ISIS recruited and trained a “Suicide Brigade,” made up of jihadis from Belgium, France, Germany, Tunisia, Egypt and Spain who joined the Caliphate for the sole purpose of dying as martyrs, Sky News reported, following Tuesday’s deadly attacks in Brussels.
The Sky News report is a follow-up on its revelation earlier this month, of a memory stick stolen from the head of ISIS’ internal security police by a disgruntled fighter named Abu Hamed. The stick includes the personal information of 22,000 ISIS fighters from 51 countries in Syria and Iraq, including the names, nationalities, addresses, phone numbers, family contacts and blood types of ISIS recruits. Among those thousands of pages of documents there are the names of 123 registrants, who filled out the column about the position they would like in the Caliphate with “martyr (sha’heed).” “fighter,” “infiltrator” and “martyr” were standard pieces of information requested.
What’s interesting in the files, according to Sky News, is the number of times that Belgium or Belgian cities are mentioned, and the fact that 25 Belgians are identified on the martyrs’ list. There are 48 references to Belgian nationals within the ISIS registration questionnaires.
Sky News has also learned that the recruits were trained not just to carry out suicide attacks but to be trainers as well, developing new terror cells.
The leaker, Abu Hamed, claimed he was disappointed with ISIS, which has been taken over by Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Baath party. ISIS no longer conducts itself as an Islamist organization, Hamed explained, which is why he decided to go AWOL.