Pornography

Police authorities in the United Kingdom say they have discovered terrorists are using online child pornography to exchange information about their plots to bring calamity to society.

The former chairwoman of Parliament's Joint Intelligence Committee, Baroness Neville-Jones, said, "The information about a possible link between extremism and child pornography potentially provides useful insight into three things: the methods that extremists use to communicate; the methods they use to target vulnerable people in society; and the techniques they seek to use to conceal their online activities."

The newspaper reported security services in Britain are aware of the activity and are investigating.

One source told the Times eventually child welfare experts may need to be trained to identify signs of terrorist plots during their routine monitoring of pornographic sites.

The report said investigators haven't yet determined which came first: the involvement by terrorists with child pornography or the utilization of child porn networks to transmit secret information securely.

One Times source noted the conflict between strict Islamic law that would ban any such images and the use by Islamists of that very medium.

"It shows that these people are very confused," the source said. "Here they are hating Western decadence but actually making use of it and finding that they enjoy this stuff."

Andrew Dismore, the member of Parliament who chairs the Joint Committee on Human Rights, said: "This is an important development. We have to do more than just the police work. It needs child protection, criminological and psychological work. It could become a very important weapon in the fight against terrorism."

The report said the first British suspicions of a link between child sex abuse and jihadis emerged two years ago when antiterrorism police in two unrelated investigations were shocked to find computerized images of hardcore child pornography.

The report said one case that tipped off the security services to a plausible link involved Abdul Makim Khalisadar, a former mujahidin and a preacher at the East London mosque.

The Times said it also learned child pornography was found on computers during a 2001 raid on a mosque run by an al-Qaida recruiter in Italy.

Police there say they believe the images contained messages.

The newspaper said the messages could be concealed within digital images, audio, video or other files.

Isa 1:4 Woe, sinful nation, a people heavy with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, sons who corrupt! They have forsaken Jehovah; they have provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger; they have gone away backward.