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Recent Appearances... Rantburg

Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Qatar and FBI find remains of 30 people believed killed by Islamic State in Syria
2025-05-13
An interesting combination of searchers in Syria, even if one assumes Qatar is the money bags and the FBI provided strong backs and sharp brains. Could this be where those FBI staff on probation were sent to demonstrate attitude adjustment, or are they the best of the best, building contacts for future hunts back home?
[IsraelTimes] Bodies uncovered near Dabiq on Turkish border, DNA tests underway in effort to identify them; Qatari internal security forces declines to say who the search team was looking for

The remains of 30 people believed to have been killed by the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
 terror group have been found in a remote Syrian town in a search led by Qatar
...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi...
i search teams and the FBI, according to a statement from Qatar on Monday.

The Qatari internal security forces said the FBI had requested the search, and that DNA tests are currently underway to determine the identities of the people. The Qatari agency did not say who the American intelligence and security agency is trying to find.

Dozens of foreigners, including aid workers and journalists, were killed by IS turbans who had controlled large swaths of Syria and Iraq for half a decade and declared a so-called caliphate. The group lost most of its territory in late 2017 and was declared defeated in 2019.

Since then, dozens of gravesites and mass graves have been discovered in northern Syria containing remains and bodies of people IS had kidnapped over the years.

American-Israeli journalist Steven Sotloff, fellow US journalist James Foley, and humanitarian workers Kayla Mueller and Peter Kassig are among those killed by IS.

John Cantlie, a British correspondent, was kidnapped alongside Foley in 2012, and was last seen alive in one of the Death Eater group’s propaganda videos in 2016.

The search took place in the town of Dabiq, near Syria’s northern border with The Sick Man of Europe Turkey
...a NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A single organization with differing goals, equipment, language, doctrine, and structure....
 member, but not the most reliable...
.

Mass graves have also been found in areas previously controlled by Syrian president Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad
Supressor of the Damascenes...
, who was ousted in a lightning insurgency in December, ending his family’s half-century rule. For years, the Assads used their notorious security and intelligence agencies to crack down on dissidents, many of whom have gone missing.

The United Nations
...the Oyster Bay money pit...
 in 2021 estimated that over 130,000 Syrians were taken away and disappeared during the uprising that began in 2011 and descended into a 13-year civil war.

Last June, a federal United States appeals court upheld the conviction of a Brit for his role in a hostage-taking scheme by the Islamic State group that was tied to the abductions of Foley, Sotloff, Mueller, and Kassig.
Link


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Dozens of bodies found in Syria mass grave
2022-07-29
[NEWAGEBD.NET] Kurdish-affiliated authorities said on Thursday they had found the remains of almost 30 bodies in a mass grave in northern Syria, with a war monitor saying they were likely killed by jihadists.

’At least 29 bodies, including those of a woman and two children, have been found in a mass grave,’ near a hotel in Manbij, said an official of the Kurdish-affiliated Manbij civilian council..

The jihadist Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
 group had turned the hotel in a prison when it ruled the northern city between 2014 and 2016.

The mass grave was unearthed on Wednesday by municipal workers who were doing work on the sewerage system, according to the Manbij military council.

Some of the decomposed remains were found handcuffed and blindfolded, it said.

The military council said it was unclear when they were killed, but that it was during IS rule of Manbij.

The Britannia-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said the remains are believed to belong to people kidnapped by IS fighters.

US-backed Kurdish-led forces took control of Manbij in 2016, after ousting the jihadists from the city.

Dozens of mass graves have been found in Iraq and Syria but the identification process is slow, costly and complicated.

IS seized large swathes of Iraq and Syrian territory in 2014, declaring a ’caliphate’ and killing thousands before they were detained.

One of the biggest alleged IS mass graves contained 200 bodies and was discovered in 2019 near Raqa, the group’s former de-facto capital in Syria.

Rights groups have repeatedly called on Kurdish authorities and the Syrian government to investigate the fate of thousands who went missing during IS rule.

The missing include British news hound John Cantlie and Italian Jesuit priest Paolo Dall’Oglio.
Link


Home Front: WoT
British-born ISIS ‘Beatle' due to plead guilty; Update: Former Brit admits all, gets life sentence
2021-09-03
[PUBLISH.TWITTER]

Update from The Times of Israel at 5:30 a.m ET:
UK-born Alexanda Kotey admits to involvement in scheme to kidnap and torture Westerners, including Israeli-American Steven Sotloff, among four beheaded by group.

