Three years ago, Albert and Yassin left their homes in Kosovo and Albania to wage jihad in Syria. Now they’re back, swelling the ranks of jihadists in a region the Islamic State has called a “new front” in Europe.

Yassin, 30, who now works as a halal butcher in a downtrodden suburb of Albania’s capital Tirana, refused to give his real name out of fear of repercussions.

Wounded in Syria’s battered northern city of Aleppo in 2014, the father-of-three told AFP he left “to help the Syrian people” and hopes Allah will recognise his sacrifice, even if he did not die a martyr.

A Kosovo court has jailed an ISIS propagandist for seven months for engaging in propaganda for ISIS through his Facebook profile. The court said Samet Imishti from the town of Hani i Elezit had also been fined 800 euros.

http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/kosovo-jails-isis-facebook-propagandist-04-12-2016

Kosovo police said on March 16 that they arrested two men charged with recruiting and providing funding to fighters for the Islamic State (IS) group.

http://www.rferl.org/content/kosovo-police-arrest-two-recruiting-islamic-state-fighters/27618174.html

Pristina-based Insajderi news site reports that Kosovo Police arrested a businessman this morning from Peja/Pec, Fatos Rizvanolli, a key suspect who is believed to have funded the travel expenses of Kosovar recruits for ISIS. Police issued a communiqué saying that it has also conducted raids in Rizvanolli’s businesses and properties in Pristina and Peja. Koha reports that police arrested another suspect, in the region of Prizren on Tuesday, who is suspected of being involved in funding or facilitating terrorism.

Kosovo’s Minister for European Integration, Bekim Collaku, said today in Pristina that the non-enlargement of the European Union in the Western Balkans could lead to increased influence of Russia and ISIS in the region. During a round-table on EU enlargement, Collaku said he was aware of the latest crisis faced by the EU such as the refugee crisis and the growth of right-wing parties, “but crises in the past did not stop the enlargement of the Union”.

Kosovo's Foreign Minister and former Premier Hashim Thaci says he received a death threat purportedly from the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) organisation over his opposition to the extremist group.

"It was a death threat against me and my family," Mr Thaci told AFP in an interview on Wednesday.

Kosovo has been one of Europe’s most pro-American states since the United States helped it break free of Serbian control. Yet in a generational shift in this largely secular country, Islamic radicalisation is making some in-roads among the young. And it’s not only men who have gone east to join Isis.

Security experts in Kosovo say most Kosovan women who join ISIS do so to follow husbands who want to fight (...) but a few independent women go for their own reasons, considering they are on a sacred mission.

The two Kosovo citizens, who claim to have only spent a short time in Syria because they refused to shift allegiance from the Al Nusra militant group to ISIS, pleaded guilty at a Pristina court.

-See more at: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/kosovars-who-refused-isis-plead-guilty-on-terrorism-charges-01-14-2016

The Ambassador of the OSCE Mission in Kosovo, Jean Claude Schlumberger said that participation of Kosovo citizens in ISIS is a signal that should be stopped quickly.

He said societies throughout the world are facing extremism and radicalism, therefore bridges should be built to fight these challenges among communities, institutions and states of the region.

MILAN –  Authorities in Italy and Kosovo have detained four Kosovars suspected of making threats against the pope and a U.S. diplomat.

Italian police said Tuesday that three were detained in Italy; one was being held while two were expelled under anti-terrorism measures. Kosovo police, meanwhile, arrested an ethnic Albanian south of Pristina who had a pistol and a rifle in his possession.