The United States designated on Tuesday Pakistan’s Balochistan Liberation Army and Lebanese Hezbollah operative, Husain Ali Hazzima, as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs), the State Department said in a statement according to aawsat.com. 

Additionally, the US has amended the terrorist designations of Jundallah, which has started using the name Jaysh al-Adl. 

According to the statement, the new measures seek to deny Hazzima, BLA and Jaysh al-Adl the resources to plan and carry out terrorist attacks.

They also expose and isolate organizations and individuals and deny them access to the US financial system.

Therefore, all of their property and interests subject to US jurisdiction are blocked, and US persons are prohibited from engaging in any transactions with them.

“Today’s actions notify the US public and the international community that Hazzima and BLA have committed, or pose a significant risk of committing, acts of terrorism,” the statement said. 

Hazzima is the chief of Hezbollah Unit 200, the party’s intelligence unit that analyzes and assesses information collected by its military members.

Hezbollah was designated as an FTO in 1997 and as an SDGT in 2001.

The BLA has carried out several terrorist attacks in the past year, including a suicide attack in August, 2018 that targeted Chinese engineers in Balochistan, a November, 2018 attack on the Chinese consulate in Karachi, and a May, 2019 attack against a luxury hotel in Gwadar.

The Australian police’s counter-terror units announced on Tuesday that they had foiled a plot by the Islamic State terrorist group to attack a range of public buildings and embassies in Sydney.

According to the Australian police statement, their forces arrested two men, aged 20 and 23, after learning of their plot to carry out terrorist attacks in the large city of Sydney.

 “We will say that they had a number of targets, including police stations, defense establishments, embassies and councils, courts and churches,” Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner Ian McCartney told reporters in Sydney.

“There are still those people within the community who wish to do us harm,” he said. “I want to say they don’t represent the Islamic faith. Their actions are criminal and they represent hatred and terror.”

Police made the arrests because they had compiled sufficient evidence for charges, McCarthy said, but offered few details.

A third man, aged 30, is charged with welfare fraud.

The police did not name those charged, who are expected to appear in court later in the day or on Wednesday.

The so-called Islamic State caliphate was established in 2014 and although it has been driven in the past year from all territory it once held in Syria and Iraq, authorities say it remains a threat, as an underground movement.

McCarthy said the man charged with plotting had been tracked by Australian authorities since mid-2018, when he drew their attention by traveling to Lebanon.

He now faces life imprisonment, if convicted. The others face sentences as long as 10 years.

The men knew each other on social media, police added. In addition to the Sydney plot, the 20-year-old planned to travel to Afghanistan to fight there for Islamic State, and the 23-year-old was prominent among extremists online globally.

Four men with suspected ties to the Islamic State militant group were captured on Tuesday by members of the Nicaraguan armed forces after entering the country illegally from Costa Rica, Nicaraguan police said according to reuters.com.

The identities of three of the men matched those of suspects featured in an alert attributed to U.S. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) warning that three possible terrorists had recently arrived in Central America.

In a statement, Nicaraguan police said two of the men were Egyptian nationals and the other two were Iraqi. The four were due to be deported back to Costa Rica, it added.

The Egyptians were named as Mohamed Ibrahim, 33, and Mahmoud Samy Eissa, 26, while the Iraqis were Ahmed Ghanim Mohamed Al Jubury, 41 and Mustafa Ali Mohamed Yaoob, 29.

The first three men were named in the HSI alert published by Mexican media on Monday, which identified them as possible members of Islamic State headed for the United States.

Questioned on the HSI alert on Tuesday, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said his government was aware of the search for the suspects and was dealing with the matter.

U.S. Homeland Security officials could not immediately be reached for comment by Reuters.

The three men who featured in the HSI alert were registered in Costa Rica on June 9, according to the Nicaraguan statement. That date matched the information as the HSI statement.

The fourth suspect, Mohamed Yaoob, was registered in Costa Rica on June 13, the statement said.

The men entered Nicaragua through an unauthorised crossing point known as La Guasimada in the Cardenas municipality on the southwestern border with Costa Rica, Nicaraguan police said.

After arresting the men at around 10 a.m., the army handed them over to national police for investigation, whereupon they were taken to migration authorities for deportation via the Penas Blancas border crossing, the statement said.

The four men were delivered to Costa Rican migration authorities at around 7 p.m., Nicaragua’s government said.

The feared former head of Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro’s intelligence police has charged that the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah operates in the Latin American country with the protection of the government, like reported by toi.com.

