Tag Archives: Islamic State

New York state man gets longest-ever sentence for supporting Islamic State

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A New York state resident was sentenced on Thursday to 22-1/2 years in prison for trying to recruit fighters to join Islamic State in Syria – the longest prison term handed out yet to an American convicted of supporting the militant group.

Mufid Elfgeeh, 32, of Rochester, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Wolford of the Western District of New York. The district’s U.S. attorney, William Hochul, called Elfgeeh “one of the first ISIL recruiters ever captured,” using another acronym for the militant group.

A North Carolina federal judge last May issued the second-longest sentence for Islamic State-related activity – 20 years and three months in prison – to Donald Ray Morgan, 44, for trying to provide material support to Islamic State, and for unlawfully possessing a firearm.

A Reuters analysis, confirmed by the U.S. Department of Justice, found they were the two stiffest such sentences yet issued.

Convictions for Islamic State-related activity by Americans have become more frequent in recent months as more than 80 such cases brought by U.S. prosecutors since 2013 work their way through federal courts.

An Arizona man was convicted by a jury on Thursday of conspiring to support Islamic State and other terrorism-related charges, while two men in unrelated cases in Mississippi and Ohio pleaded guilty on Friday and Wednesday to trying to join or convince others to join Islamic State. They have not yet been sentenced.

Although Elfgeeh pleaded guilty in December only to trying to recruit two individuals to join Islamic State, he was also originally charged with trying to kill U.S. service members and unlawfully possessing firearms and silencers.

Beginning in 2013, the FBI paid two informants to help investigate Elfgeeh, according to court records. The informants recorded conversations in which Elfgeeh talked about wanting to kill members of the U.S. military and Shi’a Muslims in New York. One of the informants eventually sold Elfgeeh firearms and ammunition.

Elfgeeh tried to send the two individuals to Syria to fight on behalf of Islamic State, buying them a laptop computer, a high-definition camera, an expedited passport and other travel documents, according to his plea agreement.

He used Facebook and WhatsApp to activate a network of Islamic State sympathizers in Turkey, Syria and Yemen who could facilitate their trip, the plea agreement said.

During the same months, Elfgeeh also helped the alleged commander of a Syrian rebel battalion contact Islamic State leadership so that the battalion could join the larger group, prosecutors said.

(Reporting by Julia Harte; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Arizona man found guilty in ‘Draw Mohammed’ event shooting

PHOENIX (Reuters) – An Arizona man was found guilty on Thursday of plotting with others to attack a “Draw Mohammed” cartoon contest in Texas last year and providing material support to the Islamic State group, prosecutors said.

Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem, 44, was convicted on all five charges against him by a federal jury in U.S. District Court in Phoenix stemming from the May 3 attack in the Dallas suburb of Garland that left his two alleged associates dead in a shoot-out with police.

The case against Kareem, also known as Decarus Thomas, was the first Islamic State-related prosecution to reach trial of the dozens brought by the federal government across the nation. It is the second jury verdict in such a case, as U.S. Air Force veteran Tairod Pugh was convicted earlier this month in New York.

“This verdict sends a strong message to those who support terrorists,” acting special agent in charge of the FBI’s Phoenix division, Justin Tolomeo, said in a statement.

Kareem’s attorney could not be immediately reached for comment on Thursday, but Kareem maintained his innocence and denied involvement in the attacks when he took the stand for two days in the federal trial.

Kareem’s roommates, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, of Phoenix were killed by Garland police after they opened fire with assault rifles outside the May 3 cartoon drawing event.

The contest was intended to satirize Islam’s Prophet Mohammed. It came months after gunmen killed 12 people in the Paris offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in what was said to be revenge for its cartoons depicting Mohammed.

Such portrayals are considered offensive by Muslims. None of the approximately 150 people attending the event in Garland in May were hurt.

The original indictment said Kareem supplied the two gunmen with arms and helped them prepare for the attack. He was later charged with showing support for the Islamic State militant group in social media posts, researching travel to the Middle East to train with terrorists and seeking to make explosives that could be used during last year’s Super Bowl in Arizona, the most-watched U.S. sporting event annually.

