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Eye on Extremism
February 11, 2022
Associated Press: Saudi Arabia: 12 Hurt In Attack Targeting Airport Near Yemen
“The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen said 12 people were injured by falling debris from an attempted drone attack Thursday on an airport in the southern Saudi region of Abha, near the kingdom’s border with Yemen. Hours later, Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who have been battling the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, claimed responsibility for the attack. Saudi air defenses destroyed the bomb-laden drone, according to the coalition. Saudi state television and accompanying social media accounts carried video from inside Abha’s airport showing operations there running as normal after the incident. The coalition said the people who were hurt included travelers and workers at the airport. Two of the injured were Saudi citizens, four were Bangladeshi residents and three were Nepali residents. There was also one person each from Sri Lanka, the Philippines and India hurt.”
Politico: Islamic State Evolves ’Emoji’ Tactics To Peddle Propaganda Online
“The Islamic State has a new weapon in spreading hate speech and violent content online: the emoji. Over the past two months, Facebook pages in Arabic, Kurdish and English have used these digital images to sidestep Facebook's content rules. Emojis have been used instead of words like “weapon,” “explosion” and “rocket” to champion the Islamic State's terrorist attacks across the Middle East and farther afield. These pages, posing as mainstream media organizations with mundane names like World News and Media Point, have collectively racked up hundreds of thousands of likes, shares and comments, based on research shared with POLITICO. The fake news outlets are part of a sophisticated digital disinformation campaign that includes deploying different tactics across Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and Telegram channels. Islamic State-affiliated channels, all told, have almost 80,000 followers. Some of the social media content has been available since June 2020, primarily focusing on spreading hate speech in Iraq and Syria by sharing news about ISIS attacks from the group's official mouthpieces. Much of the ISIS content reviewed by POLITICO is still online — and none of it should be available on social media, based on platforms' own rules against terrorist content.”
United States
Reuters: Teenager Arrested, Charged In Bomb Threats In Washington Schools
“A 16-year-old boy was arrested on Thursday and charged with calling in bomb threats at seven predominantly Black schools in Washington a day earlier, the city police department said. The four high schools and three charter schools, which were evacuated following Wednesday's bomb threats and later cleared, included Dunbar High School, which was threatened on Tuesday during a visit by U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris' husband. The teenager from Southeast Washington was charged with making “terrorist threats,” the Metropolitan Police Department posted on Twitter. Authorities did not release the suspect's name and said the investigation into the incident was continuing. Authorities have not indicated a connection to race in the spate of bomb threats, and police said Tuesday's incident did not appear to be targeted at Harris' husband, Douglas Emhoff, who was visiting Dunbar for a Black History Month event. But the incidents have further raised fears among Black communities already rattled by a series of bomb threats made last week against at least a dozen historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, nationwide. No explosives were found at any of the HBCUs, but the threats are being probed by the FBI.”
WFLA: Congressman Crist Holds Roundtable On Hate Crimes, Extremism In Florida
“Congressman and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist hosted what he called an emergency roundtable Thursday morning to address hate crimes and extremism in Florida. “Nazi demonstrations in Orlando. Bomb threats at Bethune Cookman University and other historically Black colleges and universities around the country. Racist graffiti in Tampa Bay schools. And right here in St. Pete, a spray-painted swastika on the Holocaust Museum with the words “Jews are guilty.” All these sound-like headlines from 50 years ago,” Rep. Crist said. “But they’re happening now. Black, Jewish, and other Florida minority communities are being targeted by dangerous, and in some cases well-organized, extremist groups.” St. Petersburg police launched an investigation last month into racist graffiti found in a bathroom at St. Petersburg Catholic High School. Detectives are also still trying to figure out who sprayed anti-Semitic graffiti on the Florida Holocaust Museum in May 2021. “Anti-Semitism is a virus that mutates and takes on many different kinds of forms,” explained Rabbi Jonathan Berkun from the Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center during the roundtable. Three men are facing charges following the Neo-Nazi demonstrations in Orlando that made national headlines.”
Syria
The New York Times: A One-Legged Man Bathing On A Rooftop In Syria? Must Be ISIS’ Leader.
