Guy Van Vlierden

Avoiding a Resurgent Islamic State: Repatriation, Rehabilitation & Reintegration The Islamic State is prioritizing freeing its operatives and supporters from SDF-controlled prisons and detention camps, seeing that as a necessary step for the group’s resurgence. To that end, they’v...

My most recent Intel Brief highlighting the dangerous implications posed by a Trump administration draw down of our forces in Northeast Syria. 1/5

thesoufancenter.org/intelbrief-2...

geolocation of a Belgian IS recruiter at Ehsas NGO's orphanage in Kunduz google.com/maps?ll=36.7... he doesn't seem to be aware or care about the fact that the videos he's posting on the internet made it fairly easy to pinpoint his exact location

In 2011, however, he did praise the Taliban because they "behead unbelievers who oppose Muslims", according to the 2016 verdict. While he now calls on "honest" Belgian Muslims to follow his example and come to Afghanistan (10/10)

He explicitly says that he is not in Afghanistan to wage jihad and was also misunderstood in the past. "I wanted to live under the laws of Allah as I do here now, not planting bombs and killing people" (9/10)

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He doesn't reveal his exact whereabouts. But together with @brunostruys.bsky.social, @p-vanostaeyen.bsky.social and the phenomenal @obretix.bsky.social we were able to locate him here in the northern city of Kunduz (8/10) www.google.com/maps/place/3...

He now says he will continue that project in Afghanistan, also with the intention that it will benefit an orphanage, images of which he shows in his recent videos (7/10)

In recent years, he has raised money to establish an ecological Muslim village under the name 'Hijra Permaculture Autonomie', which he tried in vain in Benin (where he was arrested and deported) and Indonesia (6/10)

In 2016, Denis was sentenced, first to 10 and on appeal to 5 years in prison. When he was released in 2018, he readily admitted to having become even more radicalized (5/10)

One of them was Najim Laachraoui, later known as explosives expert of the Islamic State, who supplied the bombs for the Paris attacks of November 13, 2015 and who himself died in the Brussels attacks on March 22, 2016 (4/10)

In 2011, he started distributing food to the homeless under the name 'Resto du Tawhid', which earned him a large following, whom he soon began recruiting for Syria. In total, at least 57 FTFs left with his help (3/10)

Er zit een Belg bij de Afghaanse taliban. En hij is niet de eerste de beste jihadronselaar Er zit een Belg bij de Afghaanse taliban. En niet de eerste de beste. Een decennium geleden was Jean-Louis Denis (50) één van de succesvolste ronselaars van Syriëstrijders, die ook later aanslagpleger...

Alternately known as Jean-Louis Le Soumis, Abu Sara and Abu Yahya, he came into the picture as an extremist as early as 2008. At that time, he distributed pamphlets against democracy and for jihad around the Brussels North Station (2/10) www.hln.be/buitenland/e...

Jean-Louis Denis, one of the most prolific recruiters of Belgian foreign terrorist fighters for the Syrian war a decade ago, has embraced the Taliban. In a series of videos posted last week, he announced his hijra to Afghanistan about 3 months ago (1/10)

Islamic State Editorial on the New Orleans Attack Unsurprisingly, when news emerged of a truck-ramming and shooting attack in New Orleans on New Year’s Day, the question arose as to whether the attack had some connection to the Islamic State: a quest...

Full translation & overview of Islamic State editorial on the New Orleans attack, covering issues such as the fact that the group may praise & bless attacks without officially claiming them, and what the attack means for the wider U.S.-led war on the group www.aymennaltamimi.com/p/islamic-st...

THREAD: In 2023, I received an envelope with no return address. Inside was a flash drive containing tens of 1000s of secret files.

It came from a vigilante with a tumultuous past, who'd conducted a years-long undercover operation. He didn’t tell the FBI or his family. He only told me.

The New Syria and Reactions to Assad's Fall: A Sample of Local Reactions With the fall of the Assad regime overnight and a transition process now underway, it feels good to be able to write more freely and freely use the term regime without having to worry about exposing c...

Obviously everyone should be reading everything @ajaltamimi.bsky.social's put out over the past 2 weeks

www.aymennaltamimi.com/p/the-new-sy...

The Age of Political Jihadism: A Study of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham The Syria-based group now functions more like a government than a nonstate actor, portending a reorientation for the larger jihadist movement.

