Posts

Prosecutors: NY Man Hoping to Become Suicide Bomber for Jihad

/0 Comments/in , /by

A New York man was being held without bail on terrorism charges after federal authorities said he was prepared to strap on a bomb and sacrifice himself for jihad and persistently tried to join the Islamic State or another extremist group in Syria.

Elvis Redzepagic, 26, was charged Saturday with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. Police on suburban Long Island arrested Redzepagic on Feb. 2 on a minor, unrelated charge, and he told them: “I’m going to leave this country, and I’m going to come back with an Army — Islam is coming,” according to a federal court complaint . . .

Redzepagic “was persistent in his efforts” to join Islamic militants in civil-war-ravaged Syria, making it to Turkey in 2015 and Jordan last year and even getting to the Syrian border, said William F. Sweeney, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York field office. (Read more from “Prosecutors: NY Man Hoping to Become Suicide Bomber for Jihad” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

ISIS Gains Ground, Targets Egyptian Christians in Sinai

/0 Comments/in , /by

In the past three days, Islamic State militants in Egypt’s volatile northern Sinai region abducted four men accused of collaborating with the government, three of them during a brazen raid in the middle of a public market. Two of the men have been found slain while the others remain missing; Egyptian officials say that one of the slain men had his eyes plucked out and was set on fire before being shot to death.

Women are being threatened with punishment if they don’t wear the niqab and farmers are being forced to pay financial tribute to ISIS under the guise of the “zakat” mandatory Islamic donation to charity. The militants have set up their own checkpoints especially on the roads around the city of Rafah, which borders the Gaza Strip. Passengers are forced to recite from the Quran before being allowed to pass, according to area residents and tribal leaders.

This recent show-of-strength campaign by ISIS loyalists in northern Sinai comes on the heels of a recent easing of the military campaign against them and represents a move to reassert their control over the local civilian population, according to residents, tribal leaders and officials. (Read more from “ISIS Gains Ground, Targets Egyptian Christians in Sinai” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

ISIS Has ‘People in Place’ to Conduct ‘Steady’ Attacks

/0 Comments/in , /by

The Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) terror group is under heavy global pressure from militaries and law enforcement organizations, but military and counterterrorism officials forecast no letup in the current wave of international terrorism.

“We think that transnational terrorist attacks, in the near term, will probably remain steady. The group has been able to build a robust and redundant apparatus for conducting transnational terrorist attacks,” said a U.S. defense official.

ISIS will likely continue to employ a less-centralized approach to attacks, the official said — one driven by slick, incendiary online messages.

“They have a lot of people in place already that are sympathizers around the world. … We think they will be able to continue to be able to produce at least a constant level of propaganda, which underpins a lot of the ideology in Europe and elsewhere,” the official said.

Currently in Europe, the terror threat, which is high, is driven by ISIS, Al Qaida and other mostly Salafist groups. (Read more from “ISIS Has ‘People in Place’ to Conduct ‘Steady’ Attacks” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Special Ops Chief: US Troops Have Killed 60,000 ISIS Militants the Past Two Years

/0 Comments/in , /by

U.S. military forces have killed 60,000 Islamic State militants over the past two years, according to a U.S. Special Operations Commander.

On Tuesday, while speaking at a defense conference near Washington D.C., Army Gen. Raymond Thomas said the figure is substantially higher than the one reported at the end of last year – when U.S. officials said they had killed 50,000 ISIS fighters.

“I’m not into morbid body count, but that matters,” Thomas said at the National Defense Industrial Association’s annual Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict conference, according to the Military Times. “So when folks ask, do you need more aggressive [measures], do you need better [rules of engagement], I would tell you that we’re being pretty darn prolific right now.”

But Defense Department Spokesman Christopher Sherwood told Fox News that death tolls are not a proper measure of “effectiveness” in the fight against ISIS.

