Nine Arrested in Major Takedown of Critical Online Infrastructure Linked to Terrorists and Propaganda

• Eurojust and Europol coordinated a major operation aimed at disrupting terrorist communications and propaganda.
• Servers linked to the Islamic State were taken down in Germany, the Netherlands, the United States, and Iceland.
• Spanish authorities arrested nine radicalized individuals via this operation.

As Europol reports, judicial and law enforcement authorities in Europe and the U.S. dismantled critical online infrastructure this week in a large-scale operation to disrupt platforms for terrorist communications and propaganda. Eurojust and Europol coordinated and supported the joint operations in which Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, the U.S., and Iceland participated.

Many servers supporting multiple media outlets linked to the Islamic State (IS) were taken down in Germany, the Netherlands, the United States, and Iceland after a seizure initiated by Spanish authorities under the coordination of Eurojust. The authorities also uncovered several terabytes of information and arrested nine “radicalized individuals.”

These servers were used to distribute propaganda such as IS directives and slogans, “messages capable of inciting terrorism in at least thirty languages,” including Spanish, Arabic, English, French, German, Danish, Turkish, Russian, Indonesian, and Pashto.

The operation against terrorist communications targeted the I'LAM Foundation, which was linked to the IS terrorist organization, as it reportedly spread radical messages via created, operated, or supported websites and other communication platforms.

The Spanish Civil Guard (Guardia Civil) investigations in 2022 connected the I’LAM Foundation, which operated new and sophisticated tech infrastructures, to communications of media with global reach via websites and communication channels that included radio stations, a news agency, and social media content. 

In April 2018, a multinational operation took down IS's Web infrastructure. Terrorist propagandists had to rely heavily on social media and messaging applications for their activities, which permitted Europol and investigators in Member States to investigate the social media networks used by IS media operatives. This resulted in the referral of over 26,000 items of IS-supporting content in 2019.

This comes after another successful international operation, Operation Endgame, which aimed to disrupt criminal services and take down infrastructure for malware droppers. Four people were arrested, and more than 100 internet servers were taken down or disrupted in Europe, the UK, the US, and elsewhere.