"Terrorist 007" and his Internet adventures

On July 5, 2007 three terrorists with Al Qaeda links were jailed. The leader of the group was Younes Tsouli, a Moroccan-born 23-year old living in Shepherds Bush, West London. The son of a diplomat, Tsouli was given a jail term of 10 years. Judge Peter Openshaw at Woolwich Crown Court sentenced two of Tsouli's accomplices. 24-year old Waseem Mughal of Chatham in Kent was given seven and a half years' jail.

British-born Mughal and Tsouli had been convicted of conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause an explosion. 21-year old Tariq al-Daour, who was born in the United Arab Emirates who lived in Bayswater, West London, was jailed for six and a half years. He was convicted of fundraising offenses under Britain's Terrorism Act 2000.

At the start of the two-month trial, all the three men had denied guilt of the charges against them, but on Monday July 2, 2007, Tsouli and Mughal had changed their pleas to guilty. On July 4, al-Daour also changed his plea to guilty.

Tsouli, mainly operating from his bedroom in Shepherd's Bush, had set up various websites. One jihadist website he was working on at the time of his arrest on October 21, 2005, had the title: "Youbombit.com." The main focus of his internet jihad activity was an Islamist web forum entitled Al-Ansar, which had 4,500 members. In August 2005, he became the administrator of this web forum. His online identity was "IRH007" or "Irihabi007" - meaning (in Arabic) "Terrorist 007".

Another website which Tsouli operated was At-Tibyan. This website was a resource for disseminating online manuals in support of terrorism and jihad. A recent example of the sort of material provided by At-Tibyan can be downloaded in pdf format here. Until closed down, At-Tibyan also had a web forum which was set up in November 2004.

The Al-Ansar website was used as a vehicle for Al Qaeda's Iraqi representative, Abu Maysara al-Iraqi, to present information and propaganda. Tsouli hacked into American websites. This allowed him to insert data into existing sites, including one site run by the state of Arkansas and another run by George Washington University.

In August 2004 a member of the Al-Ansar forum posted the following message: "To Our Brother Irhabi 007. Our brother Irhabi 007, you have shown very good efforts in serving this message board, as I can see, and in serving jihad for the sake of God. By God, we do not like to hear what hurts you, so we ask God to keep you in his care.

You are one of the top people who care about serving your brothers. May God add all of that on the side of your good work, and may you go careful and successful. We say carry on with God's blessing. Carry on, may God protect you. Carry on serving jihad and its supporters."

At the time of his arrest, as officers broke into his top-floor apartment, Tsouli had put up a struggle, in which a mirror was broken, injuring an officer. This mirror glass may have caused the lesions which appeared on Tsouli's face in his official police "mug shot".

Younes Tsouli featured in news reports again last week, as he became the "poster boy" for a campaign by anti-terrorism chiefs to highlight the use of the internet to promote terrorism.

Robert Mueller, the FBI's director, has said of the Tsouli case: "We are seeking terrorist leaders in foreign bases, lone actors in suburban basements, and also small but sophisticated groups who want to carry out terrorist attacks. The threat exists not only in the mountains of Pakistan, but also in the shadows of the internet."

The Terrorism That Dares Not Speak Its Name

For Britain's official counter-terror strategists, Tsouli