Disgruntled Terrorists Are Now Turning on ISIS
Revenge is a dish best served cold.
After enduring months of U.S.-led airstrikes, the Islamic State now has a new enemy: its own recruits. In separate data dumps given to Sky News as well as the German paper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, jihadis who tried (and hated) the ISIS way of life have dropped the dime on their former comrades-in-arms.
Sky News received documents detailing information about citizens from up to 51 different countries who have filled out questionnaires prior to being inducted into ISIS’s terrorist army. Many names found on the data dump, reported Sky, are “well-known.” The names include Abdel Bary, who was a rapper in London before joining the Islamic State in 2013 and a high-profile jihadi who is no longer in action:
Another jihadi named in the documents, now dead after being targeted in a drone strike, is Junaid Hussain, the head of Islamic State’s media wing who along with his wife former punk Sally Jones, plotted attacks in the UK.
Her whereabouts are unknown.
Reyaad Khan from Cardiff, who also entered in 2013, is also among those found among the registration forms.
He was well known for appearing in a highly produced Islamic State propaganda video.
He was later killed.
The Los Angeles Times reported that the ISIS data acquired by the German authorities was received the data “on a memory stick stolen from the leader of Islamic State’s internal security police by a former fighter who had grown disillusioned with the group.”
Sky spoke directly with the source of the data dump, and he clearly hated ISIS. Asked if he thought the information he provided to the media could gut ISIS’s network by giving valuable intelligence to the terrorist group’s enemies (read: everyone), he simply said, “God willing.”
If this information helps stop the terrorist state in its tracks, it’s none too soon. As was clear in the horrific, ISIS-inspired attacks on Paris in 2015, the terrorist army is only becoming more aggressive and self-assured in its assault on what it considers the world of infidels, regularly threatening new attacks at every turn. It would be just desserts if a group that recruited by promising naive young men their version of paradise is taken out by those very same recruits’ sense of disillusionment.