Tag Archives: ISIS

In Paris, military chiefs vow to intensify Islamic State fight

PARIS (Reuters) – Defense chiefs from the United States, France, Britain and four other countries pledged on Wednesday to intensify their fight against Islamic State, in an effort to capitalize on recent battlefield gains against the militants.

Islamic State lost control of the western Iraqi city of Ramadi last month, in a sorely needed victory for U.S.-backed Iraqi forces. But critics, including some in the U.S. Congress, say the U.S. strategy is still far too weak and lacks sufficient military support from Sunni Arab allies.

“We agreed that we all must do more,” U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter told a news conference after talks in Paris among the “core” military coalition members, which also included Germany, Italy, Australia and the Netherlands.

A joint statement by the Western ministers re-committed their governments to work with the U.S.-led coalition “to accelerate and intensify the campaign.”

The Paris setting for the talks itself sent a message, coming just over two months after the city was struck by deadly shooting and bombing attacks claimed by Islamic State.

French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian sounded an upbeat tone about the campaign, saying Islamic State was in retreat.

“Because Daesh is retreating on the ground and … because we have been able to hit its resources, it’s now time to increase our collective effort by putting in place a coherent military strategy,” he said.

British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said the goal was now to “tighten the noose around the head of the snake in Syria in Raqqa.”

Carter forecast that the coalition would need to ramp up the number of police and military trainers. He also emphasized preparations to eventually recapture the Iraqi city of Mosul from Islamic State and the expanding role of U.S. special operations forces in Iraq and Syria.

COALITION NOT “WINNING”

Still, U.S. Senator John McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and other critics of U.S. President Barack Obama’s approach to the war effort say Islamic State still poses a potent threat.

“ISIL has lost some territory on the margin, but has consolidated power in its core territories in both Iraq and Syria,” McCain said at a Wednesday hearing on U.S. war strategy, using another acronym for Islamic State.

“Meanwhile, ISIL continues to metastasize across the region in places like Afghanistan, Libya, Lebanon, Yemen, and Egypt. Its attacks are now global, as we saw in Paris.”

Carter has sought to lay out a strategy to confront Islamic State, both by wiping out its strongholds in Iraq and Syria and by addressing its spread beyond its self-declared caliphate.

But U.S. officials have declined to set a timeline for what could be a long-term campaign that also requires political reconciliation to ultimately succeed.

Carter announced a meeting next month of defense ministers from all 26 military members of the anti-Islamic State coalition, as well as Iraq, in what he described as the first face-to-face meeting of its kind.

“Every nation must come prepared to discuss further contributions to the fight,” he said. “And I will not hesitate to engage and challenge current and prospective members of the coalition as we go forward.”

(Additional reporting by Marine Pennetier, editing by Larry King)

UN report details horrors affecting Iraqi civilians

The ongoing violence in Iraq killed nearly 4,000 civilians in just six months last year and thousands more are being held as slaves, according to a new report from the United Nations.

The report, a project of the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, was released Tuesday and shines a light on the extent of the toll that the Islamic State’s presence in Iraq is taking on the nation’s civilian population.

“The violence suffered by civilians in Iraq remains staggering,” the report reads. “The so-called ‘Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’ (ISIL) continues to commit systematic and widespread violence and abuses of international human rights law and humanitarian law. These acts may, in some instances, amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide.”

The report indicates at least 3,855 civilians were killed between May 1 and October 31 of last year, pushing the total number of civilian deaths in the country since the start of 2014 to 18,802.

“Even the obscene casualty figures fail to accurately reflect exactly how terribly civilians are suffering in Iraq. The figures capture those who were killed or maimed by overt violence, but countless others have died from the lack of access to basic food, water or medical care,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said in a statement.

The report indicates at least 7,056 civilians were wounded in Iraq during the six-month window last year. In total, there have been at least 36,245 civilians wounded since the beginning of 2014.

Some 3.2 million people have been displaced within Iraq over the past two years, the UN report found.

The report documents reasons they may be fleeing their homes, including the Islamic State’s gruesome execution techniques.

It cites many reports of public beheadings and several instances in which civilians were thrown from rooftops, as well as one incident in which militants forced nine people to lay down in a Mosul street and then ran them over with a bulldozer in front of a crowd of onlookers.