Gen. Manuel Ricardo Cristopher Figuera, who fled his homeland for Colombia and then the US after the failed April 30 uprising in the country, has been passing some of the Maduro regime’s most closely held secrets to American officials.

In an interview with the Washington Post published Monday, he spoke of his disenchantment with the government he had once worked to protect.

“I never saw the country’s situation and the government’s corruption as closely as I did during my last six months,” he said, the period when he ran the notorious SEBIN, or Bolivarian Intelligence Service, the regime’s political security arm.

“I quickly realized that Maduro is the head of a criminal enterprise, with his own family involved,” Figuera said.

Among the abuses: family members linked to the regime using their influence to buy and sell gold to the state for huge profits; support for terror groups like the Colombian ELN; and the deep influence that Cuba’s Raoul Castro has over Maduro, both personally and through Cuban guards and advisers who surround the Venezuelan president.

And, Figuera added, he had seen intelligence reports that say the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah was operating in the capital Caracas, in nearby Maracay, and in the offshore island region of Nueva Esparta with the blessing of the Maduro government. The presence is “apparently geared toward illicit business activity to help fund operations in the Middle East,” the Post reported.

Hezbollah has long been believed by Western intelligence agencies to be playing a significant role in the South American drug trade in order to help finance its military buildup in Lebanon and its infrastructure around the world, but Figuera’s comments, cited only in brief in the Post interview, may be the highest-level admission about such activities from a former top official of a regime that supports the group.

A report earlier this month by Israeli researchers said Hezbollah personnel act as middlemen in the global drug route from South America to West Africa and from there to Europe, helping to move hundreds of tons of cocaine and other drugs through ports in Belgium and Germany — with only 5-10 percent of it being intercepted by law enforcement.

Also in June, the US and Argentina convened a two-day regional summit in Buenos Aires about the persistent Hezbollah threat in the Western Hemisphere. The summit held on June 11 and 12 came a month ahead of the 25th anniversary of the terrorist bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in the Argentine capital. The attack was carried out by a Hezbollah suicide bomber and orchestrated by Iran, the late Argentinian investigator Alberto Nisman established.

Law enforcement, prosecutors and financial practitioners attended the workshop, a State Department release said. They came from the two convening countries as well as Chile, Colombia, Panama, Paraguay and Peru.

“The workshop focused on Hezbollah’s modus operandi globally and its terrorist and criminal infrastructure and activities in the Americas,” the release said. “Participants discussed various techniques to constrain and counter the group’s illicit activities, including the financial and law enforcement tools available to identify, investigate, and prosecute Hezbollah’s global support and facilitation networks.”

The summit was timed as part of the events that Argentina’s government is planning to mark the anniversary of the blast on July 18, 1994, which killed 85 and injured more than 300.

The Mossad intelligence agency played a cat-and-mouse game with the Hezbollah terror group to stymie its efforts to establish explosives storehouses from Thailand to New York, an Israeli intelligence official confirmed earlier this month.

The largest cache, containing some three tons of ammonium nitrate, a key ingredient for some types of explosives, was found at four locations in north London, sites raided by the Metropolitan Police in September 2015. Other caches planted by Hezbollah cells were discovered in Cyprus, Thailand and as-yet unnamed European countries, according to reports.

Figuera, meanwhile, was one of a handful of Venezuelan officials placed under US sanctions for his role as head of a security service notorious for torture and the inhumane treatment meted out to political prisoners.

A former head of security for Maduro’s mentor, former president Hugo Chavez, Figuera was thought to be one of the regime’s true believers.

But his role in its excesses has led to profound regret, he said.

SEBIN’s “Tomb,” the prison for political prisoners under its Caracas headquarters, has long been accused of inhumane conditions that led to prisoner deaths and suicides — conditions meant to coerce confessions for political crimes.

“Look, if there’s something I regret it’s that I didn’t free all the prisoners. Because there’s a lot of people there who are kidnapped and who are there unfairly. And I owe those people, you know?”

He added: “At one point I thought I was going to be able to bring Maduro to his senses. There are people there who have cancer. There’s a woman there with special issues. There are people who have nothing to do and no reason to be there. I believe I could have done more. Those people are not a threat to the country.”

European leaders have hammered the United States for nearly two decades about the injustice of Guantanamo Bay, where prisoners are held indefinitely at a detention camp outside the normal U.S. justice system, like reported by stripes.com.

