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NYT: A terrorist hoping to buy an antiaircraft weapon in recent years needed to look no further than Facebook, which has been hosting sprawling online arms bazaars, offering weapons ranging from handguns and grenades to heavy machine guns and guided missiles.
The Facebook posts suggest evidence of large-scale efforts to sell military weapons coveted by terrorists and militants. The weapons include many distributed by the United States to security forces and their proxies in the Middle East. These online bazaars, which violate Facebook’s recent ban on the private sales of weapons, have been appearing in regions where the Islamic State has its strongest presence.
This week, after The New York Times provided Facebook with seven examples of suspicious groups, the company shut down six of them.
The findings were based on a study by the private consultancy Armament Research Services about arms trafficking on social media in Libya, along with reporting by The Times on similar trafficking in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
A seller based in Tripoli, Libya, offered components of a man-portable antiaircraft defense system, or Manpads, in a closed Facebook group.Credit Armament Research Services
1. The Weapons Have Included Heavy Machine Guns and Heat-Seeking Missiles
Many sales are arranged after Facebook users post photographs in closed and secret groups; the posts act roughly like digital classified ads on weapons-specific boards. Among the weapons displayed have been heavy machine guns on mounts that are designed for antiaircraft roles and that can be bolted to pickup trucks, and more sophisticated and menacing systems, including guided anti-tank missiles and an early generation of shoulder-fired heat-seeking antiaircraft missiles.
The report documented 97 attempts at unregulated transfers of missiles, heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, rockets and anti-matériel rifles, used to disable military equipment, through several Libyan Facebook groups since September 2014.
Last year ARES said it had documented an offer on Facebook to sell an SA-7 gripstock (pictured above), the reusable centerpiece of a man-portable antiaircraft defense system, or Manpads, a weapon of the Stinger class. Many of these left Libyan state custody in 2011, as depots were raided by rebels and looters. ARES said it documented Libyan sellers claiming to have two complete SA-7s for sale, two additional missiles and three gripstocks. An old system, SA-7s are a greater threat to helicopters and commercial aircraft than to modern military jets.
Machine guns, rifles and a shotgun advertised on Facebook groups in Libya.
2. Others Are the Standard Arms of Militant and Terrorist Groups
Machine guns and missiles form a small fraction of the apparent arms trafficking on Facebook and other social media apps, according to Nic R. Jenzen-Jones, the director of ARES and an author of the report. Examinations by The Times of Facebook groups in Libya dedicated to arms sales showed that sellers sought customers for a much larger assortment of handguns and infantry weapons. The rifles have predominantly been Kalashnikov assault rifles, which are used by many militants in the region, and many FN FAL rifles, which are common in Libya.
All of these solicitations violate Facebook’s policies, which since January has forbidden the facilitation of private sales of firearms and other weapons, according to Monika Bickert, a former federal prosecutor who is responsible for developing and enforcing the company’s content standards.
Images from Facebook groups selling weapons in Iraq.
3. Weapons Sales Greased by Social Media Sites Have Become a Feature of Many Conflicts
The use of social media for arms sales is relatively new to Libya. Until a Western-backed uprising against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in 2011, which ended in his death at the hands of an armed mob, the country had a tightly restricted arms market and limited Internet access. But social media-based weapons markets in Libya are not unique. Similar markets exist in other countries plagued in recent years by conflict, militant groups and terrorism, including arms-sales Facebook groups in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
On Monday, The Times shared links for seven such groups with Facebook to check whether they violated the rules. By Tuesday, Facebook had taken down six of the groups. Ms. Bickert said that one Facebook group — which displayed photographs of weapons but only discussed them and expressly forbade sales — had survived the company’s scrutiny.
Photo
Online weapons markets in Iraq and Libya.
4. Facebook’s Rules on Arms Sales Are Related to Changes in How Facebook Is Used.
Ms. Bickert described the company’s policies as evolutionary, reflecting shifts in its social media ecosystem.