Some civilians who weren’t killed or injured are being sold into slavery, the report found.

The agencies behind the report wrote they believe the Islamic State currently holds roughly 3,500 people in slavery, many of whom are women the terrorist group is holding as sex slaves.

The Islamic State is also abducting children and training them to become soldiers, according to the report, and captured between 800 and 900 children in one single incident in Mosul.

But Iraqi civilians are facing threats to their safety from other organizations, the UN reported.

The report documents a series of acts allegedly carried out by pro-government forces, including abductions, illegal killings and evictions of people who were trying to escape violence. The acts may represent a violation of international humanitarian law, the UN agencies said in the report.

“This report lays bare the enduring suffering of civilians in Iraq and starkly illustrates what Iraqi refugees are attempting to escape when they flee to Europe and other regions. This is the horror they face in their homelands,” Hussein said in a statement.

Indonesia looks to stop militants overseas from returning home, planning attacks

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesian President Joko Widodo is considering a regulation that would prohibit Indonesians from joining radical groups overseas, in an effort to prevent a deadlier attack than last week’s militant assault on Jakarta.

At a meeting on Tuesday at the palace, top political and security officials agreed to review anti-terrorism laws, which currently allow Indonesians to freely return home after fighting with Islamic State in Syria.

Security forces fear that returning jihadis could launch a much more calculated attack than the amateurish assault militants launched on Thursday using two pistols and eleven low-yield homemade bombs. Eight people were killed in the attack, including the four attackers.

“We’ve agreed to review the terrorism law to focus on prevention,” parliamentary speaker Zulkifli Hasan told Reuters.

“Currently there is nothing in the law covering training. There is also nothing currently covering people going overseas (to join radical groups) and returning. This needs to be broadened.”

Proposed revisions would also tighten prison sentences for terrorism offences, he said.

Chief security minister Luhut Pandjaitan told reporters the new regulation would allow suspects to be temporarily detained.

“The point is to give police the authority to preemptively and temporarily detain (a suspect) while they get information to prevent future incidents,” Pandjaitan said, adding the detention could last up to two weeks.

Widodo said discussions on the new regulation, which would be a stop-gap measure until parliament can revise its anti-terrorism law, were still at “an early stage”.

“This is very pressing. Many people have left for Syria or returned,” he said, but did not say when a decision would be made.

Roughly 500 Indonesians are believed by authorities to have traveled to the Middle East to join Islamic State. About 100 are believed to have returned, most of whom did not see frontline combat.

Indonesian Police Chief Badrodin Haiti told Reuters in an interview Monday that the country was bracing for the return of these more experienced fighters, who may be capable of carrying out far more sophisticated operations than last week’s attack, which was hampered by poor training and weapons.

Thursday’s bombings and shootings in the heart of Jakarta were the first attack in Indonesia attributed to Islamic State. The last major militant attacks in the country were in 2009, when suicide bombers struck two luxury hotels in the city.

Even if the new revisions are imposed, Indonesia would still have weaker anti-terrorism laws than some of its neighbors.

Malaysia last April passed a law reintroducing detention without trial, three years after a similar measure was revoked. Australia has in recent years passed measures banning its citizens from returning from conflict zones in Syria and the Middle East, while making it easier to monitor domestic communications.

(Additional reporting by Jakarta bureau; Editing by Randy Fabi)

Islamic State presses attack to capture more land in eastern Syria

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Islamic State captured ground from Syrian government forces near the eastern city of Deir al-Zor on Monday, a group monitoring the war said, pressing a three-day assault which state media says has killed 300 people.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there was still no word on the fate of over 400 people it reported kidnapped when IS began to attack government-held areas of the city on Saturday. State media has made no mention of the abductions.

Deir al-Zor is the main city in a province of the same name. The province links Islamic State’s de facto capital in the Syrian city of Raqqa with territory controlled by the militant group in neighboring Iraq.

Islamic State, in control of most of Deir al-Zor province, has laid siege since March to remaining government-held areas in the city of Deir al-Zor.

This is the third day of IS attacks on the towns of Ayyash and Begayliya, which lie to the northwest of Deir al-Zor city on the approach from Raqqa.

