Anything Odd about Obama in Argentina Besides the Tango?

Obama offers Argentina help in AMIA investigation

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) — President Barack Obama offered Argentina help in pursuing the perpetrators of the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires.

At a news conference Wednesday in Buenos Aires following his meeting with Argentina’s president, Mauricio Macri, Obama said he would visit a memorial to the bombing victims at the city’s Metropolitan Cathedral.

“I told President Macri that the United States offers whatever help we can to finally hold these attackers accountable,” Obama said.

TheTower: Newly-elected Argentine President Mauricio Macri said that his government is determined to “make headway” into the investigation of the 1994 AMIA Jewish center bombing in Buenos Aires, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported on Wednesday.

“We are fully committed to contribute in any way we can to make headway with this investigation,” Macri declared. “Here, we suffer the ravaging consequences of two bomb attacks. We are still in the dark of what happened.”The second attack Macri referred to was the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires. The Argentine president also pointed out that his government abandoned an agreement signed by the previous administration to jointly investigate the AMIA bombing with Iran, the main suspect in the case. A court found the accord to be unconstitutional.

Obama honours Argentina Dirty War victims

Obama’s visit to Argentina coincided with the 40th anniversary of a right-wing military coup, which the U.S. government condoned and which ushered in the dictatorship.

Obama and Argentinean PresidentMauricio Macri threw white flowers into the brown waters of the Río de la Plata, or River Plate, to remember thousands of victims of Argentina’s US-backed dictatorship. Democracies have to have the courage to acknowledge when we don’t live up to the ideas that we stand for.

Despite early USA support for the coup, Obama said US diplomats, human rights workers and reporters played an important role in documenting the abuses that took place in the aftermath.

A jetty runs into the nearby river, commemorating victims of the “death flights”.

Documents already declassified by Washington have revealed, for example, that then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1976 asked the Argentine military dictatorship to hurry and end its repression before Congress could cut off aid.

Several days before the Obama trip, I received and email that the National Archives declassified some Argentina Dirty Wars documents. I found that to be quite curious. Now, we understand but what else is there to know? What about that sightseeing venture?

Well now…..

Obama to visit Patagonian tourist city Bariloche on Argentina trip

The stopover in ski-destination Bariloche, known for its crystal clear lakes and panoramic mountain vistas, appeared to be first lady Michelle Obama’s idea, Sullivan said.

“I believe she heard what Bariloche is like … and it seemed to her it would be a good place to share a little family time,” Sullivan said.

C’mon really? How about a deeper look? There seems to be a pattern of Obama visiting the worst historical places and his trip to Bariloche is no different.

In part from TheTablet: The Bariloche Hitler party, he explained, was closely linked to a Buenos Aires Nazi. The night before, he told me, he’d called the host club pretending to be a guest and asked, “Is Adolf’s party still on?” They told him yes, he insisted—but he hadn’t been able to get past security. “I counted 48 cars just outside the gate, and there were many, many more inside,” Filipuzzi told me, his eyes wide and his voice amplifying. “In Buenos Aires,” he went on, “there’s a restaurant that has a Hitler toast, but here’s the grand party.”

 

 

 

 

 

Belgium/French Terrorists and Their Weapons

In part: Container after Container

Photo Gallery: Tracing the Origins of Terror Weapons

Hat tip to Spiegel: The shop where Coulibaly’s weapons were purchased is called AFG Security and it is located in the town of Partizánske, a two-and-a-half hour drive from Vienna. The store is in the basement of a two-story apartment building on a dead-end road near the train tracks. Stairs lead down below street level and inside, a camouflage net hangs from the ceiling. A bottle of Cabernet, emblazoned with a picture of Adolf Hitler and the words “Mein Kampf,” stands in a display case.

This shop, located in the middle of nowhere, is the source of thousands of deactivated weapons that have been sold across Europe. Firearms from here have ended up in the hands of Islamist terrorists in France, gangsters in Great Britain and a man who was once one of Germany’s most dangerous neo-Nazis. Over the course of years. The AFG website continues to claim that the weapons are just “for fun” — for the reenactment of World War II battles, for example. But the key part comes later: “Most of the expansion weapons (Eds. Note: alarm weapons) are originals (originally ‘sharp’) with minor modifications which disable the shooting with original – ‘sharp’ ammunition.” The word “sharp,” in the clumsily written English version of the website, refers to the ability to fire live ammunition.

