Britain’s Sky News on Wednesday reported that it had obtained tens of thousands of documents, containing 22,000 names, addresses, telephone numbers and family contacts of Islamic State (IS) militants. According to Deutsche Welle, a representative of Germany’s federal police says they have the documents, and that they’re authentic.
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Warren called on media outlets who might have the names and numbers to publish them.
Sky News said it obtained the data via a memory stick provided by a former member of the Free Syrian Army using the name Abu Hamed, who joined ISIS but then quit because he believes the group stopped following Islamic law and is too heavily influenced by former members of Iraq’s Baath party.
Once the administrative forms were filled out, Ramsay reports, they were given to ISIS’ head of internal security, who then put the data on a memory stick.
Though the significance of these files is yet to be gauged, they could be the largest yet treasure trove of documents found on IS and the most significant leak on its past and present fighters and operations across the Mideast. The questionnaire says he was born of Bangladeshi origins in 1995, entered Syria on 31 August 2013, and was offering four areas of work – “fighter, sharia related, security work and admin ” .
Sky News said some of the names were already well-known, but the documents could also help identify some extremists who were previously unknown to the authorities in their countries.
Markus Koths, a spokesman for Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office, the Bundeskriminalamt, told The Associated Press that the agency had IS documents such as those obtained by the Sueddeutsche Zeitung. One of the files is said to contain the details of fighters trained to carry out suicide attacks.
The documents it posted had the word “secret” at the bottom, while on the top it had the name “Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant”, or ISIL, on one top corner and the “General Directorate of Borders” on the other. After they split in early 2013, those under al-Baghdadi’s command kept using the name ISIL until the caliphate was declared and they started using just the Islamic State.
He speculated that it could be an attempt by the Syrian administration to engage Western intelligence agencies.
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“And clearly I think that that is a significant point that we’ll take out of this”. Turkish courts have arrested more than 800 people with IS links, they said.