But faced with what to do about European nationals who went to fight for the Islamic State and ended up in Syrian detention camps, the continent’s leaders are proving reluctant to bring their citizens to trial at home.

Three months after the collapse of the Islamic State, about 2,000 foreign fighters are imprisoned in Syria and Iraq, and about 800 of them are believed to be European, according to U.S. officials. Those figures don’t include the thousands of wives and children with foreign citizenship.

European leaders have made little movement to repatriate their citizens, even as U.S. and Kurdish authorities beg them to take back their people. Some security officials warn that inaction could enable future attacks, and human rights advocates deplore the conditions in overcapacity camps.

“It’s obvious that there is a humanitarian crisis unfolding in the camps in northeast Syria and the prisons in Iraq that are holding thousands of foreigners,” said Letta Tayler, a global terrorism researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Western Europe’s response has been to look the other way. It just goes against everything that Western Europe says it stands for.”

European leaders have taken a hard look at what their domestic populations want — and blinked. Popular opinion is overwhelmingly against bringing back the European fighters. The anger sharpened after terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015 and Brussels in 2016, in which some of the perpetrators had visited the caliphate.

“Ordinary Belgians want them to be taken care of over there,” said Koen Metsu, a Belgian lawmaker who has worked on security issues. The Europeans who joined the Islamic State “knew up front what they were about to do,” he said.

Even bringing back the children of the fighters is unpopular. France and the Netherlands have taken back orphans in recent days, because those children are free from the leaden political baggage of having parents who might also want to return alongside them. Belgium last week announced plans to do the same. Britain, meanwhile, has sought to strip suspected Islamic State sympathizers of their citizenship.

Some fighters and sympathizers have been convicted in absentia — unable to appear at their European trials because they were in Syria. But authorities have little appetite to bring people home to serve their sentences.

European countries have also begun to outsource prosecutions to Iraqi courts. Justice is swift, the burden of proof light, access to lawyers minimal and the punishment consistent: death by hanging, according to human rights groups who have witnessed the proceedings. In recent weeks, 11 French citizens, among others, have been sentenced to death. France, which opposes the death penalty, signaled it will not stand in the way of the trials, saying it respects Iraqi sovereignty.

Advocates of shifting prosecutions to Iraqi courts, including Metsu, acknowledge that some fighters may have fought in Syria only, not Iraq, raising questions whether Iraqis truly have jurisdiction. But they say justice is better served close to where crimes were committed and where witnesses and evidence are nearby.

The question of whether to reclaim fighters and their families is less pressing for the United States, because only a few dozen U.S. citizens are known to have traveled to join the Islamic State, according to counterterrorism analysts. But America has started to bring its people home. This month, six children and two women were flown back from the al-Hol camp to be resettled in the United States, according to Syrian Kurdish authorities. Three men and a woman are awaiting U.S. trial. Three others agreed to plea deals. And one Virginia man is appealing a sentence of 20 years for providing material support to a designated terrorist organization.

U.S. officials, having made greater progress than their European counterparts, have sought to claim the moral high ground and to impress that the current situation is not sustainable.

“It is not a solution to leave these people in camps in northeast Syria. This is a burden on the people of northeast Syria,” James Jeffrey, the U.S. special representative for Syria engagement, told reporters last week. “It is absolutely imperative that countries take action as necessary to deal with their own citizens.”

The challenge bloomed as a U.S.-led coalition took over the final pockets of Islamic State territory in Syria and Iraq. That sent a wave of refugees and ex-fighters into the already fragile camps in Kurdish-controlled northeast Syria. Many of the men are in improvised prisons. Women and children are not under the same tight control, but those suspected of Islamic State sympathies are not allowed to move freely.

At al-Hol, more than 73,000 people are packed into facilities built to house about half that. The camp population includes 3,200 foreign women and 7,900 foreign children, alongside more than 60,000 Syrians and Iraqis, according to Kurdish authorities. There are just three mobile clinics at the camp, and shortages of medicine are acute.

The Kurdish forces who operate the jammed camps have few resources. Some of them complain they are being forced to lavish more money on their defeated enemies than on their own war-frayed population.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has said he wants to withdraw U.S. forces from the region. A pullout could threaten the viability of the camps, because the U.S. military has been a crucial source of support for the Kurds.

Trump tweeted his frustration at the end of April: “European countries are not helping at all, even though this was very much done for their benefit. They are refusing to take back prisoners from their specific countries. Not good!”

