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| ISIS mass murder |
Last week, the U.S. Treasury announced that it was imposing sanctions
on three key figures in the Islamic State militant group (ISIS), Faysal
al-Zahrani, Husayn Juaythini and Turki al-Binali, as it continues to
cripple the group’s financing infrastructure.
Such measures ensure that anyone involved in financial dealings with
the sanctioned individuals will face financial penalties, effectively
severing the individuals from the global financial system.
“The Treasury and our partners worldwide are aggressively targeting
ISIL’s ability to earn and make use of its money, and we are making
progress on many fronts,” said Adam J. Szubin, the Treasury’s Under
Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, in a statement,
using another acronym for ISIS.
Faysal al-Zahrani: The U.S. Treasury last week released a number of details about
Zahrani’s role in the organization. He joined ISIS’s natural resources
ministry in July 2014, a department that directs the radical Islamist
group’s lucrative oil and gas trade operations. He rose to become a
senior oil and gas official for the group in Hasakah province in eastern
Syria. In August 2015 he was placed “in charge of all” ISIS oil and
gas activities in the region.
The Saudi national, whose age is unknown, worked for ISIS’s oil chief
Abu Sayyaf, one of the most prominent ISIS officials to be killed by
the U.S.-led coalition in Syria, and “regularly transferred funds to
him,” according to the report. U.S. special forces killed Sayyaf in a
raid in May last year.
Zahrani was in charge of at least five oil fields and directed a team
of seven officials, the department said, and through these activities
garnered “ten of millions of dollars” in oil and gas money for ISIS’s
coffers in the space of six months between September 2014 and March
2015. He is believed to now oversee the production of vehicle-borne
improvised explosive devices (VBIED) at an oil production site, known as
Rukaybah. As of December 2015, Zahrani “remained responsible” for the
oil and gas operations around the town of Shaddadi in Hasakah.
Husayn Juaythini: Juaythini was born in a refugee camp in the coastal enclave of the
Gaza Strip. He eventually travelled to Syria in September 2014 where he
pledged allegiance to ISIS.
The U.S. Treasury says that he then became a key figure in the
attempts of ISIS “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to establish an affiliate
in Gaza, linking Baghdadi with armed factions in the region and using
ISIS funds to develop their presence. He also assisted in facilitating
the movement of Libyan extremists to Syria to join ISIS.
Before he joined ISIS and moved to Syria in September 2014, Juaythini
was the second-in-command of the Mujahideen Shura Council in the
Environs of Jerusalem. This is a Salafi jihadi group with a presence in
the Gaza Strip and Egypt, the department said.
The U.S. lists the group as an extremist organization and it has dedicated several of its attacks to Al-Qaeda, according to the
Long War Journal. He is known to have plotted attacks against Israel and coordinated with a Libyan financier for weapons and funding.
Turki al-Binali: The Treasury sanctioned Bahraini ISIS ideologue Binali for assisting
the recruitment of foreign fighters for the radical Islamist group. He
acts as a shari, or spiritual leader, for the group, decrying their
rivals and circulating ISIS’s ideology among its supporters. As of
November 2014, Binali has served as the “chief religious adviser” to
ISIS.
He originates from a well-known Bahraini family and studied at
Dubai’s Islamic and Arabic Studies College before being deported and
continuing his studies in Bahrain and Lebanon, according to the
Associated Press.
He proceeded to travel to Syria to join ISIS and he has been pictured
preaching in a Mosul mosque as early as July 2014, just a month after
the group’s takeover of the city.
In July 2013, the 31-year-old wrote a biography of Baghdadi under the
pen name Abu Humam Bakr bin Abd al-Aziz al-Athari while ISIS was still
in its earlier incarnation of the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI), according
to the U.S.-based think tank the
Washington Institute.
In his account of the ISIS leader, Binali claimed that Baghdadi is a
descendant of the Prophet Muhammad and detailed his links to the Iraqi
al-Bu Badri tribe, known for historic links to Muhammad, and detailed
Baghdadi’s education at the Islamic University of Baghdad, where he
obtained a PhD, and his preaching at the Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal Mosque in
the Iraqi city of Samarra.
As ISIS started to form and Baghdadi announced the group’s expansion
into Syria in 2013, Binali called on Muslims to pledge allegiance to the
new group in a publication named “Extend Your Hands to Give Bay‘a
[loyalty] to Baghdadi,” according to
Cole Bunzel,
an ISIS expert and doctoral candidate at Princeton University. Bunzel
indicates that Binali was imprisoned in Bahrain around seven years ago,
without elaborating on the charge for his incarceration.
He proceeded to circulate ISIS propaganda under the Twitter username
@turky_albinali but his account is now suspended. The U.S. Treasury
notes that he now plays a pivotal propaganda role within the
organization.
Binali “provides literature and fatwas” for the group’s jihadi
training camps and pamphlets for their recruitment efforts, as well as
running a recruitment cell since March 2014 to bring Gulf nationals to
join the extremist group. Bahrain subsequently revoked his citizenship
in January last year.
He has also provided the group with religious justification for
enslaving women of ethnic minorities, as the group has done with
thousands of Yazidi women and children in Iraq. ISIS views members of
the minority sect as devil worshippers. He wrote on an online jihadi
forum: “There is no doubt that enslaving women of infidel warriors” is
allowed, adding that “it is not permitted to kill women and children but
they become slaves to Muslims.”
Read more: Who Are the ISIS Leaders Subject to New U.S. Sanctions?
