Tag Archives: Terrorism

U.S. Air Force veteran convicted of attempting to join Islamic State

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Tairod Pugh, a U.S. Air Force veteran, was found guilty on Wednesday of attempting to join Islamic State, according to his lawyer.

The conviction marks the first case in more than 75 Islamic State-related prosecutions brought since 2014 by the U.S. Department of Justice to reach a jury verdict.

After a week-long trial in Brooklyn federal court, a jury found Pugh, 48, guilty of attempting to provide material support to a designated terrorist organization, and obstruction for destroying four portable electronic storage devices after his detention in Turkey.

“Of course, we are disappointed with the verdict as we put in great effort to defend the case, but the jury appeared to be fair and genuinely concerned about reaching the correct verdict as they saw it,” Pugh’s lawyer Eric Creizman said.

Pugh will be sentenced in September, Creizman said.

Prosecutors said Pugh immersed himself in violent Islamic State propaganda for months before buying a one-way flight from his home in Egypt to Turkey, where he hoped to cross the Syrian border into territory controlled by the extremist group.

He was detained by Turkish authorities at an Istanbul airport and eventually flown to the United States to face terrorism charges.

Pugh’s defense lawyers argued that his only offense was to express “repugnant” views about Islamic State in Facebook posts and to watch dozens of the group’s slickly produced recruitment videos. They said he traveled to Turkey to find work, not to become a jihadist.

But prosecutors pointed to a letter he drafted to his Egyptian wife, found on his laptop, in which he vowed to fight for Islam and declared he had two options: “Victory or Martyr.” The letter was written days before he flew to Turkey, though it was unclear whether he ever sent it.

He also took with him to Istanbul a black facemask, a map depicting Islamic State’s strongholds in Syria and a chart of the border crossings between Turkey and Syria.

Only one other Islamic State-related U.S. prosecution has reached trial. In Phoenix, Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem is on trial for plotting with others to attack a Prophet Mohammed cartoon contest in Texas. Two of his alleged associates were killed in a shootout with police at the event.

Pugh served as an avionics specialist in the Air Force from 1986 to 1990 and later worked as an Army contractor in Iraq from 2009 to 2010, prosecutors said.

(Additional reporting by Barbara Goldberg; Editing by Ed Tobin and Andrew Hay)

Tunisia says Islamic State attacked border to control town

TUNIS (Reuters) – Tunisian Prime Minister Habib Essid said on Tuesday Islamic State militants had carried out the huge raid on Ben Guerdan on Monday that killed 55 people in an attempt to control the town and expand their territory.

Tunisia has become increasingly concerned about violence spilling across its frontier as Islamic State has expanded in Libya, taking advantage of the country’s chaos to control the city of Sirte and setting up training camps there.

Dozens of militants stormed through the border town of Ben Guerdan on Monday attacking army and police posts and triggering street battles during which troops killed 36 fighters. Twelve soldiers and seven civilians also died during the attack.

Essid said officials were still investigating whether the group of 50 militants had infiltrated across the frontier from Libya, though officials found three caches of arms, explosives and rockets in Ben Guerdan after the attack.

“They wanted to take over the barracks and police stations and gain territory, but our forces were ready,” Essid told reporters. “They thought it was going to be easy and the people of Ben Guerdan would help them. But Tunisians would never accept them.”

The attack was one of the worst in Tunisia’s history and followed three major Islamic State assaults last year, including gun attacks on a museum in Tunis and a beach resort in Sousse that targeted foreign tourists.

Since its 2011 revolt to oust autocrat Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia has battled a growing Islamist militancy at home and more than 3,000 Tunisians have left to fight for Islamic State and other jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq.

But the increasing chaos in Libya, where two rival governments and armed factions are battling for control, has allowed Islamic State to thrive just over Tunisia’s border, and the government has been preparing for potential attacks.

The United Nations is trying to bring Libya’s factions behind a national unity government that would allow Western governments to help them fight Islamic State. But the group’s rapid growth has also prompted Western governments to consider air strikes and special forces operations in Libya.

Last month, a U.S. air strike killed more than 40 militants in Sabratha, a coastal town near the Tunisian border. Officials say many were Tunisian fighters.