“When Facebook began, there was no way to really engage in commerce on Facebook,” she said. But in the past year, she noted, the company has allowed users to process payments through its Messenger service, and has added other features to aid sales. “Since we were offering features like that, we thought we wanted to make clear that this is not a site that wants to facilitate the private sales of firearms.”
It is not clear how extensive arms trafficking on the site has been, but the rate of new posts has been unmistakably brisk, with many groups offering several new weapons a day. Mr. Jenzen-Jones said that ARES documented 250 to 300 posts about arms sales each month on the Libya sites alone, and that sales appeared to be trending up. Over all, using data from arms-sales Facebook groups across the Middle East, he said, “We’ve got about 6,000 trades documented, but it’s probably much bigger than that.”
Photo
A Facebook user in Syria shared an image of Islamic State fighters.
5. Facebook Relies on Users to Report the Arms Trafficking It Bans
Ms. Bickert said the most important part of Facebook’s effort “to keep people safe” was to make it easy for users to notify the company of suspected violations, which can be done with a click on the “Report” feature on every Facebook post.
In this way so-called Community Operations teams — Facebook employees who review the reports in dozens of languages — can examine and remove offending content. How effective the policy is, in practice, is unclear. Several groups from which the photographs for this article were downloaded operated on Facebook for two years or more, accumulating thousands of members before Facebook announced its ban on arms sales.
This trafficking occurred in countries where the Islamic State is at its most active and where armed militias or other designated terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda, have a persistent presence. In all four countries, government forces do not control large areas of territory and civil society is under intense pressure. Christine Chen, a Facebook spokeswoman, said the company relied on the nearly 1.6 billion people who visit the site every month to flag offenders. “We urge everyone who sees violations to report them to us,” she said.
Pistols have been widely sold and sought on Facebook in Libya.
6. In Libya, Widespread Pistol Sales on Facebook
ARES has documented many types of buyers and sellers. These include private citizens seeking handguns as well as representatives of armed groups buying weapons that require crews to be operated effectively, or appearing to offload weapons that the militias no longer wanted. Different markets have different characteristics. In Libya, fear of crime seemed to drive many people to buy pistols, Mr. Jenzen-Jones said. “Handguns are disproportionately represented,” he said. “They are widely sought after — primarily for self-defense and particularly to protect against carjackings — with many prospective buyers placing ‘wanted’ posts.” They were also expensive, ranging from about $2,200 to more than $7,000 — a sign that demand outstrips supply.
Military weapons originating in the United States have been sold through Facebook groups in Iraq.
7. Weapons Provided to Allies in Iraq Have Filled Facebook Sales Pages
In Iraq, the Facebook arms bazaars can resemble inside looks at the failures of American train-and-equip programs, with sellers displaying a seemingly bottomless assortment of weapons provided to Iraq’s government forces by the Pentagon during the long American occupation. Those include M4 carbines, M16 rifles, M249 squad automatic weapons, MP5 submachine guns and Glock semiautomatic pistols. Many of the weapons shown still bear inventory stickers and aftermarket add-ons favored by American forces and troops.
Such weapons have long been available on black markets in Iraq, with or without advertising on social media. But Facebook and other social media companies seem to provide new opportunities for sellers and buyers to find one other easily; for sellers to display items to more customers; and for customers to peruse and haggle over a larger assortment of weapons than what is available in smaller, physical markets.
A TOW launcher, a wire-guided anti-tank missile system, was advertised on a Facebook group in Syria with this message: “There is a TOW launcher, brand new, whoever wants it should contact us via private messages or WhatsApp.”
8. In Syria, Weapons Identical to Those Distributed to Rebels by the United States Are Offered for Sale
Similarly, weapons identical to those provided by the United States to Syrian rebels have also been traded on Facebook and other social media or messaging apps. In one recent example, a seller in northern Syria — who identified himself as a student, photographer and sniper — offered a pristine-looking Kalashnikov assault rifle that he said came from the Hazm Movement, which received weapons from the United States before the movement was defeated by the Nusra Front, a Qaeda affiliate. He noted on Facebook that the rifle was new and had “never fired a shot,” and hinted of either a bonus gift or a discount.
