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maltatoday, SUNDAY, 24 JULY 2016 Sport 50 OLYMPICS Virtù Ferries MaltaToday and Virtù Ferries have teamed up to take one lucky winner and a companion every week to Sicily, with two tickets to be won every week in our photography competition. Already been on holiday? Good: we're sending you back if your best photograph from your holidays and travels makes the cut. That's right: send us a good quality image of your holidays and we'll send the best one to the gateway of Italy with Virtù Ferries. Malta - Sicily Express Ferries For more information visit www.virtuferries.com or contact by telephone 23491000 RULES OF THE COMPETITION maltatoday Conditions apply: 1. Tickets for each week's competition can only be won by one person who submits one entry of a high-res image with description. Entrants with more than one entry WILL NOT be considered. Entrants must send a description of photo. 2. Winners will be informed before the end of the week, and then announced on maltatoday.com.mt and MaltaToday on Sunday. 3. By entering this offer, entrants consent to their photos being published and owned by Mediatoday Co Ltd. 4. The entrant with the best photograph will be awarded two (2) return tickets, valid for travel to any Virtù Ferries destination. Mediatoday's decision is final. 5. Tickets are issued free of charge, excluding port charges, and in accordance with Virtù Ferries' rules and regulations. All taxes and charges are to be paid accordingly by the winning entrant upon the issuance of tickets. 6. This offer is closed to employees and contributors of Mediatoday Co. Ltd and Virtù Ferries, or their family members. This week's theme: Travel SEND US PHOTOS FROM YOUR FAVOURITE HOLIDAY PHOTO COMPETITION Photos should be a hi-res image (one per individual entry) with a sentence or two about what inspired you to take your photo. Entrants are kindly reminded not to send in personal family pictures that might be unrelated to theme subjects unless expressly requested. If sending a photo by post, address it to: 'MaltaToday photo competition', Mediatoday, Vjal ir-Rihan, San Gwann, SGN9016 Please supply your daytime telephone number, your name, your home address and an email address. Send the photo via email on info@mediatoday.com.mt [SUBJECT HEADING: MaltaToday photo competition] by next Friday at 9am. Themes may change from one week to the other This week's winner is RITA PIZZUTO with the photo 'Selling capers in Marsascala' BRAZIL held 10 presumed Islamist militants in isolation cells at a maxi- mum security jail on Friday as police combed their computers and mobile phones for information about possi- ble threats to next month's Olym- pics in Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's Justice Minister Alexan- dre Moraes said after the arrests on Thursday that the men formed a disorganized group of "amateurs" who contacted each other via social media and had little clue of how to become terrorists. His statements, however, did not go down well at ABIN, Brazil's intel- ligence agency, or the Federal Police, where sources told Reuters the min- ister had underplayed the terrorist threat by portraying the group as a bunch of crazy young men. "He gave the impression that this is a minor problem, that does not represent a risk," said one Federal Police source. "That's not right. We cannot spread that idea." Security officials and experts said that such groups, even if inchoate or disorganized, reflect the growing ef- forts by Islamic State (IS) and other radical organizations to attract would-be militants through social media and Internet platforms. "There is something qualitatively different about terrorist organiza- tions and their dynamics today because they are more diffuse and widely distributed and may materi- alise where you don't expect them," says Robert Muggah, research di- rector at the Igarapé Institute, a se- curity and development think tank in Rio de Janeiro. U.S. intelligence officials said on Friday they have no evidence that the men arrested in Brazil, at least some of whom had allegedly pledged allegiance to IS, were actually part of or directed by the militant group. Like Brazilian officials, they say they have no reliable evidence of plans for any specific attack on the Olympics, which start Aug. 5. But recent attacks in Europe have raised fears of a "lone wolf" sympa- thetic to IS attacking athletes or visi- tors to the Games, especially from countries targeted by the group, such as the United States, Britain, France and Israel, officials said. "Amateurs or not, they were or- ganising themselves," said Paulo Storani, a former captain of an elite squad in Rio de Janeiro's police. "This is the way the Islamic State recruits people." Federal Police sources said they had been monitoring some mem- bers of the group for around a year after they accessed militant Islamist web sites. Police decided to arrest the men, who gave themselves Arabic names in exchanges over WhatsApp and Telegram message apps, when they started discussing weapons training and one tried to buy an AK-47 as- sault rifle online from a Paraguayan gun shop. Authorities said only two of the men, all Brazilians between the ages of 20 and 40, had actually met each other, when they went to learn Ara- bic in Egypt in 2012 after converting to Islam. Local media published photo- graphs of the two men in Cairo holding what appeared to be a black-and-white IS banner. The rest had no direct contact with the group, though police told the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper that four had pledged allegiance to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi online. The judge who issued the arrest warrants, Marcos Josegrei da Silva, said they were warranted under a new anti-terrorism law enacted this year that provides for prison sentences of up to eight years for belonging to a terrorist group or for planning an act of terrorism. The men can be held for 60 days without charges. An eleventh suspect sought by police turned himself in on Friday afternoon in Mato Grosso state and will be taken to the same prison, federal police said in a statement, without naming the detainee. Thursday's arrests renewed fears that militants might find fertile ground for sympathizers in Brazil, a diverse population of more than 200 million people. The country's large Arab com- munity, while mainly Christian, has long been the subject of specula- tion over suspected ties to militant groups, but no proof of such a rela- tionship has ever been discovered by Brazilian or foreign intelligence officials. Another source of concern is that southern Brazil, where some of the Arab community settled, is an area where weapons are one of many contraband products frequently smuggled across porous borders with Paraguay and Argentina. The wife of one of the men photo- graphed in Cairo said her husband, Vitor Magalhaes, 23, used social media to teach Arabic after he won a scholarship to Egypt. She denied he was involved in terrorism. "He became a 100 percent better person when he converted to Islam. He is a loving father, a good person who wants to help everyone," Lar- issa Rodrigues told Globo TV at her home in the Sao Paulo district of Guarulhos. Magalhaes only mentioned Islam- ic State at home when it appeared on the news and was "all about work", she said. The other man in the Cairo pho- to, Antonio Andrade dos Santos, 34, openly supported Islamic State after his conversion. But he had been expelled from a local Muslim prayer centre in the northern city of Joao Pessoa, because of his extreme views, the Estado de S.Paulo news- paper reported. Brazil holds terror suspects, seeks leads about possible Olympic threat Brazilian Federal Police officers escort one of the 10 people they arrested on suspicions of belonging to a group supporting Islamic State and discussing terrorist acts during next month's Rio 2016 Olympic Games, at the Guarulhos airport in Sao Paulo.