ISIL defector provides data on 22,000 ISIL supporters

Reuters:
disillusioned former member of Islamic State has passed a stolen memory stick of documents identifying 22,000 supporters in over 50 countries to a British journalist, a leak that could help the West target Islamist fighters planning attacks.

Leaks of such detailed information about Islamic State are rare and give Britain's spies a potential trove of data that could help unmask militants who have threatened more attacks like those that killed 130 people in Paris last November.

A man calling himself Abu Hamed, a former member of Islamic State who became disillusioned with its leaders, passed the files to Britain's Sky News on a memory stick he said he had stolen from the head of the group's internal security force.

On it were enrolment forms containing the names of Islamic State supporters and of their relatives, telephone numbers, and other details such as the subjects' areas of expertise and who had recommended them.

One of the files, marked "Martyrs", detailed a group of IS members who were willing and trained to carry out suicide attacks, Sky said.

Richard Barrett, a former head of global counter-terrorism at Britain's MI6 Secret Intelligence Service, said the cache was "a fantastic coup" in the fight against Islamic State.

"It will be an absolute goldmine of information of enormous significance and interest to very many people, particularly the security and intelligence services," Barrett told Sky News.
...
It will also be helpful in the screening process for refugees attempting to move about in the West.  Hopefully, the US will get its hands on the material too.  Germany is vouching for the authenticity of the information:

Germany: Files Listing Islamic State Fighters Are Authentic



BERLIN - Thousands of files have surfaced with personal data on members of the Islamic State group - documents that might help authorities track down and prosecute foreign fighters who returned home after joining the extremists, or identify those who ...

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains