A U.S. Air Force veteran is jailed on charges of attempting to join the Islamic terrorist group ISIS.
Tairod Nathan Webster Pugh is facing charges of attempting to provide material support to terrorists and providing resources to a terrorist organization. He also was charged with obstruction of justice for destroying thumb drives containing evidence of his online interaction with the terrorist group.
Pugh had lost his job as an airplane mechanic, which was based in the middle east. After the job loss, he traveled from Egypt to Turkey with the intent of sneaking into Syria.
“Pugh, an American citizen and former member of our military, allegedly abandoned his allegiance to the United States and sought to provide material support to ISI[S],” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Carlin said. “Identifying and bringing to justice individuals who provide or attempt to provide material support to terrorists is a key priority of the National Security Division.”
U.S. intelligence officials say that at least 150 Americans are fighting with the terrorist group in Iraq and Syria.
The Islamic terrorist group ISIS is continuing their campaign to eradicate any religious historic emblems by destroying historic Christian churches in Iraq.
The Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor says they have obtainted pictuers of terrorists using sledgehammers and other tools to destroy crosses and other Christian iconography. Statues were torn down and then smashed to pieces.
“The images show ISIS men engaged in the destruction of various Christian symbols, which ISIS perceives as being polytheistic and idolatrous,” JTTM reports.
“They don’t care what it’s called; they are just following their ideology and that means getting rid of churches and minorities. It is the Islamic State, and there’s no room for anyone else,” MEMRI Director Steven Stalinsky said, according to The Daily Mail.
The United Nations calls the actions of ISIS a “war crime.”
“This is yet another attack against the Iraqi people, reminding us that nothing is safe from the cultural cleansing under way in the country: it targets human lives, minorities, and is marked by the systematic destruction of humanity’s ancient heritage,” UNESCO’s Irina Bokova said.
On the heels of losing the key city of Tikrit to Iraqi forced backed by U.S. airstrikes, intelligence experts say that ISIS is suffering from infighting that is causing overall weakening in the ranks.
“The key challenge facing ISIS right now is more internal than external,” The Washington Post quotes Lina Khatib, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, as saying. “We’re seeing basically a failure of the central tenet of ISIS ideology, which is to unify people of different origins under the caliphate. This is not working on the ground. It is making them less effective in governing and less effective in military operations.”
One of the problems is that ISIS recruits in Iraq feel that preferential treatment is being given to the ISIS recruits in Syria. Also the living conditions of ISIS recruits in rural areas are considered to be much less favorable than those in urban centers.
Also, the group has executed 120 of its own members for various perceived failures in loyalty, which has caused dissention among the ranks.
ISIS was driven out of Tikrit by a force of 30,000 Iraqi troops and militia which has also delivered a blow to the morale of the terrorist army.
A new release from the terrorist group ISIS claims that an American carried out a terrorist bombing earlier this week.
“The brother Abu Dawud al-Amriki (may Allah accept him) launched himself with his explosives-laden truck,” an ISIS bulletin read, according to AFP news agency.
CNN claims that U.S. government officials have not confirmed the identity of the bomber but did admit that at least 150 Americans have made their way to Syria and Iraq to fight with the terrorists.
However, two senior Iraqi officials confirmed the attack.
The news of the attack has further stirred up concern on Capitol Hill concerning potential domestic terrorists. Republican Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas said that Syria has the largest collection of Islamic terrorists in world history.
“I am worried about our ability to combat this threat abroad, but also here at home. I wrote to the president recently as part of my ongoing investigation and raised concerns that we have no lead agency in charge of countering domestic radicalization and no line item for it in the budgets of key departments and agencies,” McCaul, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, said at the time.
A CNN report says most Americans who joined ISIS are in their late teens or early 20’s who had expressed online and in conversations with friends conflict between western life and the teachings of Islam.
A man that the U.S. government has designated a terrorist has been found leading Iraqi forces in their fight against ISIS.
The man is Major General Qasem Suleimani, the Iranian spymaster and leader of the special operations wing of the Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Photographs from the war theater around Tikrit showed Suleimani providing direction to senior Iraqi officials fighting to take the town back from ISIS. Analysis say the discovery shows the growing influence of Iran on the Iraqi government.
“I know we’re keeping our distance physically from them in Baghdad,” Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J said. “Have we ceded most of the governance of Iraq to Iranians?…And will the military operations that are undergoing, which we are watching, divide the country and require us in some ways to spend more of our resources?”
