Homeland Security News

The United States said on Monday it had imposed sanctions on four people affiliated with Islamic State and another militant group, including two Russian nationals and a Briton.  The U.S. Treasury Department said three Islamic State supporters and a member of the so-called Caucasus Emirate were designated as foreign terrorists. The designations allow the U.S. government to freeze their assets and bars U.S. citizens from dealing with them.

The four were also put on the United Nations al Qaeda sanctions list, a Treasury statement said.  The action "highlights the ramp-up in U.S. and international efforts to aggressively target and destroy ISIL," said Daniel L. Glaser, the Treasury's assistant secretary for terrorist financing.

Read more:  Reuters

Britain's most senior counter-terror police officer has warned that social media firms are putting lives at risk by refusing to co-operate with investigations into terrorist activity.  Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said some companies were designing products in such a way that they are useless to police conducting covert surveillance operations.  Companies are adopting a strategy of refusing to provide detectives with online data of terrorist suspects and some inform suspects they are under police surveillance, he claimed.

In a speech at the Royal United Services Institute, Mr Rowley said advances in technology were creating surveillance "blind spots" making it harder to arrest suspects.  "We've had terrorist cases in that last year where digital surveillance gaps have meant that as the plot has developed we've been unsighted on exact details of what they're planning," he said.

Read more:  Sky News

Dozens of Islamist Saudi Arabian clerics have called on Arab and Muslim countries to "give all moral, material, political and military" support to what they term a jihad, or holy war, against Syria's government and its Iranian and Russian backers.  Although the clerics who signed the online statement are not affiliated with the government, their strong sectarian and anti-Christian language reflects mounting anger among many Saudis over Russian and Iranian involvement in Syria's civil war.

Russia last week started air strikes against Syrian opposition targets that it describes as aimed at weakening the jihadist Islamic State group, a move Riyadh has denounced. The clerics' statement compared it to the Soviet Union's 1980 invasion of Afghanistan, which prompted an international jihad.  "The holy warriors of Syria are defending the whole Islamic nation. Trust them and support them ... because if they are defeated, God forbid, it will be the turn of one Sunni country after another," the statement said.

...Riyadh's state-affiliated clergy have already termed the war a jihad for Syrians, but they have also denounced Islamic State and al Qaeda and said that Saudi citizens must not go abroad to fight or give the rebels money except via government channels.  The 53 signatories, including prominent Islamists with a history of opposing the government, were careful not to contradict that message, for example by calling on Saudis to join the jihad, but they also did not speak out against travel for jihad.

Read more:  Reuters

At least 37 people were killed on Monday in car bomb attacks in Baghdad and the north and south of Iraq, police and medical sources said.  One attack took place near a crowded market in the town of Khalis, about 80 km (50 miles) northeast of Baghdad, killing 15 people, police said.  "The driver begged police to be allowed to park his vehicle in order to buy medication from a nearby pharmacy and five minutes later it (the bomb) went off and caused huge destruction," police captain Mohammed al-Tamimi said.

In the town of Al Zubair, about 15 km (9 miles) southwest of the oil town of Basra, a second attack took place also near a crowded market. Ten people died.

Another car bomb exploded in the Hussainiya district of the northern outskirts of Baghdad, killing 12 people, police and medical sources said.

Iraq, a major OPEC oil producer, is struggling to come up with a formula to contain Islamic State, the ultra-hardline Sunni group that controls a third of the country and wants to redraw the map of the Middle East.  Islamic State has previously claimed responsibility for car and suicide bombings.

News source: Reuters

A Jordanian parliament member said he learned from Islamic State-linked media that his son carried out a suicide attack in Iraq, three months after dropping out of medical school and joining the extremist group.

The case highlights the continued grassroots appeal of IS ideas in the region, including in staunchly pro-Western Jordan, a partner in the U.S.-led military campaign against the group. IS militants have seized large parts of Syria and Iraq, both neighbors of Jordan.

"My son had everything, a family, money, and studying medicine, but he was controlled by terrible thoughts," the legislator, Mazen Dalaeen told The Associated Press. "He was deceived and tricked by Islamic State. Islamic State is in every home through TVs and the Internet."

The legislator said he last saw Mohammed in Ukraine in June and stayed with him and his Ukrainian wife, a convert to Islam, for a week. Mohammed was a third-year medical student.

Read more: AP via Yahoo News