THEY are terror attacks 10,500 miles apart but the Bondi Beach slayings and Manchester synagogue stabbings show how ISIS is making a terrifying comeback.
Now experts warn Britain is at risk of more attacks as the Jihadist insurgency controls a vast sleeper network through social media – using artificial intelligence to boost their profile.
Moments before Sajid Akram, 50 and his son Naveed, 24, opened fire on innocent Jewish festival-goers in Sydney, the pair draped an Islamic State flag over the front windscreen of their car.
In Britain, Syrian-born Jihad al-Shamie called 999 to pledge allegiance to ISIS after his attack on the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue in Manchester, which left two worshippers dead in October.
Experts say it’s only a matter of time before ISIS sympathisers launch more assaults on Brits after the group was taken over by a bloodlust preacher who left the mosques of London to become the supreme leaders of the group.
The terror group is also on a recruitment drive, using AI-generated ‘news anchors’ to push their agenda as well as ChatGPT to translate their messages into different languages.
They are also using influencers on social media platforms like TikTok to brainwash youngsters into their ideology.
In early 2023, a planned terror attack on a Pride march in Austria, hatched by two teenagers and a 20-year-old, was thwarted. They were found to have been inspired and radicalised by Jihadists on TikTok and other platforms.
After an ISIS attack on a Russian concert hall, which killed 145 in March last year, followers put out a fake video using an AI-generated news presenter as part of their propaganda war.
The ‘presenter claimed the shootings were part of “the normal context of the raging war between the Islamic State and countries fighting Islam.”
The 92-second clip was put out as part of a new media program, run by ISIS supporters, called News Harvest, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist movements online.
AI is also allowing the terrorists to translate their messages of hate more quickly to reach a wider audience.
The materials are posted on platforms such as Facebook, where they can reach large audiences before being detected and removed.
SITE (Search International Terrorist Entities) co-founder Rita Katz said AI was becoming invaluable to the organisation.
She told the Washington Post: “For ISIS, AI means a game changer.
“It’s going to be a quick way for them to spread and disseminate their bloody attacks to reach almost every corner of the world.”
Both MI5 and MI6 are understood to be monitoring the growing use of AI as a propaganda weapon amid concerns ISIS and al-Qaeda are mounting a comeback.
In his annual threat update last month, MI5’s director-general, Sir Ken McCallum, warned that the two groups were “once again becoming more ambitious.”
ISIS bosses play a constant cat and mouse game with social media firms who take down violent content – setting up new accounts to repost propaganda and recruit followers.
The Soufan security research centre in New York said shutting and banning ISIS from social media platforms “does not eliminate the underlying phenomenon or reduce demand.”
It said: “The phenomenon of platform migration has also occurred in the global jihadi movement.
“ISIS was highly active on Twitter in the early 2010s, using the platform to recruit, disseminate propaganda, and coordinate attacks.
“However, as Twitter began cracking down on ISIS-related accounts by suspending thousands of them, members of ISIS migrated to other platforms.”
Meanwhile experts in the UK fear Britain will be targeted in increasingly twisted plots as ISIS gains more followers.
The Bondi shootings have sparked a series of terror attack alerts and the UK Government this week warned tourists heading to Dubai that the UAE may be targeted.
One specialist told The Sun how he believes weekly pro-Palestine marches are fuelling radicalisation – and make it more likely for so-called lone wolf attackers to strike.
Dr Alan Mendoza, executive director of think-tank, the Henry Jackson Society, said: “They raise the temperature of the issue, damage social cohesion and encourage people who are radicalised to go to the next step and carry out attacks.
“We need to dampen tensions down by preventing excessive marches – there’s no good reason to have them week in, week out.
“Free speech is one thing but why are city centres allowed to be shut down when hate slogans are being used such as ‘globalise the intifada?’
“It’s encouraging behaviour that’s not conducive to the public good and we ought to be taking it seriously.”
ISIS faded mostly into obscurity in the West when its caliphate, which stretched across the Iraq-Syria border, collapsed in March 2019 after US-backed Syrian forces captured its territory.
But it never disappeared completely with pockets of power in south Asia and Africa and increasingly in Afghanistan, now under the control of the Taliban.
ISIS fighters hide out in caves, forests and mountain ranges where Dr Mendoza says they run sophisticated social media campaigns – including a weekly newsletter called Al Naba.
Dr Mendoza said: “It keeps followers abreast of how many killings have taken place and part of its message is about how ISIS is winning the war against the infidel.
“ISIS is making a resurgence but its actual survival in itself is a triumph for it.
“In this contemporary age, there are lots of ways they can continue to operate. Security services have to be lucky all the time – they only have to be lucky once to cause devastation.
“They are actively trying to damage the UK and are engaged in ways of destabilising the country.
“We think of Britain as gun free but if you want something bad enough you can probably get it.”
Two men are currently in trial in Manchester for allegedly plotting a gun attack on jews in Manchester.
Alleged Islamic State fanatic Amar Hussein, 52, and restaurant owner Walid Saadaoui, 38, have denied preparing acts of terrorism and arranging to buy weapons and ammunition.
Antonio Giustozzi, senior research fellow in terrorism and conflict at defence think-tank RUSI, said ISIS relies on influencers to spread their material.
He said: “ISIS branded social media is struggling because they are closely monitored and get blocked. They rely more on community chats and on seemingly independent influencers, who share ISIS-related material alongside much other stuff.”
MI5 fears
He added that Britain was likely to see more attacks in the organisation’s name, adding: “The ISIS propaganda encourages sympathisers to set up their own plots, so it is likely to happen sooner or later.”
ISIS’ supreme leader is now a preacher who once worked at the Quba Mosque in Leicester and Greenwich in London.
Orange-bearded Abdul Qadir Mumin hides out in the caves of Somalia where he commands an army of fighters.
He tried to recruit vulnerable young Brits to the cause but his extreme views attracted complaints from local Muslim communities.
The Bondi Beach attackers, who killed 15 innocents, had two homemade Islamic State flags inside their car and had recently returned from a trip to the Philippines, where it’s been suggested they could have been given military training.
Rise and fall of ISIS
ISIS grew out of the chaos of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.
An off-shoot of al-Qaeda, the group changed its name to Islamic State in 2006.
When the Syrian civil war breaks out in 2011, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi sends operatives there to set up a subsidiary -and breaks with al-Qaeda.
The group starts to seize land – Fallujah in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria. It declares a caliphate.
In Iraq, thousands of Yazidis are slaughtered and more than 7,000 women and girls are forced to be sex slaves.
In Syria, hundreds of members of the Sheitaat tribue are executed and Western hostages are beheaded in sick films posted online.
In 2014, the US builds up a coalition against ISIS and starts air strikes.
It takes five years to defeat the group
They spent a month in areas that have become a hotbed for ISIS, including Davao City, the capital of Mindanao, the southern island of the Philippines, and Marawi, which was held by homegrown terrorists for five months in 2017.
Dr Paul Stott, head of security and extremism at Policy Exchange, said: “ISIS acts as a kind of beacon for angry people and looks to motivate people through its Islamist ideology.
“What we are seeing in Manchester and Sydney is simply anti-semitism, terrorism aimed at jews by people who want to carry on the campaign of Hamas, but in western countries.
“What these attackers are doing is attaching themselves to the pre-eminent group of the day which happens to be ISIS. Twenty years ago they would have done it in the name of al-Queda.
“I think we have to come to terms with the fact that the 7-10 attacks shifted the dial and were hugely damaging to social cohesion. On the fringes are people who wish to do harm to jews or anybody they see as associated with Israel of the West, so these are dangerous and difficult times we live in.”