The inaction by European politicians also comes over the objections of some of their own security officials. Many who work to keep Europeans safe — but who don’t have to win their votes – would prefer to keep terrorism suspects and convicts close by, where they can be watched, instead of running the risk they could vanish abroad and plot future violence.

“There is a disconnect between the political world that is very concerned about the political risks that are associated with the repatriation of terrorists, and the various services that are dealing with counterterrorism daily,” said Thomas Renard, a terrorism expert at the Brussels-based Egmont Institute. “Having these individuals here, prosecuting them here, is not only feasible but also probably less problematic.”

“Purely from a security point of view, we should not make the mistakes of the past. We should not create a new Guantanamo Bay,” said one senior European security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive assessments that do not line up with those of national leaders.

Many of Europe’s objections to Guantanamo, the U.S. detention facility in Cuba, had to do with torture. But other factors that led the United States to detain people there — a lack of confidence in civilian courts to handle terrorism trials and a fear of the political backlash of bringing terror detainees onto U.S. soil — echo in the European decisions, the official said.

European sentences for terrorism-related charges tend to be lighter than in the United States — the lightest offenses are punishable with two- to five-year sentences. Prisons can be hotbeds of radicalization. And European politicians warn that mustering the battlefield evidence necessary for convictions on serious charges can be difficult. Some countries, such as Sweden, never criminalized travel to Syria, making it difficult for law enforcement to charge people for basic association with the Islamic State.

“It’s political suicide to try to bring them back, because the public doesn’t want them back,” said Magnus Ranstorp, a counterterrorism expert at the Swedish Defense University. “They’ve committed atrocities, but you cannot convict them. And if you can convict them, it won’t be for that long unless you can prove murder. It’s a ripe mess.”

Swedish leaders are advocating a different approach.

“We said we will not repatriate terrorists to Sweden,” said Swedish Home Affairs Minister Mikael Damberg in an interview. Damberg has pushed for an international tribunal near Syria to prosecute Islamic State crimes. He said that would provide a way to process the detainees without bringing them to Europe.

“Not doing anything in the region, close to evidence and witnesses, is also complicated, and risks not actually prosecuting and condemning them,” he said.

Skeptics of the effort, including the U.S. government, say setting up a tribunal could take years, by which time evidence would be lost and memories faded. They also say it would force an even bigger burden on Iraq, which is already struggling to rebuild after Islamic State occupation. The Iraqi government is in talks to take back about 30,000 of its own citizens who traveled to Syria to live under Islamic State rule.

Some families of terrorism victims say they would prefer that justice be served closer to home.

“We want those trials to happen in France,” said Georges Salines, whose daughter, Lola, died in the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks. “We really want for those people to be heard by judges. We want to know how they got radicalized.”

A Hezbollah operative collected “detailed information” about Toronto’s Pearson airport, according to a report circulated by Canada’s air safety agency and obtained by Global News.

The June 18 Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) report reproduced an article about Ali Kourani, a member of Hezbollah’s external operations unit, the Islamic Jihad Organization.

A sleeper agent based in the United States, Kourani visited Pearson airport seven times and gathered information about security measures there until his arrest, the CATSA Open Source Information Report said.

Kourani also scouted New York’s JFK airport and U.S government facilities. He passed the results of his surveillance activities to his Hezbollah handler in Lebanon on digital storage devices.

The Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group had tasked Kourani to collect the information so it could plan attacks, according to U.S. prosecutors. Kourani was arrested in 2017.

“CATSA’s priority is to offer the highest levels of security to the travelling public,” spokesperson Christine Langlois told Global News on Wednesday. “We won’t be commenting further on this article.”

Last month, a U.S. court convicted Kourani of eight counts related to his work as a Hezbollah deep-cover operative. He is scheduled for sentencing on Sept. 27.

“Kourani’s chilling mission was to help procure weapons and gather intelligence about potential targets in the U.S. for Hezbollah terrorist attacks,” the U.S. Department of Justice said in a news release.

But evidence disclosed during his trial showed he also conducted surveillance for Hezbollah in Canada and was married to a Lebanese-Canadian.

Kourani told the FBI about his contacts with a Canadian airport employee, Hezbollah expert Matthew Levitt wrote in the Foreign Policy article that formed the basis of the report reproduced by CATSA.

While they smoked a hookah together, the employee told Kourani about the locations of security cameras and metal detectors, Levitt wrote, adding, “Kourani said he could ask the man to carry a bag onto an airplane for him, and he would do it.”

Kourani told the FBI that Hezbollah’s external operations group, known as Unit 910, was “even more active in Canada than they were in the United States.”

He gave the FBI 15 names from his contact list, including a Windsor, Ont. man he said was close to Hezbollah-affiliated clerics, a resident of Fort McMurray, Alta. and man who went to school in Toronto and was “closely related” to Hezbollah factions.

An outlawed terrorist group that serves as a proxy force for Iran, Hezbollah has long operated in Canada, which it has used mostly as a support base to fundraise through crime and charities, shop for materials and spread its influence.

But Kourani’s case revealed that Hezbollah had also collected information about Canada and its largest airport.

“Hezbollah has crossed a threshold and is, at a minimum, developing North American networks capable of executing attacks should the group’s leadership deem them necessary,” said the article reproduced in the CATSA report.

Kourani underwent paramilitary training in Lebanon at age 16 and moved to the U.S. in 2003. He was recruited into the external operations unit in 2008 and told to lay low until obtaining U.S. citizenship.

Shortly after receiving a U.S. passport, he travelled to Guangzhou, China in 2009 for what U.S. authorities believe was a Hezbollah-directed trip to seek potential sources of precursor chemical needed to manufacture explosives.

“Kourani stated that, in his opinion, the ESO [Hezbollah’s External Security Organization] would smuggle explosives to the U.S. from Canada,” read an FBI report filed in U.S. District Court.

Kourani made yearly trips to Lebanon to obtain instructions from his handler, who wanted him to scout airports and identify Jewish businessmen and former members of the Israeli military living in the U.S.

At the time, Hezbollah’s Islamic Jihad Organization was desperate to retaliate for the 2008 assassination of its founder, Imad Mugniyah, he told the FBI.

During a 2014 visit to Canada, Kourani was approached by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. In 2016, his wife told CSIS Kourani had beaten her and her mother, according to a court document.

His lawyers have asked the court to set aside the verdict.

A Syrian man who first arrived in New York as a refugee is now facing terror charges involving a bomb plot in Pennsylvania, like reported by cbslocal.com.

A criminal complaint alleges Mustafa Mousab Alowemer planned to bomb an unidentified church on Pittsburgh’s north side, and purchased materials he thought were necessary to build a bomb. He also allegedly provided plans and a map to an undercover FBI agent he thought was a fellow Islamic State supporter.

“Targeting places of worship is beyond the pale, no matter what the motivation,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers said in a statement. “The defendant is alleged to have plotted just such an attack of a church in Pittsburgh in the name of ISIS.

The 21-year-old Alowemer, a Pittsburgh resident, is charged with one count of attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and two counts of distributing information relating to an explosive device or weapon of mass destruction.

Federal documents show he first arrived in the U.S. at JFK Airport in August of 2016. Then he moved to Pennsylvania, where he recently graduated high school.

According to the criminal complaint, Alowemer met several times between April and June with the undercover FBI agent and an FBI source. During one of the meetings, Alowemer allegedly provided plot details, bomb materials he’d purchased and printed copies of Google satellite maps with markings showing the location of the church plus arrival and escape routes.

Alowemer planned to carry out the bombing next month by delivering the explosives in a backpack, according to the complaint.

An international counterterrorism forum hosted by China’s armed police force opened in Beijing.

With the theme Special Forces Sniping, the four-day event, Great Wall-2019 International Forum on Counterterrorism, has attracted more than 240 representatives from the military and police forces of 31 countries including China, France, Pakistan, Israel and Uzbekistan.

This year’s forum aims to jointly build a platform for cooperation with different countries to share experiences and improve capabilities to effectively handle terrorist incidents and safeguard national security and social stability, said Qin Tian, deputy commander of the Chinese People’s Armed Police Force.

“We will work with an open attitude and pragmatic actions to jointly make the Great Wall Forum a platform for international cooperation, so we can share experiences, and pool our wisdom and strength, to effectively improve our ability to carry out our missions and to better benefit the people of all nations,” he added.

During the forum, participants are scheduled to attend five seminar sessions, view military training demonstrations and visit counter-terrorism training facilities.

In recent years, the armed police has hosted events including the Great Wall International Forum on Counterterrorism and the Sharp Blade International Sniping Competition, aiming to inspire mutual learning and promote friendship.

