US authorities exposed sinister puppet master who move Islamic State terrorists across Europe
A $5million bounty has been placed on the head of a sinister ISIL ‘gatekeeper’ who may have helped six Paris suicide bombers travel from Syria to France to carry out their deadly mission.
US intelligence has identified Tarad Mohammad al-Jarba, also known as Abu-Muhammad al-Shimali, as a key puppet master who leads ISIL’s ominously named immigration and logistics committee.
Al-Jarba plays a critical clandestine role moving western terrorist fighters from Europe, Australia and elsewhere to Gaziantep in Turkey, and onto training camps and battlefields in Iraq and Syria.
Here, the jihadis are skilled up with combat experience and weapons and explosives training, before often being returned to urban centres in their homeland.
US investigators have turned the spotlight on al-Jabar as the inevitable quest for answers over how the November 13 attacks in Paris that left 132 dead were able to happen.
Three suicide bombers entered Europe as fake ‘refugees’, French investigators now believe, and questions are also being asked over how the mastermind of the Paris attacks was able to move into France.
Serious accusations of security failures have been levelled at French intelligence agencies and police.
The most disturbing allegations is Paris police failed to pass a note to the country’s intelligence services that warned a group of six were preparing a major attack on the capital 10 days before November 13.
A senior official in Turkey has said they alerted France twice of an imminent attack, and Associated Press has reported Iraqi intelligence also contacted French counterparts with potentially useful information.
Political inquiries will no doubt eventually reveal the veracity of the finger pointing, but the facts indicate France faces the most challenging anti-terror operation of any country in Europe.
France has sent more fighters to Syria and Iraq than any of its European neighbours. It is believed roughly 6000 jihadi fighters from Europe have travelled to Syria, and nearly 2000 are from France.
A specialists team of nearly 600 intelligence agents is stretched trying to physically follow and monitor thousands of terror suspects, according to the Telegraph.
“The task we’ve been given, measured simply by the number of people we now need to keep tabs on, is so enormous in certain ways, it’s just become impossible,” a French counterterrorism official said in an interview in September. “You can’t watch everyone. We’re swamped.”
France has recently beefed up legislation to conduct domestic surveillance, but, like all of western Europe, its powers pale in comparison to the post 9/11 Patriot Act in the US.
There have been calls among EU member states to redraw the Schengen Zone – a region that allows passport-free travel across multiple borders.
This is a soft underbelly that ISIL ‘gatekeeper’ al-Jarba has been able to exploit.
ISIL terrorists who are able to successfully pose as refugees and enter Greece via Turkey can move freely into France, Belgium, Germany and other prized western targets.
An emergency EU meeting in Brussels on Saturday will discuss re-drawing the Schengen Zone, tightening borders and enforcing strict passport checks.
It has always been one of ISIL’s primary ambitions to draw ‘western infidels’ into a ground war in Syria and a final showdown in the city of Raqqa.
Brutal attacks like those inflicted on Paris will test the resolve of Barack Obama and other leaders to keep dropping bombs from the air and avoid putting boots on the ground.
In just a few short weeks, ISIL has flexed its muscle and ratcheted up the climate of fear.
They claimed responsibility for the October bombing of a Russian passenger plane that killed 224, and an ISIL suicide bomber is thought to have killed 44 people in Beirut just days before the attacks on Paris.
With the festive season coming, Europe is nervous and intelligence agencies across the continent will be on high alert.
Source: 9News