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said that he shared the concern of the representatives about who would be influencing the region if the troops drive ISIS out of the major cities in the region.
Intelligence officials say that 2/3 of the Shiite militia fighting ISIS are loyal to Iran.
A new video released by Islamic terrorist group ISIS shows Kurdish fighters being paraded through Iraqi towns in cages.
The cages are similar to the one used to burn alive a Jordanian pilot.
The video shows 21 prisoners in orange jumpsuits being driven around on pickup trucks. A terrorist holding a microphone with the ISIS logo then talks to the prisoners who identify themselves as Peshmerga soldiers who were protecting Kurdistan.
“We say to the Peshmerga: Leave your jobs, or your fate will be like these, either the cage, or under the ground,” says a man in the video in Kurdish language.
The video does not show any of the prisoners being executed but it also does not give any indication of their current status.
The Kurds are seen by ISIS as pro-American because they fought against Saddam Hussein and helped in the American invasion of Iraq.
She had to flee her home when ISIS began an invasion and now lives in an unfinished mall in northern Iraq.
Yet little Myriam is thanking God for a place to live and her heart is full of forgiveness for those who destroyed her old life and killed dozens of her friends.
An Arabic Christian network interviewed children living in the Ainkawa Mall’s refugee camp about their lives since they had to flee ISIS.
“We used to have a house and were entertained, where as here we are not,” Myriam said. “But thank God. God provides for us.”
“God loves us and wouldn’t let ISIS kill us,” she explained.
The reporter covering the story asked Myriam what she would do if she had the power to take action against the terrorists that destroyed her home.
“I won’t do anything to them,” Myriam asserted. “I will only ask God to forgive them.”
Other children told the reporter they missed their schools and their churches. All of them made similar statement: “Jesus will be with us no matter where we go.”
ISIS has burned alive 45 Iraqi citizens for a variety of alleged crimes against the terrorist’s rules.
Al-Baghdadi Local Police Chief Qasim al-Obeidi told the BBC that some of those killed were members of the Iraqi Security Forces which has been the main force fighting to stop the spread of ISIS.
The massacre comes as the State Department’s main spokeswoman, Marie Harf, says that ISIS can’t be beaten by force.
“We’re killing a lot of them, and we’re going to keep killing more of them,” she stated. “So are the Egyptians, so are the Jordanians. They’re in this fight with us. But we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war.”
“We can work with countries around the world to help improve their governance,” she said. “We can help them build their economies so they can have job opportunities for these people.”
The ISF is working to drive ISIS out of al-Baghdadi but has been unable to dislodge the terrorists.
New reports of the brutality of ISIS are coming from Iraq including their chopping off the hands of women who were using cell phones.
A witness reported that ISIS caught women using cell phones in the city of Mosul and proceeded to cut off their hands for it. Five men who were caught using cell phones were bound and whipped for “illegal use of the devices.”
“The ISIS militants cut three women’s hands off for unknown charges,” the man claimed. “They also whipped five people for using cell phones to contact their relatives while standing on the celebration stage in the Cultural Compound in central Mosul.”
The terrorists then told the citizens of Mosul if they were found using a cellphone, they would be given at least 30 lashes.
“In order to shut one of the doors of penetration the enemy uses to attain its goals and strike with exactness by means of its war and remote-guided aircraft, it has been decided to forbid the use of any electronic device or a system that has access to service to enable precise location of positions,” the ISIS statement declared.
The terrorist group has cut off all landlines into the city and destroyed cell phone towers to keep the town isolated from the world.
Over 100 tablets that have been dated back to Nebuchadnezzar’s era in Babylon have provided further support for the Scriptures showing the exile of the Jewish nation.
The tablets, which have just gone in display in Jerusalem, provide a look into the lives of the Jews as they lived in exile. Among day to day life items, the tablets trace a Judean family over four generations.
The tablets had been discovered in Iraq and rescued from ISIS by a UK-based Israeli collector. The artifacts are written in ancient akkadian cuneiform script.
“We started reading the tablets and within minutes we were absolutely stunned,” Babylonian expert Filip Vukosavovic told reporters. “It fills in a critical gap in understanding of what was going on in the life of Judeans in Babylonia more than 2,500 years ago.”
“On the one hand it’s boring details, but on the other you learn so much about who these exiled people were and how they lived,” he added.
The tablets will be displayed for one year at the Bible Land Museum in Jerusalem.