Recent declarations of victory over the Islamic State by U.S. President Donald Trump, coupled with the loss of nearly all territory controlled by the Islamic State, signaled to many that the end had arrived for the richest and deadliest terrorist groups in living memory.

The Islamic State, for many non-expert observers, seemingly came out of nowhere when it declared an Islamic Caliphate and took over regions of Iraq and Syria equaling the size of Britain, like reported by thestrategybridge.org.

Seemingly, the group was defeated after the Anbar Awakening and second Gulf War, but the organization waited patiently in the shadows for the right opportunity to strike back and regain relevance. During the interlude following the second Gulf War and the establishment of the caliphate, the group did what it has always done well—survive. Remnants of al-Qa’ida in Iraq, the forerunner of the Islamic State, organized, strategically planned, and created structures that would allow the group to take advantage of the power vacuum that arrived with the Syrian Revolution.

The Islamic State depended heavily upon former Baathist officials from the Saddam Hussein era such as Haji Bakr. Individuals such as these knew the importance of intelligence, military tactics, and one very important pathway to organizational success—logistics. The group prioritized logistics by creating the Immigration and Logistics Committee (ILC). The Committee is responsible for moving people, weapons, and finances inside and outside of territory controlled by the Islamic State through hidden supply chains. Both the United States and the United Nations have released reports warning that despite the loss of territory and damage to the bureaucratic structures, “The general security, finance, and immigration and logistics ‘bureaus’ remain intact.”

Recent attacks in Syria and Iraq show the Islamic State is not defeated. The Institute for the Study of War recently explained that IS is attempting to reestablish itself in Iraq and is poised to take advantage of linked networks for future attacks against the Government of Iraq. Additionally, countries have different perspectives on best practices for returning captured Islamic State fighters. The international community also continues to prepare for clandestine returning foreign fighter cells to carry out attacks similar to those carried out in the 2015 Paris Attacks, 2016 Brussel bombings, and most recently the Sri Lankan Easter attacks. The lack of international cohesion in dealing with these challenges presents IS ample opportunity to regenerate and reorganize.

The Isalmic State, like al-Qa’ida before it, has a reputation for carving out operational space in unstable regions. Recent calls for attacks in Yemen and Libya by Islamic State spokesperson Abu Hassan al Muhajir underscore the exploitation of vulnerable regions. Al Muhajir states, “O solders [sic] of the Khilafah in Iraq, Sham, Khurasan, Yemen, East Asia, West Africa, Libya, Sinai, Somali, and everywhere, prepare for the war and be diligent about it, grasp the opportunity, move the brigades, and make prolong the battle. Your enemy would not stand that.” Shortly after the statement, Islamic State fighters increased their violent attacks in Iraq, Syria, and other places.

According to the official magazine of the Islamic State, Al-Nabaa, within four days of al-Muhajir’s statement, ninety-two Islamic State attacks resulted in 360 killed from different provinces, mainly in Iraq and the Levant. The Immigration and Logistics Committee provides the organizational structure to implement al-Muhajir’s vision and is likely the organization elliptically referenced as a provider of provisions in al-Baghdadi’s video. The Committee serves as the sinew allowing the Islamic State to benefit from U.S. and coalition retrograde in Iraq and Syria, Libyan instability, and the deployment of foreign fighters.

THE IMMIGRATION AND LOGISTICS COMMITTEE (ILC)

The Immigration and Logistics Committee has two main roles: to receive and host immigrants traveling to territory controlled by the Islamic State and to supply the logistical needs of other departments. This logistics element of Islamic State strategy is codified in Abu Bakr Naji’s “The Management of Savagery.” Naji emphasizes the importance of logistics, noting that “regions of chaos and savagery will advance to the stage of the administration of savagery, while the remaining regions and states of the Islamic world will continue on two flanks—the flank of logistical support for regions of savagery controlled by us and the flank of the ‘power of vexation and exhaustion’ (directed against) the regimes, until victory comes to it from outside, by the permission of God. (By logistical support, I mean money, a place for transferring of people [i.e. a safehouse], sheltering of components, the media, etc.).” The similarities, as discussed below, between the directives of the manual and the tangible actions of the Immigration and Logistics Committee cannot be overstated.

Saudi Arabian Tirad Mohammad al-Jarba, also known by his nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Shimali, was the shadowy leader of the Immigration and Logistics Committee since at least 2005. Ten years later the U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned al-Shimali for his role as the “border and logistics official” responsible for facilitating travel from Turkey and Syria for IS fighters from Australia, Europe, and the Middle East. Treasury also explained that he was responsible for processing new Islamic State fighters in Azaz, Syria.

