Lone-wolf terrorists, we are often told, constitute the new face of Islamist terror. These young men read about the activities of Islamic State (IS) on the Internet, perhaps pick up a few bomb-making tips from IS publications, and are then inspired to carry out massacres. However, writes Rukmini Callimachi, this story doesn’t describe how IS generally operates. Instead, its “cyberplanners” carefully recruit potential attackers via social media and then give them long-distance coaching, training, and instructions as to how to plan and execute attacks. One such cyberplanner, a Sudanese citizen known as Abu Issa al-Amriki, had his hand in numerous plots before he was killed in Syria by an American airstrike last April:
At the same time that he was recruiting [potential terrorists in Hyderabad], Amriki was grooming attackers in Canada and Britain, as well as at least three other young men in suburbs across America. . . . They included a former member of the Army National Guard living in Virginia, a warehouse worker from Columbus, and Emanuel L. Lutchman, a twenty-five-year-old in Rochester.
Looking for ways to get to Syria, Lutchman reached out to Amriki on December 25, 2015, asking what it was like to live inside territory controlled by the group. “Dream come true,” Amriki responded, before telling the young man that the Syrian border had been closed. Instead, the handler suggested that Lutchman carry out an attack right at home on New Year’s Eve—less than a week after their first exchange. Plan an “operation” and kill “1,000,000s of kuffar,” Amriki instructed him, using a derogatory Arabic word meaning infidel. Over the course of several chats via the [encrypted electronic-communication service] Telegram, they planned how Lutchman would attack a bar serving craft beer to celebrate the holiday. . . .
The two men discussed recruiting three other “brothers” to take part. They stayed in contact as Lutchman went to Walmart, where he spent $40 on two ski masks, two knives, a machete, zip-ties, duct tape, and latex gloves. He planned to abduct one of the bar’s customers and videotape himself killing the victim, prosecutors say. And they exchanged a flurry of messages as the twenty-five-year-old began to voice doubts and the handler assumed the role of therapist, patiently listening and reassuring him.
Lutchman was arrested at his home the day before his planned attack on Merchants Grill in Rochester, outed by the accomplice he had recruited, who turned out to be an FBI informant.
Read more on New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/04/world/asia/isis-messaging-app-terror-plot.html