Alexanda Amon Kotey,
...half-Ghanaian, half-Greek Cypriot, all former British citizen, Alex was known in the press as ‘Ringo’. He recruited at least 25 of his peers in the area west of London, and gleefully beheaded captives for ISIS in Syria. His confession makes his little group sound like a bunch of Big Turbans...
37, pleaded guilty to all eight counts against him at a plea hearing in US District Court in Alexandria. The charges include hostage-taking resulting in death and providing material support to the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
 group from 2012 through 2015.

He admitted guilt in connection with the deaths of four American hostages — Sotloff, journalist James Foley, aid worker Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller, also an aid worker — as well as European and Japanese nationals who also were held captive.

Britannia, which did not want to put them on trial at home, stripped them of their UK nationality.

But their transfer to the United States was made possible only after the US authorities assured London they would not seek the death penalty
 in the case.

They both originally pleaded not guilty
"Wudn't me."
, but earlier this week Kotey indicated he would change his plea.

The plea deal sets a mandatory minimum sentence of life without parole. After 15 years, though, he would be eligible to be transferred to the United Kingdom to face any possible charges there.

In the plea deal, he admits that life is an appropriate sentence in the United Kingdom as well. If he were to receive a sentence of less than life there, the deal requires that he serve the rest of his life sentence, either in the United Kingdom if that country will do so, or be transferred back to the US to serve the life term.

The deal also requires him to cooperate with authorities and answer questions about his time in the Islamic State group. He would not, though, be required to testify at Elsheikh’s trial, scheduled for January.

US District Court Judge TS Ellis said Kotey had "agreed to cooperate fully and truthfully with the United States and provide the government with all the information you know about any criminal activity, not just what is in the indictment, but if you know about any criminal activity."

The deal also requires him to meet with victims’ families if they request it.

Kotey gave a somewhat detailed account of his time in Islamic State when Ellis asked him to explain in his own words what he had done.

He said he traveled to Syria to "engage in a military fight against the Syrian forces of Bashir al-Assad" and that he eventually pledged allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

"I accept I will be perceived as a radical who holds bad boy views," he said.

He acknowledged that he had participated in "capture-and-detain operations" to kidnap Foley and other Western hostages and that he led efforts to extract ransoms.

He described the acts of violence that were inflicted on the hostages as a necessary part of keeping them in line and persuading Western governments to pay ransom.

In the years after the hostages had been killed, he said he filled multiple roles within the Islamic State, including as a sniper and as director of a special forces training camp.

Kotey and Elsheikh’s four-member IS cell was dubbed the "Beatles" by their captives due to their British accents. They allegedly tortured and killed their victims, including by beheading, and IS released videos of the murders for propaganda purposes.

Alleged ringleader Mohammed Emwazi, known as "Jihadi John," was killed in a US Arclight airstrike
...KABOOM!...
 in Syria in November 2015 while the fourth "Beatle," Aine Davis, is imprisoned in The Sick Man of Europe Turkey
...just another cheapjack Moslem dictatorship, brought to you by the Moslem Brüderbund...
 after being convicted on terrorism charges.

Kotey and Elsheikh supervised detention facilities for hostages and allegedly coordinated ransom negotiations conducted by email, according to the US authorities. The pair also engaged in a "prolonged pattern of physical and psychological violence against hostages," they said.

Kotey and Elsheikh were "leading participants in a brutal hostage-taking scheme" that targeted American and European citizens and that involved murders, mock executions, shocks with Tasers, physical restraints and other brutal acts, the indictment alleged.

Prosecutor Dennis Fitzpatrick said at Thursday’s hearing that Kotey, Elsheikh and Emwazi were all friends at a young age in London, where they became radicalized.

A US special forces raid that resulted in the death of Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Syria in 2019 was code-named Task Force 8-14, in reference to the birthday of the young aid worker Mueller. Prosecutors say Kotey and Elsheikh worked closely with a chief front man for IS who reported to al-Baghdadi.

James Foley was kidnapped on November 22, 2012 in northern Syria with British Sunday Times journalist John Cantlie, who is still missing. A writer and videographer, Foley covered the uprising against Bashir al-Assad’s regime for various media, including Agence La Belle France-Presse (AFP). On August 19, 2014, IS posted a video online showing a masked, black-clad man beheading him in retaliation for the US strikes in Iraq. He was 40.

