The Hackers, Wannabees & Fembots
There was legitimate reason to pay attention to the activities of groups like the Cyber Caliphate Army. They lead almost daily actions against companies, government agencies, and individuals that compromise privacy interests, erode trust in account security, and keep law enforcement busy with assets. On a small scale, the disruptions to businesses can be financially burdensome or even devastating. In many cases, sites can be reset if they have normal server backups running.
Thus far, the known hackers related to ISIS have launched limited types of attacks and with a skill set far below that of nation state-level actors like the Russian intelligence and criminal hacking crews behind dozens of spearphishing and cyber espionage attacks across Europe and on the Democratic National Committee in the 2016 election. The skill sets of the nation state hackers require some things the ISIS hackers do not seem to have in their tool kit: finances and institutional brainpower. Although ISIS may pay its cyber attackers a good wage on caliphate scale, that doesn’t constitute the financial and institutional power you’ll find in Russian intelligence services like the FSB or GRU, who have redundant manpower, attack history, and brainpower resources.
Based on observing the daily postings from the Cyber Caliphate Army and its allies the Kalashnikov-e channel, United Cyber Caliphate Channel on Telegram, and the listed hackings associated with these groups on Zone-H.com (a website dedicated to announced website intrusions) and other resources, the cyber Jihadis did not represent a significant online threat as of late summer 2016. Mostly these groups are focused on “capture the flag”- style campaigns where they hack websites and mark them up with their propaganda. They most often result in a homepage replaced with ISIS friendly messages. For a sense of perspective, Junaid Hussain, leading member until his death by airstrike mentioned earlier, was busted for breaking into Tony Blair’s email through his advisor Katy Kay’s account rather than doing something substantially destructive, such as taking down the London power grid. This doesn’t rule out the possibility of advances in coordination if given the opportunity to try.
Figure 45: Junaid Hussain. (Source: TAPSTRI)
Killing a Cyber Emir—Junaid Hussain
There are few individuals in the ISIS cyber ranks who get named, but one person stands out for his part in developing the cyber activities under the black banner. His name was Junaid Hussain, also known by his long time handle, “TriCk.” Born in 1994, he was raised in a Pakistani family in Birmingham England. Junaid had developed a reputation for his skills as a hacker early on. He was even once called “the Best in the UK” in an interview from 2012. In the interview, Hussain states he started hacking when he was eleven years old out of revenge for being hacked on a console game system.1
His efforts were assisted by a hacking group known as “TeaMp0isoN” (Team Poison) long before he joined ISIS in 2008. He popped up on the radar in January 2011 after Facebook announced that unauthorized postings had occurred due to a bug in its system. Team Poison was credited with exploiting the Facebook bug after they posted a late New Year’s Eve post stating, “On the evening of the 31st of December 2010 (New Year’s Eve), TeaM P0isoN and ZCompany Hacking Crew will clean up Facebook.”2
Years later, Hussain would move in a more extreme direction. He said in an interview with Softpedia that he became political at age fifteen when he had been “watching videos of children getting killed in countries like Kashmir and Palestine.”3 He had built up a reputation and clout in the hacker collective Anonymous’s world despite his comments that often insulted his western peers. He stated that TeaMpOisoN was akin to “Internet Guerilla Warfare,” while Anonymous is equivalent to the “peaceful protesting, camping on the street.” He also criticized their efforts that resulted in hacking random sites as “useless” and ineffective.
A key entry in the 2012 Softpedia interview with Hussain exposed his arrogance about being caught. He stated, “My real identity doesn’t exist online—and no I don’t fear getting caught.”4 Yet, get caught is exactly what happened to Hussain after he hacked the gmail account of Tony Blair advisor Katy Kay. After he posted about the hack and began baiting law enforcement with prank phone calls, Hussain was arrested April 12, 2012, and sentenced to six months in jail.5
As the Islamic State rose to power in Iraq and Syria, Hussain changed his path from hacktivist in the wild to cyberjihadist. He adopted the Islamic honorific name or kunya of Abu Hussain al-Britani (Father of Hussain, the Britain) and hit Twitter with a penchant for maximizing the use of the 140-character platform. In 2013, Hussain left England for Syria to join ISIS.
His skills were immediately recognized, and he was not sent to the front line or made a suicide bomber. Hussain was assigned to grow the ISIS hacker command but was unable to convince his former allies on the Internet to join him. While he was able to gain followers as a hacktivist when fighting the oppression of people in Palestine and the Indian/Pakistan Kashmir, the extreme nature of ISIS put a barrier between him and former hacking peers, which ultimately prevented the cyber groups he formed from becoming a formidable force.