IS has now taken control of areas in the south and west of Begayliya, and has seized the Saeqa military camp near the town of Ayyash, the Observatory said.

A Syrian official source told Reuters the Syrian army repelled the attacks but IS is continuing the offensive.

Speaking to Al Mayadeen television news early on Monday, Deir al-Zor’s governor said the security situation in Begayliya was “excellent”.

Syria’s state news agency SANA said on Sunday that at least 300 people, including women and children, had been killed during the attacks in Deir al-Zor.

The Observatory says around 400 people said to have been kidnapped have been taken to countryside to the west of the city, closer to Raqqa.

The United Nations has warned that around 200,000 besieged residents in Deir al-Zor face severe food shortages and sharply deteriorating conditions.

The Syrian government has dropped some basic commodities into the city in recent weeks, and Russia said on Friday it had dropped 22 tonnes of aid to the besieged part of the city.

The Syrian foreign ministry said on Monday it had written to the United Nations condemning the attack. Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which is fighting alongside President Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria, also condemned the attacks by IS in a statement on Monday.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington and Mariam Karouny; Editing by Tom Perry and Dominic Evans)

Israel says ISIS could attack it and Jordan after Syria setbacks

TEL AVIV (Reuters) – Islamic State’s battleground setbacks in Syria have increased the chance of an attack by the insurgents or their allies on Israel and Jordan, Israel’s military chief said on Monday. 

While focused on shoring up its Syrian and Iraqi fiefdoms, Islamic State has in recent months stepped up attacks abroad and issued public threats to include Israel among its targets.

Lieutenant-General Gadi Eizenkot, chief of Israel’s armed forces, said that with Russia intervening last year to help Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the insurgents’ advance had been largely arrested.

An exception to this, Eizenkot said, was in the southern Syrian border nexus with Israel and Jordan.

“The successes against ISIS raise the probability, in my eyes, that we will see them turning their guns both against us and against the Jordanians,” he told a conference hosted by Tel Aviv University’s Institute for International Security Studies.

Islamic State itself does not have a strong presence on Syria’s south-west border region, but one of several Islamist forces in the area, the Yarmouk Martyrs’ Brigade, is believed by its opponents to be linked to the ultra-hardline militant group.

It has fought rival insurgent forces from Syria’s al Qaeda offshoot, the Nusra Front, and Ahrar al-Sham for control of territory next to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and close to northern Jordan.

“In their strategic logic, there is a certain logic in connecting Israel with Jordan,” Eizenkot said, and in the border area “they are not experiencing what the organization and other global jihadi groups are experiencing inside Syria”.

A voice recording release on social media three weeks ago and attributed to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi warned that Israel was a target.

Jordan, one of two Arab countries to have signed peace treaties with Israel, has largely weathered the upheaval in much of the Middle East over the past five years, though it has absorbed major refugee influxes from Syria and Iraq, another neighbor wrecked by Islamic State insurgents. 

Jordan has low-key military backing from the United States and Israel, cooperation that the parties rarely discuss publicly.

Israel has formally kept out of the almost five-year-old Syrian civil war, though it has launched occasional bombing raids to thwart suspected transfers of advanced arms by Assad’s government to allied Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas.

Hezbollah, which fought Israel’s technologically superior military to standstill in the 2006 Lebanon war, remained a major threat and stood to receive boosted support from its Iranian patron thanks to the lifting of international sanctions against Tehran, Eizenkot said.

But he also described Hezbollah as cautious to open a new front with Israel, noting that while the Shi’ite militia had gained combat experience reinforcing Syrian government forces against Sunni Islamist-led rebels, it had also suffered losses.

Some 1,300 Hezbollah guerrillas had been killed and almost another 5,000 wounded in Syria, out of a regular fighting force of 20,000 and a reservist force of 20,000-25,000, Eizenkot said.

Hezbollah generally does not publish details on its casualties, and says it is ready to fight Israel again.

(Editing by Dominic Evans)

Morocco arrests Belgian national allegedly tied to Paris attackers

RABAT (Reuters) – Moroccan authorities have arrested a Belgian national of local origin directly linked to the attackers who carried out the Paris shootings and bombings in November that killed 130 people, the government said in a statement on Monday.