The guns are mostly decommissioned weapons from the Slovak military. Container after container of these firearms wound up in the hands of companies like Kol Arms, which then converted them from lethal weapons into alarm rifles. By the time the weapons left AFG Security, they were considered harmless — at least according to the law. For the lawless, however, they were the hottest new thing on the market. AFG sold an estimated 14,000 alarm weapons abroad, mostly over the Internet, according to the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA). The agency currently has 33 open investigations into customers in Germany.

Many of the shop’s customers apparently appreciated how quickly the weapons could be re-converted into active firearms. French investigators recently tried it out for themselves: It took only two hours for a locksmith of modest talent to reopen the barrel. Doing the same with German-made alarm guns isn’t nearly as easy.

Investigators from several EU countries have been monitoring the shop since 2014 after being tipped off by packages from Germany mailed to Alexander M., alias “Smokey,” a serial burglar from London who has since been sentenced to life in prison. The packages included four fully functioning vz.61 Scorpion submachine guns, which are as small and deadly as the name implies. Smokey ordered the guns from jail using his smartphone.

Initially, the authorities had no idea who the supplier was. They knew only that the person had been active on the anonymous trading platform Agora on the so-called Darknet. British and German police dispatched cyber investigators to order weapons in a sting operation. The tracking number of the packages led them to a mechatronics student named Christoph K. in the Bavarian city of Schweinfurt. Christoph K. is a slender young man in his mid-twenties with technical ability, good business acumen and few scruples. One morning in January 2015, police raided the campus of the University of Applied Sciences in Schweinfurt where Christoph K. was pursuing his studies. Further arrests and legal proceedings followed all across Europe.

‘Unaware of the Consequences’

Christoph K. had been reactivating the AFG alarm weapons in his basement workshop and then reselling them for 10 times the price. Four weeks ago, the Schweinfurt regional court sentenced him to four years and three months in prison. Defense attorney Jochen Kaller said his client had been “unaware of the consequences” of his actions.

Christoph K. wasn’t AFG’s only regular German customer. The company’s weapons registry, which the BKA has obtained, also includes the name Alexander R., 39, who bought two Kalashnikovs and three dozen Scorpions. In Ferlach, a hub of the Austrian weapons industry, he obtained raw tubes for the new barrels needed to reactivate the weapons.

Officials at the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the German domestic intelligence agency responsible for monitoring extremism, had already had Alexander R. on their radar. Back at the end of the 1990s, he had been part of weapons deals with a former leader of Hoffmann, a right-wing extremist paramilitary sports group. At the time of their arrest, police seized close to a dozen submachine guns along with five hand grenades. After his conviction, R. spent more than four years in prison. While in jail, he wrote to his comrades that he planned to destroy “the regime of the Federal Republic of Germany.” Police found a pamphlet in Alexander R.’s possession stating that the undercover agents who caught him should be shot and their corpses left with a warning note in their mouths. “Perhaps together with his dick and balls.”

After his release from prison, Alexander R. initially kept a low profile. But beginning in mid-2013, he began purchasing large quantities of weapons from AFG in Slovakia. Operating under the assumption that the company was under BKA surveillance, R. drove several times directly to Partizànske, where he paid in cash rather than ordering over the Internet. On the telephone, he once spoke of a “Big Chainsaw,” a friend of “Beans,” terms a regional court in Rhineland-Palatinate is convinced refers to weapons and ammunition. A few months ago, the court sentenced Alexander R. to six years in prison. His application for appeal was rejected on all major points. Meanwhile, the convict hasn’t revealed the location of the three dozen submachine guns.

Claude Hermant, 52, who had previously worked for the right-wing populist Front National party’s security service in France, also placed a major order with AFG in 2014. The stalwart right-winger has paramilitary training and is also known to have spent a few months in jail in Africa, where rumors circulated about his alleged links to a failed coup attempt. Read the full investigative summary here.

Operation Hemorrhage

It has been said often, either fight the enemy in a true war theater on the battlefield with real war tactics or fight them at home. Brussels and Paris and in the United States in Boston and San Bernardino to mention a few, the hybrid war gets real expensive. These costs are rarely measured or questioned. We are also not measuring the cost of freedoms are giving up. Add in the cost of the cyber war…..well….going back much earlier than 9-11-01 the costs cannot be calculated.

Operation Hemorrhage: The Terror Plans to Wreck the West’s Economy

DailyBeast: Every European who flies frequently knows the airport in Zaventem, has spent time in the ticketing area that was strewn with blood, limbs, broken glass, battered luggage and other wreckage.