By the time Junaid reached Syria he was married to a British convert to Islam named Sally Jones. Jones, a mother of two, was a former punk rock guitarist now going under the name, “Umm Hussain Britanya.” Hussain was treated very well by ISIS because they counted on him to empower their cyber capabilities. Sally Jones would herself become a major ISIS female recruiter who would become famous for her exhortations for Brits and Americans to attack their fellow citizens.
Hussain often acted as a facilitator for recruiting and was in contact with numerous Americans who were later arrested or killed. One of his disciples was the American Munir Abulkader of Ohio. Abdulkader was a twenty-one-year-old Eritrean-American who was arrested for planning firebomb and AK-47 gun attacks on police officers and military. While in communication with Hussein, Abdulkader was encouraged to stay in the United States and fight as a lone wolf.
On May 3, 2015, two gunmen—Elton Simpson, an African-American, and Nadir Soofi, an American of Pakistani parents—armed themselves and drove from Phoenix, Arizona, to Garland, Texas. Simpson was well known to the FBI as a wannabe jihadi who had been arrested and imprisoned for attempting to travel to Syria and Somalia. The two had driven to Texas with three AK-47 rifles and handguns with the intent to attack the First Annual Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest. Internationally known anti-Muslim speakers Pamela Geller and Dutchman Geert Wilders were present, as well as a massive law enforcement presence. A few minutes before the attack, Simpson and Soofi tweeted under the hashtag #texasattack, “The bro with me and myself have given baya (oath of loyalty) to Amirul Mu’mineen (Prince of Holy Warriors). May Allah accept us as mujahideen. Make dua.” This was a direct call to giving their fealty to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, caliph of ISIS.6 Simpson had been in communications with Junaid Hussain before he was arrested while trying to go to Syria and had served as an al-Qaeda recruiter for the Somali al-Shabaab militia. After they were killed, Junaid Hussein tweeted, “Allau Akbar,” in response to their bay’āt and deaths.
Great effort went into tracking and killing Hussain by US intelligence. As noted previously, he was finally killed in Syria outside of Raqqa on August 24, 2015, after a secret technique that UK intelligence developed to hack his mobile phone’s software and give away his location. The drone waiting overhead verified him and put a Hellfire missile into the car he was travelling in. He was replaced by Bangladeshi hacker Siful Haque Sujan.
THE WANNABE—SIFUL HAQUE SUJAN
After the death of Junaid Hussain, Siful Haque Sujan, a Bangladeshi web developer, took over the operations previously run by Hussain. Sujan lived in Rhydyfelin near Pontypridd in Wales for six years.7 He had immigrated to the UK in 2003 from Bangladesh. In England, he became the CEO of Ibacs IT Solutions LTD, a web development and e-commerce company, from November 2006 until his departure.
The thirty-one-year-old developer had studied systems engineering at the University of Glamorgan. According to his LinkedIn account, he graduated from Oxford Mission High school in 1999 and attended ALD College from 1999 to 2001. Afterwards trained at Trinity College in London from 2004 to 2006 and University of South Wales from 2007 to 2008.
In 2016, his Linkedin profile says: “Currently working on worldwide joint ventures and expansion of my businesses … I am an IT graduate and an entrepreneur from Cardiff, South Wales. Some of my ventures including iBacs Limited (Bangladesh), iBacs IT Solutions LTD (UK), iBacsTel Electronics LTD (UK), iBacs Trade International (UK), British Jordanian Company for E-Commerce (Jordan), iBacs Limited Jordan (Jordan) and so on. My expertise are [sic] in IT and Telecommunication and I enjoy designing IT systems. In iBacs, we have designed various IT systems including real estate, food portal, social networking, job portal and many more. I am privileged to work with some extra ordinary people who made it all happen.”8
When he joined ISIS, he adopted the kunya or honorific name of Abu Khalid al-Bengali.9 Like other ISIS recruits, according to his associates in the UK, he never appeared to have shown signs of radicalization. He traveled to Syria in July 2014 after he was denied a visa a few months earlier. He told friends he was headed back to Bangladesh.10
Although he replaced Hussein, he clearly did not learn the lesson of the lethality of the Internet. He, too, was killed near Raqqa on December 10, 2015, just 90 days after the death of Junaid Hussain. In the Pentagon briefing by Col Steve Warren, Sujan was called a “key link” in ISIS cyber operations.11 He was married to Saima Aketer Mutka, 28, who is believed to be in Syria with his three children.12
After his death, UK authorities revealed that Sujan had been involved in money laundering and he had been sending money to Bangladesh and Syria. He sent £333,000 or approximately $425,000 to his father. His brother, Ahsanul Haque Galib, age fifteen, and his father, Abul Hasanat, age seventy, were arrested in Dhaka. Sujan sent £500 to a fifteen-year-old girl to marry him and travel to Syria. Authorities arrested his associate, Abdul Samad. The company director was arrested, as well.