Who are HTS, the Syrian rebels who stunned the world by storming Syria's second city after a three-day blitz against Russian-backed Assad regime forces? Read Institute jihadism scholar Aaron Y. Zelin's groundbreaking study of the group.
www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analy...

A sequence of maps of the Syrian frontlines posted by
@Levant_24_ (Twitter) these last few days ...

29XI24 8:55 -> 1
30XI24 20:30 -> 2
1XII24 12:15 -> 3
1XII24 16:25 -> 4

For those curious about Jawlani and his evolution, I've been tracking every single media release/public appearance he has had since January 2012 jihadology.net/2020/05/27/a...

Apparently not - although I don't know the details, it appears to be a non-combat related health issue.

Here's a video of the salat janaza, the funeral prayer performed for Chourouhou also posted on X by Michael Devred, who has started a collection to support the "many relatives of Tustari in Belgium" - using the most common nickname for the man who was known in Syria as Abu Rashid (9/9)

Chourouhou passed away in the hospital on the night of November 28 to 29, 2024, his friend Michael 'Abourayan' Devred (sentenced in 2016 to 5 years and 4 months, of which 5 years suspended) announced on X, formerly known as Twitter - posting this picture of the deceased (8/9)

Just as Suqur as-Sham was taking part in the offensive led by Hayat Tahrir as-Sham (the Islamist militia that once emerged from the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda) that led to the recent capture of Aleppo, Chourouhou had to be hospitalised for an unspecified health problem (7/9)

According to Jean-Louis Denis, one of Belgium's most notorious recruiters for jihad in Syria who served his sentence and was released in 2018, Chourouhou recently worked for a local judge in Syria — most likely under the authority of Suqur as-Sham in Idlib (6/9)

L’imam franco-syrien Bassam Ayachi, « informateur » des services secrets, condamné à un an de prison ferme Cette figure de l’islamisme belge a été condamnée à Paris à cinq ans d’emprisonnement, dont un an ferme, pour association de malfaiteurs terroriste.

Chourouhou was sentenced in absentia to 10 years for terrorism in Brussels on 29 July 2015. But while Ayachi was captured and sentenced to 5 years (4 suspended) in Paris in 2022, Chourouhou remained in Syria and thus escaped prosecution (5/9) www.lemonde.fr/societe/arti...

Footage of Belgian-Syrian sheikh Bassam Ayachi in liberated Idlib Mohammed Chourouhou (50), a Belgian fighter within the former islamist militia ‘Suqur as-Sham’, has posted recent footage from Idlib on his Facebook page. “The city is completely …

Earlier that year I also posted video footage that Chourouhou had then distributed of his sheikh Ayachi in Idlib, which had just been captured from the regime of Bashar al-Assad - historical footage that is probably nowhere else to be found today (4/9) emmejihad.wordpress.com/2015/03/30/f...

Belgian father forced his teenage daughter into marriage with IS commander The Belgian newspaper ‘Het Laatste Nieuws’ reports today about Mohammed C. — a Belgian-Moroccan father who took his whole family to the Syrian war. He pushed his mentally unstable son i…

In my long-unupdated blog, I told in 2015 how Chourouhou first ended up in the ranks of ISIS, married off his underage daughter and sent his mentally unstable son to the front to collect corpses (3/9) emmejihad.wordpress.com/2015/12/15/b...

The previous picture appeared on Facebook in May 2014, when he had just joined Suqur as-Sham, the militia of the most famous veteran of the Belgian jihad, Bassam Ayachi. In this picture from 2017, Ayachi is recognizable by his white beard and Chourouhou by his red coat (2/9)

It's been a terribly long time since I reported on Belgian foreign fighters in Syria. The passing of one of 100+ of them we lost track of is a good opportunity for a first post on this platform. His name is Mohammed Chourouhou and he left Brussels for Syria on October 6, 2013 (1/9)

Un réseau de l’organisation Etat islamique qui voulait rallier l’Europe démantelé en Côte d’Ivoire et à Madagascar Huit Syriens et Irakiens ont été arrêtés fin juillet, à Abidjan et Antananarivo, avec l’appui des services de renseignement américains et français. Suspectés de faciliter le voyage de membres de l’EI ...

Everything in this Le Monde article is pointing to the fact that IS Central Command is planning major operations in Europe again ...

Un réseau de l’organisation Etat islamique qui voulait rallier l’Europe démantelé en Côte d’Ivoire et à Madagascar

www.lemonde.fr/internationa...