Nigerian military officials have announced the arrest of a businessman who actively participated in the kidnapping of almost 300 schoolgirls by the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram.
Military spokesman Major General Chris Olukolade said that Babuji Ya’ari was the leader of a “terrorist intelligence cell” for Boko Haram. Olukolade had been pretending to be a member of the Youth Vigilante Group so he could provide information to the terrorists and mislead officials.
“The arrest of the businessman … has also yielded some vital information and facilitated the arrest of other members of the terrorists’ intelligence cell who are women,” Olukolade said in a statement Tuesday night.
In addition to the kidnapping, Ya’ari has been a coordinator of attacks in the city of Maiduguri and helped plan and carry out the 2014 assassination of the emir of Gwoza.
Also arrested was a woman named Hafsat Bako who managed payroll for the terrorist operatives. The Nigerian defense ministry said she was paid about fifty American dollars for each job.
The BBC has reported some of the Chibok girls kidnapped in Nigeria are being forced to fight by the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram.
The broadcaster reported that Amnesty International said they were aware of 219 of the still missing girls who have been forced into fighting with the terrorists.
“The abduction and brutalisation of young women and girls seems to be part of the modus operandi of Boko Haram,” Netsanet Belay of Amnesty said.
A girl who escaped the terrorists told the BBC that Boko Haram would kill Christians in front of them as a way to cause fear in the girls. The girl said that when she refused to marry a terrorist, they killed the men.
‘They were Christian men. They [the Boko Haram fighters] forced the Christians to lie down. Then the girls cut their throats’, the unidentified teen told the BBC.
“(The girls) told us: ‘You women should learn from your husbands because they are giving their blood for the cause. We must also go to war for Allah.’’
Reports last week say that two teenage girls who were forced to commit suicide bombing attacks in Nigeria were Chibok girls captured by Boko Haram.
Islamic militants claiming connection to ISIS are warning that they will “cleanse” Israel of all Christians and “non-believers” by the end of Ramadan unless they leave the country.
“Those who work with the Zionists also encourage Muslims to leave their religion and become more secular and open, and they spread evil,” Arabic-language leaflets warns, according to The Jerusalem Post. “They take these Muslims away from us. … We know where they are, but we need help to find them all — all those Christian collaborators.”
“ISIS soldiers will work to kill these people so this country is clean of them and … will clean this country and the Muslim Quarter from these Christians during this holy Ramadan.”
The Jerusalem Post said that no Arabic Christians who received the note would talk to them but their neighbors said the messages have rattled the community.
“They’re fearful for their lives and don’t want to go to the police because they feel that the police won’t be responsive,” an Israeli man told the Post, requesting anonymity.
“What’s most problematic is that in this case individuals aren’t being targeted but an entire group, which is pretty darn serious. If leaflets with swastikas and similar threats were sent to Jewish neighborhoods, people would be outraged. I hope and pray it amounts to nothing at all.”
ISIS has called for terror attacks during Ramadan and has taken responsibility for attacks last week in France, Tunisia and Kuwait.
Three Islamic terror attacks were carried out almost simultaneously today after call for “Ramadan calamity.”
In Lyon, France, a terrorist named Yassin Salih rammed a car through the gate of an American-owned chemical factory. He attempted to blow up the complex but failed. He then decapitated the manager of the complex and posted his head on a fence by the factory. Salih also posted Islamist flags to the fence.
Salih, which French officials confirmed they had under surveillance as a possible terrorist sympathizer, was wounded in the explosion and taken into custody. His wife and one other accomplice have also been taken into custody.
French President Francois Hollande confirmed it was an Islamist terror attack.
In Tunisia, at least two terrorists stormed a beach popular with tourists and gunned down 27 people. An attack on a Shiite mosque in Kuwait has left at least 25 dead. Hundreds were wounded in both attacks.
On Tuesday, the spokesman for the terrorist group ISIS issued a call for “calamity” for “infidels, crusaders, Shiites and apostates”.
“Be keen to conquer in this holy month and to become exposed to martyrdom,” Abu Mohamed al-Adnani said.
Islamic terrorists have burned down an ancient Iraqi church so they can build a mosque on the site.
Christian symbols and relics were destroyed in the church. Terrorists posted fliers throughout Mosul saying the Syrian Orthodox Church of St. Ephraim is going to be reopened as “mosque of the mujahideen.”
“They (ISIS) take everything from us, but they cannot take the God from our hearts, they cannot,” said Nicodemus Sharaf, archbishop of the Syriac Orthodox Church in Mosul, who’s now a refugee.
The homes and businesses of Christians in Mosul are now marked for destruction according to a report in the BBC.
The terrorists have become so extreme that Muslims in Mosul say they’ve stopped attending mosques.
“The group has even replaced the imams in the mosques with pro-IS people,” a Mosul resident named Hisham told the BBC. “Many of us have stopped going to the mosques because those attending are asked to give an oath of allegiance and we hate that.”
Hisham reported that restrictions on women are so severe that a man was beaten because his wife’s gloves did not completely cover her hands.