Figure 46: Rashid Kassim appears in Wilayat Nineveh video before executing captive.
THE TELEGRAM RECRUITER—RASHID KASSIM
Rashid Kassim, a.k.a. Ibn Qassim, was born around 1987 in France. He was radicalized under the influence of a Salafist imam in Rouanne, Loire, and worked there in a childcare center in a Muslim community.13 Like some jihadists from the west, Kassim considered himself a rapper; at one point, he released two songs called “I’m a Terrorist” and “Rap Attack.”14 He was fired for trying to teach the children to be jihadists. The other members of the mosque found him to be too extreme and obsessed. He had traveled to Algeria before he decided to travel to Egypt in 2012 with his wife and child. From there he went on to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State. In May 2015, French authorities were notified that Kassim and his wife had left France. This set off an investigation into their whereabouts.
Kassim was active in using social media to recruit. He opened a Facebook page and pretended to be a girl under the name Nicole Ambrosia.15 He used Telegram to lure other children to fight for the terror organization in France. Kassim ran a Telegram channel that passed out advice to fighters. He posted once that he was unable to be active on social media due to injury: “The only reason that I have time to do all this is that I was wounded.”16 In September 2016, an announcement came that intelligence agencies gained access to Kassim’s Telegram account. Le Monde broke the story. Kassim was known for talking about random topics including vampires, freemasons, hell, evolution, and the Holocaust.
Arrests and disrupted plots
Kassim has been at the center of many events and had been orchestrating the activities of attackers. His Telegram messages gave him away and led to the arrest of ten teenagers in a month. A flurry of arrests took place after investigators reviewed the Telegram chats. The arrests included a nineteen-year-old from Hauts-de-Seine, a twenty-three-year-old from Lyon, a sixteen-year-old from Melun on August 4, 2016, and an eighteen-year-old from Clermont-Ferrand.
He was responsible for setting three fifteen-year-old boys on a course to strike at Paris with stabbing attacks. On September 8, 2016, a teenage boy who had been in contact with Kassim was arrested. On September 10, another teen was arrested in Paris after authorities discovered that he was involved in a planned stabbing. He, too, had been in contact with Kassim. On September 14, an Egyptian teen was arrested in Paris after planning an attack with Kassim via Telegram.17
Kassim and the Larossi Abballa Attack
Larossi Abballa murdered Jean Baptist Savaing, a police officer, and his wife, officer Jessica Schneider, on July 13, 2016, in their Paris-area home before livestreaming a message to the world via Facebook. After Abballa killed Savaing, he quoted Kassim in his live message. Investigators said Abballa was a member of the Telegram channel run by Kassim.18
Murder of priest in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray
Days later, two teens from Rouen murdered a priest in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray by slitting his throat after chatting with Kassim via Telegram. He was implicated in attacks on officers in Magnanville in June 2016.
Failed Car Bomb Attack
On September 4, he attempted to pull off a failed remote control attack from Syria by detonating a Peugeot near Notre Dame Cathedral. To pull off the plot, he gave instructions to Ines Madani, a nineteen-year-old girl, with her friends Amel Sakaou, Ornella Gilligman, and Sarah Hervouet. He instructed them to “fill a car with gas cylinders, sprinkle petrol in it, and park in a busy street … BOOM” The plot failed after the ignition by cigarette malfunctioned. The cigarette went out. A police officer was stabbed during the arrest of one of the women.
Of the four women charged in the plot, Sarah Hervouet was a former girlfriend of both Larossi Abballa, the Paris killer of the police officer, and Adel Kermiche, murderer of the eighty-year-old priest of Rouen.19 Despite the failed attack, Kassim still hit Telegram to celebrate the women and use it as an example to shame men into acting. “Where are the brothers?” he asked.20
Appearance in Nineveh video
Kassim appeared in a Wilayat Nineveh release called Their Alliance and Terror, a 7:18 video applauding the 2016 Bastille Day attack in Nice by Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel and Larossi Abballa. Kassim was featured in the video, which showed him beheading an accused spy. He also issues threats to France with calls for lone wolf attacks or “terrorisme de proximité.”
