Released
U.S. forces release Al-Baghdadi from Camp Bucca, the biggest U.S. detention camp in Iraq. Kenneth King, commander at the time:
We spent how many missions and how many soldiers were put at risk when we caught this guy and we just released him.
Al-Baghdadi is not viewed as a threat upon release:
He said, ‘I’ll see you guys in New York,’ like, ‘This is no big thing, I’ll see you on the block’
Forced to watch snuff videos
Human Rights Watch says ISIS forced 153 boys as young as 14 in Kobani to watch videos of beheadings and crucifixions while listening to religious lectures, and flogged them with cables for not paying attention. Former prisoner:
Those who didn’t conform to the program were beaten. They beat us with a green hose or a thick cable with wire running through it. They also beat the soles of our feet.
Secret military base
Sources in the Persian Gulf tell Reuters that Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have set up a secret ‘nerve centre’ near the Turkish border with Syria to direct military aid and communications to Syrian rebels fighting the government. Doha source:
It’s the Turks who are militarily controlling it. Turkey is the main co-ordinator/facilitator. Think of a triangle, with Turkey at the top and Saudi Arabia and Qatar at the bottom. The Americans are very hands-off on this. U.S. intel are working through middlemen. Middlemen are controlling access to weapons and routes.
The centre is located in the southern Turkish city of Adana, about 100 km (60 miles) from the border, and was set up after Saudi Deputy Foreign Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Abdullah al-Saud visited Turkey and requested it. The Turks liked the idea of having the base in Adana so that they could supervise its operations.
Kidnapped with Foley
Cantlie is traveling in the same vehicle with Foley when both were abducted. A media blackout is put in place that lasts almost a year and a half, in an effort to protect the two.
Asked to leave northern town
Six of Syria’s main rebel factions ask ISIS to withdraw from the town of Azaz, near the Turkish border, which it captured several days earlier from Free Syrian Army rebels. The statement asks “our brothers in ISIL to withdraw their troops and vehicles to their main headquarters immediately” and implement an “immediate ceasefire” in the area. Signed by the Ahrar al-Sham, Liwa al-Tawhid and Jaysh al-Islam factions, and the smaller Suqur al-Sham, Furqan Brigades and Liwa al-Haq groups, it comes hours after the group clashes with the mainstream Northern Front Alliance and sends fighters towards a border post. ISIS and the Northern Front are asked to…
…resort immediately to the Islamic court, which will remain in session in Aleppo for 48 hours
Captures town from rival opposition
ISIS fighters seize the northern town of Azaz near the Turkish border from Free Syrian Army forces, causing confusion among the ranks of the opposition. FSA spokesman Loay al-Mikdad says the group took the town from Assad regime forces in self-defence and questions why ISIS are storming an area that is already ‘liberated’:
They said they came to defend the Syrian people. Now they have turned their guns away from fighting the regime to fighting the Syrian people.
Captured in Syria
0 0 reuben reuben2014-10-22 17:06:492015-01-17 11:41:42Captured in SyriaHenning abducted
Henning is abducted 30 minutes after the aid convoy he is traveling with crosses the border from Turkey into Syria, a journey of only four miles. He had insisted on joining the convoy of former NHS ambulances delivering defibrillators, stethoscope sand oxygen to a hospital in Idlib instead of remaining at home in Eccles, Greater Manchester, with his wife and two children. Convoy organiser Kasim Jameel, a taxi driver from Bolton:
Alan is a man who is full of compassion and we are just praying to Allah that he is released safe and sound. We are liaising with the authorities and we do not want to say anything which might put him in any further jeopardy or which will inflame the situation. I could tell a lot of stories about the good that Alan has done and about how, as a non Muslim, he has helped Muslims who have suffered in the conflict. He is motivated to help others – not just by helping the convoy but by loads of other things as well. He is the nicest of nice guys who has done so much to help other people. He is just a normal bloke, an everyday taxi driver who wanted to do good. We are thinking about him all the time and praying that he will be allowed home to his family.
Ousted from Aleppo, Idlib
Rival opposition factions strike back at ISIS after its moves to seize territory they have claimed from regime forces in Aleppo and Idlib provinces. Raqqa-based Sham News Network media activist Abu Bakr:
The rebels have achieved tremendous progress against ISIS in all the points of conflict, liberating more than 80% of the Idlib countryside and 65% of Aleppo and its countryside
Mohammad Hassano, an activist in the town of Azaz:
People just couldn’t take it anymore, after all the kidnapping and arrests and attacks against the [Free Syrian Army]. People were very angry at them, but there was hesitation in fighting them because of the priority of fighting the regime.
Ousted from Raqaa
Mainstream rebel groups force ISIS out of Anbar provincial capital Raqaa, freeing at least 50 hostages that include journalists and aid workers taken captive by the group. ISIS remains in control of the Anbar cities of Ramadi and Falluja – where it is surrounded by the Iraqi military – but the fall of Raqaa means it has lost much of the territory in Turkish border areas that it has held for six months after seizing it from the other rebel groups. Many ISIS members are now said to be defecting to join Syrian Al Qaeda arm the Al-Nusra Front or more mainstream rebel groups including the remnants of the Free Syrian Army.
‘Crush other rebels’
ISIS calls on its fighters to destroy rival opposition groups in an audio message from spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani:
Crush them totally and kill the conspiracy at birth
A warning to the rebels:
None of you will remain, and we will make of you an example to all those who think of following the same path
Withdraws from Aleppo
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports that ISIS’s headquarters in Aleppo have been overtaken by rival opposition:
Fighters from several Islamist rebel brigades took control of the children’s hospital in the Qadi Askar district, which is the headquarters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in the city.
The extremist group has effectively abandoned the area:
ISIL withdrew from the Inzarat area after clashes with fighters from rebel… brigades, and the post office building was taken over by Islamist rebel fighters … There are hardly any ISIL members left in the city of Aleppo.
Senior militant killed
A senior Iraqi intelligence official says senior ISIS leader Haji Bakr has been assassinated in a killing related to the dispute between ISIS and other opposition groups. Haji Bakr’s real name was Sameer Abid Mohammed Al-Halefawi, and he is reported to have served as an air-defense officer in Saddam Hussein’s army before joining Al Qaeda in Iraq after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
Expelled from Deir Ezzor
Rival opposition groups including the Al Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nusra Front expel ISIS from the province of Deir Ezzor. The oil-producing province is also a key conduit for weapons across the Iraqi border. The Al-Nusra Front, which has largely stayed out of conflicts with ISIS, joined about 10 other militant groups to expel the extremist faction.
Flees to Syria
Media report that Sharrouf was able to flee to Syria via Malaysia in January by skirting a travel ban placed on him. He boarded a flight at Sydney airport using his brother’s passport in place of his own, which was confiscated by authorities. New South Wales premier Barry O’Farrell:
I have to say I think that immigration and the federal police and customs have been doing a magnificent job. But I look to see what caused what appears to have been a fairly major breakdown.
Colorado woman arrested for conspiracy
Colorado resident Shannon Maureen Conley, 19, is arrested and charged with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists as she attempts to board a flight out of Denver airport. She has allegedly admitted to authorities that she is planning to travel to the Turkish border to meet an ISIS member that she met over the internet. Conley, a certified nurse’s aide, allegedly told authorities that she planned to become the man’s wife and serve as a nurse in an ISIS camp, during a series of seven interviews conducted during the five months before her flight after she was reported for suspicious behavior. She faces up to 15 years in prison if found guilty.
Interpol searches for Austrian girls
Interpol is searching for two teenage girls from Austria who are believed to have run away from their homes in Vienna to join ISIS. Samra Kesinovic, 16, and Sabina Selimovic, 15, have been missing since April 10. Photos on their Facebook pages apparently show them brandishing Kalashnikov rifles – in some cases surrounded by armed men. Some of the pictures have been circulating online for years, and their families believe that those pictures, and social media posts apparently by the girls, are fake. However, Austrian officials believe that the girls are located in a training camp, are already married, and are living in the homes of their new husbands. Facebook postings apparently from the two girls say that they planned to marry so that they could become ‘holy warriors’ and indicate that they are seeking martyrdom:
Death is our goal.
Kurdish boys kidnapped
Over 140 Kurdish junior high school boys, on their way home from taking final exams, are kidnapped by armed fighters. The boys are forcibly removed from buses driving children back to their homes in Ayn al-Arab, and are transported by truck to the ISIS controlled city Manbij in northern Syria. The boys are being taught about jihad and Sharia doctrines, are forced to watch videos depicting torture and execution, and are receiving military training. Human Rights Watch states in a report on the abduction:
Former recruits described how leaders gave children particularly difficult or dangerous tasks and encouraged them to volunteer for suicide attacks.
Produces magazine
0 CommentsMonitoring and translation site Jihadology.net reports that the ISIS-affiliated Al Hayat media group has produced the first issue of Islamic State magazine (pdf link here.) The six-page magazine leads with a photo feature on a car bombing by ‘apostates’ that it says injured over 40 people in Raqa city, which ISIS considers its headquarters, in an area where the wives and children of foreign fighters are said to live. It includes photo stories and captions on ISIS’s methods for countering tanks on the battlefield, the militants’ advance on the city of al-Khair in Deir Ezzor province, the execution of a sorcerer, and distribution of aid by ISIS members. Lead story:
A car bomb was parked and blown up by Sahwat in between two buildings where the women and children of mujahireen live. Alhamdullilah (thank God) noone was killed. 45 people were injured, mostly mujahir women and children, with three cases of critical injuries. A shop owner was badly injured and his shop was left in ruins. May Allah expose the hypocrites behind the attack.
Trained in Syria
Paris public prosecutor François Molins says the man arrested as the Brussels Jewish Museum shooting suspect, French national Mehdi Nemmouche, 29, trained in Syria:
During his last stay in jail he was noticed for extremist [Islamist] proselytism. On December 31, 2012, three weeks after he was freed, he travelled to Syria. He spent over a year in Syria, where he seems to have joined the ranks of combatant groups, jihadist terrorist groups.
Nemmouche is being questioned by the DGSI, which can hold him for up to 96 hours or 144 hours if investigators feel he poses an imminent terrorist threat.