“A vital clue in the two-year manhunt for the Islamic State’s elusive leader fell into place last fall when a U.S. spy drone spotted a bearded man bathing atop a three-story building in northwest Syria. The man was missing his right leg. That physical disability matched the description of the man American and allied spies had been searching for: Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, the leader of ISIS. Intelligence analysts soon trained other aerial surveillance cameras and eavesdropping sensors on the rooftop and surrounding areas. Within weeks, American officials said, what started as a tip from informants on the ground had been confirmed by the sensors in the sky. That information, reported earlier by The Washington Post, set in motion a daring U.S. commando raid that led to Mr. al-Qurayshi’s death last week. Mr. al-Qurayshi, who was 45 and born in Iraq, had lost his leg in an American airstrike near Mosul, Iraq, in 2015, senior American officials said. “We took a shot at him in 2015,” one senior official said. “He was on our target list from the earliest days of the campaign.” The blast that killed Mr. al-Qurayshi during the raid was most likely caused by a large bomb the terrorist rigged to destroy most of his third-floor residence, senior U.S. military officials said on Thursday. The explosion was so powerful that military officials now suspect that a child found dead on the building’s second floor was killed by the blast’s concussive force, not in a firefight between the child’s parents and the commandos.”
“At least five children were killed during a raid by U.S. commandos last week on the home of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, the leader of the Islamic State militant group, according to a review of video footage and witnesses who saw the aftermath of the operation. That represents more than the tally by the Pentagon, which has alternatively said two or three children were killed. While locals said they knew little about the adults who had lived in the house and kept a low profile, one thing was clear: the house had been full of children, often seen playing on the third-floor patio or in the yard. But their presence was not enough to deter the late-night raid on the house last week in Syria’s northern Idlib province, a three-floor cinder block building surrounded by olive trees. U.S. officials said they tried to reduce civilian casualties by conducting a raid that carried significant risks for American soldiers, rather than targeting the house with an airstrike, and had sought to evacuate children from the building by telling their parents to send them out. The day after the raid, the Biden administration blamed the deaths on Qurayshi, saying he detonated a large explosion that caused his own death, though U.S. officials have since said they are not sure who detonated the device.”
The New Arab: Sanaullah Ghafari, The IS Leader The US Has Offered $10m For
“…Little is known about Ghafari, thought to be born in 1994, reportedly in Afghanistan or Iraq, according to experts at the Counter Extremism Project. An IS statement called him “an experienced military leader... one of the 'urban lions' of [IS-K] in Kabul who assisted in planning and carrying out guerrilla operations along with suicide and complex attacks,” the New York-based CEP said in a recent report. Ghafari's network has proven its capacity for deadly efficiency, targeting civilians at mosques, shrines, public squares and even hospitals. The group claimed responsibility for 340 attacks last year after a “trough” in 2020, according to the Switzerland-based Jihad Analytics (JA), which focuses on the online communications and on-the-ground operations of extremist groups. “In 2021, it recovered and succeeded in carrying out bloody attacks across a wider territory after the return of the Taliban,” JA's founder Damien Ferre told AFP. Besides the Kabul airport assault that left 185 people dead including 13 American soldiers, Ghafari is also believed to have orchestrated the sophisticated siege of the Jalalabad prison in Afghanistan in August 2020, which freed hundreds of IS fighters. “His goal has been to guide the organisation out of this period of relative decline first by doubling down on sectarian attacks against vulnerable minorities and then by launching a revitalised war against the Afghan Taliban,” analysts Amira Jadoon and Andrew Mines wrote in a report published by War on the Rocks, a US-based military affairs website.”
Afghanistan
Washington Examiner: ISIS-K Nearly Doubled In Size Following Taliban Prison Releases: United Nations
“The size of the Islamic State's Afghanistan faction has nearly doubled in size, according to a new report from the United Nations. ISIS-Khorasan, or ISIS-K, has been able to expand in Afghanistan in recent months following the U.S. military's departure at the end of August, which coincided with the Taliban's rise to power, thus providing the terror group with a conducive environment to reconstitute. U.N. member states estimated that ISIS-K had approximately 2,200 fighters previously, but that number is “now approaching 4,000,” according to the U.N. secretary-general’s strategic level report written late last month. The U.N. Security Council was briefed on the report on Wednesday. “There are no recent signs that the Taliban has taken steps to limit the activities of foreign terrorist fighters in the country,” the report added. “On the contrary, Member States are concerned that terrorist groups enjoy greater freedom in Afghanistan than at any time in recent history.” The report cited “the release by the Taliban of several thousand individuals from prison” in Afghanistan as the primary source of the additional fighters, while member states “reported only small numbers of foreign terrorist fighters moving to Afghanistan.”
Middle East
The Times Of Israel: Three More Suspects Charged In December’s Deadly West Bank Terror Shooting
“Military prosecutors filed indictments against three Palestinian men accused of carrying out a deadly shooting attack in December in which an Israeli man, Yehuda Dimentman, was killed outside the illegal Homesh outpost in the northern West Bank, the Israel Defense Forces said. The three men — Muhammad Youssef Jaradat, Mahmoud Ghaleb Jaradat, and Ghaith Ahmed Yassin Jaradat — were each charged with “intentionally causing death,” the equivalent of murder in the military legal system, though only two of them were suspected of carrying out the deadly shooting itself. Their indictments came a week after a similar indictment against a Palestinian teenager who allegedly drove the getaway car that was used in the attack. As he is a minor, the teenage suspect’s name cannot be published. According to the Shin Bet security agency, the four suspects carried out the attack on behalf of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group. Ataaf Youssef Muhammad Jaradat, the mother of the minor and one of the adult suspects, was also due to be charged with failing to prevent the attack and assisting them afterward, as her teenage son had told her about the plans in advance and she helped hide the weapons that they used after the attack, the military said.”
