Efforts by theIslamic State of Iraq and the Levant to recruit young, vulnerable Americans via social media has turned it into a bigger terror threat than al-Qaeda, according to the director of the FBI.
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The FBI has arrested a significant number of people over the last eight weeks who had been radicalized, Comey said, without specifying a number.
His comments echo those of Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, who in April said that IS was not forming terror cells in the al-Qaeda model to attack the West, but instead attempting to inspire misfits and the mentally ill to commit attacks through online propaganda. “And by virtue of that model, it’s now the threat we are anxious about in the homeland most of all”.
He repeated previous claims that several people had been arrested for planning attacks on the Fourth of July holiday but gave no further details.
Hundreds of FBI investigations have been opened, across all 50 states, focusing on targets who have received messages from ISIS and may act upon them.
Comey said it was too soon to say how Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, the Chattanooga gunman who killed four Marines and one US Navy sailor last week, became radicalized. His family has said he suffered from depression and used drugs.
‘I worry very much about what I can’t see, ‘ Comey added, because he said Islamic State group recruiters use encrypted communication software and human couriers to avoid US eavesdropping.
When asked if their threat now eclipsed that from al-Qaeda, who killed more than 3,000 people in the 9/11 attacks, he replied “yes”.
Dozens of Americans, aged between 18 and 62, are being tracked after travelling to fight with the extremist group.
The U.S. has been leading coalition airstrikes in Iraq and Syria against terror groups like the Islamic State since summer 2014.
But Mr Comey said the Khorasan threat had been “significantly diminished” by US military strikes.
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The Pentagon announced Tuesday Muhsin al Fadhli, a Kuwaiti-born jihadi and leader of the Khorasan Group, was killed earlier this month in a targeted strike.
