Religious persecution

The top ten countries where Christians face the most extreme persecution are North Korea, Somalia, Libya, Eritrea, Yemen, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan, Iran & Afghanistan

The man accused of shooting dead 51 Muslim worshippers in the Christchurch mosque attacks in March smiled on June 14 as his lawyers entered not guilty pleas to multiple murder and terrorism charges.

An Istanbul court sentenced 15 of 10 former staffers of the shut-down daily Zaman to a range of jail terms on terror-linked charges on April 30. 

The Authority for Information on Former Communist Police Secret Files, which was established at the beginning of January, has started to receive the first requests from Albanian institutions looking to verify the pasts of people seeking promotion to senior positions or receiving medals from the state.

Paradoxically, the end of the secular republic in Turkey also marks the end of Islamism or Islamist politics in Turkey and elsewhere. The Turkish Parliament is currently voting on a constitutional change that will usher in a so-called Turkish type of presidential system, or "President of the Republic System" as the governing party dubs it.

The German Police has a list of 548 Islamists who the German authorities believe they pose a threat to the national security.

Among them are at least 50 Islamists whose asylum application has been rejected but they have not been deported.

A survey on Albanians' perceptions and understanding of the communist era conducted by an independent think tank on behalf of the OSCE office in Tirana has upset representatives of victims of the old regime and prompted calls for the state to do more to condemn the crimes of the communist past.

Hajriz Hoxha, the brother of Ramiz Hoxha, one of two Kosovo Albanian men executed for alleged treachery by the KLA in 1998, told BIRN on Sunday that he had seen the masked men he believed to be the killers and had new information which could reveal their identities.

Hungary has become the first country whose government is opening a special office tending to Christians persecuted in the Middle East and on European territory, reported Front Page Magazine.