Steve Sotloff was captured on August 4, 2013, north of Aleppo where he was covering the refugee crisis. Originally from Miami, he was the grandson of Holocaust survivors and had dual US-Israeli citizenship. His family and the Israeli government kept his kidnapping secret for a year to try to assist his safe return. He was beheaded in early September 2014 in an execution in which Emwazi appeared. He was 31.

Kayla Mueller was working with the Danish Refugee Council when she was kidnapped in northern Syria in 2013. Mueller’s parents say she was tortured before being handed over to al-Baghdadi, who allegedly raped her repeatedly before killing her. IS claimed, without offering any proof, that she was killed in an air strike near Raqqa, Syria by a Jordanian plane in 2015, when she would have been 26.

Peter Kassig was the head of a small NGO that distributed food, clothing and medicine to Syrian refugees when he was kidnapped on October 1, 2013. In November 2014, IS grabbed credit for his execution in a video in which Emwazi appeared, standing next to a severed head. He was 26.
Related:
Alexanda Kotey: 2021-09-01 ISIS 'Beatles' member Alexanda Kotey who is charged with plotting to torture and behead US and European hostages in Syria is set to plead guilty today
Alexanda Kotey: 2021-07-13 ISIS regroups in the heart of Iraq: British Guardian
Alexanda Kotey: 2020-10-08 Two Islamic State jihadists have been extradited to the US from Iraq to face trial for the murder & beheading of American citizens
Link


Europe
8 Portuguese men charged with fighting for IS in Syria
2019-12-20
[Ynet] Prosecutors in Portugal said Wednesday they were bringing terror charges against eight Portuguese men suspected of fighting for the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
 group in Syria.

Prosecutors said in a statement the men were suspected of involvement in the 2012 kidnapping by the group of British war correspondent John Cantlie
...captured by ISIS in July 2012 along with Jeroen Oerlemens, they were freed by the Free Syrian Army a week later, then Mr. Cantlie was captured again by ISIS in November 2012 with American newsie John Foley. He was last seen in an ISIS video in 2016. There were rumours he had been spotted in Hajin, Syria at the beginning of 2019...
and Dutch photographer Jeroen Oerlemens.
...after his release by the original FSA, which dissolved shortly thereafter, he continued his war correspondent career until he was shot dead by an ISIS sniper in Sirte, Libya in 2016...
The case was opened in 2013 after Portuguese authorities received information about the kidnappings from British authorities.

Over the past six years Sherlocks have traced the radicalization and movements of the men, the statement said.

They converted to Islam and joined Islamic State group, the statement said, and traveled to Syria with their wives and children.

They are accused of joining, supporting and recruiting on behalf of a terror organization.

Two of them are in Portugal and have been interrogated, the statement said. The whereabouts of the other six wasn't known.
Related:
John Cantlie: 2019-03-25 SDF try to piece together what happened to ISIS captives
John Cantlie: 2018-12-20 ISIS has executed 700 prisoners since Hajin ouster: war monitor
John Cantlie: 2017-11-23 Foreigners Held or Missing in Syria
Link


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
SDF try to piece together what happened to ISIS captives
2019-03-25
[Rudaw] Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who are holding thousands of Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
 (ISIS) members, are trying to piece together a picture of what happened to the people who were held captive by the terror group.

"We rescued some of them, but not many in the past five years," Redur Khalil, SDF spokesperson and bigwig, told Rudaw at the ceremony to mark the territorial defeat of the group’s so-called caliphate on Saturday.

When ISIS swept across northern Iraq in the summer of 2014, they kidnapped 6,417 Yezidi women and youth. As of early March this year, 3,371 have been rescued and the whereabouts of 3,046 remains unknown, according to figures from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

The Yezidis were not the only ones who had their children kidnapped by the turbans and subjected to the group’s brutal ideology. Four Turkmen boys from Tal Afar were among 13 children rescued during the battle to defeat ISIS in Baghouz, eastern Syria this month.

Hope has dwindled for the families who have waited years for news of their missing loved ones as they watched the SDF and the global coalition slowly tighten the noose on ISIS in Syria until their ultimate defeat, announced on Saturday.

Wadiha Ibrahim’s husband, three sons, and one daughter have been missing for more than four and a half years.

