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How a Secretive Branch of ISIS Built a Global Network of Killers

(New York Times) Rukmini Callimachi - Believing he was answering a holy call, Harry Sarfo left his home in Bremen, Germany, last year and drove for four straight days to reach the territory controlled by the Islamic State in Syria. The Islamic State's secret service informed him that where he was really needed was back home, to help carry out the group's plan of waging terrorism across the globe. "They have loads of people living in European countries and waiting for commands to attack the European people," Sarfo recounted on Monday, in an interview inside a maximum-security prison near Bremen. "They said, 'Would you mind to go back to Germany, because that's what we need at the moment.' And they always said they wanted to have something that is occurring in the same time: They want to have loads of attacks at the same time in England and Germany and France." Sarfo's account, along with those of other captured recruits, has further pulled back the curtain on the Islamic State's machinery for projecting violence beyond its borders. The group has sent "hundreds of operatives" back to the EU, with "hundreds more in Turkey alone," according to a senior U.S. intelligence official and a senior American defense official.
2016-08-04 00:00:00
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