It was another attack on aviation that pulled the United States into the conflict sometimes known as the “global war on terror” in the first place. Since then, airports and airplanes have remained a constant target for Islamic militants, with travelers being encumbered by new batches of security measures after each new attack or attempt.

After the ex-con Richard Reid managed to sneak a bomb aboard a transatlantic flight in December 2001, but failed to detonate the explosives, American passengers were forced to start removing their shoes on their way through security. After British authorities foiled a 2006 plot in which terrorists planned to bring liquid explosives hidden in sport drink bottles aboard multiple transatlantic flights, authorities strictly limited the quantity of liquids passengers were allowed to carry. When Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab snuck explosives hidden in his underwear onto a flight on Christmas Day 2009, he ushered in full-body scans and intrusive pat-downs.

Those are the misses. There have been hits, too. In August 2004, two female Chechen suicide bombers, so-called “black widows,” destroyed two domestic Russian flights. In January 2011, a suicide bomber struck Moscow’s Domodedovo airport in an attack that looked almost identical to the one that rocked the airport in Brussels: the bomber struck just outside the security cordon, where the airport is transformed from a “soft” target to a “hard” one. Just months ago, the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS)—the perpetrator of the Brussels attacks—destroyed a Russian passenger jet flying out of Egypt’s Sinai, killing 224 people.

The targeting of airports and airplanes has been so frequent that in lighter times—back when the terrorists seemed so much worse at what they do—some pundits openly mocked their continuing return to airplanes and airports. In one representative discussion from early 2010, a well-known commentator described jihadists as having a “sort of schoolboy fixation” with aviation.

But the reason for this targeting, of course, is neither mysterious nor quixotic, and it’s one the jihadists have explained for themselves. Following the November Paris attacks, ISIS released an infographic boasting that its slaughter on the streets of Paris would force Belgium “to strengthen its security measures … which will cost them tens of millions of dollars.” Moreover, the group claimed, “the intensified security measures and the general state of unease will cost Europe in general and France in specific tends of billions of dollars due to the resulting decrease in tourism, delayed flights, and restrictions on freedom of movement and travel between European countries.”

And that was before the group successfully attacked the Brussels airport, despite those costly new security measures.

Even before 9/11, jihadists saw bleeding the American economy as the surest path to defeating their “far enemy.” When Osama bin Laden declared war against the “Jews and crusaders” in 1996, he emphasized that jihadist strikes should be coupled with an economic boycott by Saudi women. Otherwise, the Muslims would be sending their enemy money, “which is the foundation of wars and armies.”

Indeed, when bin Laden first had the opportunity to publicly explain what the 9/11 attacks had accomplished, in an October 2001 interview with Al Jazeera journalist Taysir Allouni, he emphasized the costs that the attacks imposed on the United States. “According to their own admissions, the share of the losses on the Wall Street market reached 16 percent,” he said. “The gross amount that is traded in that market reaches $4 trillion. So if we multiply 16 percent with $4 trillion to find out the loss that affected the stocks, it reaches $640 billion of losses.” He told Allouni that the economic effect was even greater due to building and construction losses and missed work, so that the damage inflicted was “no less than $1 trillion by the lowest estimate.”

In his October 2004 address to the American people, dramatically delivered just before that year’s elections, bin Laden noted that the 9/11 attacks cost Al Qaeda only a fraction of the damage inflicted upon the United States. “Al Qaeda spent $500,000 on the event,” he said, “while America in the incident and its aftermath lost—according to the lowest estimates—more than $500 billion, meaning that every dollar of Al Qaeda defeated a million dollars.”

Al Qaeda fit the wars the United States had become embroiled in after 9/11 into its economic schema. In that same video, bin Laden explained how his movement sought to suck the United States and its allies into draining wars in the Muslim world. The mujahedin “bled Russia for ten years, until it went bankrupt,” bin Laden said, and they would now do the same to the United States.

Just prior to 2011, there was a brief period when jihadism appeared to be in decline. Al Qaeda in Iraq, the group that later became ISIS, had all but met with defeat at the hands of the United States and local Sunni uprisings. Successful attacks were few and far between.

People gather at a memorial for victims of attacks in Brussels on Wednesday, March 23, 2016. Belgian authorities were searching Wednesday for a top suspect in the country's deadliest attacks in decades, as the European Union's capital awoke under guard and with limited public transport after scores were killed and injured in bombings on the Brussels airport and a subway station. (AP Photo/Valentin Bianchi)

Valentin Bianchi/AP

Representative of those dark times for jihadists, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula released a special issue of its online magazine Inspire celebrating a terrorist attack that claimed no victims. In October 2010, jihadists were able to sneak bombs hidden in printer cartridges onto two cargo planes. Due to strong intelligence efforts, authorities disabled both bombs before they were set to explode, but the group drew satisfaction from merely getting them aboard the planes.

