Tag Archives: ISIS

Turkish Construction Workers Kidnapped by Terrorists

A group of masked terrorists kidnapped 14 Turkish construction workers from a site in Baghdad early Wednesday.

Iraqi and Turkish officials say the gunmen stormed the complex around 3 a.m. when the workers were sleeping.  They specifically targeted the Turkish workers and separated them from the others before forcing them into SUVs.

“The Iraqi authorities for the time being do not have information on how the incident occurred or who captured them,” Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus told reporters.

The gunmen were reportedly wearing military uniforms.

Local officials told Time that it’s likely the kidnappings were revenge because of Turkey recently agreeing to allow the U.S. to use their bases for drone strikes against ISIS.

The workers had almost finished construction on a sports complex that includes a 30,000 seat soccer stadium.

ISIS Creates Currency as Part of “World Domination” Plan

ISIS has announced the creation of their own “gold dinar” with an aim to take down the American economy.

The move is being called the “second blow” to the U.S. in a newly released video.  The first blow was the 9/11 attacks.

The video, titled “The Rise of the Khilafah and the Return of the Gold Dinar”, was released Saturday.  The video says the goal is to end “the capitalist financial system of enslavement, underpinned by a piece of paper called the Federal Reserve dollar note” along with installing the monetary system “intended by Allah.”

“One of the great forms of corruption that the world came to witness was the dark rise of banknotes borne out of the satanic conception of banks which mutated into a fraudulent … financial system of enslavement orchestrated by the Federal Reserve in America, a private corporation and system that would, through the use of deceit and force, deprive people of their due by imposing on them the usage of the piece of paper that came to be known as the dollar bill,” the narrator states.

The video shows minting of gold, silver and copper coins and then terrorists handing them out to people in the streets.

“We are witnessing the return of days, like those during the time of the prophet,” says one shop keeper who hugs and kisses the terrorist.

The terrorist group is considered one of the richest in history because of oil fields they control and their smuggling of oil.  U.S. official say the group generates as much as $3 million U.S. dollars per day.

Virginia Teen Jailed for Attempting to Help ISIS

A Virginia teenager will spend the next eleven years of his life in prison because he attempted to help Islamic terrorist group ISIS.

Ali Shukri Amin, 17, will also have a lifetime of probation and will have all of his online activity monitored for the rest of his life.

Amin had faced 15 years in prison.  His lawyer argued that because he had cooperated with federal authorities and didn’t try to radicalize anyone but his friend Reza Niknejad that he should only get six years in prison.

Family members and friends, including two imams, were in the courtroom when Amin received his sentence.

In addition to attempting to radicalize a friend, Amin operated a Twitter account where he had 4,000 followers to his ISIS propaganda.  He instructed people on how to make donations to ISIS via the computer currency Bitcoin.

Prosecutors called for the maximum sentence because of the “danger he will continue to pose to society” after his release.

Aid Groups Claim ISIS Used Chemical Weapons

At least two aid groups working to help civilians trapped by the terrorist group ISIS say that many are showing wounds that correspond with a mustard gas attack.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said that it has treated potential chemical weapons victims in Marea although they did not officially confirm mustard gas.  The Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) said their doctors were able to identify the agent as mustard gas.

“Personally, I’ve never encountered these symptoms before, and clinical features and the evolution in time were highly suggestive of intoxication by a chemical agent,” an MSF doctor, who requested anonymity, told the Guardian newspaper. “I think we are never prepared to face this kind of atrocities among civilian population and children. As medics, we are trained to react in difficult and stressful situations, but events like this are overwhelming.”

At least one former military official with expertise in the field says the attack used mustard gas.

“This is classic mustard agent symptoms, I have no doubt,” Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former commanding officer of the UK Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear regiment and Nato’s Rapid Reaction CBRN battalion, told the Guardian.

U.S. Central Command had previously reported that ISIS is suspected to have used chemical weapons on Kurdish forces in northern Syria.  Also, they reported a sulphur mustard gas attack on Kurdish forces in Iraq by the terrorists.