(Writing by Patrick Markey; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Twitter praised for cracking down on use by Islamic State

(Reuters) – Officials with the nonprofit Simon Wiesenthal Center praised Twitter Inc on Monday for increasing efforts to thwart Islamic State’s use of its platform for recruitment and propaganda.

The center’s Digital Terrorism and Hate Project gave Twitter a grade of “B” in a report card of social networking companies’ efforts to fight online activity by militant groups such as IS.

“We think they are definitely heading in the right direction,” the project’s director, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, told Reuters in a telephone interview ahead of Monday’s release of the report card at a press conference in New York.

He said the review was based on steps that Twitter has already taken and information that center staff learned in face-to-face meetings with company representatives.

Islamic State has long relied on Twitter to recruit and radicalize new adherents. The Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish human rights organization, has been one of toughest critics of the Twitter’s strategy for combating those efforts.

Some vocal Twitter critics have tempered their views since December, when the site revised its community policing policies, clearly stating that it banned “hateful conduct” that promotes violence against specific groups and would delete offending accounts.

Researchers with George Washington University’s Program on Extremism last month reported that Islamic State’s English-language reach on Twitter stalled last year amid a stepped-up crackdown by the company against the extremist group’s army of digital proselytizers.

The center gave Twitter grade of “C” in a report card last year, which covered efforts to fight terrorism along with hate speech. This year it gave two grades, awarding Twitter a “D” on hate speech, saying the company needed to do more to censor the accounts of groups that promote hate.

A Twitter spokesman declined comment, but pointed to a statement on the company’s blog posted Feb. 5 on combating violent extremism.

“We condemn the use of Twitter to promote terrorism and the Twitter Rules make it clear that this type of behavior, or any violent threat, is not permitted on our service,” Twitter said in the blog.

Among other major Internet firms included in this year’s survey, Facebook Inc got an “A-” for terrorism and a “B-” for hate. Alphabet Inc’s YouTube got a “B-” for terrorism and a “D” for hate.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston; Editing by Peter Cooney and Jeffrey Benkoe)

U.S. strikes al Shabaab training camp in Somalia, more than 150 killed

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States has carried out an air strike in Somalia, killing more than 150 fighters with the al Qaeda-linked Islamist group al Shabaab, following U.S. intelligence on preparations for a large-scale militant attack, the Pentagon said on Monday.

The weekend strike using both manned and unmanned drone aircraft targeted al Shabaab’s “Raso” training camp, a facility about 120 miles north of the capital Mogadishu, the Pentagon said.

The U.S. military said it had been monitoring the camp for several weeks before the strike and had gathered intelligence, including about an imminent threat posed by those in the camp.

“We know they were going to be departing the camp and that they posed an imminent threat to U.S. and to Amisom, African Union mission in Somalia forces, that are in Somalia,” said Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis.

Davis declined to disclose any specific information the United States might have about the group’s intended target.

Al Shabaab could not be reached for comment.

Somalia’s Foreign Minister Abdusalam Omer said the Somali intelligence agency had provided information about the camp to the U.S. in the runup to the attack.

“There has to be intelligence on the ground for this to happen. Our intelligence had helped,” Omer told Reuters.

The al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab was pushed out of Mogadishu by African Union peacekeeping forces in 2011 but has remained a potent antagonist in Somalia, launching frequent attacks in its bid to overthrow the Western-backed government.

The group, whose name means “The Youth,” seeks to impose its strict version of sharia law in Somalia, where it frequently unleashes attacks targeting security and government targets, as well as hotels and restaurants in the capital.

Al Shabaab was also behind deadly attacks in Kenya and Uganda, which both contribute troops to an African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia.

Omer said the U.S. drone strike was a major blow to al Shabaab.

“It’s a big victory for fighting terrorism,” Omer said. “Instead of al Shabaab attacking civilians, it was a military target was hit and there was a high success rate.”

Davis said as many as 200 fighters were believed to be training at the Raso camp at the time of the strike and expressed confidence there were no civilian casualties.

“Their removal will degrade al Shabaab’s ability to meet the group’s objectives in Somalia, which include recruiting new members, establishing bases and planning attacks on U.S. and Amisom forces there,” Davis said.

