ISIS Aiming at Nuclear Meltdown Disaster

Jennifer Newton writes on the March 26, 2016 website edition of London’s The Daily Mail Online, that “two workers from the nuclear power plant in Dole [Brussels] have joined the Islamic State in Syria. One of the men, reportedly known as IIyass Boughalab, is believed to have been killed in Syria, while the second served a short sentence in Belgium foe terror-related offenses in 2014. With an extensive understanding of nuclear facilities,” Belgian authorities are concerned that Boughalab may have passed on valuable intelligence [schematics, plant layout, vulnerabilities, access control protocols, etc.] to ISIS,” Ms. Newton writes. Because of these concerns, all non-essential employees at the Doel and Tihange nuclear power plants have been sent home. The reduced staffing is a measure designed to allow security personnel to reduce the number of people who have daily access to the facilities, which before the recent bombing was around 1,000 personnel.

Of further concern, Didier Prosperom “who worked as a G4S security [officer] at a Belgian nuclear research center, was shot several times in the bathroom of his home last Thursday in Froidchapellein the Charleroi region of Belgium,” the Daily Mail reports. Although Belgian authorities are currently treating the incident as a murder investigation, there is the possibility that Prosperom was targeted by ISIS militants for information and access to nuclear facilities and when he refused, he was murdered.

And, the European Union’s Counter-Terrorism Chief, Gilles de Kerchove, warned last week that “Belgium’s network of nuclear power plants and other major infrastructure face the threat of [major] cyber attack within the next five years. [I think that is optimistic and if I had to bet, I’d say such a cyber attack is likely to occur within 18 months, rather than five years; but, that is just a guess]. “It would take the form of entering the SCADA (Supervisory Control & Data Acquisition), which is the nerve center of a nuclear power plant, a dam, air traffic control center or railroad switching station,” Mr. de Kerchove said.

The surveillance of nuclear power plant personnel, and the recruitment of workers at the facilities, shows how the Islamic State is upping its game in the area of human intelligence. ISIS is learning and adapting to security impediments by playing long ball, and conducting targeted HUMINT operations as another tool in their quiver to find ways to get the critical intelligence they need to carry out some kind of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) attack.

While Brussels can be criticized for their lackadaisical attitude towards the threat they are faced with, such as failing to keep tabs on one of the bombers that Turkey warned Belgian authorities was a militant jihadist. But, we should not forget that we have a POTUS here that has been emptying Guantanamo Bay Prison (GTMO) and sending dangerous jihadists back into the fold. Indeed, one of the recently released GTMO detainees is now leading al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the most dangerous branch of the group that has carried out terrorist attacks against U.S. personnel and interests. So, before we are too critical of Belgium, we may well have released, or soon to release, the next bin Laden, or the next al-Baghdadi.

The bottom line is that the Islamic State surveillance of Belgium’s nuclear facilities and personnel, as well as their successful recruitment of two nuclear power plant employees shows sophistication, and their determination to acquire a WMD, or understand how to cause a catastrophic nuclear meltdown at one of these facilities. ISIS may well have decided that rather than try and acquire illicit nuclear material, it may be just as effective to blow up the facility — by any and all means.