Prosecutors said Kareem could face a potential sentence of at least 45 years in prison.

(Reporting by David Schwartz in Phoenix; Editing by Curtis Skinner and Sandra Maler)

Record number of children arrested for terrorism offenses in UK

LONDON (Reuters) – British police arrested a record number of children for terrorism offenses last year and the number of women detained also soared, official figures showed on Thursday.

While the total number of terrorism-related arrests fell, 16 children aged under 18 were held in 2015, up from 10 the year before and the highest number ever recorded, according to figures from the Home Office (interior ministry).

Meanwhile 45 women were detained on suspicion of terrorism crimes – a 15 percent increase on the previous year – and a continuation of a recent upward trend.

In total, there were 280 terrorism-related arrests, a decrease of 3 percent from 2015 when there were 289.

“The overall fall in terrorism-related arrests was driven by a fall in the number of arrests for domestic terrorism, which decreased to 15 in the year ending December 2015 compared with 28 in the previous year,” the Home Office said.

Arrests for international-related terrorism increased by three percent.

Britain is on its second-highest threat level, meaning an attack is considered highly likely.

Earlier this month, Britain’s most senior anti-terrorism officer said Islamic State fighters wanted to carry out “enormous and spectacular” attacks against Britain and the Western lifestyle in general in repeats of last November’s Paris attacks which left 130 people dead.

(Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Stephen Addison)

Germany searches home of two Syrians suspected of planning attack

BERLIN (Reuters) – German police have raided the home of two Syrian brothers with links to the militant group Islamic State (IS), suspecting that they were preparing an attack, prosecutors in Frankfurt said on Thursday.

Police confiscated an air pistol, electronic storage devices, mobile phones and $16,000 in cash but did not arrest the brothers, 21 and 30 years old.

Prosecutors did not give more information on the exact nature of the suspected crime, which they called a “serious act of violent subversion”.

The older brother had entered Germany in February 2015 with a forged passport obtained by IS, a crime for which he was sentenced and fined last year.

Prosecutors said that in social media postings he had promoted the militant group, threatened German authorities and justified last November’s attacks in Paris.

The younger brother published a picture of himself on social media that showed him sitting in a “luxury car belonging to his brother” sporting a pistol, the prosecutor’s office said.

Germany has been on alert since militants with links to Islamic State killed 130 people in Paris in November.

The anxieties have been fueled by the arrival of over 1 million migrants in Germany last year, many of them fleeing war and conflict in the Middle East and beyond.

Last month, the government said that the whereabouts of more than 140,000 people registered in 2015 were unknown.

(Reporting by Tina Bellon)

U.S. says Islamic State committed genocide against Christians

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Islamic State has committed genocide against Christians, Yazidis and Shi’ite Muslims, the United States said on Thursday, a finding U.S. officials hope will bring more resources to help the groups even though it does not change U.S. military strategy or legal obligations.

“In my judgment, Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yazidis, Christians and Shi’ite Muslims,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters, referring to the group by an Arabic acronym. “Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology, and by actions.”

Republicans, who control the U.S. Congress, had pressured the Democratic White House to call the militants’ atrocities in Iraq and Syria genocide and the House of Representatives on Monday passed a nonbinding resolution 393-0 labeling them as such.

U.S. officials hope the determination will help them win political and budget support from Congress and other nations to help the targeted groups return home if and when Islamic State-controlled areas such as the Iraqi city of Mosul are liberated.

While the genocide finding may make it easier for Washington to argue for greater action against the group, U.S. officials said it does not create a U.S. legal obligation to do more, and would not change U.S. military strategy toward the militants.

On Wednesday, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said: “Acknowledging that genocide or crimes against humanity have taken place in another country would not necessarily result in any particular legal obligation for the United States.”

U.S. President Barack Obama ordered air strikes against the group starting in 2014 but has made clear he wishes to avoid any large commitment of U.S. ground troops.

Unlike in Rwanda in 1994 and Darfur in 2004, where the United States found that genocide had taken place but did not use military force to stop it, U.S. officials noted they began air strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq in August 2014 in part to save the Yazidi minority group from targeted attack.

