Unmasked: Mosul Eye is anonymous historian who leaked Daesh secrets

Mosul Eye has revealed himself as 31-year old Omar Mohammed: a historian, scholar and blogger. (AP)
Updated 07 December 2017
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Unmasked: Mosul Eye is anonymous historian who leaked Daesh secrets

MOSUL, Iraq: He would wander the streets of occupied Mosul by day, chatting with shopkeepers and Daesh fighters, visiting friends who worked at the hospital, swapping scraps of information. He grew out his hair and his beard and wore the shortened trousers required by the extremists. He forced himself to witness the beheadings and stonings, so he could hear executioners call out the names of the condemned and their supposed crimes.
By night, anonymously from his darkened room, Mosul Eye told the world what was happening. If caught, he too would be executed.
But after more than three years, his double life has grown too heavy to bear. He misses his name.
His secrets consume him, sap energy he’d rather use for his doctoral dissertation and for helping Mosul rebuild. In conversations with The Associated Press, he agonized over how to end the anonymity that plagues him. He made his decision.
Mosul Eye is Omar Mohammed, historian, scholar, blogger. He is 31.
The revelation of his identity is for his thousands of readers and followers, for all his volunteers in Mosul who have been inspired by a man they have never seen. But above all, it is for the brother who died in the final battle and for his grieving mother.
“I can’t be anonymous anymore. This is to say that I defeated ISIS. You can see me now, and you can know me now,” he told The Associated Press.
Mohammed first posted about the Daesh group under his own Facebook account, in the first few days after its fighters swept into Mosul, but a friend told him he risked being killed. So in those first days he made himself a promise: trust no one, document everything.
A newly minted teacher with a reputation for secular ideas, he had lost his university job.
He found another calling.
“My job as a historian requires an unbiased approach which I am going to adhere to and keep my personal opinion to myself,” he wrote on that first day, June 18, 2014.
Mosul Eye became one of the outside world’s main sources of news about the Daesh fighters, their atrocities and their transformation of the city into a grotesque shadow of itself.
During Friday sermons, Mohammed feigned enthusiasm. He collected propaganda to post online later. He drank tea at the hospital, fishing for information.
Much of what he collected went on the blog. Other details he kept in his computer, for fear of giving away his identity. Someday, he promised, he would write history with them.
The most sensitive details initially came from two old friends: a doctor and a high school dropout who had joined a Daesh intelligence unit.
Mohammed’s information sometimes included photos of the fighters and commanders, complete with biographies surreptitiously pieced together during the course of his normal life — that of an out-of-work scholar living at home.
“I used the two characters, the two personalities to serve each other,” he said. He expanded into a Facebook page and a Twitter feed to parcel out information at a time when little news was escaping.
Intelligence agencies made contact as well and he rebuffed them.
“I am not a spy or a journalist,” he would say. “I tell them this: If you want the information, it’s published and it’s public for free. Take it.”
In March 2015, his catalog of horrors got to him.
“I was super ready to die,” Mohammed said. “I was so tired of worrying about myself, my family, my brothers. I am not alive to worry, but I am alive to live this life. I thought: I am done.”
He cut his hair short, shaved his beard and pulled on a bright red sweater. His closest friend joined him.
They drove to the banks of the Tigris blasting forbidden music. They shared a carafe of tea. Heedless of people picnicking nearby, Mohammed lit a cigarette— banned by Daesh. Somehow, incredibly, he wasn’t caught.
“At that moment I felt like I was given a new life.”
He resumed what he had taken to calling his duty. He grew out his hair and beard, put the shortened trousers back on.
He tested out different voices, Christian, Muslim. Sometimes he indicated he was gone, other times that he was still in the city.
Finally, after leaving Mosul a thousand times in his mind, he decided it was time to get out.
“I think I deserve life, deserve to be alive.”
A smuggler agreed to sneak him out for $1,000. Mohammed left the next day, the contents of his computer transferred overnight to a hard-drive that he packed with him.
No one gave him a second look during the two days and some 500 kilometers it took to reach Turkey.
Once there, Mosul Eye kept at it: via WhatsApp and Viber, from Facebook messages and long conversations with friends and relatives who had contacts within Daesh. From hundreds of kilometers away, his life remained consumed by events back home .
By mid-2016, deaths were piling up faster than he could record. The Daesh group was on a hunt for traitors and the airstrikes were taking an increasing toll on everyone. His records grew haphazard, and he turned to Twitter to document the atrocities. In February 2017, he received asylum in Europe.
Only after his elder brother Ahmed was killed in a mortar strike and Daesh was gone from the city did Mohammed reveal his secret to a younger brother — who greeted the news with a shock of pride and happiness. His sibling spoke on condition of anonymity from his refuge in Iraq because he was fearful for his life.
“People in Mosul had lost hope and confidence in politicians, in everything,” his brother said. Mosul Eye “managed to show that it’s possible to change the situation in the city and bring it back to life.”


Syrian state media: Israel attacked town near Lebanon border

Updated 3 sec ago
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Syrian state media: Israel attacked town near Lebanon border

DAMASCUS: An Israeli strike hit a Syrian town near the border with Lebanon on Tuesday, Syrian state media said, less than a week after deadly strikes on the same area.
“An Israeli aggression targeted the industrial zone in Al-Qusayr” in Homs province, the official SANA news agency said. There was no immediate news of casualties or damage.

