Posted on 03/28/2006 7:37:37 AM PST by Wiz
Rome, 28 March (AKI) - One of the key webmasters who managed several al-Qaeda websites closed down in recent months has disappeared from the Worldwide Web, numerous messages posted to Islamist Internet forums have reported in recent days. The individual goes by the nickname of Irhabi 007 and was allegedly a founder member of the password-protected Muntada al-Ansar al-Islami (Islam Supporters Forum) and al-Eklas (Sincerity) websites. Al-Qaeda had been using both sites - which had thousands of users - for military instructions, propaganda and recruitment, according to the Washington Post newspaper, which broke the story of Irhabi 007's arrest.
Irhabi 007 is reportedly the nom de guerre of a 22-year-old West Londoner of North African origin, Younis Tsouli, arrested by British police last autumn after years of investigation. The police stepped up their probe following the July 2005 attacks on central London's transport system that killed 56 and injured 700. They managed to hunt down and seize Tsouli in London on 21 October, 2005. Irhabi means terrorist in Arabic.
In the house he was arrested in, investigators found several bogus credit cards, which Tsouli had used to purchase services from Internet providers on whose servers he allegedly disseminated his jihadist information. Apart from the labourious task of retracing his Internet operations, investigators have been confronted with the problem of al-Qaeda's ability to cover its Internet traces and throw them off the scent.
According to Islamist message board users, the arrest of Irhabi 007 and other jihadist hackers was due to painstaking detective work by the secret services of a number of Arab and Western countries, whose agents managed to infiltrate al-Qaeda's ranks.
(Excerpt) Read more at adnki.com ...
pong
Interesting. Thanks for the ping.
Who need the steenking Internet anyway? Is Western invention, so is very bad.
Interesting indeed. And I have to wonder why the information is now coming out. Obviously his disappearance some months ago would have been noticed by his surfing jihadi buddies.
Infiltration is the only way to actually win this war.
I was wondering the same thing. But if that were the case, I would think his screen name would have continued to be operational. Kind of a strange history here, at least with our partial view.
Hmm...think we will see HIS demise posted on the Internet?
ping
Yes, good point.
On closer read of the story it would seem that the disappearance may have only been noticed in recent days.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.