Weapons Shipped to Jihadists; JW Exposed Terrorists Enter U.S. Via Mexico; Smuggler Busted Amid Rise in Migrants from Terrorist Nations

ISIS Leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed by U.S. Forces early on Sunday morning. While much of ISIS has been eradicated in Iraq and Syria – with both their leader and spokesman killed in northeastern Syria, the international terrorist threat they pose continues to loom large. ISIS, similarly to other terrorist organizations has called for “soldiers and supporters of the Caliphate everywhere” to remain committed to the jihadist cause.

Judicial Watch investigations have revealed that individuals affiliated to radical Islamic groups are seeking to enter the U.S. by illegally crossing our Nation’s southern border. Read the FOX News update below and stay on top of Judicial Watch’s investigative work on the potential for terrorist infiltration into the U.S.

From FOX News: ISIS leader’s death marks latest defeat of once-powerful group

“U.S. sources have confirmed that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead, apparently using a suicide vest to kill himself during a U.S. raid on a compound in northwest Syria, marking the latest successful operation against the once-powerful group that at one point controlled portions of Iraq and Syria.

But who was the man whose death triggered worldwide headlines and a giant blow to ISIS?

Al-Baghdadi, whose real name is Ibrahim ibn Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai, took over ISIS in 2010 after previous leader Abu Omar al-Baghdadi was killed.

Born to a lower-middle class family in Samarra in the Sunni Triangle north of Baghdad in 1971, al-Baghdadi was part of a religiously conservative family, but was believed to have been radicalized decades later.

Earlier in his life, he earned a PhD in Islamic jurisprudence from what was then known as Saddam University, later renamed Islamic University of Baghdad after the U.S. ousted Saddam Hussein. According to Fawaz A. Gerges’ book “A History of ISIS,” the “consensus among people who knew Baghdadi” is that the “turning point in his radicalization” was when the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003.

Al-Baghdadi was captured by U.S. forces in February 2004. He was released that December along with other militants who were believed to be “low level” threats. After he was released, he reportedly told an American prison guard that he “will find you … anytime and anywhere…here or New York.”

In 2006, al-Baghdadi joined ISIS, which at the time was led by founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The group’s military leaders were mostly former generals who served under Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime.”

Read the Full Story Here.

Watch Judicial Watch’s Latest Video on the Obama Administration’s Contorted Foreign Policy in the Middle East:

1. Obama Admin. Knew Weapons Were Shipped from Benghazi to Syrian Rebels/Jihadists (10/21/2019)

“DOD records obtained by Judicial Watch contain the first official documentation that the Obama administration knew that weapons were being shipped from the Port of Benghazi to rebel troops in Syria. The growing sectarian direction of the war was predicted to have dire consequences for Iraq, which included the “grave danger” of the rise of ISIS.”

Watch the Video Here.

2. As JW Exposed Years Ago, ISIS Fighter Affirms That Terrorists Enter U.S. Via Mexico (6/11/2019)

“Five years after a Judicial Watch investigation uncovered evidence of Islamic terrorists infiltrating the United States through Mexico, a captured ISIS fighter is providing details of a plot in which jihadists enter the country through the southern border to carry out an attack. The terrorists begin their journey in Central America and exploit vulnerabilities in the Mexican border to reach the U.S., according to Abu Henricki, an ISIS soldier captured by the Syrian Democratic Forces in Rojava, Syria. Henricki and 160 of his fellow terrorists were interviewed at length by a research group called the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism. The nonpartisan organization published its findings recently in an alarming report that includes a video of the interview with the captured terrorist, who is Canadian and has dual Trinidadian citizenship

“They were going to move me to the Mexican side [of the U.S. southern border] via Puerto Rico,” Henricki says about the ISIS plot. “This was mastermind[ed] by a guy in America. Where he is, I do not know. That information, the plan came from someone from the New Jersey state from America. I was going to take a boat [from Puerto Rico] into Mexico. He was going to smuggle me in,” Henricki explains. “I don’t know where I’d end up.” In the report, the researchers reveal that the ISIS fighters were to travel from Syria to penetrate the U.S. southern order by infiltrating migration routes. “Whatever one thinks of President Donald Trump’s heightened rhetoric about the U.S.- Mexico border and his many claims that it is vulnerable to terrorists, ISIS apparently also thought so, as knowledge of this ISIS plot came from the mouth of a now-repentant ISIS cadre,” the report states.