THE CASE OF PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY
In 2001, before the attacks on the United States, Ahmad Abousamra, born in France in 1981, and his friend Terek Mehanna were visiting with an unnamed friend of Mehanna’s. According to court filings in the case, the three discussed going to training camps before September 11, 2001. The son of a Boston-area doctor, Abousamra was a Syrian-American who was born in France before moving to the Boston area. He graduated from Northeastern University and became very proficient with computers.
In 2002, Daniel Maldonado, born in New Hampshire in 1983, met Abousamra, who introduced him to Mehanna. They watched jihadist videos on VHS tapes at Mehanna’s home or downloaded video clips from the web according to Mehanna’s friend, who had watched the videos with them and known Mehanna for almost 20 years. The videos featured grievance segments on Bosnia and Palestine before ending with the noble story of victory by the mujahideen.
Years later, the unnamed friend would purchase tickets for the three to go to Yemen. They would watch jihadist videos to get psyched up about their journey. The trip was a failure, though. The important people that Mehanna wanted to see were either in jail or on hajj.
Abousamra left the United States in 2004 to go fight in Iraq against US forces and returned in 2006. He was questioned by FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) in 2006. He then went to Syria in 2006. The unnamed friend of Terek Mehanna began to cooperate with the JTTF that same year.
Maldonado had moved his family to Egypt in November 2005. After the move, he began work as an IT administrator for a forum called “Islamic Networking.” Omar Hammami (a.k.a. Abu Mansur al-Amriki), an American who travelled to Somalia to fight with al-Shabaab, was one of the people who would join that discussion forum under the name “al-Mizzi.” He would later join Hammami in Somalia to train with the al-Qaeda-backed al-Shabaab terror group. Hammami, an active recruiter and propagandist, was killed in a village raid in Somalia. Maldonado was arrested by Kenyan authorities in February 2007 along the border with Somalia. After his family lived in Somalia for a period of time, they fled to Kenya, but it was too late for his wife, who died of malaria. He was the first US citizen charged with support for terrorism related to Somalia. He pled guilty in April 2007 and received a sentence of ten years.
Ahmad Abousamra was accused by the US government of being involved in the social media campaign of ISIS.21 There was no explanation given about his role or evidence of this activity. He was regarded as important because he was an an American with computer skills. Al-Arabiya referred to him as “an expert in filmmaking, an ISIS documentary film maker.”22 Patrick Pool, however, characterized him as a “Top ISIS media propagandist official” involved in beheading videos.23 ISIS has never acknowledged his presence in any releases either official or unofficial.
Later unconfirmed rumors claimed he died in a Syrian airstrike.24 He had been charged along with Terek Mehanna in 2009 related to a plot to attack in Boston on a shopping mall and planned attacks on Condoleeza Rice and John Ashcroft. He was listed as one of the FBI’s Most Wanted with a $50,000 reward.
The group of friends would discuss their plans with secret codes, including Mehanna discussing the use of encryption in communications with an associate in order to evade surveillance. Together they would use phrases as code for terrorist activity. Example: “peanut butter,” “peanut butter and jelly,” or “PB&J”—all meant “jihad.” In order to get good at “peanut butter and jelly” they would need to go to “culinary school” or training camps.25 According to the criminal complaint, Maldonado made up the phrase “culinary school,” thinking that it would be understood by Mehanna. Mehanna acknowledged that he understood the meaning.