"We had hoped they [would] return. We were waiting. But they never returned," she told Rudaw earlier this month, sitting outside the tent that is her temporary home in a camp in Kurdistan Region’s Duhok province.

The world is also waiting for news of hostages from around the globe who disappeared into the black ISIS void.

There was a brief flicker of hope in January that British journalist John Cantlie might still be alive. Used as a mouthpiece by ISIS, he was last heard from in 2016 until there were rumours he had been spotted in Hajin, Syria in January.

As the battle raged, the SDF said they could not confirm whether hostages like Italian priest Paolo Dall’Oglio or Lebanese journalist Samir Kassab were alive or dead.

The SDF is holding at least 10,000 ISIS jihadists ‐ mainly Iraqis and Syrians as well as imported muscle. They have also screened tens of thousands of family members of the hard boys.

"We interrogate [them] about what happened to those they held captive. Where did they go? What is their fate and whereabouts? These investigations continue, but unfortunately, we have not reached a clear result yet," explained Khalil.

"It is very painful and saddening," he said.
Link


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
ISIS has executed 700 prisoners since Hajin ouster: war monitor
2018-12-20
[Rudaw] More than 700 people held prisoner by ISIS have been executed since the jihadist group was forced out of Hajin on Friday, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported Wednesday.

The war monitor said it has received "confirmations" from security sources within the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
 group and from residents who have recently fled areas under its control.

"Credible sources confirmed to the Syrian Observatory that the Islamic State organization executed more than 700 of its prisoners," the Observatory said.

Some of those killed were ISIS deserters, the monitor said.

The executions took place in the group’s headquarters, its prisons, and in the remaining areas under its control, the SOHR said. The dead are thought to have been buried in mass graves.

Russian President Vladimir Putin
...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances...
 told a summit in the Black Sea resort of Sochi in October that ISIS was holding 700 captives, including Syrians, Americans, and Europeans.

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced on Friday it had ousted ISIS from its largest remaining stronghold of Hajin in Deir ez-Zor province.

Sporadic festivities are still ongoing as the group maintains control of a small pocket of territory on the east bank of the Euphrates, including the towns of Shafaa, al-Sousah, and al-Baghouz.

ISIS also controls desert areas on the west bank of the Euphrates, where it has reportedly transferred 350-400 of its prisoners.

According to SOHR, ISIS is known to have executed 6,191 prisoners on Syrian soil since 2014, often in a brutal fashion. Several executions were filmed and posted on the internet in propaganda videos, including the burning alive of a captured Jordanian pilot.

SOHR implored the US-led Coalition and the SDF to interrogate ISIS security officials to discover the whereabouts of mass graves and the fate of missing people.

Around 3,000 Yezidi women and girls are still unaccounted for, while 40 Kurdish Peshmerga fighters captured in battle are missing.

The fate of several Westerners, including journalists Austin Tice and John Cantlie, is still unknown.
Link


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Foreigners Held or Missing in Syria
2017-11-23
[AnNahar] The capture by Iraqi and Syrian forces of the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
 group's last bastions failed to clarify the fate of several foreign hostages thought to have been kidnapped by jihadists.

The Syrian city of Raqa, which U.S.-backed forces retook in mid-October, was the group's inner sanctum and where many of the kidnapped foreigners were sequestered.

Following is what we know about John Cantlie, a British journalist who was kidnapped by IS five years ago on Wednesday, and about other foreigners still believed held or missing in Syria:

JOHN CANTLIE

British journalist John Cantlie was detained by the Islamic State group on November 22, 2012.

He was kidnapped along with U.S. news hound James Foley, who became the first of a string of foreign hostages to be slain in gruesome propaganda videos.

Cantlie however appeared in several subsequent videos released by IS in which he delivered jihadist propaganda to the camera in the style of a news report.

His last appearance was during the battle for djinn-infested Mosul
... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn...
 late last year. He looked very gaunt and tired.

His current whereabouts are unknown and Cantlie's family have chosen discretion as a way of increasing his chances of survival.

GRIGORY TSURKANU AND ROMAN ZABOLOTNY

The pair, believed to be Russians, were captured in September or early October in Deir Ezzor province in eastern Syria.

Moscow never confirmed the identity of the two men, who appeared in an IS propaganda video. A Cossack group identified them as two veterans from southern Russia in their late thirties.