British Born ISIS Hacker and Recruiter Killed in Drone Strike

A British citizen who intelligence officials say was a head of terrorist group ISIS’ cyberwarfare division has been killed in a U.S. drone strike.

Juaniad Hussain, also called Abu Hussain al-Britani, died in an airstrike in Raqqa, Syria.  U.S. officials say they have a “high level of confidence” that Hussain is dead.

Hussain has been confirmed as the target of the attack as he moved in a convoy.  The strike was part of a 48 hour campaign aimed at the terrorist’s power structure in their self-proclaimed capital.

“This is a great intelligence success,” one U.S. official told CNN.

Cybersecurity experts say that while Hussain was more of a nuisance than serious hacker, he was especially dangerous in recruiting hackers and others to join the terrorist group.

“He wasn’t a serious threat. He was most likely a nuisance hacker,” Adam Meyers, vice president of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, told the London Independent.   “It was his involvement in recruitment, communications and other ancillary support that would have made him a target.”

Hussain had spent six months in prison for hacking the personal address book of British Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2012.  He left for Syria soon after the sentence.

Germany to Welcome All Syrian Refugees

As a wave of Syrian refugees attempting to escape the violence of the Middle East drew closer to the Hungarian border, Germany announced they would be welcoming in anyone escaping the civil war.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the situation the biggest migration crisis since World War II.

The announcement comes as some smaller nations have declared states of emergency because of the mass wave of people fleeing ISIS and the Syrian war.  Macedonia first tried to use their military to keep out the migrants and when they were overrunning chartered trains to take the migrants directly to Germany or France.

German and French officials are working together to create a joint plan for all of Europe to deal with migrants from war torn areas.  The outline will provide expedited asylum for those refugees as well as returning to home countries those who are not arriving from an area of conflict.

“There are moments in European history when we face exceptional circumstances, and these are exceptional circumstances that will last,” Hollande said alongside Merkel before they met for talks in Berlin. “So rather than wait and then cope on a day-to-day basis, we must get organized and strengthen our policies.”

Germany announced they expect to absorb 800,000 migrants this year, after only receiving 44,417 in the first six months of the year.

Officials are dealing with a wave of anti-immigrant violence.  A shelter for migrants in the German town of Heidenau was attacked three consecutive nights despite police guarding the facility.

ISIS Destroys Ancient Temple

Islamic terrorist group ISIS has destroyed an ancient temple in the city of Palmyra, Syria in what the United Nations is calling a war crime.

The Temple of Baalshamin was destroyed on the heels of the terrorists killing Khaled al-Asssad.  The 82-year-old al-Asssad was an expert on Syrian antiquities and refused to tell the terrorists the locations of items they wanted to find.  Assad ran the antiquities department of Palmyra for 50 years.

Syria’s head of antiquities told the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights the terrorists blew up the temple on Sunday causing “much damage.”

“[ISIS] destroyed an incredibly important architectural structure,” Maamoun Abdulkarim said. “It is the first structure in the Palmyra complex to be destroyed, although they recently destroyed two Islamic shrines nearby.”

“They said they would destroy the statues but not the structures themselves inside Palmyra. They lied.”

The United Nations was swift to condemn the action.

“The systematic destruction of cultural symbols embodying Syrian cultural diversity reveals the true intent of such attacks, which is to deprive the Syrian people of its knowledge, its identity and history. One week after the killing of Professor Khaled al-Assaad, the archaeologist who had looked after Palmyra’s ruins for four decades, this destruction is a new war crime and an immense loss for the Syrian people and for humanity,” Unesco Director-General Irina Bokova said in a statement.

“The art and architecture of Palmyra, standing at the crossroads of several civilizations, is a symbol of the complexity and wealth of the Syrian identity and history. Extremists seek to destroy this diversity and richness, and I call on the international community to stand united against this persistent cultural cleansing. Daesh (ISIS) is killing people and destroying sites, but cannot silence history and will ultimately fail to erase this great culture from the memory of the world. Despite the obstacles and fanaticism, human creativity will prevail, buildings and sites will be rehabilitated, and some will be rebuilt,” Bokova continued.

