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Top ISIS Leader ‘Omar the Chechen’ Believed Dead in U.S. Airstrike

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A top ISIS commander known by his nickname Omar the Chechen — and recognized by his distinguishable red beard — is believed dead from a U.S. airstrike in Syria, a senior defense official told NBC News Tuesday.

The likely death of Omar al-Shishani near the town of Shaddadi — seized by Syrian rebels from ISIS last month — would be a key gain for coalition forces in taking out one of the biggest names on the U.S.’s terror hit list.

The senior defense official said al-Shishani, born in 1986, is believed to have died along with a dozen other ISIS fighters in the airstrike Friday.

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook added that al-Shishani — originally named Tarkhan Tayumurazovich Batirashvili — was a Syrian-based Georgian national who held top ranks within ISIS, including minister of war . . .

[Omar al-Shishani] fought for Georgia’s military before contracting tuberculosis. In 2010, he was arrested for weapons possession and spent 16 months in jail. He later went to Syria to command forces fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad and rose the ranks of ISIS. (Read more from “Top ISIS Leader ‘Omar the Chechen’ Believed Dead in U.S. Airstrike” HERE)

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ISIS Posts Info of 55 New Jersey Police Officers

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ISIS hackers have threatened 55 New Jersey police officers by releasing their names, addresses, telephone numbers and working locations online.

The Caliphate Cyber Army (CCA), an ISIS-affiliated group of hackers that largely focuses on defacing websites and spreading propaganda, released an Excel spreadsheet containing the details of 55 New Jersey Transit Authority police Wednesday.

The Daily Mail understands that the information — which lists the details of employees from a probationary police officer up to a number of captains — was obtained by hackers on February 26 from a uniform laundering list.

Many of the addresses associated with the officers are station houses and headquarters, but when put into Google Street View, many others show residential homes. Telephone numbers include officers’ cellphones . . .

The file was uploaded to an Arabic-language file sharing site on Wednesday. By Saturday morning it had been downloaded 300 times. (Read more from “ISIS Posts Info of 55 New Jersey Police Officers” HERE)

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Senator Ernst Just Revealed Something Terrifying About ISIS’ Presence in US – Everyone Needs to Know This

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Speaking in front of a room filled with conservative grassroots activists, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, took on President Barack Obama’s foreign policy strategy, arguing that the country needs to elect a new leader who is willing to confront the “real and dangerous threats” facing the nation.

“We’ve all got to come together and find conservative leadership that will confront the very real and dangerous threats America faces in this world,” Ernst said at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, outside Washington, D.C. “The reality is, the world is in turmoil, and President Obama does not want to face that fact.”

Criticizing Obama for once referring to the Islamic State—also known as ISIS—as a “JV” team, Ernst, who served in the military for more than 23 years, stressed the urgency for new leadership.

“The San Bernardino attacks proved this is not just some JV force in the Middle East,” she said. “ISIS is present in all 50 states, according to the FBI. Think about that for a moment.”

Ernst sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, which oversees the nation’s military. She is also a member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

The lack of leadership in confronting ISIS, Ernst said, is not just hurting the homeland. The administration’s “inability to stand tall and destroy ISIS” is bleeding into other sectors of the country’s foreign policy, she argued.

“Russia is taking advantage of our lack of leadership in Eastern Europe and the Middle East right now,” Ernst said, adding:

Over the past seven years, the Obama-Clinton foreign policy strategy has been to give ground to Vladimir Putin from Ukraine to Syria, [and] to retreat from making tough choices in the defense of American interest in our national security.

Rallying young conservatives in the room, Ernst said the time is now to elect new leadership.

“We need to make this happen,” she said. “We need a conservative who will help our allies and protect our national security.”

Running through Saturday, CPAC offers conservatives across the country an opportunity to gather with fellow activists and leaders for speeches, panels, exhibits, and other activities at Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center at Maryland’s National Harbor. (For more from the author of “Senator Ernst Just Revealed Something Terrifying About ISIS’ Presence in US – Everyone Needs to Know This” please click HERE)

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CIA: ISIS Attack on US ‘Inevitable’

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By John Hayward. In his 60 Minutes interview last Sunday, CIA Director John Brennan warned that Islamic State attacks (ISIS/ISIL) on U.S. soil are “inevitable.” He came close to blaming political correctness for interfering with efforts to detect and thwart terror plots.

When interviewer Scott Pelley asked if Brennan expects an Islamic State attack in the United States, the CIA director replied, “I’m expecting them to try to put in place the operatives, the material or whatever else that they need to do or to incite people to carry out these attacks, clearly. So I believe that their attempts are inevitable. I don’t think their successes necessarily are.”