“References to enemy killed are estimates, not precise figures,” Sherwood told Fox News via email. “While the number of enemy killed is one measure of military success, the [U.S. military] coalition does not use this as a measure of effectiveness in the campaign to defeat ISIS.” (Read more from “Special Ops Chief: US Troops Have Killed 60,000 ISIS Militants the Past Two Years” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Yazidi Children Screamed and Cried Outside the Door While ISIS Fighters Raped Their Mothers

/0 Comments/in , /by

As the Islamic State continues its genocide of Yazidis and Christians in Syria and Iraq, a detailed report by the U.N.’s Human Rights Council reveals that Yazidi mothers and their children are brutally persecuted – mothers sold and re-sold as sex slaves, children murdered, and children traumatized from being forced to listen behind locked doors as their mothers are raped and beaten.

One Yazidi woman who was sold seven times to ISIS fighters said, “When he would force me into a room with him, I could hear my children screaming and crying outside the door. Once he became very angry. He beat and threatened to kill them. He forced two of them to stand outside barefoot in the snow until he finished with me.”

An ISIS fighter killed the children of a Yazidi woman who was sold three times as a sex slave. When she asked him, “What did you do to them?” he beat her and said, “They are kuffar [non-Muslim] children. It is good they are dead. Why are you crying for them?”

The U.N. report from June, They Came to Destroy: ISIS Crimes Against the Yazidis, explains the Islamic State’s attacks on Yazidi villages in Sinjar in August 2014 and the subsequent (and ongoing) genocidal actions taken by ISIS to destroy the Yazidi people.

The report is based on 45 interviews with survivors, religious leaders, doctors and journalists. An estimated 5,000 Yazidis have been killed, so far, by the Islamic State. “ISIS has sought to destroy the Yazidis through killings, sexual slavery, enslavement, torture and inhuman and degrading treatment and forcible transfer causing serious bodily and mental harm,” states the report. (Read more from “Yazidi Children Screamed and Cried Outside the Door While ISIS Fighters Raped Their Mothers” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

ISIS in Huge Trouble at Site of ‘Apocalyptic Battle’ After Blitz by American-Syrian Alliance

/0 Comments/in , /by

Dabiq should have been the preordained site of an apocalyptic battle between a Muslim army and a Christian legion,, according to Islamic mythology.

That battle would be the harbinger of a new world order in which Islam will be the only religion.

Dabiq is of such great significance to Islamic State that it named its English-language online magazine after the town in northern Syria and believes the battle will bring the end of the world.

This is based on what the Prophet Mohammad foretold 1,400 years ago.

“The last hour will not come” until an Islamic army will defeat the “Romans” there, the Prophet said about Dabiq.

“The spark has been lit in Iraq, and its heat will continue to intensify — by Allah’s permission — until it burns the Crusader armies in Dabiq,” Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the liquidated founder of ISIS was quoted as saying by Dabiq Magazine last year.

In Islamic State’s version of this prophecy, the U.S.-led coalition is playing the role of the Romans while ISIS will represent the Muslim army.

However, despite Islamic State’s frantic preparations for the battle — the jihadist organization sent hundreds of its best fighters to Dabiq recently — the town is close to collapse and could spell the end of ISIS in Syria, British media reported on Wednesday.

The U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army supported by 300 U.S. Special Forces and coalition warplanes is making rapid gains on the battlefield and the town could even fall within hours, according to the British news site Express.

Mostafa Sejari, a commander of the Free Syrian Army, however, warned he expected the battle for Dabiq would be “the fiercest ever” but nevertheless expected that FSA control over the city was a matter of time.

In Islamic State’s version of this prophecy, the U.S.-led coalition is playing the role of the Romans while ISIS will represent the Muslim army.

“By controlling Dabiq, we break the myth of Daesh and open a road to reach Marea (in Turkey). Controlling Dabiq is just a matter of time, God willing,” Sejari told Express while using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

The progress of the American-Syria alliance is hindered by hundreds of mines that have been planted by ISIS ahead of the battle and the expectation is that the jihadist group will use many suicide bombers to block the entrance to Dabiq.

The Obama administration believes the fall of Dabiq will deliver a devastating blow to the morale of Islamic State’s fighters and would make the recapture of more important cities such as Raqqa (ISIS’ capital in Syria) and Mosul (the second-largest city in Iraq) easier.

