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Al-Qaeda’s Internet Guru Turns Out To Be British Computer Geek
The Daily Mail revealed today that the man responsible for the vast majority of the jihadi recruitment videos flooding the Internet is a 23 year old computer nerd from London.
Younes Tsouli, 23, an IT student at a London college, used his top-floor flat in W12 to help Islamist extremists wage a propaganda war against the West.
Under the name “Irhabi 007″, which combines a James Bond reference with the Arabic word for terrorist, he worked with al Qaeda leaders in Iraq and came up with a way to convert often gruesome videos into a form that could be put onto the Web.
Videos he posted included messages from Osama bin Laden and images of the kidnapping and murder of hostages in Iraq such as American Nick Berg.
Basically, Al-Qaeda operatives would pass him tapes straight out of a camcorder and he would transfer them to his computer.
After watermarking the videos with the “As-Sahab” Al-Qaeda logo he would then upload them to Islamic forums, YouTube, and other video sharing sites.
Once he uploaded the movies, they took on a life of their own and went viral. The propaganda was downloaded, copied, or burned to DVD millions of times.
Tsouli arrived in London in 2001 with his father, a Moroccan diplomat. He studied IT at a college in central London and was quickly radicalised by images of the war in Iraq posted on the internet.
By 2003 he had already started up his own radical Islamic website where he posted a variety of Islamic propaganda and jihad videos.
His work caught the attention of some high level Al-Qaeda members who then recruited him to be the IT guy for the entire organization.
In 2005, Tsouli became administrator for the web forum al-Ansat, used by 4,500 extremists to communicate with each other, sharing such practical information as how to make explosives and how to get to Iraq to become a suicide bomber.
By that time he had begun to attract the attention of various law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and Britain, which eventually led to his arrest.
His capture led to the arrest of several Islamic terrorists around the world, including 17 men in Canada and two in the United States.
This is another example of why it’s so important that we stay vigilant and stay on the offense against these thugs. This kid was running Al-Qaeda’s Internet operation from an apartment in London.
The dedication that these people have to their radical cause is truly remarkable and should never be underestimated.
-Chris Jones
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