Islamic State bigger threat than Al Qaeda, Federal Bureau of Investigation chief says

Sounding the alarm: Speaking to an audience at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado Wednesday, FBI Director James Comey said that ISIS has influenced a significant number of Muslim Americans who can’t travel to the Middle East to “kill where you are”.

Efforts by theIslamic State of Iraq and the Levant to recruit young, vulnerable Americans via social media has turned it into a bigger terror threat than al-Qaeda, according to the director of the FBI.

Comey said that pro-IS Twitter accounts had more than 21,000 English language followers, many of whom were likely to be Americans. The FBI has arrested (taken in to custody) a noteworthy number of people over the last handful of weeks who had been radicalized, Comey said. He repeated his previous disclosure, without elaborating, that several people were arrested who were planning attacks related to the July 4th holiday. There are still hundreds of investigations pending. “ISIL is not your parents’ al Qaeda”.

He confirmed the bureau had not been tracking Muhammad Abdulazeez, identified as the gunman who shot and killed five service members last week at military sites in Tennessee.

In 2014, officials in intelligence said the biggest concern had been about an attack that would create large casualties against a U.S. airliner by a Yemen affiliate of al-Qaeda or by operatives of Khorasan the al-Qaeda in Syria. His family has said he suffered from depression and used drugs.

“The threat that ISIL presents and poses to the United States is very different in kind, in type and degree than al Qaeda”, Comey said.

“I worry very much about what I can’t see”, he added.

Dozens of U.S. citizens, aged from 18 to 62, are being now tracked after having traveled to fight with the extremist radical militant group.

On 8 July, Khorasan leader Muhsin al Fadhli was killed in an air strike near Sarmada, Syria, the Pentagon confirmed.