Journalists Got Their Hands on an Islamic State

Computer. What They Found in the Hidden Files

Is Terrifying
Buried in a Dell computer captured in Syria are lessons for making bubonic
plague bombs and missives on using weapons of mass destruction.

During the Cold War, everyone in the world lived in fear that a nuclear blast
would wipe them out, and during the turn of the century, Al Qaeda flew
commercial jets into US buildings.
Today, the well-funded Islamic State is continuing this reign of terror with
the formidable biological threat.
From Foreign Policy:

ATAKYA, Turkey Abu Ali, a commander of a moderate Syrian rebel
group in northern Syria, proudly shows a black laptop partly covered in
dust. We took it this year from an ISIS hideout, he say
Abu Ali says the fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS),
which have since rebranded themselves as the Islamic State, all fled before
he and his men attacked the building. The attack occurred in January in a
village in the Syrian province of Idlib, close to the border with Turkey, as
part of a larger anti-ISIS offensive occurring at the time. We found the
laptop and the power cord in a room, he continued, I took it with me. But I
have no clue if it still works or if it contains anything interesting.
As we switched on the Dell laptop, it indeed still worked. Nor was it
password-protected. But then came a huge disappointment: After we
clicked on My Computer, all the drives appeared empty.
Appearances, however, can be deceiving. Upon closer inspection, the ISIS
laptop wasnt empty at all: Buried in the hidden files section of the
computer were 146 gigabytes of material, containing a total of 35,347 files
in 2,367 folders. Abu Ali allowed us to copy all these files which included
documents in French, English, and Arabic onto an external hard drive.
The laptops contents turn out to be a treasure trove of documents that
provide ideological justifications for jihadi organizations and practical
training on how to carry out the Islamic States deadly campaigns. They
include videos of Osama bin Laden, manuals 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.
A screenshot of material found on the computer. The files appear to be
videos of speeches by jihadist clerics.
But after hours upon hours of scrolling through the documents, it became
clear that the ISIS laptop contains more than the typical propaganda and
instruction manuals used by jihadists. The documents also suggest that
the laptops owner was teaching himself about the use of biological
weaponry, in preparation for a potential attack that would have shocked the
world.
The information on the laptop makes clear that its owner is a Tunisian
national named Muhammed S. who joined ISIS in Syria and who studied
chemistry and physics at two universities in Tunisias northeast. Even
more disturbing is how he planned to use that education:
The ISIS laptop contains a 19-page document in Arabic on how to develop
biological weapons and how to weaponize the bubonic plague from infected
animals.
The ISIS laptop contains a 19-page document in Arabic on how to develop
biological weapons and how to weaponize the bubonic plague from
infected animals.
The advantage of biological weapons is that they do not cost a lot of
money, while the human casualties can be huge, the document states.
The document includes instructions for how to test the weaponized
disease safely, before it is used in a terrorist attack. When the microbe is
injected in small mice, the symptoms of the disease should start to appear
within 24 hours, the document says.
The laptop also includes a 26-page fatwa, or Islamic ruling, on the usage of
weapons of mass destruction. If Muslims cannot defeat
the kafir [unbelievers] in a different way, it is permissible to use weapons of
mass destruction, states the fatwa by Saudi jihadi cleric Nasir al-Fahd,
who is currently imprisoned in Saudi Arabia. Even if it kills all of them and
wipes them and their descendants off the face of the Earth.
When contacted by phone, a staff member at a Tunisian university listed on
Muhammeds exam papers confirmed that he indeed studied chemistry and
physics there. She said the university lost track of him after 2011, however.
Out of the blue, she asked: Did you find his papers inside Syria? Asked
why she would think that Muhammeds belongings would have ended up in
Syria, she answered, For further questions about him, you better ask state
security.
An astonishing number of Tunisians have flocked to the Syrian battlefield
since the revolt began. In June, Tunisias interior ministerestimated that at
least 2,400 Tunisians were fighting in the country, mostly as members of
the Islamic State.
This isnt the first time that jihadists have attempted to acquire weapons of
mass destruction. Even before the 9/11 attacks, al Qaeda had experimented
with a chemical weapons program in Afghanistan. In 2002, CNN obtained a
tape showing al Qaeda members testing poison gas on three dogs, all of
which died.
Nothing on the ISIS laptop, of course, suggests that the jihadists already
possess these dangerous weapons. And any jihadi organization
contemplating a bioterrorist attack will face many difficulties: Al Qaedatried
unsuccessfully for years to get its hands on such weapons, and the United
States has devoted massive resources to preventing terrorists from making
just this sort of breakthrough. The material on this laptop, however, is a
reminder that jihadists are also hard at work at acquiring the weapons that
could allow them to kill thousands of people with one blow.
The real difficulty in all of these weapons [is] to actually have a
workable distribution system that will kill a lot of people, said Magnus
Ranstorp, research director of the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies at
the Swedish National Defence College. But to produce quite scary
weapons is certainly within [the Islamic State's] capabilities.
The Islamic States sweeping gains in recent months may have provided it
with the capacity to develop such new and dangerous weapons. Members
of the jihadi group are not solely fighting on the front lines these days
they also control substantial parts of Syria and Iraq. The fear now is that
men like Muhammed could be quietly working behind the front lines for
instance, in the Islamic State-controlled University of Mosul or in some
laboratory in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the groups de facto capital to
develop chemical or biological weapons.
In short, the longer the caliphate exists, the more likely it is that members
with a science background will come up with something horrible. The
documents found on the laptop of the Tunisian jihadist, meanwhile, leave
no room for doubt about the groups deadly ambitions.
Use small grenades with the virus, and throw them in closed areas like
metros, soccer stadiums, or entertainment centers, the 19-page document
on biological weapons advises. Best to do it next to the air-conditioning. It
also can be used during suicide operations.