ISIS Names Brussels Attackers
Terror magazine says brothers involved in Paris and Brussels attacks.
-- An issue of an ISIS magazine reveals new details about the terrorists involved in the deadly attack in Brussels, Belgium and separately appears to threaten an aide to Hillary Clinton along with a U.S. Congressman.
The ISIS magazine, released online overnight, described Brussels bombers Ibrahim and Khalid El-Bakraoui as key logisticians in the terror cell that carried out both the Brussels attack last month and the Paris attacks in November.
“All preparations for the raids in Paris and Brussels started with him [Khalid] and his older brother Ibrahim,” the magazine says.
Khalid, who detonated a suicide belt in a Brussels subway station, is described as the mastermind of the Brussels attack, led to violence by dreams in which he believed himself to be fighting in both modern and ancient holy battles. Ibrahim had detonated his suicide belt in the Brussels airport.
The magazine praised another young man identified as Najm al-Ashrawi, who also blew himself up in the Brussels airport, and said his radicalization began just in 2013 when he went to fight in Syria. Authorities previously identified the second airport bomber as Najim Laachraoui. The magazine said he was wounded in fighting in Syria and, while recovering, “began to train in order to realize his dream of returning to Europe to avenge the Muslims of Iraq and Sham [a region including Syria] for the constant bombing of crusader warplanes.”
The magazine makes mention of another man linked the Brussels attacks, Muhammad Bilaqa’id -- likely the man authorities identified as Mohamed Belkaid -- who apparently survived a shot to the head in Syria but was called to Europe by Laachraoui to take part in the attacks in Europe. He was killed in a police raid just days before the Brussels bombings. The article shows images of both Laachraoui and Belkaid in desert camouflage, common of ISIS fighters in Syria, and Belkaid holding a bloody knife.
The article does not appear to discuss Mohammad Abrini, who authorities say recently confessed to being the mysterious “man in white” who was spotted in the Brussels airport with the bombers prior to the explosions, or another man, only identified as Osama K., who is suspected of being involved in the subway attack.
Elsewhere in the magazine, an aide to Hillary Clinton and Congressman Keith Ellison are mentioned in a long article that called extremists to arms, identifying them as “overt crusaders” and “politically active apostates” who “involve themselves in the politics and enforcing laws of the kufr [disbelievers].” Earlier in the article, the author cites ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as saying for those "who are caught before they repent, then there is no amnesty for them and their shall be a painful -- and fatal -- punishment."
Rep. Ellison, D-Minn., took the threat as a point of pride.
“The fact that I’m in Daesh’s [ISIS’s] bad side means I am fighting for things like justice, tolerance, and amore inclusive world,” the lawmaker said. “As millions of faithful Muslims flee [ISIS’s] imposed nightmare they call a ‘caliphate,’ [ISIS] takes the time to threaten Muslim public servants in the West… [ISIS] is a collection of liars, murderers, torturers and rapists. No Muslim I know recognizes what they preach as al-Islam.”
Terrorist groups like ISIS and al Qaeda have previously called for the deaths of Americans, from high-profile politicians like President Obama to rank-and-file service members.
“This is just a way they are trying to intimidate us, and it’s not going to work,” said a service member whose personal information was leaked online last year.
The report has been updated.