foiled a series of terrorist plots planned by the Islamic State (IS) to be carried out in the country this summer.
As a result of the measures taken, 6 criminals were neutralised while attempting to put up armed resistance, and 2 were arrested, the FSB said in a statement on Monday.
On June 29, a Russian citizen was detained for plotting attacks on citizens with the use of firearms and cold weapons in Moscow, and his accomplice residing in the southwestern Astrakhan Region was eliminated, Xinhua news agency reported.
On July 1, a citizen preparing bombings in Moscow at places of mass gathering was detained.