Nigeria
Vice: Boko Haram Fighters Tortured These Women. Now They’re Neighbours.
“The enslaved woman faced double charges. Count one: she refused to willingly wear an explosive belt and go for a suicide mission. Two: she incited other enslaved women against their captors. Her sentence, the commander said, would be to detonate a bomb vest. Not at a market or a crowded mosque, as is the norm, but inside a building with other disobedient women. The bomb was strapped to the woman’s frame. Hours later, it went off. On a Sunday evening in December, six years later, Balaraba — who asked to use only her first name for safety reasons — lifted a grey hijab to bare scars from the blast that ripped through her body. Her arms are a patchwork of mangled skin, blacker in some places than others. Her thighs are the same. Blotches of black skin sit on her nose and chin. The 29-year-old is one of possibly hundreds of women who survived years of enslavement by the terrorist group Boko Haram, and who are now reliving their experiences as the fighters surrender to the Nigerian government in an unexpected wave of defections. In the space of six months, thousands of fighters have swarmed Maiduguri, the city in northeast Nigeria where the insurgency started more than a decade ago. The fighters are waiting to be freed and returned to the communities where they once lived.”
“The United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism says the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL or ISIS), a terrorist group, is expanding its affiliates and network beyond Syria and Iraq to Africa. The Under-Secretary-General of the UN office of counter-terrorism, Vladimir Voronkov told the Security Council on Wednesday that the epicentre of ISIL terrorist group – officially known as Da’esh – activities now appeared to be in the African continent. The under-secretary-general said that the terrorist activities were gaining ground in the Central and West Africa, which he said continues at an “unsettling” scale and pace. According to him, the terrorist activities intensifying in Central and West Africa – especially Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali and Niger and attacks increasingly reported in the border area between Mozambique and Tanzania. Pointing to potential spill-over effects that could reach even beyond the continent, he urged countries to use every tool at their disposal to sustain important gains made against the group. He added that a subsequent targeted attack reportedly resulted in the death of the ISIL/Da’esh leader, Amir Muhammad Sa’id Abdal-Rahman al-Salbi, widely known as Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Quraishi.”
“A total of 965 terrorists alongside their families and 550 children laid down their weapons and surrendered to the Nigerian troops in Borno and Yobe states within three weeks, the Defence Headquarters has said. This was made known by Benard Onyeuko, the Director, Defence Media Operations while addressing the press on Thursday on the activities of Nigerian troops from January 20 to February 10. According to Onyeuko, troops of the Operation Hadin Kai recorded victory as 965 terrorists laid aside their weapons in different locations including Gamboru, Tumbumma, Kukawa, Baga, Gwoza, Mallam Fotori, Damboa, KirtaWulgo, Bun Yadi, Gujiba, Madiya all in Borno and Yobe states. The success, he said, is attributed to the airstrikes which eliminated several ISWAP Commanders and their fighters. He further noted that 104 of the 965 terrorists are from the Islamic State West African Province (ISWAP) Camp that was taken by troops at Marte. “The surrendered terrorists have been properly documented and handed over to the appropriate authorities for necessary action,” he said. Also, in Yobe and Borno states, no fewer than 120 fighters were neutralised by the troops while 50 of the terrorists were arrested, according to the Defence Headquarters. Weapons recovered from the terrorists include five gun trucks, 50 assorted arms and 200 rounds of different calibres of ammunition.”
Somalia
Al Jazeera: Several Killed In Attack Targeting Somalia Election Delegates
“A suicide bomber targeting a minibus full of delegates involved in Somalia’s parliamentary elections killed at least six people in Mogadishu, the ambulance service said, as the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab armed group claimed responsibility for the attack. The blast occurred early on Thursday as the vehicle was passing a busy junction on a road heading to the president’s office in the capital of the East African nation. “The area was densely populated when the blast occurred and some of the victims, most of them civilians, are seriously wounded,” security official Abdullahi Muktar told the AFP news agency. He said six people died and 12 were injured. “The incident is still [being] investigated to know the exact details but preliminary observation we have indicates that someone carried out the blast,” he said. Mogadishu’s Aamin Ambulance Service confirmed the fatalities in a statement sent to journalists, but said the attack had wounded 13. “The blast was huge, and I saw ambulances carrying wounded victims, some of them with serious injuries,” witness Mohamed Tahlil said. A delegate on the bus said the passengers were unharmed. “We were in the bus passing the junction and I could see someone running towards the bus and police shouting at him ‘stop’ at gunpoint.”