In another example, from October, a Facebook arms-trading group offered a “new TOW launcher,” referring to a wire-guided anti-tank missile system of the same type provided to rebels by the United States and other countries. The post included a phone number for the seller, which linked to WhatsApp, a messaging service. Reached on WhatsApp this week, the seller, whose profile picture shows the face of a corpse, said that he had sold the launcher but added, unconvincingly, that he could not recall the price.
A Facebook page in Libya offered an array of military and police equipment.
9. Social Media Pages Help Armed Groups Find Other Military Equipment
Items offered for sale on Facebook in Libya also included much of the other equipment sought by militias or terrorists for their operations. These included ammunition, bulletproof plates for flak jackets, rifle scopes, hand grenades, two-way tactical radios, fragmenting antipersonnel warheads for rocket-propelled grenade launchers, uniforms (including police uniforms) and forward-looking infrared cameras, used for night imaging.
Ms. Bickert said that using Facebook to help sell items not considered weapons, like bulletproof plates, did not violate the company’s rules. Since the same groups selling plates were also selling weapons, however, they were removed this week.
Online arms trafficking of this magnitude is an “eye opener,” said Nicolas Florquin, research coordinator for the Small Arms Survey, the Geneva-based international research center that underwrote the ARES study, part of an effort to supplement trafficking investigations by the United Nations Panel of Experts. Without addressing Facebook or any particular social-media company directly, he added, “Obviously there has to be more attention to monitoring and controlling it.”
Posts on Facebook advertising trips by boat from Turkey to Greece in a “safe way.”
10. Facebook Groups Also Offer Residents a Means to Flee
One of the arms-trading pages that Facebook took down this week included a stray advertisement, among ones for weapons and crates of 82-millimeter mortar rounds. It was for people looking to escape the miseries and dangers that have settled over some of the territory where such Facebook pages have been a feature of the arms trade. The advertisement offered open-ocean boat rides. Passage to Greece, it said, was “guaranteed.” The advertisement was of a type. In a region struggling with large-scale violence and overrun by militias, terrorists and the many forces fighting them, Facebook groups dedicated to refugee trafficking promise the chance to escape.
Janes: Photos released by North Korean official news outlet Rodong Sinmun on 9 March showed the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, meeting the country’s nuclear technicians at what could be a KN-08 (Hwasong-13) intercontinental ballistic missile production facility near Jonchon in the country’s northern Chaggang province.
The accompanying article said Kim was congratulating his nuclear weapon scientists for having developed a miniaturised nuclear warhead: a claim being met with scepticism by various Western analysts.
The photos and article came two days after Pyongyang threatened its South Korean neighbours with a pre-emptive nuclear strike for the 7 March initiation of joint exercises ‘Foal Eagle’ and ‘Key Resolve’: the largest set of manoeuvres ever conducted with US forces in the region, in which around 17,000 US troops are exercising alongside some 300,000 South Korean military personnel.
In the week prior to the beginning of the exercises, Pyongyang’s KCNA state news agency quoted Kim as saying that North Korea’s “nuclear warheads need to be ready for use at any time”.
Various security policy think-tanks have accused Washington and its South Korean allies of raising tensions on the Korean peninsula, calling the exercises ill-advised. Stephan Haggard from the School of Global Policy and Strategy at University of California, San Diego, who authors a blog on North Korea, told news sites like CNN, “I didn’t see the logic of expanding the exercises. I personally think that upping the sizes of the exercises didn’t serve any material function. It’s not clear that the size will bring North Korea back to the diplomatic table, so there’s no real purpose to do that. All you’ve done is stir the viper’s nest.”