“Such acts are war crimes and their perpetrators must be accountable for their actions. UNESCO stands by all Syrian people in their efforts to safeguard their heritage, a heritage for all humanity.”

Terror Cell with Iranian Ties Busted in Kuwait

Kuwaiti intelligence officers have broken up a terrorist cell with connections to both Iran and Hezbollah.

The statement from the country’s interior ministry says three Kuwaiti nationals are under arrest and the search is ongoing for three others suspected as part of the cell.

Security officials say the men have connections to both Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and Lebanon’s Hezbollah terrorist network.  The police found the men with a large cache of weapons and explosives hidden in an underground bunker area located on a farm.

Police reported finding 204 hand grenades, 65 guns, 56 rocket-propelled grenades and 317 pounds of bomb-making material.

The report also stated that three of the cell members were divers who smuggled explosives but also tracked the movements of ships around the nation.

The arrests marked the second straight month of breaking terror cells.  Last month, Kuwaiti terror forces broke apart an ISIS related group.

ISIS “Mein Kampf” Document Discovered

Intelligence officials are calling a document found in Pakistan as the ISIS version of “Mein Kampf” that blames Israel for the rise of the terrorist group and calls President Obama “the mule of the Jews.”

“It reads like the caliphate’s own Mein Kampf,” said a U.S. intelligence official, who reviewed the document. “While the world is watching videos of beheadings and crucifixions in Iraq and Syria the Islamic State is moving into North Africa the Middle East, and now we see it has a strategy in South Asia. It’s a magician’s trick, watch this hand and you’ll never see what the other is doing.”

The document, “A Brief History of the Islamic State Caliphate (ISC), The Caliphate According to the Prophet,” is aimed to recruit Pakistani and Afghani Taliban members into ISIS.  The document provides the group’s version of their history along with various battle plans that would make their leader ruler of the world.

“Accept the fact that this caliphate will survive and prosper until it takes over the entire world and beheads every last person that rebels against Allah,” it proclaims. “This is the bitter truth, swallow it.”

Retired Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn called the document “a red flag to which we must pay attention.”

“If I were in their shoes, I would say, ‘We are winning, we are achieving our objectives,’” Flynn said. “They have demonstrated an incredible level of resiliency and they will not be defeated by military means alone.”

Pentagon Believes ISIS Used Chemical Weapons

Pentagon officials have confirmed that they are investigating reports of Islamic terrorist group ISIS using chemical weapons against Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq.

The officials were quick to emphasize that it was likely a small amount and in a weak concentration, but it still would confirm the terrorists have found at least one cache of Syrian chemical weapons.

A senior U.S. official said that after a barrage fired at a Peshmerga unit last week, there were  “wounds consistent with a blister-producing agent.”

“We continue to monitor these reports closely, and would further stress that any use of chemicals or biological material as a weapon is completely inconsistent with international standards and norms regarding such capabilities,” Alistair Baskey, spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council, said in a statement.

Peshmerga Brig. Gen. Sirwan Barzani told CNN they suspect the agent used was mustard gas because some troops also suffered breathing difficulties beyond the skin blistering.

ISIS had been previously accused by monitoring groups of using chlorine based chemical weapons against Kurdish forces.

“We continue to take these and all allegations of chemical weapons use very seriously. As in previous instances of alleged ISIL use of chemicals as weapons, we are aware of the reports and are seeking additional information. We continue to monitor these reports closely, and would further stress that use of any chemicals or biological material as a weapon is completely inconsistent with international standards and norms regarding such capabilities,” Blake Narendra, a spokesperson for the State Department’s Arms Control, Verification and Compliance Bureau, told reporters.

Mustard gas is only deadly in large quantities but can cause painful burns and blisters that could render an enemy immobile from pain.