Small Wars Journal

How a Secretive Branch of ISIS Built a Global Network of Killers

Wed, 08/03/2016 - 10:04am

How a Secretive Branch of ISIS Built a Global Network of Killers by Rukmini Callimachi, New York Times

… The operatives belonged to an intelligence unit of the Islamic State known in Arabic as the Emni, which has become a combination of an internal police force and an external operations branch, dedicated to exporting terror abroad, according to thousands of pages of French, Belgian, German and Austrian intelligence and interrogation documents obtained by The Times.

The Islamic State’s attacks in Paris on Nov. 13 brought global attention to the group’s external terrorism network, which began sending fighters abroad two years ago. Now, Mr. Sarfo’s account, along with those of other captured recruits, has further pulled back the curtain on the group’s machinery for projecting violence beyond its borders.

What they describe is a multilevel secret service under the overall command of the Islamic State’s most senior Syrian operative, spokesman and propaganda chief, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani. Below him is a tier of lieutenants empowered to plan attacks in different regions of the world, including a “secret service for European affairs,” a “secret service for Asian affairs” and a “secret service for Arab affairs,” according to Mr. Sarfo…

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Comments

ClarLulton

Thu, 09/08/2022 - 5:48am

Secretive branches of violent groups are the reason the so-called Islamic State has been able to be so successful in its global terror campaign. You can get social login more new steps for managing their login technology. The first public mention of their secret cells came in December 2015 during a press briefing by the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Nick Rasmussen. It was reported that members of a cell in Libya were planning attacks against French citizens when they were arrested.