“We didn’t act in Rwanda. We looked back and regretted it. We didn’t act militarily in Darfur. In this case within … days of the Yazidis being targeted by Daesh in Iraq, American planes were in the air trying to help them,” said a senior U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

‘WE’VE DONE AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT’

Islamic State militants have swept through Iraq and Syria in recent years, seizing swathes of territory with an eye toward establishing jihadism in the heart of the Arab world.

The group’s videos depict the violent deaths of people who stand in its way. Opponents have been beheaded, shot dead, blown up with fuses attached to their necks and drowned in cages in swimming pools, with underwater cameras capturing their agony.

Kerry argued the United States has done much to fight the group since 2014, but did not directly answer a question on why it had not done more to prevent genocide.

“We’re very confident we’ve done an enormous amount,” he told reporters as he walked down a hall at the State Department.

“The fact is that Daesh kills Christians because they are Christians. Yazidis because they are Yazidis. Shi’ites because they are Shi’ites,” Kerry said earlier, and accused Islamic State of crimes against humanity and of ethnic cleansing.

Islamic State militants have exploited the five-year civil war in Syria to seize areas in that country and in neighboring Iraq, though U.S. officials say their air strikes have markedly reduced the territory the group controls.

On-again, off-again peace talks got under way this week in Geneva in an effort to end the civil war, in which at least 250,000 people have died and millions have fled their homes. A fragile “cessation of hostilities” has reduced, but not ended, the violence over the last two weeks.

(Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by James Dalgleish)

Kerry to miss deadline for decision on whether ISIS atrocities are genocide

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will not have a decision on whether atrocities committed by Islamic State constitute genocide by a March 17 deadline set by Congress, but he should have a decision soon, the State Department said on Wednesday.

“We are informing Congress today that we’re not going to make that deadline,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner told a news briefing.

“We certainly respect the deadlines that Congress lays down on specific reports, or in this case decisions about genocide,” he said. “However, we also take the process very seriously. And so if we need additional time … in order to reach a more fact-based, evidence-based decision, we’re going to … ask for extra time.”

(Reporting by Arshad Mohammed and David Alexander; Editing by Eric Beech)

Algerian named as dead Brussels gunman, manhunt goes on

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Belgian prosecutors on Wednesday named a 35-year-old Algerian as the man shot dead by police on Tuesday during a police raid on a Brussels apartment in the hunt for clues to bloody attacks in Paris last November.

Police found an Islamic State flag in the apartment used by Mohamed Belkaid and two others suspected of being with him after officers were met with a barrage of automatic weapons fire as they arrived to search the flat.

Belkaid, who was living in Belgium illegally and had a police record for theft but was not on security watchlists, was killed by a special forces sniper after a three-hour siege. A manhunt for the two other suspects continued on Wednesday.

The government held its alert status steady at Level Three, one step below the maximum.

The prosecutors said a radical Islamic text was found next to Belkaid’s body and a cache of ammunition was also discovered. It was not clear if he had any links to the Paris suspects.

Two people detained overnight on suspicion of links to the shootout in the suburb of Forest were released without charge.

Investigators believe much of the planning and preparation for the Nov. 13 shooting and bombing rampage in Paris that killed 130 people was conducted in Brussels by young French and Belgian nationals, some of whom fought as militants in Syria.

Ten people are being held in Belgian custody on a variety of charges relating to the four-month investigation, though prime suspects, including Salah Abdeslam, a brother of one of the Paris suicide bombers, are suspected of having fled the country.

SHOOTOUT

On Tuesday, six Belgian and French police officers arrived to search the flat and came under automatic fire through a door from at least two people barricaded inside. Four officers, one of them a Frenchwoman, were wounded, none very seriously.

Ministers said the police visit to the apartment had not been expected to provide much new evidence and that the presence of French officers did not imply a major break in the case.

Prime Minister Charles Michel said he was holding the state of alert steady after a meeting of security and intelligence chiefs in Belgium’s national security council .

