TerrorismU.S. tracking 150 people who travelled to Syria – some of them “to fight” in ISIS ranks

There are far more Americans with ISIS than first thought // Source: almashhad.net

U.S. law enforcement agencies are tracking about 150 people who traveled from the United States to Syria in recent months, “a significant number of them to fight,” FBI director James Comey told reporters at a briefing in Boston on Tuesday.

The Guardian reports that this number of Americans who traveled to the Middle East to join the Islamic State (ISIS) is higher than figures mentioned earlier by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement of Americans who actually joined ISIS ranks. Last month, Comey told CBS News that the FBI was aware of “a dozen or so” Americans fighting in Syria “on the side of the terrorists.”

Comey repeated this estimate on Tuesday. “There we see somewhere in excess of a dozen [Americans who have joined ISIS] that we have a pretty good handle on,” Comey said. “I don’t have high confidence that I see the entire universe,” he added.

That total number of travelers under surveillance is ten times that, Comey said. “We have tracked coming up on close to 150 people who traveled from the United States to Syria, for all manner of motivations,” Comey said Tuesday. “A significant number of them to fight.”

“We are determined not to allow future lines to be drawn from a terrorist diaspora out of Syria to a future 9/11,” Comey said.

Comey refused to answer a question about whether fighters had returned to the United States from Syria. “That is something that we track very closely,” he said. “I don’t want them to know too much about what we know.”

In October, the UN Security Council said 15,000 fighters from eighty countries have traveled to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside Isis and other militant groups.

In his interview with CBS News, Comey said he would do everything in his power to monitor the militant fighters if they return to the United States. He noted that American citizens have the right freely to enter and exit the United States.

“Ultimately, an American citizen, unless their passport is revoked, is entitled to come back,” Comey told CBS. “So someone who has fought with (Islamic State) with an American passport and wants to come back, we will track them very carefully.”

Comey said that currently the United States is not in as dangerous a time as when al Qaeda was at its peak, because the intelligence community is “better organized.”

“We’re better organized and equipped at the border,” he said. “We have relationships with our foreign partners. All of which make us better able to see dots and connect dots. The transformation since before 9/11 is striking.”

Comey also said that the Khorasan Group is a “serious” group bent on harming the United States.

“Khorasan was working and you know, may still be working on an effort to attack the United States or our allies, and looking to do it very, very soon,” Comey said. “I can’t sit here and tell you whether it’s their plan is tomorrow or three weeks or three months from now. Given our visibility we know they’re serious people, bent on destruction. And so we have to act as if it’s coming tomorrow.”