By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 22 August 2023
Tag Archives: al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia
The Death of Al-Qaeda’s Leader Ayman al-Zawahiri: One Year On
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 31 July 2023
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi: Bringing the Islamic State to Saddam’s Iraq and Joining Al-Qaeda
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 20 June 2023
Al-Qaeda and Global Terrorism: What is the Current Threat?
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 23 February 2023
The ‘Strategic Plan’ of the Islamic State
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 16 August 2022
The Unlearned Lesson of 7/7
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 7 July 2022
The Capture of the Islamic State “Finance Minister” and the Impact of Leadership Losses
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 22 October 2021
This article was originally published at European Eye on Radicalization
Mustafa al-Khadhemi, the Iraqi Prime Minister, announced on the morning of 11 October that the Iraqi National Intelligence Service (INIS) had arrested Sami Jassim al-Jaburi (Haji Hamid), the effective finance emir of the Islamic State (ISIS), in “a complex external operation”. Continue reading
Islamic State Profiles the Godfather of its Media Department
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 8 May 2021
The 285th edition of Al-Naba, the weekly newsletter of the Islamic State (IS), released on 6 May, had a biography of Abu Muhammad al-Furqan, one of the most important IS leaders, the head of its Central Media Department and its operational ruler when he was killed in September 2016. Continue reading
The First “Interview” with the Islamic State’s War Minister (2008)
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 3 April 2021
The Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) released a forty-five-minute media product, “The First Audio Interview with Shaykh Abu Hamza al-Muhajir”, on 24 October 2008. A translated transcript of the interview is reproduced below, with some interesting and important sections highlighted in bold.
The First Speech of Abu Hamza al-Muhajir
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 15 March 2021
The Islamic State movement, then-known as Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia (AQM), used a suicide truck bomb to blow up the Sadeer Hotel, where many foreign contractors were staying, and the next-door Agriculture Ministry, on 9 March 2005, murdering three people and wounding forty, thirty of them Americans. Reporting at the time noted that “insurgents wearing police uniforms first shot to death a guard at the Agriculture Ministry’s gate, allowing the truck to enter a compound the ministry shares with the adjacent Sadeer hotel”, and these details were confirmed in a two-minute audio message released later in the day by Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, the veteran Egyptian jihadist who would take over AQM when its founder was killed in 2006.[1] A transcript of the brief speech is reproduced below. Continue reading