Judicial Watch has reported this for years as part of an ongoing investigation into the national security crisis created by the dangerously porous southern border. Judicial Watch has interviewed local, state and federal law enforcement officials as well as U.S. and Mexican military sources and has traveled to remote Mexican border towns to interview American ranchers. When the Central American caravan got started last fall, Judicial Watch deployed an investigative team to the Guatemala-Honduras border after Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales confirmed that nearly 100 Isis terrorists had been apprehended in the impoverished Central American nation. Judicial Watch’s reporting has confirmed that ISIS has a training cell just a few miles from El Paso, Texas in an area known as “Anapra” situated just west of Ciudad Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. We also verified that Mexican drug cartels are smuggling foreigners from countries with terrorist links to stash areas in a rural Texas town (Acala) near El Paso. Back in 2014 Judicial Watch reported that four ISIS soldiers, who entered the U.S. through the Mexican border, were arrested in McAllen and Pharr Texas.”

Read the Full Story Here.

3. Bangladeshi Smuggler Busted Amid Rise in Migrants from Terrorist Nations – (9/17/2019)

Earlier this year a congressional probe revealed that migrants from terrorist nations are trying to enter the United States through Mexico at record rates. Among the most alarming statistics included in the investigative report was an astounding 300% increase in Bangladeshi nationals attempting to sneak into the country through Texas alone. This month federal authorities arrested a Mexican-based Bangladeshi smuggler in Houston and charged him with bringing in 15 fellow countrymen through the Texas-Mexico border. His name is Milon Miah and he lives in Tapachula, in the southeast Mexican state of Chiapas bordering Guatemala. Just a few months ago Judicial Watch reported large groups of Africans, Indians, Bangladeshis, Afghans, Syrians and Pakistanis are in Tapachula awaiting asylum in the U.S. as part of the monstrous Central American caravan.

Africa is a hotbed of Islamic terrorism, according to the State Department, and Bangladesh is a South-Asian Islamic country well known as a recruiting ground for terrorist groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Al-Qaeda Indian Subcontinent (AQIS). Last year 630 Bangladeshi nationals tried to enter the U.S. illegally in Laredo, Texas alone, marking the 300% increase from the previous year. The figures help confirm what Judicial Watch uncovered years ago as part of an ongoing investigation into the national security threats created by the porous southern border;  Mexico is a hotbed of Islamic terrorism that immediately threatens the U.S. Islamic jihadists are training in southern border towns near American cities and have joined forces with Mexican drug cartels to infiltrate the United States. A few years ago, a high-ranking Homeland Security official confirmed to Judicial Watch that Mexican drug traffickers help Islamic terrorists stationed in Mexico cross into the U.S. to explore targets for future attacks. Among the jihadists that traveled back and forth through the porous southern border was a Kuwaiti named Shaykh Mahmood Omar Khabir, an ISIS operative who lives in the Mexican state of Chihuahua not far from El Paso. Another was a Saudi Al Qaeda operative, Adnan G. El Shurkrjumah, wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) during his cross-border jaunts.”

Read the Full Press Release Here.

3. State Official Raised Concerns Clinton’s Staff Culled 30,000 “Personal” Emails  (7/2/2019)

“(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that John Hackett, the former Director for Information Programs and Services (IPS), which handles records management at the State Department, testified under oath that he had raised concerns that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s staff had “culled out 30,000” of the secretary’s “personal” emails without following strict National Archives standards. The full deposition transcript is available here.

John Hackett, as part of a series of court-ordered depositions and questions under oath of senior Obama-era State Department officials, lawyers, and Clinton aides, also revealed that he believed there was interference with the formal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) review process related to the classification of Clinton’s Benghazi-related emails.

Hackett served first as deputy director then as director for Information Programs and Services, which handles the FOIA request program and the retirement of and declassification of documents at the State Department. He was at the department from April 2013 to March 2016.

In March 2015, Clinton told reporters that she and her staff had deleted more than 30,000 emails “because they were personal and private about matters that I believed were within the scope of my personal privacy.” ABC News reported: “However, after a year-long investigation, the FBI recovered more than 17,000 emails that had been deleted or otherwise not turned over to the State Department, and many of them were work-related, the FBI has said.”

(Heather Samuelson, the Clinton lawyer who deleted the Clinton emails, separately testified to Judicial Watch that she received immunity from the Justice Department.)

Hackett answered during the deposition that he recalled a conversation that he had when he was at the State Department about requesting rules or parameters from Secretary Clinton or her attorneys that they used to segregate her personal and official work emails.”

Read the Full Story Here.