An emissary of the European Union said there are EU-member countries supporting Islamic State terror by purchasing oil from them.
Jana Hybaskova, the European Union’s ambassador to Iraq, has accused a number of EU-member countries of buying oil from the Islamic State (IS or ISIS), according to Turkish media reports.
Speaking last Tuesday at the European Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee, Hybaskova would not name the countries involved.
IS, a brutal terror organization, made headlines recently with the beheading of two American journalists: James Foley and Steven Sotloff; the latter was Jewish and an Israeli citizen.
Hybaskova said that tankers filled with oil purchased from IS had arrived in European countries and that the EU must “exert pressure on Iran, Kurdistan and Turkey to stop this trade.”
IS Controls Oil Fields in Iraq and Syria
“Over the past year, the group has gained control of oil fields in Iraq and Syria, giving it access to thousands of barrels a day that it sells on the black market,” Bloomberg Businessweek reports.
“Most of the group’s oil flows through local middlemen and is paid for almost entirely in cash, making the transactions extremely difficult to track. That insulates Islamic State from traditional methods used to dry up terrorist funds, such as international banking sanctions and anti-money-laundering laws,” the article continues, adding that IS “may be making more money than any other terrorist group,” according to U.S. intelligence officials and antiterrorism finance experts. “While al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas depend on the kindness of wealthy sympathizers and state sponsors, Islamic State finances itself almost entirely through revenue from extortion, taxes, and especially illicit oil sales.”
Islamic State Members in US and Israel
IS has reportedly taken hold in countries around the world, including the United States, according to former CIA operative Bob Baer, who recently told CNN that some American citizens had gone to Syria to join IS and returned to the US via the Mexican border.
“It’s a definite concern,” Baer said. “And then there’s the unknown, of how many people have come back they’re not even aware of.”
Even in Israel there are reports of a fifth column of Israeli Arabs promoting IS. According to YNET news site, an imam in northern Israel told his congregants: “ISIS is on the right path.”
Abed Mansour, a resident of the predominantly Arab city of Tira in central Israel, is among many in the Israeli-Arab community who strongly oppose the Islamic terror group. “I know many people who have started to support ISIS,” he stated, as reported in YNET. “There are at least a thousand of them in this city alone. They have turned into dangerous people. I sometimes wonder if they are behind the murder and violence spree in our sector.”
Written by: United with Israel Staff