A 21-year-old British hacker who was a member of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was killed in a U.S. military airstrike earlier this week, the Pentagon confirmed Friday.
“We can confirm that Junaid Hussain, an ISIS operative was killed in a U.S. military airstrike on August 24 in Raqqa, Syria,” said Air Force Col. Pat Ryder, spokesman for U.S. Central Command.
{mosads}”He was involved in actively recruiting ISIL sympathizers in the West to carry out lone wolf style attacks,” Ryder said, using a different acronym for ISIS.
“He was also responsible for releasing personally identifying information of approximately 1,300 U.S. military government employees and specifically sought to direct violence against U.S. service members and government employees,” he added.
“Junaid Hussain’s death removes a key ISIL member involved in actively recruiting and inciting sympathizers in the West to carry out lone wolf attacks.”
Hussain was a leading member of the CyberCaliphate, and behind the hack of Centcom’s YouTube and Twitter accounts earlier this year, a defense official told The Hill. He also posted the personal information of U.S. service members as a “hit list.”
The Counter Extremism Project, a non-profit orgnaization, said Hussain was “arguably the most important and highest profile English speaking online recruiter and propagandist for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).”
“Hussain reportedly radicalized and directly encouraged Elton Simpson to carry out the May 3, 2015 attack with Nadir Soofi on a draw-Muhammad contest in Garland, Texas,” the Counter Extremism Project statement said. “Hussain’s targeting will hopefully seriously weaken ISIS’s online ability to radicalize, recruit, and incite to violence.”
Ryder said the airstrike was specifically targeting Hussain, and that he was the only one killed in the airstrike. He said “appropriate coordination” for approval of the airstrike, involving Centcom commander Gen. Lloyd Austin and other U.S. government agencies, was done before it was taken.
The U.S.’s targeting of Hussain, a hacker, illustrates the emphasis placed on disrupting ISIS’s online propaganda, which has recruited tens of thousands of foreign fighters and Westerners to fight with the terrorist group.
There is also increasing concern over that propaganda inciting lone wolf attacks — either by homegrown radicalists or from fighters returning to their home countries.
“This individual was very dangerous, he had significant technical skills, and he had expressed a strong desire to kill Americans and recruit others to kill Americans, and so he was working to inspire lone wolf attacks here in the U.S. and elsewhere, so he no longer poses a threat, and that’s a good thing,” Ryder said.
“Needless to say, we have taken a significant threat off the battlefield and have made it very clear that in terms of ISIL leadership, we are going to target them where we can just as we are targeting their other communications nodes, logistics nodes, and other military equipment,” he added.
American University law professor Stephen I. Vladeck, said under the U.S. government’s current interpretation of the 2001 authorization for the use of military force (AUMF), cyberhackers can be considered as much of enemy belligerents as fighters on the battlefield.
“The U.S. position is that members of ISIS are per se belligerents—just like members of the German Army during World War II,” he said. “The fact that the target is someone engaged in cyberwarfare, as opposed to conventional warfare, shouldn’t matter.
However, he said, a legal question would arise if it’s not clear whether a target is “clearly a belligerent in the armed conflict” or a civilian.
Where the administration is drawing the line between the two is not yet clear.
On Friday, the Justice Department announced that a Virginia teenager behind a pro-ISIS Twitter account, 17-year-old Ali Shukri Amin, was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
“The Department of Justice will continue to use all tools to disrupt the threats that ISIL poses, and our efforts will be furthered by parents and other members of our community willing to take action to confront and deter this threat wherever it may surface,” said John Carlin, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for national security, said in a statement.
“More and more, their propaganda is seeping into our communities and reaching those who are most vulnerable,” he said.
— Updated 1:32 p.m.