THE FEMBOTS OF JIHAD
If one were to sit down and watch the hundreds of hours of videos and dedicate hundreds of more hours to going through photo slide shows, you would be hard-pressed to see a woman in any of it. You might occasionally see a hijab-covered girl among children in a few rare scenes or in a few that are meant to show off ISIS education. But the life of women in the caliphate is essentially absent from their propaganda. There are no official releases that feature women. But there was one unofficial video made by the al-Khanssaa Brigade, a “female policing brigade,” that was notable in that it features Sally Jones, widow of Junaid Hussain. Despite their absence in jihad imagery, women are vital to the online ISIS effort to thrive. Their number one mission is to recruit other young women, from any nation or faith, to come to the caliphate so they can serve as “jihadi brides” for soon-to-be-dead fighters of the cult of death.26
“Women of the Islamic State” was a manifesto published by the al-Khanssaa Brigade in January 2015 and translated by the Quilliam Foundation, a London-based counterextremism think tank. The foundation contends that it was “a piece of propaganda aimed at busting myths and recruiting supporters,” but aimed at women in the Gulf region rather than Westerners. It touches upon anti-Western sentiment and discusses what a woman’s role should be—which was mainly taking care of her husband and children. “It is always preferable for a woman to remain hidden and veiled, to maintain society from behind this veil,” the manifesto reads. “This, which is always the most difficult role, is akin to that of a director, the most important person in a media production, who is behind the scenes organizing.”27 The manifesto also condemned the wide range of fashions and beauty practices as the work of the devil, or Iblis.28 The analysis by the Quilliam Foundation notes that the fact that it hadn’t been translated into other languages, including English, as past propaganda has been, means “it will have been deemed ineffective—perhaps even counterintuitive—in achieving its propagandistic aims with a Western audience.”29
The Punk Rock Jihadist Sally Jones
Sally Jones was the poster girl for the al-Khansaa manifesto. Jones was born in Kent, England, and, before becoming a jihadi bride, was a punk guitarist in a band called Krunch. She met Hussain online. Years later she’d be married to a British terrorist, raising her son in Syria and being known as the “Punk Rocker Jihadi.” She’s also been known as Umm Hussain Britanya and tweeted under the handle @UmmHussain102 for a while. She went from playing shows in the south of England to appearing in a video of the al-Khanssaa Brigade and issuing threats via Twitter. She has extensively tweeted a range of posts including: “You Christians all need beheading with a nice blunt knife and stuck on the railings at raqqa [sic] … Come here I’ll do it for you.” Then there were her veiled threats in May 2016 with comments about avoiding Central London in June and July “especially by Tube.” She has changed her named to Sakinah Hussain.30
In September 2015, the U.S. Department of State designated Jones a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist.” “Jones and Hussain targeted American military personnel through publication of a ‘hit list’ online to encourage ‘lone offender attacks,’” the State Department wrote. “Jones has used social media to recruit women to join ISIL. In August 2015, Jones encouraged individuals aspiring to conduct attacks in Britain by offering guidance on how to construct homemade bombs.”31
A propaganda video released August 26, 2016, showed five young boys murdering a group of Kurdish prisoners; one of the boys has been identified as Jones’s eleven-year-old son, called Abu Abdullah al-Britani in the video.32
As Jones demonstrates, there is no stereotypical terrorist, male or female. FBI Director James Comey said as much in the aftermath of the 2015 San Bernardino shootings, in which husband and wife Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik killed 14 and seriously injured 22 in a terrorist attack. The attack was said to be Islamic State-inspired—Malik allegedly posted a pledge to ISIS on Facebook just before the attack—although no terror groups have been directly linked to the attack.33 “The challenge of our efforts to try and find and redirect people is that it is a wide spectrum of folks,” Comey said. “It isn’t a particular demographic or geography. It’s about people seeking meaning in their lives in a misguided way.”34
In a 2015 report, a London-based think tank, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, writes there has been an “unprecedented surge in female recruits to the terrorist organization Islamic State,” with figures at the time estimating at least 550 Western women had flocked to ISIS.35
Research from a range of experts shows that the women who wind up traveling to Syria or Iraq to join ISIS have a complex range of reasons to do so. The pressures vary from the cultural stress of fitting in as a Muslim in non-Muslim countries to seeking adventure and believing in the honor of marrying and having the children of a “martyr.” According to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, the reasons women join ISIS go far beyond the concept of the “jihadi bride.” “Push” factors include “1. Feeling isolated socially and/or culturally, including questioning one’s identity and uncertainty of belonging within a Western culture. 2 Feeling that the international Muslim community as a whole was being violently persecuted. 3. An anger, sadness and/or frustration over a perceived lack of international action in response to this persecution.” “Pull” factors include “1. Idealistic goals of religious duty and building a utopian ‘caliphate state.’ 2. Belonging and sisterhood. 3. Romanticisation of the experience.”36