Brussels, headquarters of the European Union as well as Western military alliance NATO, was entirely locked down for days shortly after the Paris attacks because of fears of a major incident there. The city has maintained a high state of security alert since then, with military patrols a regular occurrence.

Belgium, with a Muslim population of about 5 percent among its 11 million people, has Europe’s highest rate of citizens joining Islamist militants in Syria.

People living in the quiet neighborhood of Forest suffered hours of lockdown on Tuesday and voiced shock at the events.

Schoolboy Maxime, 11, was at home sick when he heard gunfire and helicopters and saw masked commandoes on a rooftop. “They had a huge weapon,” he said, adding he was “very, very scared”.

(Additional reporting by Miranda Alexander-Webber; Editing by Alastair Macdonald and Tom Heneghan)

Iraqi commander sees Islamic State retrenching before Mosul battle

MAKHMOUR, Iraq (Reuters) – Islamic State is retrenching as Iraqi forces build up for an operation to retake the northern city of Mosul and some local militants desert the group, the commander in charge of the highly anticipated offensive said.

Thousands of Iraqi troops have deployed to the north with heavy weapons in recent weeks, setting up base alongside U.S. forces and troops from Iraq’s Kurdish autonomous region in Makhmour — a launchpad around 60 kilometers south of Mosul.

Although he described Islamic State as depleted, Nineveh Operations Commander Major General Najm al-Jubbouri said jockeying between the various forces preparing to take part in the battle for Mosul benefited the militants.

“The operation to liberate Nineveh will be done in stages,” Jubbouri said, referring to the province of which Mosul is capital. “Now we are more or less just waiting for the order of the commander in chief to begin the first step.”

Mosul, home to around two million people before it fell to Islamic State during a lightning offensive in 2014, is by far the biggest city ruled by the jihadist group in either Iraq or Syria. An Iraqi offensive to recapture it, backed by air strikes and advisors from a U.S.-led coalition, would be the biggest counterattack ever mounted against the group.

Kurdish and Iraqi military sources say the initial move will be westwards from Makhmour to the town of Qayyara on the Tigris River, which would sever Islamic State’s main artery between Mosul and territory it controls further south and east.

Jubbouri said the timing would hinge on the progress of military operations in the valley of Iraq’s other great river, the Euphrates, where Iraqi forces have been advancing against the militants after routing them from a provincial capital, Ramadi, in December.

The U.S.-led coalition bombing Islamic State hopes Mosul will be recaptured this year, dealing a decisive blow to the militant group. But many question whether the Iraqi army, which partially collapsed when the militants overran a third of the country in June 2014, will be ready in time.

“NO WAY FOR THEM”

As Iraqi forces push up towards Mosul, Jubbouri said he did not expect to encounter much resistance because people in the villages south of the city were fed up with the militants and are likely to rise up against them.

Already, Islamic State has withdrawn from certain villages, he said: “They have begun to abandon some areas and concentrate their presence near Mosul because they know there is no way for them.”

Citing intelligence, Jubbouri said there were 6,000-8,000 militants in Nineveh province, of which the majority were local Iraqis motivated less by belief in Islamic State’s ultra-hardline creed than the material benefits of siding with the militants.

“For that reason, many have begun to leave the organization and the battlefield. We know the foreign fighters are the ones who will fight fiercely, and also the Iraqis whose hands are stained with the blood of other Iraqis.”

In Mosul itself, Jubbouri expected street fighting and said the main challenge was the presence of more than one million people who would be used as human shields by the militants.

When Islamic State conquered Mosul, many residents welcomed them as liberators from a heavy-handed army, but Jubbouri estimated that between 70-75 percent of the population would now support the security forces.

“The rest are either hesitant or scared, and a part are embroiled (with Islamic State) in a big way.”

Rivalry between different factions who want to take part in the offensive and secure influence in Mosul poses another challenge, Jubbouri said.

The involvement of Shi’ite militias is a subject of controversy because they have been accused of abuses against Sunnis in other areas recaptured from the militants.

Turkey has also deployed troops to a base north of Mosul where they are training a militia formed by the former governor of the province, while Kurdish security forces known as peshmerga will play a support role.