Health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says war death toll at 43,391

Updated 13 min 48 sec ago
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Health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says war death toll at 43,391

  • The toll includes 17 deaths in the previous 24 hours

GAZA STRIP: The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Tuesday that at least 43,391 people have been killed in the year-old war between Israel and Palestinian militants.
The toll includes 17 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 102,347 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.


Greece says migrant arrivals rising in south-east islands

Updated 38 min 40 sec ago
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Greece says migrant arrivals rising in south-east islands

  • At the end of October, several hundred migrants set up tents and cardboard houses outside the local government offices of the city of Rhodes, sparking anger among residents
  • Rhodes mayor Alexandros Koliadis told Rodiaki that the island lacks the personnel, police officers and coast guard needed to register the arrivals before transferring them to camps

ATHENS: Some islands in the southeast of the Aegean sea, including Rhodes, are seeing an increase in migrants arriving by boat from Turkiye, Greek migration and asylum minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos said Tuesday.
“The southeast of the Aegean and the island of Rhodes are experiencing migratory pressure right now,” he said on public television station ERT, though he said the increase does not appear to be linked to rising tensions in the Middle East.
At the end of October, several hundred migrants set up tents and cardboard houses outside the local government offices of the city of Rhodes, sparking anger among residents and local authorities.
According to local media Rodiaki, more than 700 migrants arrived during the last week of October.
Rhodes mayor Alexandros Koliadis told Rodiaki that the island lacks the personnel, police officers and coast guard needed to register the arrivals before transferring them to camps on the mainland or in other islands.
Previously, Aegean islands further north such as Lesbos and Samos had received the brunt of migrants crossing from Turkish shores.
Crete, which has likewise seen an increase in arrivals from Libya, also needs to build facilities to process migrants.
Greece has seen a 25 percent increase this year in the number of people fleeing war and poverty, with a 30 percent increase alone to Rhodes and the south-east Aegean, according to the Migration Ministry.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees says 48,158 arrivals have been recorded so far in 2024, of which around 42,000 arrived by boat and 6,000 by crossing the land frontier with Turkiye.
“The camps on the islands have an occupancy rate of 100 percent. But on the mainland they are only 55 percent full, which provides a margin in the event of an increase in arrivals on the islands,” Panagiotopoulos said.


Sudan files AU complaint against Chad over arms: minister

Updated 51 min 17 sec ago
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Sudan files AU complaint against Chad over arms: minister

  • Chad last month denied accusations that it was “amplifying the war in Sudan” by arming the RSF

PORT SUDAN: Sudan’s army-backed government on Tuesday accused neighboring Chad of supplying arms to rebel militias, likely referring to the paramilitary forces it is battling.
The northeast African country has been engulfed by war since April 2023, when fighting broke out between the regular army, led by de facto ruler Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commanded by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
Justice minister Muawiya Osman said Burhan’s administration had lodged the complaint against Chad at the African Union.
Speaking to reporters, including AFP, Osman said the government demanded compensation and accused Chad of “supplying arms to rebel militias” and causing “harm to Sudanese citizens.”
“We will present evidence to the relevant authorities,” he added from Port Sudan, where Burhan relocated after fighting spread to the capital, Khartoum.
Chad last month denied accusations that it was “amplifying the war in Sudan” by arming the RSF.
“We do not support any of the factions that are fighting on Sudanese territory — we are in favor of peace,” foreign minister and government spokesman Abderaman Koulamallah said at the time.
The United Nations has been using the Adre border crossing between the two countries to deliver humanitarian aid.
Sudan had initially agreed to keep the crossing open for three months, a period set to expire on November 15. Authorities in Khartoum have yet to decide whether to extend the arrangement.
The Sudanese war has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 11 million, including 3.1 million who are now sheltering beyond the country’s borders.


Explosion at Turkish oil refinery injures 12

Updated 05 November 2024
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Explosion at Turkish oil refinery injures 12

  • The 12 employees sustained slight injuries and were taken to a hospital for examinations

ANKARA: An explosion at an oil refinery in northwestern Turkiye on Tuesday left at least 12 employees slightly injured, the company said. A fire at the facility was quickly brought under control.
The Turkish Petroleum Refineries company, TUPRAS, said a fire broke out at its facilities in Izmit, in Kocaeli province, during maintenance work on a compressor. The company’s emergency teams responded immediately to the incident, it said in a statement.
The 12 employees sustained slight injuries and were taken to a hospital for examinations, the company said.
The company said the unit where the incident occurred “was deactivated in a controlled manner” and that other operations at the refinery were “continuing as normal.”
Earlier, Tahir Buyukakin, the mayor for Kocaeli told private NTV television that the blast occurred during a drill. The fire was quickly brought under control by the company’s own crews and no request for help was made, he said.
Video footage from the site showed smoke rising from the refinery, which is one of Turkiye’s largest. Izmit is about 100 kilometers (62 miles) east of Istanbul.
The Borsa Istanbul stock exchange temporarily halted trading of TUPRAS shares, until the company provides a detailed explanation of the incident.