The report continues: “ISIS has increased its female-focused efforts, writing manifestos directly for women, directing sections of its online magazine publications Dabiq to the ‘sisters of the Islamic State’ and allowing women to have a voice within their recruitment strategy—albeit via social media.” The Western girls and women who move to Syria and join ISIS are then used to recruit more Western women particularly to fill the sexual desires of fighters. “You have French girls messaging French girls and American girls messaging American girls,” Mia Bloom, professor at Georgia State University and author of Bombshell: Women and Terrorism told Marie Claire. “It helps with relating, finding common ground. It makes it feel more like the recruiter is just like you, a friend.”37
“The group creates propaganda that specifically targets women, and sells them a different message from the one sold to men (though both are told it’s their religious obligation to join the Islamic State),” Kate Storey writes in Marie Claire. “Men are marketed the chance to prove their faith by joining the fight; women are marketed the idea of sisterhood and the opportunity to marry a jihadi fighter, thus supporting the cause by raising the next generation of militants.”38
Katrin Bennhold writes in the New York Times:
Social media has allowed the group’s followers to directly target young women, reaching them in the privacy of their bedrooms with propaganda that borrows from Western pop culture—images of jihadists in the sunset and messages of empowerment. A recent post linked to an Islamic State account paraphrased a popular L’Oréal makeup ad next to the image of a girl in a head scarf: “COVERed GIRL. Because I’m worth it.”39
Umm Isa al-Amrikiah—The First ISIS Feminist
Someone blogging under the name Umm Isa al Amrikiah (Mother of Issa, the American) posted her first message on her Telegram channel in mid-January 2016. A post on her channel, published by News Corp Australia Network, gave some insight into why she created the channel. It read:
“This channel is dedicated to everyone who wishes to do Hijrah to the blessed land of Sham (Syria) … I will be posting daily reminders, pictures of Sham, short articles and general information about my life here in Sham … I am a married sister so all brothers will be directed to the Beast who married me on his telegram.”40
Over twelve thousand users followed her channel. Among other things, she wrote about men and women she believed were not following the religion as strictly as they should be. In one post, she railed against the men who were sending her messages. “My account is for sisters only, so unless you menstruate do not message me … And anyone who messages me will be forwarded to my husband and will be dealt with accordingly.” In another, she criticized women for posting pictures of themselves on social media. “Are you a Hijabi or a Hoejabi?” she wrote. “Hijabi: A Muslimah who is fully covered head to toe, as her Lord commanded. Hoejabi: A hybrid between a whore and a hijabi. A creature somewhat confused whether she belongs in this camp or that.” She continued, “If you look pretty or cute in the hijab then know that you’re doing something wrong.” She also posted a graphic that read, “Hijabi selfies everywhere. Duck lips, shaped eyebrows & a cake face is not Hijab.”41
The messages, however, went far beyond simply calling out what she saw as improper behavior or lack of a strict adherence to the customs of the Islamic State. Umm Isa was also used to doing ideological recruiting and propagandizing for lone wolf murder:
Who out there will get u and kill the kuffars in the west? Who wants to sacrifice himself for the sake of Allah subhana wa ta’ala? Get off your couches and do something instead of spending 24/7 on social media. You think you are doing something good by posting some ahadith and verses of the Quran while your brothers are out in the cold dark night facing the enemies? You cry out on social media “I want sharia” “I want to make hijrah” yet you are doing nothing about it. You are not a man, just a male.42
In another post, she wrote, “Allhamdulilah finally got my Hizam (suicide belt) today. May Allah subhana wa ta’ala grant me the opportunity to use it soon, to grant me the honor to sacrifice my self for Him, for his deen (to kill the kuffars). May Allah wa ta’ala grant us all shahadah Ameen.”43
When her end came, it became clear that “Umm Isa al Amrikiah” was not even American. She was identified as Australian national Shadi Jabar Khalil Mohammad. She traveled to Syria at age twenty, one day before her younger brother, Farhad, shot and killed a man outside of an Australian police station in October 2015. She married a Sudanese man, Abu Sa’ad al-Sudani, whose nickname was “The Beast of Islam.” Both Mohammad and her husband were killed in April 22, 2016, by a US air strike in Syria. Cindy Wockner writing for News Corp Australia Network noted that in her seven months in Syria “she had risen to what would appear to be senior ranks within the propaganda arm.”44 Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook told reporters, “The death of al-Sudani and Shadi remove influential ISIL recruiters and extremists who actively sought to harm Western interests and further disrupts and degrades ISIL’s ability to plot external attacks.”45