No U.S. forces on the ground participated in the strike.

“It was an air operation,” Davis said.

(Additional reporting by Drazen Jorgic in Nairobi; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Ralph Boulton)

Islamic State looking for ‘spectacular’ attacks, UK police say

LONDON (Reuters) – Islamic State fighters want to carry out “enormous and spectacular” attacks against Britain and the Western lifestyle in general, Britain’s most senior anti-terrorism officer said on Monday.

London Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said the threat from the group which has taken over large parts of Syria and Iraq was evolving, and that it was keen to repeat elsewhere incidents such as last year’s Paris shootings and suicide attacks that killed 130 people.

“What we are now seeing in recent months … is the broadening of that threat, more plans to attack Western lifestyle … going from that narrow focus on police and military and symbols of the state to something much broader,” Rowley told reporters.

“You see a terrorist group that has big ambitions for enormous and spectacular attacks, not just the types that we’ve seen foiled to date.”

British security chiefs have previously warned that the biggest threat posed by the group was the radicalization of young Britons over the internet and the danger posed by those who joined the fighting in Syria and Iraq to return home to carry out attacks.

About 800 British citizens are thought to have traveled to Syria, many to join Islamic State (IS), since the outbreak of civil war.

Rowley said recent arrests showed that IS was adopting a different methodology in trying to get fighters into northern Europe who had weapons and paramilitary training.

“Terrorist groups have always wanted to do the grand and the more spectacular attack because it gets more impact,” he said.

He said British police had made more counter-terrorism arrests in 2015 than in any previous year including a marked number of women and those aged under 20.

(Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Stephen Addison)

Spanish officials seize 20K military uniforms from alleged ISIS suppliers

Police in Spain have neutralized a “very active and effective business network” that allegedly supplied a variety of materials to terrorist groups, the country’s interior ministry said Thursday.

A counterterrorism investigation last month led to the arrest of seven people who are accused of providing “logistical and financial support” to the Islamic State and the Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, the ministry announced in a news release. Authorities also confiscated about 20,000 uniforms and other accessories that could have been used “to equip an army that would be perfectly prepared for combat” out of three shipping containers in Valencia and Algeciras.

The ministry said the containers were tied to the business network, and had been labeled as carrying “second-hand clothes” so as not to arouse suspicion from customs officials. However, authorities discovered bundles of uniforms hidden among other clothing inside the containers.

The now-neutralized network helped provide a constant supply of weapons, military equipment and other technological supplies to areas controlled by the Islamic State, the ministry said.

Belgian army to protect nuclear sites, interior ministry says

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Belgium has ordered its military to protect nuclear sites such as power plants in the country to safeguard them against possible militant attacks, the country’s interior ministry said on Friday.

Some 140 soldiers will be mobilized to protect locations such as Belgium’s two nuclear power plants at Tihange and Doel as well as nuclear research and storage facilities, a spokesman for the interior ministry said.

“We are setting up a special police unit for this sort of security task but that will take some time for it to be operational,” the spokesman said, adding that the army would take over in the meantime.

In February, Belgian investigators searching houses linked to suspects in the Islamist militant attacks in Paris last November found a video tracking movements of a man linked to the country’s nuclear industry.

The spokesman said there was no direct link between the discovery of the video and the decision to take the additional security measures.

(Reporting by Robert-Jan Bartunek; Editing by Gareth Jones)

U.S. tech companies unite behind Apple ahead of iPhone encryption ruling

(Reuters) – Alphabet Inc’s Google, Facebook Inc, Microsoft Corp and several other Internet and technology companies will file a joint legal brief on Thursday asking a judge to support Apple Inc in its encryption battle with the U.S. government, sources familiar with the companies’ plans said.

The effort is a rare display of unity and support for the iPhone maker from companies which are competitors in many areas, and shows the breadth of Silicon Valley’s opposition to the government’s anti-encryption effort.

The fight between Apple and the government became public last month when the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation obtained a court order requiring Apple to write new software and take other measures to disable passcode protection and allow access to an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters in December.

