Activities From 2003-2005
Tsouli first appeared on web forums in 2003. He attracted the attention of Aaron Weisburd on a forum called "Islamic Terrorists", where he initially appeared to be a harmless agitator, "At first I started publishing bits and pieces of what he was doing online for comic relief, and really had no appreciation of where he was headed". Tsouli and Weisburd taunted each other online "I would give him a message like, 'Your days are numbered – you’re going to get caught'. He, on the other hand, was participating in discussions about which part of my body they wanted when I was killed, and he said he wanted one of my fingers as a souvenir". In 2004, Weisburd geolocated Tsouli to Ealing in West London, and passed this information on to the authorities.
In early 2004, Tsouli joined two now defunct password-protected forums sympathetic to al-Qaeda in Iraq, Muntada al-Ansar al-Islami (Islam Supporters Forum) and al-Ekhlas (Sincerity). There, he gained a reputation as a resident expert on Internet technologies, especially on matters on both enhancing and defeating on-line security. He was well known as someone who could break into a web site and hide files containing al-Qaeda propaganda on these sites (examples of such propaganda include the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi produced film All Is for Allah's Religion, the al-Qaeda Internet magazine Voice of Jihad (Sawt al Jihad), and videos of the beheading of Americans Nick Berg, Jack Hensley and Paul Marshall Johnson, Jr.). He would then post links to these covert files on the forums he belonged to. He also mentored other volunteers on the art of computer cracking, both by answering questions on-line and through an al-Ekhlas posting entitled “Seminar on Hacking Websites”.
Eventually, Tsouli started posting non-computer related instructional material on-line, including tutorials on making suicide bomb vests and other explosive devices. He also started distributing cracked versions of computer software, including Arabic language translation software.
On 5 June 2005, Tsouli wrote "I am still the terrorist 007, one of the most wanted terrorists on the internet. I have the Feds and the CIA, both would love to catch me, I have MI6 on my back". Following the 7 July 2005 London bombings, Tsouli wrote: "Brother, I am very happy. From the moment that the infidels cry, I laugh."
Between April and October 2005, he was contacted by American Ehsanul Sadequee, who sent him a videotape he had made of potential targets including the United States Capitol building, the World Bank, a Masonic temple, and a fuel depot.
Read more about this topic: Younes Tsouli
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