Not satisfied with the campaign of brutal violence it has conducted in Syria and Iraq, militant group Islamic State (IS) has apparently called for the assassination of employees of Twitter, the micro-blogging platform that the jihadist outfit has used extensively to publicise gory executions for many months now.
This week, attention has been focused on at least one IS-related Twitter account that issued a series of tweets asking “lone wolves” in the U.S. and Europe to make Twitter employees the focus of their attacks, ostensibly in retaliation for Twitter continuously fighting to suspend accounts of IS or its followers and stifle extremist propaganda.
One Twitter handle in question, @dawlamoon, which “purportedly represents Al Nusra Al Maqdisia (The Supporters of Jerusalem) — a Jerusalem-based group that pledged loyalty to IS in February and claimed to have participated in the Gaza war on its behalf,” tweeted, “#The_Concept_of_Lone_Wolf_Attacks The time has arrived to respond to Twitter’s management by directly attacking their employees and physically assassinating them!! Those who will carry this out are the sleeper cells of death.”
Although it remained unclear about whether the account was officially part of IS, Twitter suspended the account around 2 p.m. Eastern time on Monday, after the threats to Twitter staff were posted.