Apple has pushed back, arguing that such a move would set a dangerous precedent and threaten customer security. The clash has intensified a long-running debate over how much law enforcement and intelligence officials should be able to monitor digital communications.

The group of tech companies plans to file what is known as an amicus brief – a form of comment from outside groups common in complex cases – to the Riverside, California, federal judge Sheri Pym. She will rule on Apple’s appeal of a court order that would force it to create software to unlock the iPhone.

The companies will contest government arguments that the All Writs Act, a broad 1789 law that enables judges to require actions necessary to enforce their own orders, compels Apple to comply with its request.

In their joint brief, the tech companies will say that Congress passed the All Writs Act before the invention of the light bulb, and that it goes too far to contend that the law can be used to force engineers to disable security protections, according to a source familiar with their arguments.

Google, Facebook and others also appear to be tailoring their arguments specifically to a U.S. Supreme Court audience, where the case may end up. The brief will highlight a unanimous 2014 U.S. Supreme Court case which said law enforcement needs warrants to access smartphones snared in an arrest, the source said.

That opinion, penned by Chief Justice John Roberts, united the Supreme Court’s liberal and conservative factions.

Briefs are also expected in support of the government.

Stephen Larson, a former federal judge, told Reuters last week that he is working on a brief with victims of the San Bernardino shooting who want the FBI to be able to access the data on the phone used by Rizwan Farook. “They were targeted by terrorists, and they need to know why, how this could happen,” Larson said.

Several other tech companies are joining Google, Facebook and Microsoft.

Mozilla, maker of the Firefox web browser, said it was participating, along with online planning tool maker Evernote and messaging app firms Snapchat and WhatsApp. Bookmarking and social media site Pinterest and online storage firm Dropbox are also participating.

“We stand against the use of broad authorities to undermine the security of a company’s products,” Dropbox General Counsel Ramsey Homsany said in a statement.

A separate group including Twitter Inc, eBay Inc, LinkedIn Corp and more than a dozen other tech firms filed a brief with the court in support of Apple on Thursday. AT&T Inc filed its own brief.

Networking leader Cisco Systems Inc said it expected to address the court on Apple’s behalf, but did not say whether it was joining with the large group of companies.

Semiconductor maker Intel Corp plans to file a brief of its own in support of Apple, said Chris Young, senior vice president and general manager for Intel Security Group.

“We believe that tech companies need to have the ability to build and design their products as needed, and that means that we can’t have the government mandating how we build and design our products,” Young said in an interview.

The Stanford Law School for Internet and Society filed a separate brief on Thursday morning on behalf of a group of well-known experts on iPhone security and encryption, including Charlie Miller, Dino Dai Zovi, Bruce Schneier and Jonathan Zdziarski.

Privacy advocacy groups the American Civil Liberties Union, Access Now and the Wickr Foundation filed briefs on Wednesday in support of Apple before Thursday’s deadline set by Pym.

Salihin Kondoker, whose wife Anies Kondoker was injured in the San Bernardino attack, also wrote on Apple’s behalf, saying he shared the company’s fear that the software the government wants Apple to create to unlock the phone could be used to break into millions of other phones.

“I believe privacy is important and Apple should stay firm in their decision,” the letter said. “Neither I, nor my wife, want to raise our children in a world where privacy is the tradeoff for security.”

Law enforcement officials have said that Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, were inspired by Islamist militants when they shot and killed 14 people and wounded 22 others last Dec. 2 at a holiday party. Farook and Malik were later killed in a shootout with police and the FBI said it wants to read the data on Farook’s phone to investigate any links with militant groups.

Earlier this week, a Brooklyn judge ruled that the government had overstepped its authority by seeking similar assistance from Apple in a drug case.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston and Dustin Volz in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Dan Levine, Heather Somerville, Sarah McBride, Julia Love in San Francisco; Editing by Jonathan Weber, Grant McCool and Bill Rigby)

Report shows ISIS bomb supply chain stretches to 20 countries

The Islamic State is building and deploying improvised explosive devices on a “quasi-industrial scale” across Iraq and Syria, according to a new report that examines the group’s supply chain.

The organization has utilized bomb components that were manufactured in 20 countries across four continents, Conflict Armament Research said last week in a report on its 20-month study.