Some Russian media reports said they were mercenaries for a shadowy outfit called Wagner which has been sending ex-servicemen to fight alongside Syrian regime forces.

A Russian newspaper said they were executed but their deaths were never confirmed.

SKY NEWS TEAM

Mauritanian national Ishak Moctar and Lebanese national Samir Kassab went missing on October 15, 2013, along with their Syrian driver, near the northern city of Aleppo.

They were believed held by IS but their fate was never confirmed and they are still considered missing. The pair were believed to still be alive in 2016 and held in Raqa.

JUMPEI YASUDA

Japanese journalist Jumpei Yasuda is thought to have been kidnapped by the al-Nusra
...formally Jabhat an-Nusrah li-Ahli al-Sham (Support Front for the People of the Levant), also known as al-Qaeda in the Levant. They aim to establish a pan-Arab caliphate. Not the same one as the Islamic State, though .. ...
 Front jihadist group, a former al-Qaeda affiliate, in northern Syria in 2015.

Tokyo describes him as missing. A picture of him holding a piece of paper that read "Help me, this is the last chance" was released in mid-2016 and deemed authentic.

AUSTIN TICE

The 36-year-old American journalist was kidnapped in Syria in August 2012 by unidentified gunnies after reporting south of Damascus.

His kidnapping was never claimed by any organization but his family says it has reason to believe the Texan news hound is still alive.

PAOLO DALL'OGLIO

The Jesuit priest known to most as Father Paolo was a well-known figure in Syria, where he lived for years in the 6th century Deir Mar Musa monastery that he renovated, north of Damascus.

He was exiled from Syria in 2012 for meeting with members of the opposition to Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad
Despoiler of Deraa...
's regime and kidnapped by the Islamic State group near Raqa when he returned the following year.

He was reported to have been executed and his body dumped in a crevice soon after but his death was never confirmed by any party.
Link


Terror Networks
British Captive Appears in New IS Video
2016-03-20
[AnNahar] British journalist John Cantlie, who is being held prisoner by the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
 group, appeared in a new video released Saturday supposedly filmed in the jihadists' Iraqi stronghold of djinn-infested Mosul
... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn...
In the latest installment in a series of propaganda videos released by IS, Cantlie speaks to the camera in the style of a news report.

It is unclear when it was shot, but Cantlie last appeared in an IS video in early 2015.

In Saturday's video, a gaunt-looking Cantlie says he is in Mosul, IS' main city in northern Iraq.

Dressed in black and squinting in the sunshine, he is seen standing in front of a metal shack he describes as a media kiosk that distributes IS pamphlets, which was destroyed in an air strike by a U.S.-led coalition.

Speaking in English with Arabic subtitles, as in previous clips of the same style, Cantlie criticizes and derides the U.S.-led campaign launched in 2014 against IS.

He was kidnapped along with journalist James Foley in November 2012 in Syria while covering the war there.

Foley then became the first of several hostages to be slain by the jihadists.

Media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders has condemned IS for its "cowardly" use of a hostage in a forced role to push the jihadists' propaganda.
Link


Terror Networks
ISIS magazine preparing young Muslims for an apocalypse
2015-06-21
[Ynet] The young people trying to cross over to Syria and Iraq from The Sick Man of Europe Turkey
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire....
 don't need Amazon in order to read Dabiq. Its latest issue offers them free health services at an international level, higher education programs, a great salary and an 'excellent' life at the prophet's expense.

Online sales giant Amazon experienced an embarrassing mishap: Users were invited to purchase the glossy copies of the Dabiq magazine.

It's safe to assume that Amazon's managers had no idea what black hole they were getting themselves into when they put Dabiq on sale for $12 a copy in its English, German, French and Spanish versions. Over the weekend, following a series of complaints, Amazon removed the problematic item without any explanation.

Dabiq is a town in northern Syria. The tradition adopted by the Islamic terror organizations insists that this is where the apocalypse will take place and that this will be the last stop before the caliphate. This is where the name of the magazine published by the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
 comes from. Nine issues have been published so far, each dedicated to a an issue aimed at serving the murderers in the name of Islam.

Here are a few facts: Although it is translated into five languages, this magazine is not directed at the Western reader. Its editors did not sit down in front of their computers in order to improve their image. Dabiq is for propaganda "among the hesitant" and for recruiting purposes in the Persian Gulf, in North Africa and in the Moslem exile communities in the United States and Europe.