But the fall of Dabiq will also harm ISIS’ abilities to recruit new fighters, Kyle Orton, a Middle East analyst and research fellow with the Henry Jackson Society, told Express.

“The coming loss of the town — probably in the next fortnight — will be a blow to ISIS’s ability to recruit, and the Turkish intervention, which has closed the border and driven a wedge between the opposition and al-Qaeda by giving the rebels a realistic alternative, jihadist recruitment in general, seems set to suffer in Syria,” Orton said.

The situation in the self-declared Caliphate has become so difficult that it has caused ISIS to declare the state of emergency.

The U.K. Daily Star reported Tuesday that ISIS leaders who gathered for a crisis meeting in the Iraqi town of Mutaibija ”turned on each other with weapons after arguments broke out.”

A commander of the Shiite al-Hashd al-Shaabi militia told the British paper that “the meeting turned into a bloody massacre after exacerbated disputes between the ISIS leaders that led them to use weapons against each other.”

The Shiite rebel commander added that spies had told him that there are growing disputes among Islamic State leaders. (For more from the author of “ISIS in Huge Trouble at Site of ‘Apocalyptic Battle’ After Blitz by American-Syrian Alliance” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

State Admits: Islamic State Terrorists Trying to Pose as Refugees

/0 Comments/in , /by

State Department spokesman John Kirby acknowledged Wednesday that Islamic State terrorists are trying to mingle with refugee populations overseas in the hopes of making it to the U.S. posing as a refugee.

“I wouldn’t debate the fact that there’s the potential for ISIS terrorists to try to insert themselves, and we see that in some of the refugee camps in Jordan and in Turkey, where they try to insert themselves into the population,” Kirby said on “Fox and Friends.”

Still, he argued that the vetting process for these refugees is tough, and should be enough to keep terrorists out, although he admitted it’s not a perfect process.

“The vetting process, while not perfect, is a very, very stringent, and it can take almost up to two years for a single refugee to make it into the country,” he said.

He said in the same interview: “Is it perfect? Can it be perfect? Can it be foolproof? Well, probably not, no.” (Read more from “State Admits: Islamic State Terrorists Trying to Pose as Refugees” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Inspired Attacks Show Strength of Islamic State, Experts Say

/0 Comments/in , /by

After the terrorist attacks this weekend, President Barack Obama acknowledged a link between the central Islamic State and lone bad actors, even as the administration has frequently drawn a distinction in the past.

National security experts believe terror attacks “inspired” by the radical groups are just as dangerous—potentially more so—than if ISIS draws up the plan of attack.

The independent bad actors are clearly “executing the will of the organization,” said Bill Roggio, the editor of The Long War Journal.

“ISIS says, if you can’t come down here and fight with us, fight at home, it might even be better,” Roggio, also a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “ISIS and al-Qaeda are a greater movement where in many cases these people pledge their allegiance to the groups.”

Roggio noted the attacks in New York and New Jersey are certainly similar to past terror attacks.

“The attack patterns follow the past patterns; a bomb in a populated area, similar to Boston. The execution was sloppy. but the planning and coordination were good,” Roggio said.

Over the weekend, a pipe bomb exploded at the location where a charity race for Marines and sailors was set to take place later in New Jersey. No one was harmed because the area was empty at the time of the explosion. Also, a pressure cooker filled with shrapnel—similar to what was used in the 2013 Boston Marathon attack—exploded in the Chelsea area of Manhattan, where 29 people were injured.

Additionally, in St. Cloud, Minnesota, a man stabbed eight people at a shopping center, talking about Allah and Islam. All of the victims survived. The attacker was shot and killed by an off-duty police officer before he could harm anyone else. The Islamic State claimed credit for the attack.

But there is no evidence that any of the attacks were linked to a foreign terror organization or cell.