The interior ministry gave only the suspect’s initials in Arabic and said he fought in Syria with al-Nusra front before joining the Islamic State.

The suspect, whose initials could be translated to J.A. or G.A., was arrested on Jan. 15 in the city of Mohammedia, the statement added. “He went to Syria with one of the suicide bombers of Saint Denis,” it said.

Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a 28-year-old Belgian militant who authorities said was the ringleader of the Paris attacks, was killed with other suspects days after when police raided a house in the Saint Denis suburb.

Investigations showed that during his stay in Syria he has built solid ties with Islamic State leaders including the ringleader of the Paris attacks.

The suspect was trained to handle different weapons and guerrilla tactics but left Syria through Turkey, Germany, Belgium then Netherlands from where he came to Morocco.

Morocco provided the tip-off that enabled French police to locate Abaaoud, has been holding Abaaoud’s brother Yassine since October and has issued an arrest warrant for Salah Abdeslam, who is suspected of taking part in the attacks and is on the run.

(Reporting by Aziz El Yaakoubi; Editing by Patrick Markey/Jeremy Gaunt)

ISIS claims responsibility for Jakarta attack, its first strike at Indonesia

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Islamic State said it was behind an attack by suicide bombers and gunmen in the heart of Jakarta on Thursday, the first time the radical group has targeted the world’s most populous Muslim nation.

Just seven people were killed despite multiple blasts and a gunfight, and five of them were the attackers themselves, but the brazenness of their siege suggested a new brand of militancy in a country where low-level strikes on police are common.

It took security forces about three hours to end the attack near a Starbucks cafe and Sarinah’s, Jakarta’s oldest department store, after a team of militants traded gunfire with police and blew themselves up.

An Indonesian and a Canadian were killed in the attack. Twenty people, including an Algerian, Austrian, German and Dutchman, were wounded.

“A group of soldiers of the caliphate in Indonesia targeted a gathering from the crusader alliance that fights the Islamic State in Jakarta,” the group said in a statement. It added that 15 people were killed.

Jakarta’s police chief told reporters: “ISIS is behind this attack definitely,” using a common acronym for Islamic State, and he named an Indonesian militant called Bahrun Naim as the man responsible for plotting it.

Police believe Naim is in the Syrian city of Raqqa.

The drama played out on the streets and on television screens, with at least six explosions and a gunfight in a movie theater. But the low death toll pointed to the involvement of local militants whose weapons were rudimentary, experts said.

In a sign of public unease, a bang caused by a tire bursting triggered a bomb scare that sent police cars rushing back to the scene hours after the attack.

“The president has said the nation and the people should not be scared and should not be defeated by acts of terror,” said palace spokesman Ari Dwipayana.

ARMORED CARS, HELICOPTERS

“The Starbucks cafe windows are blown out. I see three dead people on the road. There has been a lull in the shooting but someone is on the roof of the building and police are aiming their guns at him,” Reuters photographer Darren Whiteside said as the attack unfolded.

Police responded in force within minutes. Black armored cars screeched to a halt in front of the Starbucks and sniper teams were deployed around the neighborhood as helicopters buzzed overhead.

Jakarta police chief Tito Karnavian said one man entered the Starbucks cafe and blew himself up, wounding several inside.

As people poured out of the cafe, two waiting gunmen opened fire on them. At the same time, two militants attacked a police traffic post nearby, using what he described as hand grenade-like bombs.

After the militants had been overcome, a body still lay on the street, a shoe nearby among the debris. The city center’s notoriously jammed roads were largely deserted.

Indonesia has seen attacks by Islamist militants before, but a coordinated assault by a team of suicide bombers and gunmen is unprecedented and has echoes of the sieges seen in Mumbai seven years ago and in Paris last November.

Australian Attorney-General George Brandis, who was in Jakarta recently to bolster security coordination, told the Australian newspaper he had “no doubt” Islamic State was seeking to establish a “distant caliphate” in Indonesia.

The last major militant attacks in Jakarta were in July 2009, with bombs at the JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels.

The country had been on edge for weeks over the threat posed by Islamist militants.

Counter-terrorism police had rounded up about 20 people with suspected links to Islamic State, whose battle lines in Syria and Iraq have included nationals from several Asian countries.

