ISIS Has Whole Fake Passport ‘Industry,’ Official Says
By Brian Ross, Michele McPhee and Lee Ferran. The terror group ISIS has created a whole “industry” out of the production of fake passports, a high-level French official said today.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told reporters that through ISIS’s operations in Syria, Iraq and Libya, the group has acquired blank passports and has now set up a “real fake document industry.” Cazeneuve made the statement following a meeting with top European officials where he proposed setting up a new task force to help nab people attempting to come into the European Union with fake papers.
Last month ABC News reported that U.S. intelligence suspected ISIS had acquired thousands of blank Syrian passports and at least one passport printing machine after taking over government offices in Syria. Officials from Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) said in a 17-page report that the terror group has likely been able to print legitimate-looking Syrian passports since at least last summer – and raised the possibility that people using the forged documents have snuck into America.
“Since more than 17 months [have] passed since Raqqa and Deir ez-Zour fell to ISIS, it is possible that individuals from Syria with passports ‘issued’ in these ISIS-controlled cities or who had passport blanks, may have traveled to the U.S.,” the HSI report says. (Read more from “ISIS Has Whole Fake Passport ‘Industry,’ Official Says” HERE)
____________________________
Islamic State Plans Attacks From Camps in Europe, Europol Says
By James G. Neuger. Islamic State has set up a special operations command to mastermind more terrorist attacks on “soft targets” in Europe, drawing on training camps on European soil and with France as the most at-risk country, the European Union’s crime-fighting agency said.
The model is the simultaneous shootings at several locations in Paris in November which killed 130, with most of the bloodshed at a concert hall in eastern Paris, said the agency, known as Europol.
It is possible that similar operations “are currently being planned and prepared,” Europol said in a report released on Monday during a meeting of EU interior ministers in Amsterdam. “The wide range of possible targets in combination with an opportunistic approach of locally based groups creates a huge variety of possible scenarios for future terrorist events.” (Read more from “Islamic State Plans Attacks From Camps in Europe, Europol Says” HERE)
Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.