Obama addressed the weekend’s terror attacks on Monday in New York ahead of the United Nations General Assembly meeting, asserting the Islamic State is losing. Obama said:

We will continue to lead the global coalition in the fight to destroy ISIL, which is instigating a lot of people over the internet to carry out attacks. We are going to continue to go after them. We’re going to take out their leaders. We’re going to take out their infrastructure. They are continuing to lose ground in Iraq and in Syria … As we take away more of their territory, it exposes ISIL as the failed cause that it is, and it helps to undermine their ideology, which over time will make it harder for them to recruit and inspire people to violence.

In July, CNN host Jake Tapper challenged Secretary of State John Kerry’s insistence that the Islamic State is “on the run,” pointing out several terrorist attacks that were inspired by the Sunni militant group.

Kerry responded, “It depends on where you mean ISIS,” drawing a distinction between an inspired attack and one plotted and carried out by the central organization.

“If people are inspired, they’re inspired, but ISIL which is based in Syria is under huge pressure and that is just a fact … If you’re saying that one person standing up one day and killing people is a reflection of ISIS moving in Iraq and Syria, I think you’re dead wrong.”

In two high-profile cases this summer, an ISIS-inspired attacker killed 49 in Orlando and another ISIS-inspired attacker murdered 84 in Nice, France, during a Bastille Day celebration.

Inspired attacks are actually worse, argued James Carafano, vice president for the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute at The Heritage Foundation.

“It is way worse when an organization doesn’t have to invest its assets and infrastructure, and can simply outsource terror for free,” Carafano told The Daily Signal. “The notion that ISIS didn’t draw up the attack plans so we are somehow better off is utterly stupid. For ISIS this is free lunch.”

The Islamic State is still able to energize people to join its fight, which demonstrates that the United States and the West haven’t sufficiently weakened the group to the point that it is perceived as weak, Carafano said.

“The inspired attacks show that ISIS is able to take the fight to the enemy and hurt the enemy when people are acting on its behalf,” Carafano said.

In some respects, if anyone is winning, it would be the Islamic State by virtue of still being in existence after two years of fighting with the United States and other powerful Western countries, said Jim Hanson, executive vice president at the Center for Security Policy, a national security think tank.

“Whether it is al-Qaeda or ISIS, this is a civil jihad movement that doesn’t have to have a hierarchy like a Fortune 500 corporation, it’s the ideology that links them,” Hanson said in a phone interview with The Daily Signal.

“The ideology links them enough to say online, ‘If you believe as we do in Sharia law and that Islam should dominate, you are one of us,’” Hanson, a former Army Special Forces sergeant, added. (For more from the author of “Inspired Attacks Show Strength of Islamic State, Experts Say” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Sniper Takes out ISIS Executioner From a Mile Away

/0 Comments/in , , /by

A sharpshooter killed a top ISIS executioner and three other jihadists with a single bullet from nearly a mile away — just seconds before the fiend was set to burn 12 hostages alive with a flamethrower, according to a new report.

The British Special Air Service marksman turned one of the most hated terrorists in Syria into a fireball by using a Barett .50-caliber rifle to strike a fuel tank affixed to the jihadi’s back, the UK’s Daily Star reported Sunday.

The pack exploded, killing the sadistic terrorist and three of his flunkies, who were supposed to film the execution, last month, the paper said.

The ISIS butcher — who reportedly delighted in burning hostages alive — had been on a US “kill list” for several months, sources told the paper, which did not identify the sniper or the executioner. (Read more from “Sniper Takes out ISIS Executioner From a Mile Away” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Here’s Why Conservatives Should Be Wary of Google’s New Anti-ISIS Efforts

/0 Comments/in , /by

Google is trying to stop online radicalization of wannabe jihadists with a new, seemingly-effective program. While it could be a mild boon for counter-terrorism efforts, it also comes packaged with some reasonable suspicions — especially for conservatives.

Google is trying to combat extremist indoctrination by tinkering with its search and advertising algorithms, as well as YouTube’s video platform, to redirect would-be ISIS militants to content that counters the insurgency’s narrative — for example, sending someone looking for ISIS propaganda videos to a video testimonial by a former jihadist.

