ISIS hacker sealed own death sentence after he got sloppy Birmingham terrorist’s online messages allowed US to target deadly drone
THE drone that killed Junaid Hussain, the Birmingham terrorist who became the top hacker and propaganda minister for Islamic State, was guided by secret intelligence.
Experts had been guided by a trail of taped conversations between the 21-year-old and an American martyr-inwaiting.
US special ops bosses have now given details of the paper trail of “grooming” posts that led them straight to Kings Heath’s Hussain, who was third on the Pentagon’s jihadi hit list.
Hussain and two bodyguards were killed in a Raqqa drone strike on August 24, 2015. His wife, former punk rocker Sally Jones – the other half of a couple dubbed Mr and Mrs Terror – is believed to have suffered the same fate in June.
Before her death, the 45-year-old confirmed that Hussain, a man who orchestrated carnage around the globe, was killed after using a compromised internet link.
Through US publication Newsweek, FBI sources have lifted the lid on the poisonous correspondence between Hussain and Usaamah Abdullah Rahim, a lanky loser who collected Pokeman cards.
He was a would-be ISIS assassin who still lived with his parents. Rahim was shot dead on June 2, 2015, in Boston while hunting cops to decapitate. He is believed to be one of nine jihadi terrorists killed in America after being brainwashed by Hussain.
It now appears that Hussain, head of an ISIS group dubbed the Cyber Caliphate, increasingly cut corners as he lured more disillusioned young men to the cause.
As one insider told Newsweek: “For all the computer savvy Hussain exhibited, his sloppy communications with Rahim did him in.”
Rahim, a 26-year-old social outcast searching for anything to swear allegiance to, was prime ISIS fodder. So too was his nephew David Wright, a man mountain with a bulging beer belly and chip on his shoulder.
When Hussain, a former ‘hacktivist’ who used the handle Trick, urged them to “get off their mum’s couch and join the jihad”, they listened.
When he tweeted “You can sit at home and play Call of Duty or you can come here – to Syria – and respond to the real call of duty”, the pair were primed.
Hussain’s messages on internet and encrypted apps give a chilling insight into ISIS’s recruitment techniques.
It is known he also spent weeks priming Elton Simpson for the execution of Pamela Geller, a blogger and organiser of the “Jihad Watch Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest” in Garland, Texas, on May 3, 2015.
He and an accomplice, armed to the teeth with three rifles, three handguns and 1,500 rounds of ammunition, were gunned down as they moved into Garland’s Curtis Culwell Centre.
With bullets still whizzing through the air, Hussain provided commentary, tweeting: “Allahu Akbar! Two of our brothers just opened fire.” He urged others to kill “those that insult the Prophet”.
Hussain tasked Rahim and Wright with finishing the job Simpson had set out to do. Rahim, however, became tired of waiting to wreak death and destruction and decided instead on a lone wolf attack on police officers.
In a 5am call to Wright, captured by Boston FBI, he chuckled while divulging the newly hatched plan. “I’m going on vacation right here in Massachusetts,” Rahim gloated. “It’s going to be local. I’m just going to, ah, go after them, those boys in blue. Cuz, ah, it’s the easiest target.
“Them juicy necks is intense. Dang! Subhan Allah! (Glory be to Allah). Subhan Allah! Dang it, I feel, I feel, I feel...so left out.
“Jihad is a way out, and it’s a way to be with Allah and to get out of this Dunya [worldly life] to be amongst the company of the righteous.”
The deluded terrorist had, through Junaid Hussain, finally found something to nail his flag to.
Calls between the pair now provide harrowing evidence of their unwavering commitment to the ISIS cause.
With Hussain pressing the buttons, Rahim excitedly phoned Wright after taking delivery of the knife intended to be used for the fatwa.
“I got myself a nice little tool,” he boasted. “You know, it’s good for, like, carving wood and, you know, like, carving sculptures...and you know...
“Oh, man, I just, I can’t wait, know,”
Laughing uncontrollably, Rahim predicted their victim would soon “be, like, thinking with (her) head on your chest”.
The FBI believes that was a reference to the ISIS tradition of placing a severed you