Specialists on North Korea’s defence capabilities and internal politics dismiss these criticisms of the US-South Korean manoeuvres, arguing that such condemnation ignores the realities of the immediate objectives of North Korea’s nuclear programme and the nature of the regime’s internal political intrigue.
(CNN)The North Korea monitoring project 38 North says that satellite imagery shows “suspicious activity” at a nuclear enrichment site in North Korea.
Plumes of exhaust steam, a byproduct of heating the main plant at the Yongbyon Radiochemical Laboratory complex, have been seen in commercial satellite images taken March 12 and over the preceding five weeks, the group says.
This activity is unusual, the report by the Washington-based project says.
“Exhaust plumes have rarely been seen there and none have been observed on any examined imagery this past winter,” the report says.
Weeks away?
The plumes of steam do not necessarily indicate that the process for refining plutonium for nuclear weapons is underway or will be soon, the report says.
It does, however, note that U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper recently testified that Pyongyang had “announced its intention to ‘refurbish and restart’ its nuclear facilities,” including the uranium enrichment facility at Yongbyon, and that it could be able to recover plutonium from the reactor’s spent fuel “within a matter of weeks to months.”
Separate images appear to show further work on the site’s Experimental Light Water Reactor, a key facility for the enrichment of nuclear fuel, is ongoing, with a new transformer yard and road built, and the installation of electrical cables completed. More here.
NYT’s Republican leaders have blocked the closing of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, because they say they do not want terrorists held on United States soil. But American prisons currently hold 443 convicted terrorists, far more than the 89 men who remain imprisoned in Cuba.
The New York Times was able to confirm locations for about a third of the terrorists, shown on the map above. The Department of Justice would not release the names or locations of the other prisoners who had been convicted of terrorism.
The most notorious terrorists are being held in the maximum security sections of just a few federal prisons. But many others, serving lesser sentences for crimes like financing attacks or bomb hoaxes, are at facilities across the country.
Florence, Colo.
At least 30 convicted terrorists in the SuperMax
Many of the most well-known convicted terrorists are at the highest security prison in the country: the supermax in Florence, Colo., about 100 miles south of Denver.
Zacarias Moussaoui, a member of Al Qaeda who was directly linked to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, is there, as is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers. Richard Reid, known as the shoe bomber, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the underwear bomber, are also held there.
Terre Haute, Ind., and Marion, Ill.
Medium security prison At least 12 convicted terrorists
Medium security prison At least 11 convicted terrorists
At least 25 convicted terrorists are held in two federal prisons in Indiana and Illinois that have special Communications Management Units, designed to isolate certain prisoners from other inmates and limit contact with the outside world.
Mail and telephone calls are restricted. Prisoners in the units are not allowed to have any physical contact with visitors or family members. The majority of prisoners in the units, which were opened in 2006 and 2008, are Muslims.
Other Prisons Across the Country
The Hazelton, W. Va., complex has four separate prisons. Inmates here include Hawo Mohamed Hassan, one of only seven female convicted terrorists The Times was able to locate.
The low security prison on Terminal Island, at the Port of Los Angeles, houses Mohammad El-Mezain, who was convicted of providing material support to Hamas in 2009.
This multilevel security prison in Brooklyn, New York, houses two inmates with Qaeda ties and one linked to the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.
Hundreds of other convicted terrorists are held in prisons around the country. Many of these are for lesser crimes and shorter sentences.
Sabri Benkahla, who is held at a federal prison in Washington, D.C., was convicted in 2007 of perjury, obstructing justice and giving false statements to the F.B.I. He had denied visiting an overseas jihad training camp eight years prior, and denied knowing that several of his contacts were suspected of being terrorists.
The Rising Number of Convicted Terrorists in American Prisons
400
300
International
200
100
Domestic
0
2007
2009
2011
2013
2015
The New York Times|Source: Federal Bureau of Prisons
The number of convicted terrorists in American prisons has increased by more than 150 inmates since 2007. The number of domestic terrorists, some of whose crimes are related to white supremacy or eco-terrorism, has fallen in recent years, but the number of convicted terrorists who are not American citizens continues to rise.