Africa
Reuters: Four Civilians Killed As French Troops Clash With Islamist Militants In Burkina Faso
“Four civilians were caught in cross fire after French troops supported with an attack helicopter killed 10 Islamist militants in Burkina Faso, the French military said in a statement on Thursday. France has thousands of troops operating across the Sahel region as part of a mission to combat violence by Islamist militant groups linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State. But it is considering withdrawing troops from Mali, where relations between Paris and the junta in Bamako have deteriorated. The death of four civilians in Burkina comes at a bad time with anti-French sentiment especially strong in Mali and it beginning to spillover into Burkina after a coup in January. “Unfortunately, despite all the measures taken by the Barkhane (French) force and by the unit engaged on the ground, four civilians, present in the terrorist camp, lost their lives during the exchange of fire,” the French army said in a statement. It said 10 Ansarul Islam militants were killed after violent clashes during the night of Feb. 7-8, close to the town of Ouahigouya, near the border with Mali. The French military said the group had been behind attacks that killed 53 Burkinabe policemen in November and a recent attack that saw two Burkinabe soldiers killed.”
Reuters: France Launches Terrorism Probe Over Attack In Northern Benin
“France opened a terrorism investigation on Thursday into an attack on park rangers in northern Benin in which a French national was among eight people killed, while the African country reported the death of another person in a fresh attack. The French government condemned the ambush in which five rangers along with their French instructor, a civilian park employee and a soldier were killed and 12 others wounded while on an anti-poaching mission in W National Park on Tuesday. “The national anti-terrorist prosecutor's office has opened a probe with a charge of murder in connection with a terrorist undertaking after having been informed of the passing of a 50-year-old French national following a terrorist attack in the W park, north Benin”, French prosecutors said in a statement. Benin authorities reported a new attack on Thursday in which one civilian park employee was killed when a reconnaissance patrol hit an improvised explosive device. Tuesday's incident was the deadliest in a string of attacks since December in northern Benin, where groups linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State have spilled over from Burkina Faso and Niger. Recent attacks in Benin, Togo and Ivory Coast have highlighted the expansion of Islamist violence from the landlocked Sahelian countries, where an insurgency has raged for much of the last decade, to West African coastal nations.”
United Kingdom
BBC News: Birmingham Woman Who Shared Extremist Material Jailed
“A woman convicted of terrorism offences after sharing extreme videos has been jailed for five-and-a-half years. Aaminah Amatullah, 39, sent images of dead bodies, including children, to an online contact, who was in fact an undercover police officer. Sentencing at Birmingham Crown Court, the judge said he accepted mental health issues and personal problems had played a part in her radicalisation. However, he said, her actions had shown she was “a committed extremist”. Amatullah, of Livingstone Road, Handsworth, Birmingham, was convicted in December after denying the charges. The trial was told two videos were sent within four days, including a speech encouraging terrorism by the leader of the group calling itself Islamic State (IS). The videos urged extremists to “target them on the streets,” following a battle to retake the IS stronghold of Al-Baghuz in Syria. Judge Paul Farrer QC told Amatullah: “I have no doubt that by 2016 you held an extreme Islamic mindset. “You believed that you were sending [one of the videos] to a female Muslim convert living in Northampton who shared your views. “You intended to encourage terrorism - one of your social media contacts was arrested for terrorist offences in the Philippines.”
“An alleged member of a neo-Nazi terror cell has told a court he first entered “right-wing politics” as a Donald Trump supporter. Samuel Whibley, 29, is charged with disseminating terrorist publications and encouraging terrorism using the encrypted Telegram messaging app. Sheffield Crown Court heard he set up a channel and linked chat where neo-Nazi propaganda and bomb manuals were shared. Prosecutors allege the groups were about “finding the ways and means to copy those responsible for the worst extreme right-wing atrocities”, and another of the members is accused of trying to make explosives and a 3D-printed gun. Giving evidence at the trial, Mr Whibley denied being a neo-Nazi or wanting to encourage terror attacks. While being questioned by a defence barrister, he said he did not have an “interest in politics” before he started studying for a forestry degree at Bangor University in 2019. Mr Whibley told the jury he made a new group of friends, including an American student called Noah. “I started off at the lower end of right-wing politics, I was a Trump supporter from the beginning in 2016,” he added. “Noah was very republican and an ardent supporter of Trump … he introduced me to right-wing memes, he would send them to me.”
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