The production and writing team are located far from the ISIS fighting zones. They sit comfortably in front of the computer screens, know how to communicate without exposing themselves, order articles, receive reports from the ground, and publish pictures in expensive professional printing, because there are no budget restrictions.

In the two latest issues, thousands of words were dedicated to the case of women who have been taken captive by ISIS and turned into the sex slaves of the "holy war fighters." Are these miserable women hookers, or could they have saved themselves had they converted to the strict Islam?

ISIS has intentionally chosen women writers. With the help of Koran verses, they are attempting to prove that the hundreds of women kidnapped from their homes received the "appropriate punishment" after their spouses refused to move to "the right Islam."

A woman is merely an object, we learn from Dabiq, and her job is to produce the next generation of fighters and preserve the values of the "right" family. If it turns out that her conduct is "wrong," she will be abandoned, and it will be recommended to sell her to slavery, turn her into a "sex toy," and maybe even get rid of her when her price in the market drops below the value of the Iraqi dinar.

And speaking of the dinar, US First Lady Michelle Obama has received a burning insult from the Dabiq editors, who will agree to pay only one third of a dinar for her in the best-case scenario, and "even that is too much."

And there is the article of John Cantlie, the British photographer who was kidnapped by ISIS, released and kidnapped again, and is being held as Dabiq's "correspondent on the ground." This is his temporary insurance policy. Unfortunately for him, the last issue no longer includes his article, which always ends with the words "despite being a prisoner, I've been shown respect and kindness, which I haven't seen from my own government."

Dabiq doesn't provide training on fighting methods or on beheading hostages. The shocking photos reveal elementary school children, who were invited to participate in a "punishment." They received guns and orders to shoot to death the heads of prisoners dressed in the orange uniform. The Dabiq editors didn't bother to remove the photos showing the frightened, shocked children. They will still learn, they explain.

And it appears to be working. Turkey has only now woken up to block young people landing in Istanbul from crossing over to Syria and Iraq. They don't need Amazon in order to read Dabiq. In the latest issue they are offered free health services at an international level, higher education programs, a great salary and an "excellent" life at the expense of "the prophet, who knows how to ward off the plots against him and who ordered the establishment of the Islamic caliphate's capital in Dabiq, ahead of taking over the heretics' world."
Link


Terror Networks
ISIS’s futile quest for legitimacy
2015-01-06
[DailyBeast] Ever since Islamic militants grabbed a swath of land across Syria and Iraq this summer, they have been presenting their caliphate as a valid, functioning state. This weekend, the Orwellian depiction of legitimacy became ever more surreal and desperate with the announcement of a new medical school in one city they control and the release of a propaganda video featuring a British hostage touring another town, claiming “this is a normal city going about its business.”

In the Syrian city of Raqqa—the main stronghold of the self-styled Islamic State, formerly known as ISIS or ISIL—posters appeared over the weekend, according to local activists, which announced the opening of a school of medicine and invited applications from high-school graduates between the ages of 18 and 30. The medical school follows recent claims of plans to mint ISIS currency and the opening of a bank in the Iraqi city of Mosul—another was opened in the Syrian town of al-Bab several weeks ago. But locals there say any money deposited is thrown into an unlocked cupboard behind the tellers, hardly inspiring confidence.

Coinciding with the medical school announcement, the eighth propaganda video featuring British photojournalist John Cantlie, who has been held for more than two years by the militants, was released at the weekend, this time having him tour Mosul in the role of a TV correspondent. Using the city that was captured by ISIS in June as a backdrop, Cantlie disputes Western media reports that it is “in a state of near collapse” with a lack of food, water and working public institutions.

“The media likes to paint a picture of life in the Islamic State as depressed, people walking around as subjugated citizens in chains, beaten down by strict, totalitarian rule,” Cantlie says. But this picture of a “city living in fear as Western media would have you believe” is inaccurate, the captive photojournalist claims in the chilling video that has him looking less gaunt than in the previous seven propaganda videos in which he appears in as a narrator. Touring a souk and a hospital and riding on the back of a police motorcycle with a beaming jihadist, he declares, “Apart from some rather chilly but very sunny December weather, life here in Mosul is business as usual” and enjoyed by “people from every walk of life.”