Even though al-Shimali was already designated as a global terrorist by Treasury in September 2015, his suspected role in the November 2015 Paris attacks led to a more urgent search attempt with a $5 million reward for justice offer. In announcing this reward, the U.S. Department of State explained that al-Shimali and the Immigration and Logistics Committee were responsible for moving people, money, and supplies intro Syria and Iraq from Europe, North Africa, and the Arabian Peninsula. The Rewards for Justice announcement also noted that under al-Shimali’s stewardship the Immigration and Logistics Committee facilitated the movement of 25,000 foreign fighters traveling to Iraq and Syria from over one-hundred countries.

In 2017, Russia claimed al-Shimali was killed in an airstrike in Deir Az Zor, Syria, along with forty other Islamic State militants. Despite al-Shimali’s possible death, the Immigration and Logistics Committee persists. According to a U.S. government press release, two Committee members were targeted in a coalition airstrike but other members have likely taken their places.

Moving People

The depth of scholarly work and reporting surrounding the Islamic State’s movement of people, finances, and equipment is deep. Yet there is a dearth of deep research on the Immigration and Logistics Committee. Part of this may stem from the various naming conventions used. The UN refers to the Islamic State’s logistics organization as the “Immigration and Logistics Coordination Offices,” while Treasury refers to al-Shimali as the “senior Syria-Turkey border and logistics official.” Despite the differences in nomenclature, the available information through Islamic State propaganda, primary source documents, media reports, and supporter accounts provide important glimpses into the Committee’s internal workings.

The Immigration and Logistics Committee under al-Shimali’s leadership focused on the movement of prospective fighters from Australia, Europe, and the Middle East to parts of Iraq and Syria. The Islamic State made an effort to disguise the movement as Hijrah and create a narrative for travelers that could be traced to the Prophet Mohammad’s own migration from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE to escape persecution. The jihadi highway is a well-known corridor on the porous border between Syria and Turkey through which an estimated twenty-five to forty percent of Islamic State total foreign fighters passed. Of the nineteen known crossings, the majority (around 2,930) passed through three Syrian points at Tal Abyad, Jarablus, or Azaz. An analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy stated, “The corridor is crucial to [the Islamic State’s] survival. It’s the main conduit of what was once a large smuggling area for [the Islamic State] to get fighters in and out, weapons in, funding in, oil and antiquities out. If [the Islamic State] loses that corridor it will basically be stifled.” An English language source document entitled “Hijrah to the Islamic State” provides detailed information to supporters on how to travel to the caliphate.

Sources also indicate that al-Shimali reportedly processed foreign recruits into Syria via Gaziantep, Turkey before returning them to Europe for terrorist actions such as the Paris attacks, which killed 130 people. Al-Shimali likely helped six of the Paris attackers travel to Syria for training before returning to Paris to carry out the attacks.

Moving Finances

Abu Hajar, the most senior Islamic State leader interviewed and head of finance in Iraq, released details regarding imposing taxes on Iraqi sectors to support Islamic State activities. Oil was a major revenue stream, estimated in 2014 as bringing in $1 million a day. The Immigration and Logistics Committee, namely al-Shimali, was responsible for organizing and distributing funds as it related to logistical operations.

Moving money for logistical purposes took many forms and included providing money for fake passports, safehouses, smugglers, travel of foreign fighters via planes and other means of travel. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) reported that an individual designated as Person M was responsible for recruitment and facilitation of foreign fighters moving into territory controlled by the Islamic State in Syria. Islamic State leadership provided finances for Person M to support and finance these activities. This included renting a hotel room that served as a logistics hub near the Turkish-Syrian border to temporarily host the incoming fighters. Person M reportedly processed over two-hundred recruits in that logistics hub and helped them cross into Syria. The report does not specifically link Person M to the Immigration and Logistics Committee, but it is likely these activities are a function of a Committee branch.

