{"id":155383,"date":"2017-02-07T08:27:21","date_gmt":"2017-02-07T06:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=155383"},"modified":"2017-02-07T08:27:21","modified_gmt":"2017-02-07T06:27:21","slug":"isis-attack-in-south-africa-just-a-matter-of-time-analysts-warn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/lifestyle\/155383\/isis-attack-in-south-africa-just-a-matter-of-time-analysts-warn\/","title":{"rendered":"ISIS attack in South Africa “just a matter of time” analysts warn"},"content":{"rendered":"

Analysts believe that an ISIS attack within South African borders is just a matter of time, following raised tensions caused by Donald Trump’s\u00a0anti-Islamic sentiments and an increasing number of known terrorists trying to enter the county over the past 3 months.<\/p>\n

Speaking to The Mercury<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0on Tuesday (7 February), Institute for Security Studies (ISS) counter-terrorism researcher Martin Ewi said that the group was trying to determine exactly what business interests Trump has in South Africa, which could possibly be seen as a target.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump\u2019s very hard-line approach was good for Isis to justify its\u00a0activity. What this means is that some of the reports (that we get) say (Isis) will go for Trump’s investments in South Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just a matter of whether it materialises today or tomorrow,\u201d Ewi said.<\/p>\n

He also noted that while Trump investments in the country would make an obvious target, he doubted that the terrorist-group had a preference as to whether they attack a Trump business or just any American-based business in South Africa.<\/p>\n

Ewi’s concerns were echoed by the South African Muslim Network’s\u00a0chairman Dr Faisal Suliman. He noted that anger and resentment for Trump by South African Muslims could be exploited by Islamic State recruiters – greatly increasing the risk of a terrorist attack occurring in the country.<\/p>\n

South Africa had its terror-threat level upgraded in June 2016, after the US embassy issued a warning of possible terror attacks on American within South Africa\u2019s borders.<\/p>\n

This resulted in other embassies following suit with both Australia and England warning its citizens to stay away from densely-populated shopping malls and other high-risk areas.<\/p>\n

However this was a brief event, and the\u00a0alerts were soon revised\u00a0back to ‘safe’. The UK did not actively warn citizens from travelling to South Africa.<\/p>\n

At the time, State Security Minister David Mahlobo downplayed the terror alerts, assuring citizens that the\u00a0department was doing all it could to keep South Africa safe against attacks.<\/p>\n

\n

Read:\u00a0South African target next on Islamic State terror list: report<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Analysts believe that an ISIS attack within South African borders is just a matter of time following raised tensions caused by Donald Trump and an increased number of known terrorists trying to enter the county over the past 3 months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":104493,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9876],"tags":[25,5027],"class_list":["post-155383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-active","tag-mercury"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155383"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":155409,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155383\/revisions\/155409"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}