A Virginia teenager is planning for life in prison rather than his high school graduation after pleading guilty to helping ISIS.
Ali Shukri Amin, 17, admitted to authorities that he had used his computer to contact ISIS members and helped arrange for an 18-year-old classmate to travel to Syria to join the terrorists.
Amin pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to provide material support to ISIS.
The teen said he ran the twitter handle @Amreekiwitness to “provide advice and encouragement to ISIL and its supporters.” He also taught followers of the terrorist group how to convert currency to Bitcoin so they could fund the terror group.
“Around the nation, we are seeing ISIL use social media to reach out from the other side of the world,” Assistant Attorney General Carlin said. “Their messages are reaching America in an attempt to radicalize, recruit and incite our youth and others to support ISIL’s violent causes.”
The FBI had been keeping the teenager under surveillance for over a month before they took him into custody.
“Today’s guilty plea demonstrates that those who use social media as a tool to provide support and resources to ISIL will be identified and prosecuted with no less vigilance than those who travel to take up arms with ISIL,” said U.S. Attorney Dana J. Boente.
Australia’s foreign minister has said their intelligence shows ISIS has enough radioactive material to create a large “dirty” bomb.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop told The Australian newspaper that ISIS has collected enough radioactive materials from hospitals and research centers in areas they have overtaken in the last few years. She also said the group is now recruiting “highly trained professionals” to develop chemical weapons which could also be used to create “dirty” bombs.
“They seek to undermine and overthrow that order and as we have seen, are prepared to use any and all means, any and all forms of violence they can think of to advance their demented cause,” she said. “That includes use of chemical weapons.”
“Chemical weapons often receive less public attention than nuclear and biological threats,” she also said, later adding, “However, toxic chemicals were, by far, the most widely used and proliferated weapons of mass destruction in the 20th century.”
Bishop is not the first international intelligence official to comment on the possibility of dirty bombs or nuclear weapons falling into the hands of ISIS. Indian defense officials said that the terrorists are working to obtain a nuclear weapon from Pakistan.
Several intelligence officials are concerned about the approach of Ramadan, as ISIS has ramped up attacks in connection with the Muslim holy month.
Islamic terrorist group ISIS swooped in on Eritrean refugees in Libya, kidnapping anyone who said they were not a Muslim.
The Commission on Eritrean Refugees reported the attack Sunday.
“IS militants asked everyone who is Muslim or not and everybody started saying they are Muslims,” Meron Estefanos, the co-founder of the International Commission on Eritrean Refugees, told the International Business Times.
The terrorists then began quizzing those who claimed to be Muslims on the Koran and took those who could not answer the questions.
The kidnappings came just two days after two Eritrean refugees were shot dead during a similar attack by ISIS.
Eritrean refugees are fleeing their country’s political oppression. They risk passing through ISIS controlled areas of Libya to obtain a boat ride to Italy and freedom.
The refugees are tracing similar paths to Ethiopian refugees, just like the 28 Ethiopian Christians who were slaughtered by ISIS in April in their quest for freedom.
CER said that many Eritrean refugees are now trying to avoid Libya because of the terrorists.
Islamic terrorist group ISIS has kidnapped 500 children and Iraqi officials are concerned they’re being trained to be suicide bombers.
Farhan Mohammed of Anbar’s Provincial Council told reporters that ISIS was able to kidnap over 400 children from their region in less than a week.
“Daesh [Arabic acronym for ISIS] has kidnapped at least 400 children in the western province of Anbar and taken them to their bases in Iraq and Syria,” Mohammed was quoted as saying by the Christian Post.
The terrorists also kidnapped 120 children from schools in the northern part of Nineveh province.
ISIS has been releasing videos to social media showing children who are being indoctrinated by the terrorists. They call their camps training for “cubs of the caliphate.” The Iraqi Human Rights Commission estimates that 1,000 children have been trained by the terrorist group.
“They use children because it is easy to brainwash them,” Rami Abdulrahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory, told Reuters. “They can build these children into what they want. They stop them from going to school and send them to IS schools instead.”
Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram has violently killed dozens of Christians to death in their latest raids on villages.
Boko Haram killed 29 people in Adamawa state and most of the dead are Christians. The killings come a week after the terrorists hacked to death 10 Christians in Pambula-Kwamda.
They destroyed the telephone mast first before invading our community — this was to prevent us from telephoning and requesting help,” said one community pastor. “They killed 10 members of our church [Church of the Brethren in Nigeria, or EYN] using machetes and then slaughtering them.”
Military officials also say that Boko Haram is the likely source of suicide bomb attacks in a Christian community on May 19th that left nine people dead. They are also believed behind a shooting attack in Wagga.
“The attacks killed 19 people in Garkida and Madagali,” said the Rev. Samuel Dante Dali, president of the EYN. “The bombing signals a renewal of violence by the Islamist insurgent group Boko Haram at a time when Nigerian authorities are claiming victory in many parts of the northeast.”
The town of Gubio was attacked and burned Wednesday night leaving 37 men, women and children dead. Over 400 buildings were destroyed in the terrorist attack.