About a dozen uniformed police in riot gear, and a handful of detectives, gathered outside the four-story terraced house on a quiet street just off Shepherds Bush roundabout in West London. After a tip-off from overseas colleagues, they knew that inside was a man in contact with a group planning a bombing in Central Europe. His name was Younes Tsouli, but the detectives knew little more about him. As they tried to shove their way in, the young man in the top-floor flat forced his door shut. It didn’t hold for long. Once the police flooded in, there was a struggle. A mirror smashed and one officer emerged bloodied from a shard of glass. Tsouli was overpowered. “He was thoroughly detained,” one detective recalls. At first, officers were not sure that they had the right person: the long-haired young man in jogging shorts bore little resemblance to the short-haired man in the photo they had been given. But when he confirmed his name, they knew they had their man. Two detectives led him away. Amid the mess typical of any 22-year-old’s room, detectives found a laptop on a desk, still switched on and with programs running. When specialist forensic science officers arrived, they found that Younes Tsouli had been creating a website called YOUBOMBIT. A banner with the title and flames was across the bottom of the screen. Also on his screen was a search box with the word “bomb” as the search term. Tsouli was logged in under the username IRH007. On his computer drives police would find 37,000 credit card details, including security codes. The detectives didn’t know it and wouldn’t realize for some weeks but they had caught one of the most notorious, most wanted cyber-jihadists in the world, a man whose case illustrated perfectly how terrorists are using the internet not just to spread propaganda, but to organize attacks. The evidence against Younis Tsouli and his co-conspirators was so overwhelming they pleaded guilty to incitement to commit acts of terrorism on the internet. He is now serving a 16-year prison sentence at Belmarsh High Security Prison in London, where he is denied access to the internet. Read more on this huge story in detail on BBC. OS9USERWe broke this story before any other news network in the U.S.
Labels: breaking news os9user al-qaeda secret agent 007 Younes Tsouli arrested website youbombit irh007 terrorist attacks
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