FNC: A Christian saint’s bones have reportedly been unearthed amid the rubble of an ancient Syrian monastery destroyed by Islamic State.
Mar Elian monastery appears ravaged after heavy fighting between Syrian Army and the Islamic State group in Qaryatain, Syria, Monday, April 4, 2016. (AP Photo/Natalia Sancha)
Much of the fifth-century St. Elian, or Mar Elian, monastery in the town of Qaryatain has been reduced to stones by ISIS. Qaryatain was recaptured by Syrian government forces Sunday.
Channel Four News journalist Lindsey Hilsum reports that the bones of saints were clearly visible among the wreckage of the monastery, a once-cherished pilgrimage site.
The bones are thought to be those of St. Elian, also known as St. Julian of Emesa, which is the ancient name for the Syrian city of Homs. St. Elian was martyred in 284 A.D. after his refusal to renounce Christianity.
The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights reported that ISIS destroyed the monastery in August 2015. “They pulled it down using bulldozers claiming that ‘the monastery is worshiped beside Allah,’ SOHR said in a statement released Aug. 20 2015.
Militants also trashed an ancient church next to the Assyrian Christian monastery, and desecrated a nearby cemetery, breaking the crosses and smashing name plates.
Midway between the ancient city of Palmyra and the Syrian capital, Damascus, Qaryatain was once home to a sizeable Christian population. Before IS took it over last August, it had a mixed population of around 40,000 Sunni Muslims and Christians, as well as thousands of internally displaced people who had fled from the nearby city of Homs.
As it came under militant attack, many of the Christians fled. More than 200 residents, mostly Christians, were abducted by the extremists, including a Syrian priest, the Rev. Jack Murad, who was held by the extremists for three months.
During the eight months that Qaryatain was under IS control, some Christians were released and others were made to sign pledges to pay a tax imposed on non-Muslims. Some have simply vanished.
Syrian forces recaptured Palmyra from ISIS last month, ending their reign of terror at the UNESCO World Heritage site. Palmyra, located about 150 miles northeast of Damascus, dates back to the second millennium B.C. The city was one of the most important cultural centers of the ancient world and has been home to Arabic, Aramaic, and Greco-Roman culture.
ISIS took control of Palmyra last year and subsequently demolished some of its best-known monuments, such as the Temple of Ba’al. The jihadists, who beheaded the city’s former antiquities chief, also used Palmyra’s ancient amphitheater for public executions.
At least some in Washington DC are asking some questions. What questions do you have? Here is a question…Where are the emails between Hillary and the White House especially Barack Obama?
TheHill: The FBI appears to be entering the home stretch of its investigation into Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton private email server.
Yet even as arrangements are reportedly being made to interview Clinton and her top aides, much remains unclear.
The FBI under Director James Comey refuses to publicly discuss the investigation, as is customary, but critics say the lingering questions show the review is anything but routine and could result in criminal indictments.
Here’s a look at what is still not publicly known.
When will the investigation end?
The FBI’s investigation had dogged Clinton’s presidential campaign since last summer. The longer it goes, the more likely it is to damage to her chances of winning the Democratic nomination and the White House.
Reports indicate that the bureau is sprinting to complete its work so it won’t be seen as meddling in the presidential election.
Still, according to Clinton, the FBI has yet to reach out to her to schedule an interview, despite reports that she and other top aides could soon be brought in for questioning.
“They haven’t,” Clinton said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” this weekend. “But, you know, back in August, we made clear that I’m happy to answer any questions that anybody might have. And I stand by that.”
What law(s) might have been broken?
Top officials at the FBI and Justice Department have refused to discuss what charges — if any — might result from the investigation.
