White House summit to focus on threat of foreign jihadis

London

US President Barack Obama will host on Wednesday a global Summit on Countering Violent Extremism. The conference, which will feature a range of US and international politicians and security officials, will focus, according to the White House, on "foreign fighters, and the success that organisations like so-called Islamic state (IS) have had in radicalising people all across the globe".

The summit comes in the wake of an attack in Denmark on Saturday which the country's prime minister described as a "cynical act of terror" and may have been influenced by the Paris atrocities last month. The head of the Danish security service said the killer may have been "inspired by militant Islamist propaganda by IS and other terror organisations", but it is not clear yet whether he had previously travelled to an overseas theatre of war such as Syria.