“Two Nokia phones, $150 each, two HP printers, $300 each, plus shipping, transportation and other miscellaneous expenses add up to a total bill of $4,200. That is all what Operation Hemorrhage cost us,” the lead article in that special issue of Inspire boasted. “On the other hand this supposedly ‘foiled plot’, as some of our enemies would like to call [it], will without a doubt cost America and other Western countries billions of dollars in new security measures.” The magazine warned that future attacks will be “smaller, but more frequent”—an approach that “some may refer to as the strategy of a thousand cuts.”

The radical cleric Anwar Al Awlaki, writing in Inspire, explained the dilemma that he saw gripping Al Qaeda’s foes. “You either spend billions of dollars to inspect each and every package in the world,” he wrote, “or you do nothing and we keep trying again.”

Even in those days when the terrorist threat loomed so much smaller, the point was not a bad one. Security is expensive, and driving up costs is one way jihadists aim to wear down Western economies.

Unfortunately, Al Qaeda’s envisioned world of smaller but more frequent attacks proved unnecessary for the jihadists. Less than two months after the special issue of Inspire appeared that celebrated an at best half-successful attack, the revolutionary events that we then knew as the “Arab Spring” sent shockwaves through the Middle East and North Africa.

This instability would help jihadism reach the current heights to which it has ascended, where the attacks are not only more frequent but larger. Unfortunately, the United States—blinded at the time by the misguided belief that revolutions in the Arab world would devastate the jihadist movement—pursued policies that hastened the region’s instability. The damages wrought by these policies are still not fully appreciated.

The silver lining to the jihadist economic strategy is that they, too, are economically vulnerable. The damage inflicted on ISIS’s “state” by coalition bombings and other pressures forced the group to slice its fighters’ salaries at the beginning of this year. But as Al Qaeda watches its flashier jihadist rival carry out gruesome attacks on Western targets and get bombarded in return, it discerns further proof of the wisdom of its strategy of attrition.

As it watches these two sets of foes exhaust each other, Al Qaeda believes that its comparative patience will pay off. It believes that its own time will come.

 

Hillary’s Blackberry Back in the News

Questions remain unanswered that include, exactly how many email addresses were there for Hillary’s team, what are the timelines and who were they assigned to?

Not only did Hillary make an original statement about her use of emails…..her office published responses in written form and it took 9 pages to do it. That document from the office of Hillary Clinton is here.

 

Email Shows Clinton Engaged On Blackberry Issues

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it has obtained State Department documents from February 2009 containing emails that appear to contradict statements by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that, “as far as she knew,” all of her government emails were turned over to the State Department and that she did not use her clintonemail.com email system until March 2009. The emails also contain more evidence of the battle between security officials in the State Department, National Security Administration, Clinton and her staff over attempts to obtain secure Blackberrys.

The documents were obtained in response to a court order in an April 28, 2015, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00646), filed after the Department of State failed to comply with a March 10, 2015, FOIA request seeking:

Any and all records of requests by former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton or her staff to the State Department Office Security Technology seeking approval for the use of an iPad or iPhone for official government business; and

Any and all communications within or between the Office of the Secretary of State, the Executive Secretariat, and the Office of the Secretary and the Office of Security Technology concerning, regarding, or related to the use of unauthorized electronic devices for official government business.

On February 13, 2009, Cheryl Mills (Clinton’s then-chief of staff) sent Clinton an email describing efforts by the National Security Agency to address demands for a secure Blackberry:

In meeting with the NSA person today ([Redacted] NSA’s rep to DOS) – she indicated they could address our BB so that BB could work in the sciff [Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility] and be secure based upon some modifications that could be done to each BB (more below).

Mills attaches an email from an unnamed NSA official that reports:

Debbie Plunkett, D/Chief of our Information Assurance Directorate, is personally assembling a knowledgeable team to work with you and other members of your staff to move forward on your Blackberry requirement.  She will engage State’s CIO and DS/comms security folks to ensure everyone is aware of the art of the possible … I am confident we can get to YES on this! [Emphasis in original]

That same day, on February 13 at 12:33 pm Hillary Clinton, using her unsecured [email protected] account responds, “That’s good news.”