Few details about specific threats have been disclosed, but Cook said there was “an effort specifically to target Western interests.”46 “Al-Sudani was involved in planning attacks against the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom,” Cook said. “Both al-Sudani and his wife were active in recruiting foreign fighters in efforts to inspire attacks against Western interests.”47
Keonna Thomas—The Young Lioness
Keonna Thomas was a thirty-year-old mom in Philadelphia who according to US officials wished to travel to Syria and die for ISIS. She was served with a search warrant two days before her scheduled March 27, 2015, flight to Barcelona.48 On April 3, she was arrested and charged with knowingly attempting to provide support to a foreign terrorist organization. The criminal complaint against her alleged she had researched “indirect routes” to Turkey, which the complaint states was “known to be the most common and most direct transit point for individuals traveling from locations in Europe who are seeking to enter Syria and join ISIL,” according to the complaint.49
Thomas, who also went by the names “Fatayat Al-Khilafah” and “Young Lioness,” frequently communicated with two alleged fighters, one of whom claimed to be in Somalia and one in Syria. The criminal complaint against her cited several instances of her apparent ISIS support on social media. On August 18, 2013, she retweeted a graphic of a young armed boy in camouflage with the caption: “Ask yourselves, while this young man is holding magazines for the Islamic state, what are you doing for it? #ISIS.” On April 27, 2014, she tweeted: “I would prefer the shahada [martyrdom] of being in the bodies of green birds.” On December 2, 2014, she tweeted: “If we truly knew the realities … we all would be rushing to join our brothers in the front lines pray ALLAH accept us as shuhada [sic; martyrs],” according to an affidavit by the FBI special agent investigating the case.50
Hoda Muthana
Hoda Muthana was a twenty-year-old college student studying business at the University of Alabama before she ran away to Syria to join ISIS. She traveled to Syria in November 2014 and married Australian jihadist Suhan Abdul Rahman just one month after arriving. Rahman was killed shortly after by an airstrike. Ellie Hall of BuzzFeed, who originally reported Muthana’s story, wrote about an alleged interaction between Hoda and her father, Mohammed, after he sent her a message urging her to come home:
“I’m not going to come back,” he read from his phone. “This is the right place for me to live and I am really ready to die, to meet my God as a true Muslim.” Hoda denies that she told her father she was “ready” to die. “I told him that I’m obeying Allah and if that means sacrificing everything, then I will,” she said.51
Mohammed said that in the year and a half leading up to her departure, she had actually been immersing herself more and more in her religious life. He said that at the time he was proud of his daughter. “Hoda’s newfound dedication to her faith was a source of pride to her father, particularly her commitment to memorizing the Qur’an,” Hall writes.52 What he didn’t know, however, was that her increased focus on her Muslim faith was all part of her radical plan to join ISIS.
Emilie Konig was from Brittany, France. She supported a French Islamist group from Nantes known as Forsane Alizza, or Knights of Pride, which has since dissolved. Konig had two children she abandoned to go to Syria in 2012. Just as it did with Sally Jones, the US State Department designated Konig as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. “While in Syria, Konig directed individuals in France to attack French government institutions,” the State Department press release reads. “In a video posted on May 31, 2013, Konig was shown training with weapons in Syria.”53 The magazine Paris Match reported that in one propaganda video, she appeals directly to her own children to not forget that they are Muslims.54 Le Monde reported Konig was active on social networks since 2012 and has called for attacks in France.55
Aqsa Mahmood
Aqsa Mahmood was nineteen years old when she left Glasgow, Scotland, bound for Syria in November 2013. Mahmood was one of many women who had begun to recruit other young women to join ISIS. Ellie Hall of BuzzFeed writes, “The women of ISIS appear to have established networks across social media platforms, which they use to connect with one another and recruit other women.”56 Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura writes in the New York Times that Mahmood “acts as a virtual den mother offering sometimes stern advice to peers who would follow in her footsteps.”57 Hall wrote that the women of ISIS use the messaging app KiK to communicate with those seriously considering making hijrah, the journey to the Islamic State.58
The Daily Beast writes Mahmood has been “highly active on Twitter and on her blog trying to persuade would-be ‘sisters’ in Europe and the United States to travel to the Middle East to help ISIS establish its extremist vision of a militant Islamic utopia.”59
Mahmood allegedly communicated with one of the three British schoolgirls who left their homes in Bethnal Green, London, to join ISIS in Syria. Kadiza Sultana, Shamima Begum, and Amira Abase were fifteen when they ran away to Raqqa.
