Western governments appeared to be increasingly concerned about the possibility of a terror attack by Islamic State, the militant group that now controls a vast stretch of territory across Iraq and Syria, even as a laptop found near the Idlib province hinted at IS plans to weaponise the bubonic plague, and more evidence emerged of U.S. and UK citizens taking up arms to fight alongside the extremists.
Prospects for controlling the jihadist insurrection ravaging the region also appeared dim this week as U.S. President Barack Obama admitted on Thursday, “We don’t have a strategy yet,” and there was no clarity that his plan to continue “consultations with Congress,” would lead to a congressional vote on military action.
Meanwhile Foreign Policy magazine reported that a laptop seized by moderate Syrian rebels from fleeing IS forces, said to be the property of a Tunisian man fighting for the militants, contained a19-page document in Arabic on how to develop biological weapons and how to weaponise the bubonic plague from infected animals.
Additionally the laptop, whose contents were in 146 gigabytes of hidden files, included training manuals in French, English, and Arabic on how to make bombs, instructions for stealing cars, and lessons on how to use disguises in order to avoid getting arrested while traveling from one jihadi hot spot to another and videos of Osama bin Laden, the report said.
Further raising fears of terror attacks Reuters reported a conversation that it had with an IS militant via telephone, in which the man indicated that their leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had several surprises in store for the West.
“[Western law enforcement agencies] think they can distinguish us these days they are fools and more than that they don't know we can play their game in intelligence. They infiltrated us with those who pretend to be Muslims and we have also penetrated them with those who look like them,” he reportedly said.
The UK also appeared to cognise a heightened risk of attack as Prime Minister David Cameron said IS posed a “greater and deeper threat to our security than we have known before,” and Home Secretary Theresa May added that the raising of the UK’s terror threat level “substantial” to “severe” meant that an attack on the UK is “highly likely,” not necessarily “imminent.”
This week it also became clear that IS, whose apparent brutality towards captives sent shockwaves across the world on August 19 when they posted on the Internet a video showing the beheading of U.S. journalist James Foley, was holding several other hostages including a 26-year-old female aid worker whose name media organisations have agreed to keep out of publication.
According to the woman’s family militants have demanded a $6.6 million ransom for her release, and also asked that Pakistani national and terror suspect Aafia Siddiqui is released from the U.S. prison where she is currently serving an 86-year sentence on assault charges.
