$200M Ransom Shows ISIS Financial Desperation
Photo Credit: Interdependent By Cristina Corbin. The Islamic State’s staggering $200 million demand for two Japanese hostages may reveal the terrorist group’s desperation to maintain control of its sprawling caliphate, especially amid falling black market oil revenues from seized wells and pipelines, terrorism experts said.
An online video purportedly released by the group’s al-Furqan media arm and posted Tuesday on militant websites associated with the terror network presents a pricey ultimatum: Japan must pay $200 million within 72 hours or two Japanese hostages — a 42-year-old private military company operator and a 47-year-old freelance journalist — will be executed.
The hostages, identified as Haruna Yukawa and Kenji Goto Jogo, appear in the video in orange jumpsuits like other hostages previously killed by Islamic State, which controls a third of Iraq and Syria. The militant who threatens them speaks in a British accent and may be the same jihadist who appeared in videos with western journalists who were beheaded.
While Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed to save the men — saying, “Their lives are the top priority” — the Japanese government declined to say whether it would pay the ransom. (Read more about ISIS financial desperation HERE)
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ISIS Gaining Ground in Yemen
By Brian Todd. The Syria-based terror group ISIS is active and recruiting inside the Middle Eastern state of Yemen, already a hotbed of terrorist activity, CNN has learned.
The disturbing information comes from a Yemeni official, who told CNN on Wednesday that ISIS has a presence in at least three provinces in southern and central Yemen, and there is now a “real competition” between ISIS and the Yemen-based terror group al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP.
That competition manifested itself in a gun-battle between the two groups in Yemen’s eastern provinces last month, the same official said, though he did not have specifics on the casualties that resulted from that incident.
CNN cannot independently confirm the claims. (Read more from this story HERE)
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