Mahmood also went by the name Umm Layth, which translates “Mother of the Lion.” In a series of Tumblr posts that she titles “Diary of a Muhajirah,” Mahmood gives insight into her transition into life in Syria and offers tips to other Westerners considering doing the same. “Muhajirah” translates literally as “immigrant” and “is used to refer to women who have travelled to the lands controlled by Islamic State,” according to the Quilliam Foundation.60 In an April 2014 post, she writes:
For the winter you will most likely need a good pair of boots and a thick warm coat. The winters here are freezing, trust me I’m from North of Britain and even still I found it cold. You can find shampoos soaps and other female necessities here, so do not stress if you think you will be experiencing some cavewomen life here. Alhumdulilaah [praise be to Allah] I have experienced far too much luxury than I was expecting. Deen wise please do remember to bring all your Kitaabs and download as many pdfs as you can on your tablets and mobiles (Be careful to not make them too Jihadi as you also have to tie your camel - and all precations must be taken not to bait yourself out. Wallahi [I swear to Allah] these Kuffar [derogatory Arabic term for non-Muslims] and Munafiqeen [derogatory term for religious hypocrites] will do anything to cause the Muslimeen harm. But they plot and plan however Allah is the best of Planners).61
She also writes about the difficulty of separating from her family and tries to counteract the image of the typical ISIS recruit she says the media portrays. In a September 2014 post, she wrote:
The media at first used to claim that the ones running away to join the Jihad as being unsuccessful, didn’t have a future and from broke down families etc. But that is far from the truth. Most sisters I have come across have been in university studying courses with many promising paths, with big, happy families and friends and everything in the Dunyah to persuade one to stay behind and enjoy the luxury. If we had stayed behind, we could have been blessed with it all from a relaxing and comfortable life and lots of money.62
Nine British Students, Nine Online Recruiters
In March 2015, it was reported that nine British students who had been studying medicine in Sudan traveled to Syria, allegedly to work as medics in the Islamic State. Four women were among the group: Lena Maumoon Abdulqadir, Abdul Qadir, Nada Sami Kader, and Rowan Kamal Zine El Abidine. A second group from the same school—Khartoum’s University of Medical Sciences and Technology—later joined with the earlier group. It was alleged the students had been radicalized and recruited to help ISIS by Mohammed Fakhri al-Khabass, a British student who ran the school’s Islamic Cultural Association. By June, he had allegedly gotten sixteen of his classmates to join ISIS as medics.
Turkish lawmaker Mehmet Ali Ediboglu told the Observer, which originally reported on the story, that he and the families of the students believed they had been “brainwashed” into joining the Islamic State as medics. “Let’s not forget about the fact that they are doctors,” Ediboglu told the Observer. “They went there to help, not to fight.”63 One student from the original group, Ahmed Sami Khider, appeared in an ISIS propaganda video two months after his arrival in Syria. “Dear brothers and sisters, we as Muslims and as doctors have a great responsibility,” the BBC reports Khider as saying. “All you are doing is sitting in the West in the comfort of your homes. Use your skills and come here.”64
Asia Siddiqui and Noelle Velentzas
Asia Siddiqui and Noelle Velentzas of Queens, New York, were arrested in April 2015 for allegedly conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction in the U.S. The two former roommates, age 31 and 28, respectively, at the time of arrest, were “conspiring to prepare an explosive device to be detonated in a terrorist attack in the United States,” according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of New York. Stephanie Clifford writes in the New York Times, “Ms. Siddiqui had been communicating with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and Ms. Velentzas had watched violent videos made by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, the complaint says.”65
The New York Times writes: “When agents arrested the women at their apartments on Thursday, they found ‘three propane gas tanks, soldering tools, pipes, a pressure cooker, fertilizer, flux, detailed handwritten notes on the recipes for bomb making, and extensive jihadist literature’ along with ‘two machetes and two daggers,’ prosecutors said. ‘The women also had instructions on how to turn propane tanks into bombs,’ the government said.”66
An affidavit given by an FBI special agent investigating the case reads:
In 2013, the UC met with VELENTZAS on multiple occasions. During these meetings, which were not recorded, VELENTZAS expressed violent jihadist ideology and an interest in terrorism. For example, VELENTZAS praised the attacks of September 11, 2001 and stated that being a martyr through a suicide attack guarantees entrance into heaven. According to VELENTZAS, a suicide bomber does not take her life; she gives her life in the name of Allah.”67
Of Siddiqui, the agent wrote:
In or about 2009, SIDDIQUI wrote a poem that was published in a magazine called Jihad Recollections, which was a predecessor of Inspire. I have obtained a copy of the poem, which is called “Take Me to the Lands Where the Eyes Are Cooled.” The poem calls for its readers to engage in violent jihad and to destroy enemies of Islam. For example, SIDDIQUI wrote that she “drop[s] bombs” as she swings on a hammock and “[h]it[s] cloud nine with the smell of turpentine, nations wiped clean of filthy shrines.” She also wrote that she “taste[s] the Truth through fists and slit throats” and that there is “[n]o excuse to sit back and wait - for the skies rain martyrdom.”68
The affidavit continues that Velentzas expressed a “preference for attacking military or government targets, rather than civilian targets.” It also chronicles several incidents that occurred during an undercover investigation:
VELENTZAS pulled a knife from her bra and demonstrated how to stab someone to show SIDDIQUI and the UC what she would do if attacked. VELENTZAS added, “Why we can’t be some real bad bitches?” and stated that people needed to refer to them as “citizens of the Islamic State.”69