Explore the backgrounds and affiliations of extremist propagandists, leaders, and funders, and where they reside and operate
 

(New York, NY) -- The Counter Extremism Project today released an expanded Global Extremist Registry, a unique searchable database and interactive map that shines the light of scrutiny on more than 75 of the world’s most notorious extremist leaders, propagandists, financiers and their organizations.

Many of the new entries in the expanded Global Extremist Registry belong to organizations not represented previously, including Jemaah Islamiyah, Lakshar-e-Taiba, al-Mulathameen, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the Haqqani network, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Jobbik, and the National Democratic Party of Germany.

The information on the Global Extremist Registry can be searched in several ways, and is presented in both list form and graphically on a world map. The database can be searched using a specific name; by political leaders; financial leaders or propagandists; or filtered by extremist groups, such as ISIS, al-Shabab, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, the Muslim Brotherhood, or Golden Dawn.

Following is a sampling of the new entries to the Global Extremist Registry:

• Salim Hasan Khalifa Rashid al-Kuwari is a U.S.-designated al-Qaeda financier and facilitator. According to the U.S. Treasury, al-Kuwari has channeled hundreds of thousands of dollars to al-Qaeda through an Iran-based network run by senior al-Qaeda facilitator Ezedine Abdel Aziz Khalil. Reportedly operating freely out of Doha, Qatar, al-Kuwari has also allegedly facilitated the travel of extremist recruits abroad and secured the release of al-Qaeda detainees in Iran. Qatari authorities arrested al-Kuwari in 2009 and 2011 but released him both times. Al-Kuwari even worked for the Qatari Ministry of Interior after being designated by the U.S in 2011 as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.
   
• Abu Sayyaf was reportedly a leading figure in ISIS’s oil and gas operations as well as its military missions and hostage operations. Sayyaf was killed by members of the U.S. Army’s elite Delta Force in a night raid on May 16 at Al-Amr in eastern Syria. The raid also resulted in the capture of his wife Umm Sayyaf. Sayyaf was an important intelligence target because of his intimate knowledge of ISIS’s hierarchy and operations. For that reason, the United States chose a risky ground assault aimed at his capture, rather than launching a drone strike. One terrorism analyst compared Sayyaf to “Al Capone’s accountant.”
   
• Umm Sayyaf, the wife of Abu Sayyaf, has reportedly played key roles in ISIS activities, including human-trafficking operations. An Iraqi citizen, Umm Sayyaf was captured during a May 16 Special Forces raid in Syria that resulted in the death of her husband and the freeing of a Yazidi woman enslaved in the Sayyaf household. Following her capture, Umm Sayyaf was flown to a U.S. military facility in Iraq for questioning.
   
• Anjem Choudary, a U.K.-based Islamist cleric and lawyer, is a tireless propagandist for ISIS and other Islamist groups. His pro-sharia speeches and anti-Western commentaries have brought Choudary media exposure and influenced many young people to join Islamist movements. They may also have inspired acts of terror in the United Kingdom. Choudary was a founding member of the now defunct Islamist group al-Muhajiroun that openly praised the 9/11 attacks. He is also believed to have influenced two al-Muhajiroun members who in 2013 beheaded British soldier Fusilier Lee Rigby in southeast London in retaliation for British campaigns in the Middle East. British authorities have arrested and released Choudary multiple times for his connection to hundreds of British Muslims arrested in terrorism-related cases. He lives with his family in East London, England.
   
• Qasem Soleimani is the major general of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and the commander of Quds Force, the IRGC’s external wing responsible for projecting Iranian power through its global proxies. Soleimani controls both Iran’s campaign to prop up Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad and Iranian support for Iraq’s fight to defeat ISIS. There are reportedly 60 to 70 Quds Force agents on the ground in Syria at any given time, and the IRGC purportedly had 10,000 operatives in Syria as of the end of 2013. Soleimani exerts tremendous influence on the Iraqi government, its armed forces and its powerful and controversial Shiite militias like the Badr Organization, Kata’ib Hezbollah (KH) and Asaib Ahl al-Haq (AAH). Soleimani is a U.S.-designated Specially Designated Global Terrorist.
   
• Ahmad Abousamra, a Boston-raised jihadist, is reportedly one of the key figures directing ISIS’s vast, cutting-edge social media campaign to radicalize, recruit and incite violence. Abousamra was born in France in 1981 and raised in an “upscale” suburb in Boston. He worshipped at the Islamic Society of Boston in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the same mosque frequented by Boston Marathon bombers the Tsarnaev brothers, banned Muslim Brotherhood leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi, and other convicted supporters of terrorism. In 2004, Abousamra left the U.S. with “co-conspirators” to fight the U.S. military in Iraq, where he was recruited to work for al-Qaeda’s media wing. He then transferred his social media expertise to ISIS. In 2013, the FBI added Abousamra to its list of Most Wanted Terrorists. As of 2013, Abousamra and his family were living in Allepo, Syria. 
   
• Krisztina Morvai is the presidential candidate of Hungary’s far-right Jobbik party. Morvai denies being racist, anti-Semitic or homophobic, however, a pamphlet available at a Jobbik press conference in 2009 read, “Who decides on Hungary’s future?” and included depictions of an apparent criminal with dark skin, two naked homosexuals, and a Jew. Morvai, a member of the European Parliament, has called the European Union a “completely unjust, neo-liberal, bureaucratic and corrupt system.” Hungarian media have dubbed her the “Nazi Barbie.”