As Judicial Watch reported last week, the National Security Agency personnel had denied Clinton’s requests, telling Clinton staff to “shut up and color.”

The new documents include another February 13, 2009, email, written after the Mills-Clinton exchange, that shows that State and NSA security officials were shocked and surprised by Clinton’s Blackberry demands.

For instance, responding to details of the Clinton Blackberry requirements, an unnamed NSA employee simply writes “Amazing…” in a February, 13, 2009, email to Patrick Donovan, then-Director, Diplomatic Security Service and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, and Greg Starr, then-Director of the Diplomatic Security Service.  (The documents have many redactions under Exemption 7(c), which is for “information compiled for law enforcement purposes that would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”)

The new emails show that despite prior concerns about security and cost, the NSA and State Department officials came up with a plan to modify six Blackberry devices for Clinton and her staff.  A February 20, 2009 State Department email states:

Pat Donovan [head of Bureau of Diplomatic Security] tasked us with a memo that he wanted by today and that we finished last night and that it outlines the vulnerabilities and risks of BB use inside and outside a SCIF (because they’re essentially the same) and concludes with our collaboration with NSA to seek an acceptable solution for their desired BB use.

Despite this warning about using Blackberry “outside a SCIF,” Mrs. Clinton and her staff continued to use unsecured Blackberrys.  The documents suggest a continued push for secure Blackberrys in late March 2009 but the documents are heavily redacted.

Hillary Clinton has repeatedly stated that the 55,000 pages of documents she turned over to the State Department in December 2014 included all of her work-related emails.  In response to a court order in other Judicial Watch litigation, she declared under penalty of perjury that she had “directed that all my emails on clintonemail.com in my custody that were or are potentially federal records be provided to the Department of State, and on information and belief, this has been done.”  This new email find is also at odds with her official campaign statement:

On December 5, 2014, 30,490 copies of work or potentially work-related emails sent and received by Clinton from March 18, 2009, to February 1, 2013, were provided to the State Department.  This totaled roughly 55,000 pages.  More than 90% of her work or potentially work-related emails provided to the Department were already in the State Department’s record-keeping system because those e-mails were sent to or received by “state.gov” accounts.

Early in her term, Clinton continued using an att.blackberry.net account that she had used during her Senate service.  Given her practice from the beginning of emailing State Department officials on their state.gov accounts, her work-related emails during these initial weeks would have been captured and preserved in the State Department’s record-keeping system. She, however, no longer had access to these emails once she transitioned from this account.

The Associated Press previously reported that the State Department was provided by the Department of Defense with emails between Clinton and General David Petraeus that also predate March 2009.  Those emails have not been released to the public.

“So now we know that, contrary to her statement under oath suggesting otherwise, Hillary Clinton did not turn over all her government emails,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.  “We also know why Hillary Clinton falsely suggests she didn’t use clintonemail.com account prior to March, 18, 2009 – because she didn’t want Americans to know about her February 13, 2009, email that shows that she knew her Blackberry and email use was not secure.”

ISIS Stealth European Operations, on Display

Belgium terror network

AtlanticCouncil: Even though Belgian authorities have been on high alert for several months, attackers were able to strike Brussels in three separate but seemingly coordinated attacks, killing at least 31 people on Tuesday.

Part of the challenge for security officials in Belgium, where home-grown radicalization is a major problem, is the lack of information-sharing between intelligence agencies and “numerous types of local law enforcement,” according to Jorge Benitez, an international security expert at the Atlantic Council.

Brussels is home to 19 different municipalities, two intelligence agencies, and six police zones in a city home to only around 1 million people.

“Even in the tightest-wound societies in terms of security services, you can still hide in nooks and crannies,” Tom Sanderson, a terrorism expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Mashable. “And in Belgium, the nooks and crannies are huge.”

*****

FC: Jake Wallis Simons writes on the March 23, 2016 Daily Mail Online, that “the seeds of the terror blasts that shook Europe, were planned by a brotherhood of childhood friends who grew up just a few doors away from each other in a part of Brussels dubbed “the crucible of terror.”  “Police following the trail of the terrorists murderers behind the atrocities in France and Belgium have repeatedly arrived at a single block of housing in Molenbeek, a district of Brussels known as a hotbed of jihadism.”

