ISIS files leak: documents reveal names of thousands of jihadist recruits

A massive leak of top-secret Islamic State documents has exposed details of the terrorist network’s global recruitment programme.

Security services were last night examining files alleged to contain names, addresses, and family contacts of 22,000 jihadist fighters, including at least a dozen British recruits.

The leak was hailed as a severe setback for Isis, providing vital intelligence on the war effort in Syria and Iraq. Will Geddes, managing director of International Corporate Protection, a threat management company, said that the leak, if verified, was a “major blow”.

“They will be in massive crisis mode, worried about what is in there, who is in there and how it will disrupt their activities,” he said.
The security services would crosscheck the documents with their own information to provide “vital pieces of the intelligence jigsaw”.

They reveal that Isis has set up a human resources centre that requires “entrance interviews” from recruits. A 23-question survey gives their names, birth dates, nationalities, home towns and even blood types.

Prospective members were asked to choose between being used as suicide bombers, soldiers or in another role, and to detail any previous “jihadist experience”.

The cache also reveals that Isis seeks to model itself in the style of western governments that it aims to overthrow - with the establishment of a “borders administration” and other ministries. It lists the roles of Isis personnel, from drivers and members of the “prison service” to combat fighters and civil reserve.
Security agencies including MI5 and MI6 were examining the documents last night to verify their authenticity. Only a small portion of the cache is thought to have been released so far.

The 1,736 documents, stamped with the black flag of the “caliphate”, reveal that Isis has recruited jihadists from more than 50 countries. More than 70 per cent are Arabs while the majority of European recruits are from France, followed by Germany and Britain. A larger cache of documents obtained by Sky News is understood to contain the details of dozens of Britons, some thought to be based in the UK.

The man who stole the cache was a Free Syrian Army convert to Isis, according to Sky News. He quit the terrorist group claiming that it had been overrun by former soldiers from the Iraqi Baath party of Saddam Hussein and was no longer following Islamic rules.

Some well know names on the list

The leak allegedly came on a memory stick stolen from the head of Isis’s internal security police.

The Britons on the list include three well-known jihadists, two of whom have been killed in drone strikes. Reyaad Khan, 21, who was born in Cardiff, was considered such a threat to British security that David Cameron authorised the UK’s first drone strike in Syria to kill him last year.

Khan, who rose to notoriety in a recruitment video released in 2014, arrived in Isis-held territory in 2013, according to the documents.

Also among the files was Junaid Hussein, 20, a computer hacker convicted of accessing and disseminating private information belonging to Tony Blair.

Hussein, who married Sally Jones, 49, a British convert, led the Islamic State hacking division until he was killed in a US airstrike on Raqqa, the militia’s de facto capital.

Abdel Majid Abdel Bary, 26, who is known to have had links to Mohammed Emwazi, the murderer known as Jihadi John, was also named last night.

Guardian