June 19, 2008
British Computer Geek: The Central Node of American Terror Plots
Our good friend Younis Tsouli back in the news, once again. I've known about some of his connections to terror plots in the U.S & Canada, but this CBS report lays the whole thing out nicely.
How is it that a British kid, barely out of his teenage years, can become the central player in al Qaeda's recruitment efforts not only in Europe, but in North America as well? The internet doesn't make distance irrelevant, but it does make it less relevant. Tsouli, writing as Irhabi 007 [terrorist 007] could distribute jihadi propaganda and then connect with terrorists in Iraq on one end and like minded young men in Europe and Canada on the other---all from the comfort of his mother's basement!
CBS:
The Toledo trio was in frequent contact with two Chicago men who are now charged with plotting attacks of their own.For a more detailed analysis, see this story reprinted by Bill Warner and click through the links he added.Those Chicago suspects in turn communicated with two college-age students in Atlanta, sending e-mails asking them to "come and see our preparation..." for violent Jihad.
That preparation, the government charges, was conspiring with a Canadian terror cell to bomb Toronto landmarks.
And it all connected through the Internet, and to a shadowy al Qaeda webmaster known as Irhabi 007.
When we first started writing about the internet jihad, we were part of a small circle of people who got it. But now, to paraphrase Evan Kohlmann, if you still don't get that the internet is front and center in the war on Islamist terror, then you are so far out of the loop that you don't even know there is a loop.
Thanks to Dr. Novaculus.