Andy Greenberg reports for Wired:

Jigsaw, the Google-owned tech incubator and think tank—until recently known as Google Ideas—has been working over the past year to develop a new program it hopes can use a combination of Google’s search advertising algorithms and YouTube’s video platform to target aspiring ISIS recruits and ultimately dissuade them from joining the group’s cult of apocalyptic violence. The program, which Jigsaw calls the Redirect Method and plans to launch in a new phase this month, places advertising alongside results for any keywords and phrases that Jigsaw has determined people attracted to ISIS commonly search for. Those ads link to Arabic- and English-language YouTube channels that pull together preexisting videos Jigsaw believes can effectively undo ISIS’s brainwashing—clips like testimonials from former extremists, imams denouncing ISIS’s corruption of Islam, and surreptitiously filmed clips inside the group’s dysfunctional caliphate in Northern Syria and Iraq. […]

The results, in a pilot project Jigsaw ran early this year, were surprisingly effective: Over the course of about two months, more than 300,000 people were drawn to the anti-ISIS YouTube channels. Searchers actually clicked on Jigsaw’s three or four times more often than a typical ad campaign. Those who clicked spent more than twice as long viewing the most effective playlists than the best estimates of how long people view YouTube as a whole. And this month, along with the London-based startup Moonshot Countering Violent Extremism and the US-based Gen Next Foundation, Jigsaw plans to relaunch the program in a second phase that will focus its method on North American extremists, applying the method to both potential ISIS recruits and violent white supremacists.

Cyber radicalization is a huge problem in the global war against jihadism, as evidenced by the staggering number of terrorists in recent years who have been inspired to carry out terror attacks in the United States and Europe. Among the responses to the phenomenon have been Twitter’s efforts to shut down hundreds of thousands of ISIS-related accounts and the Obama administration’s attempts to combat online jihadist propaganda as part of its largely-failed anti-extremism agenda. Efforts like these, however, have resembled a game of online Whac-A-Mole, with extremists constantly making new social media profiles and with the Obama program being outsourced to Abu Dhabi, for example.

First off, it’s essential to remember that even if the jigsaw program works perfectly, it won’t be a catch-all for radicalization in the West. Yes, ISIS has capitalized on social media and other online platforms to recruit in ways never imagined, but person-to-person radicalization through extremist mosques and Islamic centers is still going to happen.

Regardless of whether or not this project proves to be effective brings us to the next caveat. Jigsaw could have very well produced the free market’s best response yet to addressing the jihadist threat online; however, given recent stories of leftist bias in Silicon Valley, the efficacy of the program should give conservatives at least a moment’s pause.

Depending on the platform, Google currently boasts anywhere from roughly 80 to 95 percent of the search engine market share, according to recent numbers from StatCounter. The tech giant has also been criticized in recent months for skewing search results in favor of Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Analysis by the Washington Free Beacon in June shows a clear distinction between the kinds of search results produced for Hillary Clinton across different search engines.

Additionally, Facebook and Twitter have also come under fire over the past year for allegedly suppressing conservative content. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg went as far as inviting conservative media figures to his house in May after it was revealed that the site’s “Trending Topics” feed wasn’t based on a news algorithm, but rather a group of people with a bias against conservative content. Furthermore, a New York Post story from February highlights how Twitter’s ostensible efforts to crack down on online harassment have led to conservative voices being shut out.

“The power of Facebook, Google and Twitter is enormous. One could argue that they have a monopoly on the content Americans see every day. The content that people read is a way to control public opinion and voting patterns,” explains CR’s Brian Darling. “[W]e as liberty minded people need to recognize the enormous power that these companies have over the news we read every day.”

When someone develops a new, more efficient hammer, it’s good to remember that it’s still capable of hitting more than nails. What Google is creating here through Jigsaw isn’t just a market-driven solution to just one part of jihadist recruitment, it’s also a means by which Google could more effectively and surreptitiously suppress other kinds of content while redirecting readers elsewhere.

Google’s latest efforts may offer a slight hand against one of the most dangerous and pervasive threats to the civilized world, but it should also be viewed with caution and scrutiny for however else — and, against whomever else — it could be applied. (For more from the author of “Here’s Why Conservatives Should Be Wary of Google’s New Anti-ISIS Efforts” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.