Jihadist Website with Beheadings Profited from Google Ad Platform

The Financial Times

17 May 2016

An Islamist extremist accused of funding the 2009 Jakarta suicide bombings has been selling advertising space on his website to international brands including Citigroup, IBM and Microsoft using a service provided by Google.

Muhammad Jibril Abdul Rahman, known as Prince of Jihad, is designated as a terrorist on the sanctions lists of the US, the EU and the UN — and subject to an asset freeze, travel ban and arms embargo. He is a prominent member of Jemaah Islamiyah, a militant Islamist group based in Southeast Asia with ties to al-Qaeda.

… “He is the most important online terrorist in Southeast Asia,” said Rohan Gunaratna, head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. “The purpose of his site is to polarise and radicalise people so that they become ripe for recruitment.”

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