Pelley asked Brennan to describe to the audience ISIS’ motivations for killing Americans. His answer was brief, but not inconsistent with the controversial warning from presidential candidate Ben Carson about “civilizational jihad.”

The difference is that Brennan sees ISIS, and presumably other organized extremists groups like al-Qaeda, as outside agents trying to “provoke a clash between the West and the Muslim world,” recruiting supporters with false claims that “the United States is trying to take over their countries.”

Brennan credited U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies with doing excellent work to prevent terrorist attacks, but he said that “we have to work harder.” His call for giving the intelligence community greater “technical capabilities” included a call for backdoor access to encrypted online communications. (Read more from “CIA: ISIS Attack on US ‘Inevitable'” HERE)

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EU Police Chief Warns That 5,000 Jihadists Returned From Middle East — and New Attack Is Likely

By Justin Huggler. Up to 5,000 jihadists trained in the Middle East could be at large in Europe, the EU’s police chief has warned.

“Europe is currently facing the highest terror threat in more than 10 years,” said Rob Wainwright, the British head of Europol, the EU’s police agency.

Thousands of EU citizens have returned to their home countries after being trained by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Wainwright said.

“We can expect ISIL or other religious terror groups to stage an attack somewhere in Europe with the aim of achieving mass casualties among the civilian population,” he told Germany’s Neue Osnabrucker Zeitung newspaper. (Read more from “EU Police Chief Warns That 5,000 Jihadists Returned From Middle East — and New Attack Is Likely” HERE)

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U.S. Scrambles to Contain Growing ISIS Threat in Libya

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The Islamic State’s branch in Libya is deepening its reach across a wide area of Africa, attracting new recruits from countries like Senegal that had been largely immune to the jihadist propaganda — and forcing the African authorities and their Western allies to increase efforts to combat the fast-moving threat.

The American airstrikes in northwestern Libya on Friday, which demolished an Islamic State training camp and were aimed at a top Tunisian operative, underscore the problem, Western officials said. The more than three dozen suspected Islamic State fighters killed in the bombing were recruited from Tunisia and other African countries, officials said, and were believed to be rehearsing an attack against Western targets.

Even as American intelligence agencies say the number of Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria has dropped to about 25,000 from a high of about 31,500, partly because of the United States-led air campaign there, the group’s ranks in Libya have roughly doubled in the same period, to about 6,500 fighters. More than a dozen American and allied officials spoke of their growing concern about the militant organization’s expanding reach from Libya and across Africa on rules of anonymity because the discussions involved intelligence and military planning.

Islamic State leaders in Syria are telling recruits traveling north from West African nations like Senegal and Chad, as well as others streaming up through Sudan in eastern Africa, not to press on to the Middle East. Instead, they are being told to stay put in Libya. American intelligence officials, who described the recent orders from Islamic State leaders, say the organization’s immediate goal is to carve out a new caliphate in Libya, and there are signs the affiliate is trying to establish statelike institutions there. (Read more from “U.S. Scrambles to Contain Growing ISIS Threat in Libya” HERE)

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5,000 Islamic State Trained Jihadis Could Be on This Continent

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Up to 5,000 jihadis could be at large in Europe after returning from Islamic State training camps in the Middle East, the head of Europe’s police agency has warned.

Europol head Rob Wainwright said that between 3,000 and 5,000 jihadis could have re-entered the continent after training with the terror group in Syria and Iraq.

Speaking to German paper Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung, Mr Wainwright said the risk of a terror attack on the continent was now the highest for many years.

“Europe is currently facing the highest terror threat in more than ten years,” he said. “We can expect Isil or other religious terror groups to stage an attack somewhere in Europe with the aim of achieving mass casualties among the civilian population.”

Mr Wainwright, who previously served as head of Britain’s National Crime Intelligence Service (NCIS) and Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), added that the growing number of militants in Europe “presents EU member states with completely new challenges”. (Read more from “5,000 Islamic State Trained Jihadis Could Be in This Continent” HERE)

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Confirmed: ISIS Using Banned Chemical Weapons in Iraq; U.S. Troops Moving Into Contaminated Areas

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By Stoyan Zaimov. A diplomat with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has confirmed laboratory tests that show the Islamic State terror group has been using banned chemical weapons on soldiers in Iraq.

Reuters reported on Monday that the diplomat, who chose to remain anonymous because the OPCW report has not yet been officially released, said the findings point to IS using sulfur mustard gas on around 35 Kurdish troops last August, in at least one confirmed case.

The use of chemical weapons has been banned throughout the vast majority of the world, with sulfur mustard known to cause severe delayed burns to the eyes, skin and respiratory tract.

Although the OPCW concluded back in October that mustard gas has been used in the civil war raging in Syria, which IS is also a part of, the new findings show that.