HISTORY OF ATTACKS

Indonesia has the world’s largest Muslim population, the vast majority of whom practise a moderate form of Islam.

The country saw a spate of militant attacks in the 2000s, the deadliest of which was a nightclub bombing on the holiday island of Bali that killed 202 people, most of them tourists.

Police have been largely successful in destroying domestic militant cells since then, but officials have more recently been worrying about a resurgence inspired by groups such as Islamic State and Indonesians who return after fighting with the group.

Alarm around the world over the danger stemming from Islamic State increased after the Paris attacks and the killing of 14 people in California in December.

On Tuesday, a Syrian suicide bomber killed 10 German tourists in Istanbul. Authorities there suspect the bomber had links to Islamic State.

Speaking in London, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry condemned Thursday’s attack.

“There is nothing in any act of terror that offers anything but death and destruction. And so we stand together, all of us, united in our efforts to eliminate those who choose terror,” he said.

Harits Abu Ulya, a expert on militancy who knows Bahrun Naim, the militant named by Indonesian authorities, said he expected more attacks.

“This is an indication that he has been learning from the Paris attacks and he has studied the strategy,” he said. “I still have doubts about the capability of the local militants to carry out attacks on a bigger scale. But it is a possibility.”

(Aditional reporting by Fergus Jensen, Gayatri Suroyo, Nilufar Rizki, Eveline Danubrata, Randy Fabi and Fransiska Nangoy; Writing by John Chalmers; Editing by Nick Macfie and Mike Collett-White)

Special anti-ISIS targeting force ‘now in place’ in Iraq, U.S. says

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A new U.S. force of special operations troops has arrived in Iraq and is preparing to work with Iraqi forces to go after Islamic State targets, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Wednesday.

Carter disclosed the deployment in a broad speech to U.S. soldiers that sought to underscore American efforts to accelerate the campaign against Islamic State, both in Iraq and Syria.

“The specialized expeditionary targeting force I announced in December is now in place and is preparing to work with the Iraqis to begin going after ISIL’s fighters and commanders,” Carter said at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

While the force was expected to number only about 200, its deployment marks the latest expansion of U.S. military pressure on Islamic State. It also exposes American forces to greater risk, something President Barack Obama has done only sparingly.

The force is separate from another deployment last year of up to 50 U.S. special operations troops in Syria to coordinate on the ground with U.S.-backed rebels fighting in a civil war raging since 2011.

Carter said that smaller group of forces had already established contact with rebels, as well as new targets for airstrikes and “strikes of all kinds.”

“These operators have helped focus the efforts of the local, capable forces against key ISIL vulnerabilities, including their lines of communication,” Carter said.

Republicans have sought to portray U.S. President Barack Obama’s strategy to defeat Islamic State as flawed and insufficient, as the militants plot or inspire attacks far beyond their self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

Obama, in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, warned against overstating the fight against Islamic State militants, but said his administration is focused on destroying the extremist group.

Carter’s speech emphasized advances by Iraqi forces — including retaking control of the city of Ramadi — and by U.S.-backed rebels in Syria.

“President Obama is committed to doing what it takes – as opportunities arise, as we see what works, and as the enemy adapts – until ISIL is delivered a lasting defeat,” he said.

Carter was addressing soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division, 1,800 of whom will deploy to Iraq in the coming months, largely to train local forces.

Carter also flagged a meeting next week in Paris with defense ministers from six nations — France, Britain, Australia, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Alan Crosby)

At least 48 killed in attacks in Iraqi capital, eastern town

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Gunmen detonated suicide vests inside a shopping complex in Baghdad on Monday and a car bomb exploded nearby in an attack claimed by Islamic State that killed at least 18 people and wounded 40 others.

Two bombs later went off in the eastern town of Muqdadiya, killing at least 23 people and wounding another 51, security and medical sources said. Another blast in a southeastern Baghdad suburb killed seven more.

Islamic State militants controlling swathes of Iraq’s north and west claimed responsibility for the attacks in Muqdadiya and at the Baghdad mall, which it said had targeted a gathering of “rejectionists”, its derogatory term for Shi’ite Muslims.