“What is necessary is for all efforts now to be combined,” Jubbouri said. “We must put aside our egos and differences and keep our eyes on the goal: to liberate the city.”

(Reporting and writing by Isabel Coles; editing by Peter Graff)

Islamic State fighter from U.S. in custody in Iraq

ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) – An American fighting for Islamic State was taken into custody in northern Iraq after he left territory controlled by the militant group, according to two Kurdish officers, one of whom arrested him.

Both said it appeared the man was intending to escape both Islamic State and Kurdish forces but handed himself in after peshmerga fighters opened fire on him near the frontline in the village of Golat.

Captain Daham Khalaf said they had spotted the fighter hiding in long grass around dawn and waited until the sun rose before surrounding him: “He shouted ‘I am a foreigner’,” Khalaf said, describing him as bearded and dressed in black.

The fighter did not have a passport but was carrying an American driving license and spoke English and broken Arabic, according to General Hashim Sitei who spoke to him.

A copy of what was said to be the license, seen by Reuters, was in the name of Khweis Mohammed Jamal.

“We gave him food and treated him with respect and handed him over to military intelligence,” said Sitei.

The fighter was unarmed but carrying three mobile phones and said his father was Palestinian and his mother was from the Mosul area in Iraq, both officers said.

The State Department said it was aware of the reports that a U.S. citizen said to have been fighting for Islamic State was captured by Kurdish peshmerga forces in northern Iraq.

The address on the driver’s license confiscated by the peshmerga was for a residence in a townhouse complex in the Washington, DC, suburb of Alexandria, Virginia.

As about a dozen reporters and television crewmembers waited outside, a black Lincoln Town Car drove up. Two men stepped out and angrily demanded that the media leave.

The older man – who identified himself as Jamal Khweis – grabbed a photographer’s camera as the younger man pushed at the lenses of several television cameras. At one point, the older man sprayed the reporters with a garden hose.

The man confirmed that he has a son the same age as the American captured by the peshmerga. He said he didn’t know where his son was, but that he would “never go” to Iraq.

“He is my son. He is a good person,” he said.

More than 250 Americans have joined or tried to fight with the extremist group in Syria and Iraq since 2011, according to a September 2015 bipartisan congressional taskforce report.

At least 80 men and women have been charged by federal prosecutors for connections to Islamic State, and 27 have been convicted.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Landay, Kat Jackson, Doina Chiacu and Susan Heavey in Washington; Editing by Louise Ireland and James Dalgleish)

Italian engineers need two months on Mosul dam before starting repairs

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Italian engineers hired to help prevent a catastrophic collapse of Iraq’s largest hydro-electric dam will need at least two months to assess the structure before starting major maintenance work, a Water Resources Ministry spokesman told Reuters.

Mahdi Rasheed Mahdi said it might be six months before work began on the Mosul dam as Italy’s Trevi Group needed to bring in specialist equipment to plug gaps caused by erosion.

The dam, near the northern city of Mosul, was built in the 1980s on a friable gypsum layer on the Tigris and needs constant repairs to avoid disaster.

Maintenance work was disrupted for two weeks in August 2014 when the dam was captured by Islamic State militants seeking to carve a caliphate in captured territory in Iraq and Syria.

The dam’s seizure prompted concerns that irreparable damage to the structure’s foundations may have been caused. Collapse would devastate Mosul and other cities along the river, including the Iraqi capital Baghdad, and cause hundreds of thousands of casualties.

“They need two to six months and this was a request by the company,” Mahdi said by telephone. “The company needs time to import their equipment and this definitely takes time. We have already anticipated this.”

Mahdi said there was no imminent threat of collapse as some maintenance work was being carried out but more was needed to stabilize the structure. The Trevi contract would not provide a permanent solution, he added.

The dam was retaken by Kurdish Peshmerga fighters with the help of U.S.-led coalition air strikes, and Iraq signed a $300 million, 18-month deal with Trevi to reinforce and maintain the 2.2 miles structure.

Italy has said it planned to send 450 troops to protect the dam, which is close to territory held by Islamic State fighters.

(Reporting by Saif Hameed, writing by Maher Chmaytelli)