ISIS Files Leaked Revealing Over 22,000 Recruites
According to NBC News, tens of thousands ISIS files have leaked that paint a very detailed picture of the terrorist group, which included a personnel file of a 20-year-old male from Minneapolis.
The leaked personnel files, obtained by German intelligence, seem like a normal, everyday, application, with questions like name, nickname, date of birth, and education quickly changing to more sinister questions.
Among the 23 questions on the form were questions such as countries traveled to, previous fighting experience, blood type, special skills, the level of obedience, and whether the applicant was interested in becoming a fighter or willing to become a suicide attacker.
Fox News reports that people from at least 51 countries, including the UK, gave up their personal information to join the Islamic State, some of whom are well known.
Reyaad Khan from Cardiff, who is known for appearing in a highly produced Islamic State propaganda video, entered in 2013. Abdel Bary, 26-year-old from London, joined in 2013 after visiting Egypt and Turkey.
A key breakthrough with the leaked files is exposing the identities of a large number of unknown jihadis in the U.K., the Middle East, North Africa, the United States, and Canada.
Leaked ISIS files on militants in #Germany likely to be genuine: Police https://t.co/FIPJDhabaJ pic.twitter.com/Qj8BP0X1rP
— The Straits Times (@straits_times) March 10, 2016
The whereabouts of the terrorist is crucial to preventing attacks and breaking up the group altogether.
Fox News also reports that the files were given to Sky News on a stolen memory stick from the head of Islamic State’s internal security police. He was in charge of protecting the files. The man who stole the leaked files is a former Free Syrian Army convert. He calls himself Abu Hamed.
Police spokesman Markus Koths stated, “The Federal Criminal Office has knowledge of this type of document of the so-called Islamic State,” referring to the ISIS registration forms reported on by Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
The Daily Mail reports that experts believe the leaked files could be useless in tracking jihadists who have snuck back into the country already.
The documents are from ISIS’ entrance interviews, which were believed to have taken place in Raqqa, Syria. The forms show just how organized ISIS is, having their own recruitment department and maintaining file information such as time of death, place of death, and cause of death. The details have been logged in extraordinary detail.
The Daily News reports that they sometimes self-describe as the “Bangladeshi Bad Boys”. The most infamous figure among them was Ifthekar Jaman, who gained notoriety after giving an interview to BBC’s Newsnight in November 2013 in which he told reporter Richard Watson, “I am Isis. This is the group I am with. We are trying to establish the law of God, the law of Allah”. He was subsequently killed in fighting a month later and became a poster child for UK radicals.
“It will be a great blow for their recruitment process because these documents show not just the people joining but the networks involved in radicalising them and facilitating their travel,” states Afzal Ashraf, a visiting fellow at Nottingham University’s centre of conflict, security and terrorism.
“Any recruit will know they are very likely to be discovered and there will be serious consequences for them, it doesn’t inspire a great deal of confidence.”
According to British police estimates, at least, 700 people from the UK have travelled to support or fight for terror groups in Syria and Iraq, and about half have since returned.
[Photo by Jake Simkin/AP, File]
