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– JIHADI CHATROOMS

 

 

An internet Islamic website chat room connects between four alleged Islamic terrorists; Najibullah Zazi, Colleen LaRose, 46, who bills herself as “Jihad-Jane”, 31-year-old mother from Leadville, Colorado, Jamie Paulin Ramirez and her Algerian husband since 09/2009 Ali Charaf Damache.

 

Initially the four and few others has little in common, they come form deferent ages, ethnic background, different faiths and culture. But through the net they became to know each other, to consolidate their relations, to persuade the two women to convert to other faith, from Christianity to Islam, and even to marry with a lot of virtual relations but with little of physical acquaintances. The chat room became the epicenter of at least two terror plots – Zazi Plot to bomb the New York City subway system and the second plot to assassinate the Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, the SWEDISH CARTOON illustrator (see – Arrests 03.09.10).

 

It is therefore obvious that chat rooms in Islamic websites are a convenient tool to convert and recruit frustrated people to the cause of Global Jihad. But using a chat room is like speaking lewdly in a café house. It can be assumed that in many of those chat rooms at least one of the participants is a pretender, a representative of a security apparatus, whose role is to monitor such chat rooms.

 

Since many of the chat rooms users are, at least in the beginning, frustrated, naïve and curious people, who use their own computers from their home or workplace it is also very easy to trace them, to obtain initial leads for further investigation and, eventually, to foil terror attacks and to arrest the conspirators. Chat rooms are two-edged sword for their users (see the case of Ryan G Anderson).

 

Form the media reports we can understand that the specific chat room of Najibullah Zazi, Jihad Jane and their associates was monitored by the FBI and other security services for over a year and it was, probably, due to the usage of the chat room that the more serious plot of Nazibullah zazi was revealed and enabled the authorities to tail him, through him to find out his connections and to obtain enough evidence before his final arrest.

 

The web is indeed a convenient space for Islamic Global Jihad to spread its ideas, to recruit supporters and to form cells but it is also a “honey trap” and a remarkable hunting ground for successful anti-terror operations.   
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* Related topics –  
09/2008 -CYBER  CELL ARRESTED IN SAUDI ARABIA  
08/2007 -CYBER  JIHAD  
07/2007 -U.K CYBER  CELL
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