The question also arises of how IS has managed to obtain chemical weapons. Another diplomat suggested to Reuters that the terror group might have obtained the sulfur mustard agent from the stockpiles of the Syrian regime, which had promised to dismantle its chemical weapons program by 2014. (Read more from “Confirmed: ISIS Using Banned Chemical Weapons in Iraq; U.S. Troops Moving Into Contaminated Areas” HERE)

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U.S. Troops in Iraq Move Into Region Where ISIS Just Used Mustard Gas

By Andrew Tilghman. U.S. troops in Iraq are setting up a train-advise-and-assist team at a forward operating base near the Islamic State group’s front lines outside of Mosul, not far from the site of recent chemical weapons attacks.

The Nineveh Operations Center in the farming village of Makhmour will be a primary base for the U.S. to support the Iraqis’ long-awaited battle to seize Mosul from Islamic State militants, also known as ISIS or ISIL, a U.S. military official said.

A large convoy of Iraqi army forces began arriving at the base in Makhmour in early February. Iraq’s military leaders plan to deploy about 4,500 soldiers to the area for the Mosul operation, Iraqi officials said.

“There’s a lot going on in Makhmour. That’s where one of our operations centers is located. So there are American advise-and-assist capabilities there,” said Army Col. Steve Warren, a U.S. Defense Department spokesman in Baghdad. (Read more from “U.S. Troops in Iraq Move Into Region Where ISIS Just Used Mustard Gas” HERE)

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Air Force Crew Refueling Plane Saves Pilot in Emergency Over ISIS Territory

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A quick-thinking refueling plane crew saved a fighter pilot who faced having to eject over Islamic State territory.

The F-16 had been trying to refuel in mid-air when the pilot discovered a malfunction with his fuel system, which meant he could only fly for 15 minutes – nowhere near enough to reach safety.

Instead of leaving the pilot to cope with the emergency himself, the US Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker crew managed to escort him back to its base while refueling every 15 minutes to keep the jet in the air.

US Air Force commander Lt Col Eric Hallberg said: “Over 80% of his total fuel capability was trapped and unusable.

“Knowing the risks to their own safety, they put the life of the F-16 pilot first and made what could’ve been an international tragedy a feel-good news story. (Read more from “Air Force Crew Refueling Plane Saves Pilot in Emergency Over ISIS Territory” HERE)

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Shipment of ‘Guillotines’ Bound for ISIS Seized

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Iranian authorities have seized a cargo shipment bound for Islamic State-held territory containing multiple guillotines, the semi-official Iranian news agency FARS reported Feb. 7.

Vahid Dashtbani, director-general of Iran’s Customs Office for Transit Affairs, told an Iranian daily newspaper Sunday that the devices were “designed for efficiently carrying out executions by beheading.”

The tools, however, were likely not guillotines in the traditional sense (such as those used during the French Revolution), but instead industrial-strength paper cutters capable of removing heads and arms swiftly and with surgical precision.

A recently published video (edited to remove the most graphic content) showed ISIS pronouncing sentence over a thief before a crowd of townspeople. The thief then had has hand sliced off with the paper cutter, referred to in the ISIS video as a “guillotine.”

In another video (not linked here because it is too graphic), the heavy blade of the instrument was shown detached from the paper cutter and wielded like a sword to behead six captives with a single stroke for qisas or retaliation. The men were reportedly Syrian soldiers linked to a car bombing which killed “innocent” ISIS soldiers and supporters. (Read more from “Shipment of ‘Guillotines’ Bound for ISIS Seized” HERE)

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Journalist: ISIS Motivated by Islam, Not Insanity

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An article in a pro-Iranian Iraqi daily denounced the widespread notion that Islamic State terror has nothing to do with Islam, stating IS’s belief that “a day will arrive when Muslims inundate Europe and subdue it to Islam,” continuing, “Is this not enough to convince us that terror does have a religion?”

The article, titled “Does terror truly have no religion?” translated by MEMRI, was published in Al-Akhbar and authored by Iraqi journalist Fadel Boula. In it, Boula objects to the claim frequently repeated in the Arab world that IS atrocities are the result of “insanity” and are unrelated to Islam.

Boula asserts that IS and other terror organizations are motivated by an extremist Salafi ideology and their members maintain the belief that their actions represent Allah’s will and directives.

He condemns the idea that IS’s actions are unrelated to Islam as naïve and ignoring the facts, “as though there are no religious goals or values behind [the terror], but only a state of insanity that causes those afflicted with it to run amok, unaware of what they are doing or what [they seek] to achieve by their actions.” (Read more from “Journalist: ISIS Motivated by Islam, Not Insanity” HERE)

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