Moving Equipment

The Immigration and Logistics Committee is responsible for getting equipment, including weapons, to the right people in order to orchestrate operations. Many of the weapons used by the Islamic State were already in the territories they seized. Amnesty International UK indicates many of these weapons from over twenty-five countries were stockpiled in Iraq: “The huge scope reflects decades of irresponsible arms transfers to Iraq, coupled with the failure to install oversight mechanism during the US-led occupation after 2003.” Weapons used in the Islamic State stockpile include assault rifles such as the Russian AK series and the U.S. M-16 in addition to guided anti-tank missiles. When the Islamic State ran out of weapons, they were able to make their own because all the supplies they needed were in the territories they took over. The Immigration and Logistics Committee most likely played a large role in acquisition and distribution of weapons across Iraq and Syria as well as weapons used in attacks outside of the self-proclaimed caliphate, perhaps even in Sri Lanka based on Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s recent April video.[1]

CONCLUSION
Understanding the mechanics of the Islamic State’s logistical operations is vital if the international community is to withstand its attempts to regroup and establish a stronghold in areas teetering on the brink of regional instability. Recent attacks in Iraq are reminders of the Islamic State’s potency as the group uses its tunnel systems to carry out attacks on Iraqi forces.

Continued attacks on security forces and regional instability could allow space for the Islamic State to exploit structural state deficiencies, resulting in not only chaos and death but also providing the group the platform it needs to reclaim worldwide relevancy. Slowly, the Islamic State is rebuilding its brand by shifting resources and foreign fighting manpower to new regions ripe for exploitation. This dispersal may hinder the group’s short-term efforts, but in the mid to long term it may also provide the organization the roots it needs to redefine itself as an exemplar for aspiring terrorist groups.

Countering the logistical activities sponsored by the Immigration and Logistics Committee will be critical in limiting the Islamic State’s ability to regroup or otherwise exploit areas of fragility, such as Libya. Despite territorial losses, the Islamic State’s organizational structure that facilitated the group’s expansion and key operations remains intact, namely the Immigration and Logistics Committee. More Sri Lanka-like attacks will occur unless strategists focus efforts on degrading the Committee’s ability to use hidden supply chain networks that allow for the movement of finance, arms, and operatives. Until that happens, the Islamic State will remain a persistent geo-strategic threat.

The international soccer governing body FIFA has launched an investigation into Palestinian soccer chief, Jibril Rajoub, for inciting terror and promoting racism.

Earlier this year, FIFA’s ethics committee sent a letter to Rajoub, who is the chairman of the Palestinian Football Association (PFA), saying he had violated its rules, including “promoting and glorifying terrorism”; “inciting hatred and violence;” “promoting racism”; and “preventing the use of the game of soccer to build a bridge for peace.”

The investigation was instigated by a 2017 complaint lodged by watchdog group, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW).

FIFA requested that Rajoub respond individually to each of the points raised in the letter. The letter, which was leaked to a pro-Palestinian website, stated:

To the extent that you dispute any part of the… complaint and allegations, you are hereby requested to submit a statement identifying every point in the complaint allegations that you dispute; an explanation of why you dispute each such point; a description of any and all additional facts you contend, clarify, contradict, or are otherwise relevant to the issue or point in dispute; and all documents, records, or data within your possession, custody, or control that support your position.

It added that Rajoub had been charged with “personally” promoting and glorifying terrorism in an “active and… passive manner.”

It included several examples of Rajoub’s violations, including PFA soccer events and teams that were named after terrorists involved in the murder of Israelis.
It cited Rajoub as praising terrorists for their acts of “bravery” and saying he was “proud” of them.

Rajoub was also accused of encouraging the Hamas terror group to abduct Israeli soldiers, citing the soccer chief as saying, “If Hamas wants to kidnap soldiers, let them kidnap soldiers….Kidnapping is the language they understand. On the contrary, we encourage [Hamas].”

According to PMW, if Rajoub is found guilty of the charges he will face heavy fines and a ban on taking part in any soccer-related activities for up to five years.

PMW director Itamar Marcus said he welcomed the investigation by FIFA. He continued:

It is demeaning for FIFA to allow a terrorist supporter who uses vile racist language to have any position attached to FIFA’s good name. Instead of using the beautiful game to build bridges and promote peace and coexistence, Rajoub uses his position to incite violence and to promote and glorify terrorism. I am hopeful that FIFA will now, once and for all, permanently remove Rajoub from any position in FIFA, and cleanse this stain on international football.

Last year, FIFA suspended Rajoub for a year and fined him 20,000 Swiss francs ($20,340) for calling on fans to burn images and jerseys of Lionel Messi as part of a campaign to stop the Argentinian national team from playing in Israel.

Rajoub, who also serves as the Palestinian Authority’s representative to the International Olympic Committee, is a former terrorist who has served time in Israeli jails, routinely glorifies terror and has referred to Jews as “Satan.”