Speculation about the charges has centered on federal statutes prohibiting against removing federal documents, especially 18 U.S.C. § 2071. A portion of that law bars officials from “willfully and unlawfully” concealing, removing or destroying federal records.
Other laws identified by the watchdog group Cause of Action include prohibitions against removing defense-related information “from its proper place of custody” and against removing classified information to keep “at an unauthorized location.”
Critics also say Clinton or her top aides may have violated internal State Department procedures about handling classified information.
Who’s in the crosshairs?
Clinton is the highest-profile name floated as a possible target of the FBI’s probe, but she isn’t alone.
According to Al Jazeera, the FBI is also seeking to interview Clinton’s former chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, and ex-spokesman Philippe Reines. Questions have also mounted about longtime aide Huma Abedin, Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy and former State Department official Jake Sullivan, who authored more emails now considered classified on Clinton’s server than anyone else, according to an analysis by The Washington Post.
A conservative legal watchdog group has asked for eight people to testify in a separate court case relating to Clinton’s server, including Mills, Abedin, Kennedy and IT official Bryan Pagliano. In that case, a federal judge said current and former State Department officials could be questioned about whether the department willfully circumvented the Freedom of Information Act.
Pagliano, who is believed to have been responsible for setting up the server in Clinton’s Chappaqua, N.Y., home, was granted immunity in exchange for his cooperation with the FBI.
What would the government have to prove to file charges?
Perhaps the biggest question for the bureau is whether there was the intent to “willfully” remove government documents, or whether Clinton’s situation was merely an oversight, as she has claimed.
None of the thousands of emails that Clinton handed over to the State Department were marked as classified, the government has said, but classified information can appear in unmarked emails as well.
Upon entering office, Clinton signed a nondisclosure agreement vowing to protect classified information, whether it is “marked or unmarked.”
Last week, the State Department halted its internal probe of whether 22 emails that have been deemed top secret — the highest level of classification — were classified at the time they were sent. The department said it was deferring to the FBI’s investigation.
Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who served under President George W. Bush, has said the evidence suggests that Clinton knew at least some of the information was sensitive, and yet kept it on her personal server anyway.
“The simple proposition that everyone is equal before the law suggests that Mrs. Clinton’s state of mind … justifies a criminal charge of one sort or another,” Muksaey wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.
How much will the FBI say?
The Justice Department is in a difficult spot, as it is likely to face a political backlash no matter what it decides in the Clinton case.
Many conservatives already doubt that the Obama administration is willing to pursue an indictment connected to the Democratic presidential front-runner. Lack of formal charges might merely be viewed as proof that the process was not above-board.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has pressed for the FBI to release the evidence collected during its investigation once the probe is concluded — regardless of the outcome — to reassure the public that political considerations did not play a role in the Department’s decision.
To avoid concerns about impartiality, Grassley and other prominent Republicans have pressed for Attorney General Loretta Lynch to appoint a special independent prosecutor to handle the Clinton investigation.
So far, she has denied the request.
Was the server secure?
Clinton’s camp has refused to outline precisely which digital protections she used to safeguard the information on her private server.
Independent cybersecurity analysts have concluded that the server went at least two months without using standard encryption protections that make data inaccessible to hackers.
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates in January said “the odds are pretty high” that foreign spies in China, Russia or Iran would have gotten access to Clinton’s data.
Adm. Michael Rogers, the head of the National Security Agency and the U.S. Cyber Command, testified before Congress that, for foreign intelligence agencies, the server “would represent opportunity.”
Clinton only gave about half of the approximately 60,000 emails she sent while secretary of State to the federal government for record keeping. The rest of the messages, she said, were purely personal in nature and were deleted.
The claim set off a firestorm in Washington, with many Republicans and transparency advocates fretting that Clinton and her team had unilaterally decided to delete half of her email correspondence, without affirming with the government that it was truly personal.
It remains unclear whether those messages can be recovered from the server or if they will ever be released.