The Iraqi government last month claimed victory against the hardline Sunni militants in the western city of Ramadi, and has slowly pushed them back in other areas.

A security official in Anbar province on Monday said ground advances backed by U.S.-led coalition air strikes killed about two dozen insurgents and pushed others out of areas near the government-held city of Haditha in Iraq’s northwest.

Monday’s bombings left the biggest death toll in three months. Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier General Saad Maan blamed “this terrorist group after they suffered heavy losses by the security forces”, without naming Islamic State.

Seven people, including two policemen, were killed in the car bomb blast near the Jawaher mall in the predominantly Shi’ite district of Baghdad Jadida, police and medical sources said.

Five more people were shot dead by the gunmen storming the mall, and six others were killed when those same assailants detonated their explosive vests, the sources said.

“People started running into the shops to hide, but (the militants) followed them in and opened fire without mercy,” said Hani Fikrat Abdel Hussein, a shop-owner standing amid shattered glass and rubble at the site of the blasts.

Police regained control of the shopping complex, in the east of the city, and a senior security official told state television there were no hostages, rejecting reports that people had been held.

“The security forces are at the scene and managed to recover the wounded. The situation is under control,” Maan added.

CASINO BOMBING

As well as the violence meted out by Islamic State, Iraq is also gripped by a sectarian conflict mostly between Shi’ites and Sunnis that has been exacerbated by the rise of the militant group.

At least seven people were killed when a suicide bomber driving a car attacked a commercial street in a southeastern Baghdad suburb on Monday, police and medical sources said.

The blast in the Sunni district of Nahrawan left more than 15 people wounded, the sources added.

Earlier in the day, three people were killed and eight others wounded when a car bomb claimed by Islamic State went off near a restaurant in Baquba, 40 miles northeast of Baghdad, security and medical sources said.

Two bombs later exploded in an area frequented by Shi’ite militia fighters in the town of Muqdadiya, another 10 miles further northeast, security sources said.

At least 23 people were killed and 51 wounded in those blasts. A bomber detonated his suicide vest inside a casino in the town. A car bomb parked outside then went off as medics and civilians gathered at the site of the first blast.

Security officials said they had imposed a curfew for all of Diyala province, where Muqdadiya and Baquba are located.

Parliamentary speaker Salim al-Jabouri, who is from Muqdadiya, said he was in contact with security and political leaders there and warned violence there aimed to “undermine efforts for civil peace”, state TV said in a news flash.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack in the Baghdad suburb.

(Reporting by Saif Hameed, Stephen Kalin and Reuters TV in Baghdad and Omar Fahmy in Cairo; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Tom Heneghan and Catherine Evans)

FBI Thwarts ISIS-Inspired Terror Attack in Upstate New York

Authorities foiled a New Year’s Eve terror plot by arresting a man who allegedly planned to commit an attack in upstate New York on behalf of the Islamic State, federal prosecutors said.

The Department of Justice alleges Emanuel L. Lutchman, a 25-year-old from Rochester, was planning an “armed attack” at a restaurant and bar in the city tonight, according to a news release. Prosecutors said Lutchman claimed the attack was ordered by a member of the Islamic State overseas, and the attack was to be “on behalf of (ISIS) and in furtherance of his plan to join” the group.

“The FBI thwarted Emanuel Lutchman’s intent to kill civilians on New Year’s Eve,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Charles Cohen said in a statement.  “The FBI remains concerned about people overseas who use the Internet to inspire people in the United States to commit acts of violence where they live.”

The formal charge against Lutchman is attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State, according to the news release, and he faces 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted.

The arrest comes in the wake of the of revisions to the National Terrorism Advisory System, which the Department of Homeland Security uses to warn Americans about terrorist threats.

The changes, implemented about two weeks after the San Bernardino mass shootings, give Homeland Security officials the ability to issue bulletins about the general risk of terrorist attacks, according to a news release from the department. Under the previous system, officials could only issue alerts if there were credible or imminent threats against the United States, the department said, and the circumstances never once warranted issuing an alert.

The current bulletin, issued Dec. 16 and still in effect, says the department has concerns about attacks from “self-radicalized actor(s) who could strike with little or no notice,” especially because foreign terrorist groups are using the Internet to spread their messages globally.