The bombs have become the organization’s “signature weapon,” according to the report, in large part because they can be built out of inexpensive components that can easily be purchased.

The report notes many IED parts are commercial goods like fertilizer, cell phones and other electronic elements, the sale of which aren’t as tightly scrutinized and regulated as firearms. That has allowed more than 700 items connected to Brazil, China, Switzerland, Japan, the United States and 15 other nations to end up in the Islamic State’s improvised explosive devices.

The study indicated 13 Turkish companies were connected to the supply chain, the most of any nation. India followed with seven companies and the United Arab Emirates was third with six.

The report does not accuse any of the 20 countries, or the 51 companies, of directly supplying the material to the Islamic State. It notes that all of the products were lawfully obtained by trade and distribution companies, who subsequently sold them to smaller commercial outlets.

Many of those smaller entities “appear to have sold, whether wittingly or unwittingly” the items to people in some way associated with the Islamic State, the report states, adding that those smaller sellers “appear to be the weakest link in the chain of custody.”

Conflict Armament Research found the Islamic State was able to obtain some products shortly after they were legally given to commercial entities, suggesting some issues with the process.

“The appearance of these components in possession of IS forces, as little as one month following their lawful supply to commercial entities in the region, speaks to a lack of monitoring by national governments and companies alike,” the report states. “It may also indicate a lack of awareness surrounding the potential use of these civilian-market components by terrorist and insurgent forces.”

Islamic State terrorist attacks killed 6,073 people in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon and Turkey in 2014, according to the most recent edition of the Global Terrorism Index.

The organization was also linked to another 20,000 deaths on various battlefields, the index found, but it did not indicate how many of the 26,000-plus deaths were specifically from IEDs.

U.S. waging cyber war on Islamic State, commandos active

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States is waging cyber attacks against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, and its newly deployed commandos are also carrying out secret missions on the ground, Pentagon leaders said on Monday, in the latest signs of quietly expanding U.S. activity.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the cyber attacks, particularly in Syria, were designed to prevent Islamic State from commanding its forces, and Washington was looking to accelerate the cyber war against the Sunni militant group.

“The methods we’re using are new. Some of them will be surprising,” Carter told a Pentagon news conference.

General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the cyber attacks were helping lay the groundwork for an eventual offensive operation to recapture the city of Mosul in Iraq from Islamic State.

Carter and Dunford, the Pentagon’s top civilian and uniformed officials, both suggested the attacks were aimed at overloading the militants’ networks. They declined to delve into specifics.

“We don’t want the enemy to know when, where and how we’re conducting cyber operations. We don’t want them to have information that will allow them to adapt over time,” Dunford said.

Dunford suggested Islamic State might not know why its computer networks were proving unreliable.

“They’re going to experience some friction that’s associated with us and some friction that’s just associated with the normal course of events in dealing in the information age. And frankly, we don’t want them to know the difference.”

U.S. COMMANDOS

The United States disclosed in January that a new, roughly 200-strong U.S. continent of special operations forces was “in place” in Iraq, poised to carry out raids against Islamic State and other secret missions, both in Iraq and in Syria.

Carter disclosed on Monday that the so-called “expeditionary targeting force,” or ETF, was already operating on the ground.

“The ETF is in position, it is having an effect and operating, and I expect it to be a very effective part of our acceleration campaign,” he said, without elaborating.

Its deployment represents increased U.S. military activity on the ground against Islamic State, exposing American forces to greater risk – something President Barack Obama has done only sparingly.

The force follows another deployment last year of up to 50 U.S. special operations troops in Syria to coordinate on the ground with U.S.-backed forces battling Islamic State.

The U.S. military disclosed last week that those U.S. forces helped opposition forces recapture the strategic Syrian town of al-Shadadi from Islamic State.

The Pentagon said recapturing the town helped sever links between Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria, the two major power centers in Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate.

More knowledge about the group’s operations is expected to be discovered, Carter said.

“As our partners take control of Shadadi, I believe we will learn a great deal more about ISIL’s criminal networks, its criminal enterprise and what it does to sustain them,” Carter said, using an acronym for the group.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and David Alexander; Editing by Susan Heavey and Richard Chang)