Names and family details containing the personal information of no fewer than 22,000 ISIS jihadists in Syria and Iraq have been obtained and revealed.
The documents also revealed a collection of application forms completed with references and next of kin inclusive. The documents were reportedly leaked by a certain disgruntled jihadi, Abu Hamed.
DailyMail reports that the cache contains the details of at least 16 British fighters, including Birmingham hacker, Junaid Hussain and Cardiff-born Reyaad Khan, who were both killed by a US drone in 2015.
Other valuable items uncovered were data for security services battling the terror group with names, nationalities, addresses, telephone numbers, family contacts and the fighter’s personal recruiter attached.
The files also include British rapper, Abdel Bary, a 26-year-old from London who joined IS in 2013 after visiting Libya, Egypt and Turkey, the son of convicted terrorist Adel Abdul Bary, who was pictured in August last year holding the severed head of a captured Syrian army soldier who had been executed.
The discovered files were passed to Sky News on a memory stick stolen from the Head of Islamic State’s internal security police, Abu Hamed who had been entrusted to protect the organisation’s core secrets, an organisation described by insiders as the group’s SS.
Reports say he (the Head of Islamic State’s internal security police) rarely parted with the drive.
Disillusioned with the Islamic State leadership, Hamed says it has now been taken over by former soldiers from the Iraqi Baath party of Saddam Hussein.
He claims the Islamic rules he believed in have totally collapsed inside the organisation, prompting him to quit.
He told Sky News that IS was giving up on its headquarters in Raqqa and moving into the central deserts of Syria and ultimately Iraq, the group’s birthplace.
Asked if the IS files could bring the network down, he nodded and said simply: ‘God willing.’
The documents are from ISIS’ entrance interviews, probably held in Raqqa, Syria, and show that the terror group has its own human resources department and they also show the name of the ISIS ‘fixer’ who ‘recommended’ the individual on the form, giving spies a better idea of who runs the group’s recruitment network.
The documents also have the route they took to Syria or Iraq date, time and place of death if applicable, meaning security services now know exactly who has perished.
Recruits from at least 51 countries, including the UK, who traveled to the region to join the murderous terror organisation – notorious for its brutality, including beheadings, crucifixions and massacres – were ordered to give up their most sensitive information.
Details were logged on an extraordinary induction form and only when a recruit had filled in the 23-question registration card were they allowed into the group, also known as Daesh.
Questions on the form included date of birth, marital status, previous jobs, who recommended them, if they had fought before, what role they would take – for instance, ‘fighter’ – and any ‘specialist skills’.
The forms even include contact details for next of kin. Many of the names on the registration cards are well known.
Experts described the document trove as the ‘biggest counter-terrorism breakthrough in years’ and believe the files could be invaluable in tackling jihadists who have sneaked back into Europe intending to bring bloodshed to the streets in ‘enormous and spectacular’ attacks.
Former UK intelligence chiefs reportedly described the documents as a ‘goldmine’ and it is believed to be the biggest ISIS intelligence haul ever uncovered.
But the major breakthrough from the documents is the revealing of the identities of a number of previously unknown jihadis in the UK, northern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, the United States and Canada.
Their whereabouts are crucial to breaking the organisation and preventing further terror attacks.
Richard Barrett, a former MI6 global terrorism operations director, said the files could prove to be the ‘biggest breakthrough in years’ in the counter-terror fight.
He said: “It will be an absolute gold mine of information of enormous significance and interest to very many people, particularly the security and intelligence services.’
“Many of the recruits passed through jihadi ‘hotspots’ such as Yemen, Sudan, Tunisia, Libya, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
“One of the files is marked ‘Martyrs’ and details a brigade manned entirely by fighters who wanted – and were trained – to carry out suicide attacks.
“Some of the telephone numbers on the list are still active and it is believed that although many will be family members, a significant number are used by the jihadis themselves,” Barrett noted.
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