The doublethink video smacks of something Winston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwell’s novel 1984. Just hours after his claims, ISIS released pictures showing the brutal executions of eight people, four of them Iraqi policemen, in Iraq’s Salaheddin province. In the Cantlie video there’s no mention of commonplace executions or the massacre by Islamic militants of more than 2,000 Shiite prisoners and soldiers shortly after Mosul was captured. Nor is there mention of the banishment of Christians on pain of death or even of the hundreds of women and girls from Iraq’s Yazidi religious minority being sold and abused as sex slaves— something boasted in Tweets and videos by Islamic State fighters. Tellingly, the eight-minute video has no interviews with locals testifying to how good life is under the jihadists—all has to be taken on trust from the captive narrator.

“Of all the Cantlie videos, this one is definitely the strangest,” tweeted Shiraz Maher, a senior fellow at the Institute Centre for the Study of Radicalization at King’s College London. “The healthier appearance and civilian clothing are very peculiar.”

The propaganda effort to portray the caliphate as a legitimate state seems increasingly frantic—an indication of ISIS weakness rather than confidence. Too much is being professed for the advance in the civil and administrative ambitions of the jihadist group. There are limits to the painting of banditry and extortion as the legitimate raising of taxes. And the narrative of state-making is undercut by the propaganda videos that are also posted of captured soldiers having their throats slit and of women accused of adultery being stoned.

For Sunni Muslims who are prepared to accept strict Sharia law and obey their new jihadist overlords, life may be more or less normal—you wear the niqab, you refrain from drinking alcohol or smoking, and you avoid being stoned, whipped or losing your head.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
New Islamic State Video Claims US Botched Rescue Raid
2014-11-22
[Ynet] The Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
 group has launched a new video with captured journalist John Cantlie.

In the video, titled Lend Me Your Ears Episode 6, Cantlie says the US botched a July raid to rescue him and fellow hostages and says he was "abandoned" by the British Government.
Link


Terror Networks
Islamic State releases 2nd video with UK hostage
2014-09-30
[IsraelTimes] The Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
 group on Monday released another video showing a British journalist who says he is a prisoner of the terrorist group.

The video featuring John Cantlie, a photojournalist, is the second in a series IS calls, "Lend me your Ears."

The slick, five-and-a-half-minute video mocked US President Barack Obama
Ready to Rule from Day One...
's September 10 speech laying out his strategy for countering IS.

"When exactly Gulf War III will start and how long it will take isn't covered," said Cantlie, clad in an orange jumpsuit and sitting in front of black background. "US advisors working with the Iraqi Army have described their performance as 'consistently grim.'"

"The Free Syrian Army
... the more palatable version of the Syrian insurgency, heavily influenced by the Moslem Brüderbund...
 are proven to be an undisciplined, corrupt, and largely ineffective fighting force...Giving the FSA 500 million [dollars] now is a completely pointless exercise," he continued. "Never mind the fact that the FSA sells the weapons the West gives them to arms dealers and smugglers, and much of it then ends up with the Islamic State."

UK journalist John Cantlie speaks in an IS video released Thursday, September 18, 2014. (screen capture: YouTube)

Cantlie also mocked Obama's language as "simplistic" and said that support in the US for his efforts against IS remains low. He also claimed that IS was not responsible for the slaughter of Christians and Yazidis in Iraq, and that it does not consider Shi'ites to be Moslems.

"For their part, the Islamic State say they welcome meeting Obama's under-construction army, " he ended. "Join me again for the next program."

In the first video, released a week and a half before, Cantlie said he worked for publications including The Sunday Times, The Sun and The Sunday Telegraph and came to Syria in November 2012 where he was subsequently captured by the Islamic State group.

The group which now controls roughly a third of Syria and Iraq has beheaded two US journalists and a British aid worker, and has threatened to kill another British hostage.

The clips released by the Islamic State group's media arm, Al-Furqan, were different than previous videos.

Entitled "Lend me your ears," they are part of a series of lecture-like "programs" in which Cantlie says he will reveal "the truth" about the Islamic State group.

No Islamic State fighters appear in the videos, which were posted online by users associated with the Islamic state group and reported by the SITE Intelligence Group, a US terrorism watchdog.

In addition to beheaded US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and British aid worker David Haines, the Islamic State group has threatened to kill Alan Henning, a British former taxi driver who was taken captive in December shortly after joining an aid convoy and crossing the border from Turkey into Syria.
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