     “The center of the deadly network is the Abdelslam family home, a first floor apartment on Gemeenplaats, behind the police station — and just around the corner from the home of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the ‘brains’ behind the Paris attacks,” Mr. Simons wrote. “Questions remain,” he adds “about how a gang of young men, all of whom were Belgian citizens,” were “transformed into death-loving monsters, showing loyalty to each other; but, [demonstrating] a profound hatred of their country and fellow citizens.”
     “Belgian authorities were so focused on Molenbeek, known as the hotbed of jihadism, that they were unaware that Europe’s most wanted man was forming a new terror network in Schaerbeek, another Muslim-dominated area just three miles down the road,” Mr. Simons wrote.  “The local community there views police with contempt,” the locals told The Daily Mail Online, “and are unlikely to report terrorists to the authorities, even if they do not have jihadist sympathies themselves.”  “Frankly, I wasn’t surprised,’ a policewoman who wished to remain anonymous told The Daily Mail Online.  “Nobody takes what happens in the district seriously.  Every day, we arrest well known criminals, and the next day they are back on the street.  It is frustrating that we are doing our work; but, the justice system doesn’t back us up.  These people aren’t being prosecuted, or fined, they are just being released.  We arrest them,and  nothing happens.  One or two hours later they smile and mock us, believing they are on the winning side.  The lack of respect for police and for Belgium in the local multicultural community meant that the terror cell could operate without fear of being reported. This made Schaerbeek — which has been ‘off the radar’ for terror police — the ideal place for the terror jihadi to hideout.  We have been asking for the higher authorities to take this district more seriously; but, it hasn’t happened,” she said.  The Daily Mail Online added that the policewoman’s commanding officer, who also wanted to remain anonymous, agreed with her observations.  “We have not been blind to the fact that something serious has been going on here.”
**** What is there to be cultivated is real and handy:
 

SkyNews: Buried in the midst of thousands of Islamic State files passed to Sky News we discovered a spreadsheet different to the rest of the documents.

The names of Islamic fighters, their pseudonyms, their countries of origin and contact numbers for family members, we had seen before.

What marked this file out was its title: The Martyrs.

Previously unheard of, this was a totally secret brigade. A brigade made up of men who had joined Islamic State to die as suicide bombers.

The files revealed the names of 123.

They came from a variety of countries: France, German, Spain, Tunisia and Egypt.

What is interesting in the files is the number of times that Belgium or Belgian cities are mentioned.

We can reveal that 25 Belgians are identified.

There are 48 references to Belgian nationals within the registration papers.

There are 70 references to the country which include their sponsors who guaranteed their entry to the terror group, family members and telephone numbers.

Islamic State, like many previous jihadi groups, has used suicide attackers to overrun their enemies’ positions from Libya to Pakistan and Afghanistan. All in traditional war zones. What marks this brigade out as different is that it appears to have been made up, in the large part, by killers trained to carry out attacks in the peaceful cities of Europe and beyond.

Death squads sent out to attack away from Syria and Iraq, away from the battlefield.

The files we have published over the past week or so list all the fighters’ intended specialisms.

Fighter, infiltrator and Martyr were standard pieces of information requested. All these men ticked the Martyr box. In translation it is suicide attacker.

The registration form of Mohammed Belkaid, first reported by Sky News from our files after he opened fire on police in Brussels last week and was killed, showed that he too was part of the Martyrs’ Brigade.

In Syria he is likely to have joined one of the training camps and the Islamic State training programme in their stronghold of Raqqa.

Sky News has previously revealed the existence of these foreigners’ camps, which train fighters to carry out attacks outside Syria and Iraq.

Counter Terrorism expert Professor Andrew Silke said ISIS seeks out recruits for its martyrs’ brigade that have a series of qualification.

He said: “One of the things that the movements are interested in is ‘have we got a candidate who is willing and able to carry out a suicide attack? Because there’s a value in that.

“Another issue … is ‘could this person operate in the West? Have they got the language skills? Do they fit in with the culture? Do they come from that particular region, because if they do, their ability to go back and operate (there) … is much greater than sending somebody from the Middle East.”

Some of the Belgians we can easily identify.

Redwana Mohammed Hajaoui also known as Abu Khalid al Maghribi, crossed into Syria in February 2014. He later appeared in an Islamic State propaganda video.

Mesut Cankarturan also known as Abu Abdullah al Beljiki from Bruges, crossed into Syria in March 2014. He later died near Deir ez-Zor.

During our investigations Sky News has learned from former ISIS members that the recruits were trained not just to carry out attacks but to be trainers as well, raising the specter of further developing terror cells.

The analysis of these files will take a long time; certainly the security services are gearing up for a long fight against Islamic State and its terror gangs.