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US launches ‘daily’ ISIL investigations: Obama official

Thursday, 28 May 2015 12:53 AM [ Last Update: Thursday, 28 May 2015 4:59 PM ]

Members of the ISIL terrorist group in Syria (file photo)

The United States has launched “daily” investigations into suspected sympathizers of the ISIL terrorist group, a senior US official says.

"We are opening new investigations daily, particularly the ISIL threat," the senior Obama administration official said on Wednesday.

"They have a strategy now of encouraging anyone, essentially, to take arms and commit a terrorist attack inside the United States," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"New individuals" are "popping up pretty much daily on the radar screen in our current threat environment."

Several individuals have been arrested in recent months for plotting to travel to Syria to fight for ISIL.

There have also been several examples of Americans being inspired by ISIL to plan terrorist attacks on American soil in recent months.

American authorities have warned the public and law enforcement agencies across the United States about young US citizens seeking to join and provide assistance to ISIL in Iraq and Syria.

ISIL has threatened to “burn the United States again" by conducting terrorist attacks against the country similar to the September, 11, 2001 attacks in New York City and the Washington, DC.

Observers say that while the US and its allies claim they are fighting against terrorist groups like ISIL, they in fact helped create and train those organizations to wreak havoc in Middle Eastern countries.

The ISIL terrorists, many of whom were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, now control parts of Iraq and neighboring Syria.

The US official said on Wednesday that agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation had to "try to figure out is this the real deal, someone who is going to commit a terrorist act, or not."

"What the FBI is looking for is connectivity, whether they can show that that person has been in touch with one of the terrorists overseas, in Syria or Iraq."

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