ISIS-affiliated terrorists tweeted a series of death threats to Twitter employees in San Francisco and across Europe, encouraging “lone wolf” attacks on the company’s workers as revenge for shutting down ISIS accounts.
The Twitter account, @dawlamoon, claimed to represent Al Nusra Al Maqdisia, which declared its loyalty to ISIS last February, Vocativ reports. The group, apparently displeased with Twitter for shutting down the accounts of ISIS terrorists, tweeted several threats to the social media giant’s workers, targeting those in San Francisco and Europe.
ISIS has attempted to use Twitter to spread its propaganda, and news of the two American journalists’ grisly murders spread quickly on the site. Twitter has been working to suspend accounts that belong to ISIS terrorists, but accounts can reappear quickly with slightly changed names. Twitter has already suspended the account in question several times, according to Vocativ, but it’s continued to pop up again.
Along with the hashtag “#TheConceptOfLoneWolfAttacks,” the account signaled its anger with Twitter management’s apparent “campaign” against the vicious terrorist group. The group also included the note “AttackingTwitterEmployees” in one tweet.
“The time has arrived to respond to Twitter’s management by directly attacking their employees and physically assassinating them!! Those who will carry this out are the sleeper cells of death,” one tweet read, according to Vocativ’s translation.
“Twitter management should know that if they do not stop their campaign in the virtual world, we will bring the war to them in the real world on the ground,” according to another.
“Every Twitter employee in San Franciso in the United States should bear in mind and watch over himself because on his doorstep there might be a lone wolf assassin waiting.”
“#AttackingTwitterEmployees is on the agenda of mujahedeen and lone wolves who are across Europe.”
Attacking American and European social media workers may not be the top priority for Islamists attempting to wrest control of Iraq and Syria, but a Vocativ analysis of the account in question found that just over 11 percent of its interactions online in the past month were with Twitter accounts based in America.
Twitter has been fighting to keep ISIS terrorists off its service, but it’s safe to assume that it will be able to fairly easily find and shut down accounts that promulgate “#AttackingTwitterEmployees.”