Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, a 23-year-old British rapper who reportedly walked out of his family’s £1 million home in Maida Vale, West London, last year to join militants in Syria after telling them he was “leaving everything for the sake of Allah,” is being investigated as a key suspect in the beheading of journalist James Foley.

A senior western intelligence official who was not identified told Fox News that Bary is being eyed as Foley’s executioner. The report noted that the Sunday Times and Sunday People listed Bary as a member of a group of at least three British-born ISIS fighters that former hostages call “The Beatles.”

The Sunday Times said Britain’s two major intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6, had identified the man who beheaded Foley but had not publicly revealed this information.

U.S. intelligence officials did not comment publicly on the reports, but a well-placed source informed Fox News that Bary’s father, who was born in Egypt, was extradited from London to the U.S. in 2012 for allegedly being connected to Osama Bin Laden, as well as the U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa in 1998.

A Mail Online report highlighted in March that Bary had grown increasingly radical after connecting with thugs linked to British Muslim, and social and political activist Anjem Choudary. He reportedly posted a series of photographs online featuring himself armed with guns and wearing masks under the heading “soldier of Allah.”

On July 1, 2013, he reportedly announced that he was giving up his musical aspirations for Islam. “I have left everything for the sake of Allah” he said, according to Mail Online.

Shortly after that declaration, Bary travelled to Syria where he joined a longtime friend who had already been fighting with ISIS.

“Oh Allah, grant us martyrdom” he reportedly said last November while praising Osama Bin Laden and calling him a “lion.”

Last Tuesday ISIS released a graphic video of Foley’s gruesome beheading where he read from an apparent script before he died.

“I wish I could have the hope of freedom and seeing my family once again, but that ship has sailed,” said Foley shortly before he was killed. “I guess, all in all, I wish I wasn’t American.”

Since Foley’s beheading there has been a raging debate over the U.S. government’s ransom policy as it relates to American captives. As a rule, the U.S. does not pay ransom to terrorist groups.

A New York Times investigation noted that al Qaeda and its direct affiliates received at least $125 million in revenue from kidnappings since 2008, mostly from European governments. The organization received $66 million in the last year alone.

Investigative reporter David Rohde, who was once abducted, highlighted that debate in a recent Reuters report pointing out the divergent policies on ransom between the U.S. and Europe.

“The payment of ransoms and abduction of foreigners must emerge from the shadows. It must be publicly debated. American and European policymakers should be forced to answer for their actions,” said Rohde.

“Foley believed that his government would help him, according to his family. In a message that was not made public, Foley said that he believed so strongly that Washington would help that he refused to allow his fellow American captives to not believe in their government,” noted Rohde.

“A consistent response to kidnapping by the U.S. and Europe is desperately needed. The current haphazard approach is failing. James Foley must not die in vain,” he ended.

Original Post by Christian Post

The US government has stepped up its efforts to increase its knowledge of Islamic State activities and assets in and around Raqqa, the group’s nominal capital…report by The Jerusalem Post

The United States intelligence and defense communities are preparing a long list of possible military targets in Syria for President Barack Obama belonging to the Islamic State, a terrorist organization holding ground throughout eastern Syria and northern Iraq.

The US government has stepped up its efforts to increase its knowledge of Islamic State activities and assets in and around Raqqa, the group’s nominal capital, after it finished taking over the region from the Assad government last week.

The US understanding of the reality in the portion of Syria under Islamic State control – what the intelligence community calls “visibility” – has been poor, as evidenced most publicly by a covert rescue operation in July that incorrectly identified the whereabouts of several Americans held captive by the group.

Islamic State has killed thousands of Christians and Muslims in the way of its march throughout Iraq, down the Euphrates and up the Tigris rivers, in an effort to form a caliphate that will extend from Baghdad to Tel Aviv.

The US lists the group as a terrorist organization, but its public beheading last week of James Foley, an American journalist, shook Washington and prompted Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey to call the group “beyond anything we’ve ever seen.”

Obama, too, called the group a “cancer” that poses a direct threat to the Muslims of Iraq, to US allies in Europe and to the American homeland.

“America does not forget,” Obama said on Tuesday. “Our reach is long. We are patient. Justice will be done.”

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki repeated on Tuesday that, despite sharing a common enemy in the Islamic State, the US would not coordinate with President Bashar Assad should it choose to strike within Syrian territory.

“Certainly we would not view it as being on the same side just because there is a common enemy,” she said. The US has repeatedly called for Assad to step down, and in recent days has blamed him for creating conditions that have allowed Islamic State to metastasize.

“When it comes to the interests of the American people, the interests of the United States, we’re not going to ask for permission from the Syrian regime,” Psaki continued, adding, “We would obviously have a legal justification for any action taken.”

Psaki said the political justification for striking Islamic State would be the protection of American lives. The threat is not restricted to borders, and thus US military options would not adhere to such restrictions, she said.

Nearly a year ago, Obama weighed striking Syria after Assad used sarin gas against a civilian town, killing 1,400 people.

Some 500 were children, and it was the deadliest attack in the three-year-old civil war to date.

During that debate, Obama took a consequential walk through the White House grounds with his chief of staff, Dennis McDonough, to discuss how to proceed. The president decided on that walk to seek authorization from Congress to use force, prompting a dramatic flurry of activity on Capitol Hill, rare during the August summer recess. Congress did not authorize force, and so the US did not act.

Obama took a similar walk on Monday with McDonough through those same grounds, though the White House did not provide a readout of the conversation. On Capitol Hill, no such flurry has matched what occurred last year.

Administration officials have not said whether the president would, once again, request authorization for the use of force from Congress.

Original Post by The Jerusalem Post