iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — Computers belonging to Islamic extremists and recovered by coalition troops are often chock full of pornography, according to a former top American intelligence official.
In his new book, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn (Ret.) writes that extremists in al Qaeda and specifically the al Qaeda franchise in Iraq that later became ISIS were “sick, psychopathic foes.”
“[W]e were facing a despicable foe, one who would rape and pillage women and children, boys and girls, behead for fun, all while watching pornography on their laptops,” Flynn writes, after describing U.S. efforts in Iraq in the mid-2000s. “In fact, at one point, we determined that 80 percent of the material on the laptops we were capturing was pornography.”
A current counterterrorism official and a former intelligence analyst told ABC News that while they couldn’t speak to the 80 percent figure, in their experience pornography was often found on jihadists’ computers.
“Some of it was really bad, and it was all over the map. Some of it was kids, animals,” said the former analyst.
In one infamous case, a “huge” stash of pornography was found by U.S. Navy SEALs during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan in May 2011, according to a U.S. official. The official said at the time the material was hidden away in a wooden box in the al Qaeda leader’s bedroom.
A former counterterrorism official told ABC News that U.S. intelligence initially suspected coded messages might be hidden in the bin Laden porn files, but it turned out they were just what they appeared to be.
The viewing of pornography is generally seen as haram, or forbidden, in mainstream Islam, much less in the extremist interpretations espoused by al Qaeda or ISIS.
But a senior law enforcement official, who has worked terrorism cases in involving al Qaeda and ISIS both in the U.S. and abroad, said, “There has yet to be a case where some crazy porn stuff hasn’t come up… It never fails.”
The former analyst said that it’s possible the terrorist groups’ strict public posturing fueled perverse private habits like the viewing of extreme pornography and, in the more recent case of ISIS, codified sexual abuse of female “slaves.”
“I think it’s indicative of their hypocrisy of what they’ve said they believe in — their perverted version of their religion,” the former official said.
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