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| An image supplied by Islamist media outlet Welayat Tarablos allegedly shows Isis members parading the street in Libya's coastal city of Sirte. |
English-speaking female jihadis have been using social media to try to lure western Muslims to join them with Islamic State in Libya, a new front in the war on terror just 400 miles from Europe’s shores.
Three native English-speaking women have been monitored for months by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a UK-based thinktank, and are believed to be British. They say they have been living in the war[-]torn north African country since at least the start of the summer.
Using a variety of social media platforms, including Twitter and encrypted messaging apps such as Surespot and Telegram, the three have reached out to their hundreds of followers, and as routes into Syria via its 500-mile border with Turkey have become further restricted they have advertised the journey to Libya as the easiest way of joining Isis’s so-called caliphate.
Isis has been in Libya for just over a year and the country is home to its largest forces outside of the Middle East. The group has its headquarters in the northern coastal town of Sirte, birthplace of Libya’s late dictator Muammar Gaddafi, but also has a training base to the west of the capital, Tripoli.
Melanie Smith, ISD researcher and an expert in western female jihadis, said evidence of women travelling to Libya to start a new life under Isis represented a dangerous tipping point. » | Shiv Malik, and Chris Stephen in Tunis | Sunday, September 27, 2015
