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WASHINGTON —The United States is taking new steps to cut off efforts by the Islamic State terror group to grow its virtual, self-declared caliphate.
Washington on Tuesday unveiled sanctions against two Egyptian nationals accused of providing IS leaders with cybersecurity training so they could move funds via cryptocurrencies and expand the terror group's recruitment efforts.
Al-Mawji Mahmud Salim and his business partner, Sarah Jamal Muhammad Al-Sayyid, are accused of creating an IS-affiliated online platform known as the Electronic Horizons Foundation (EHF).
In a statement, the U.S. Treasury Department said Al-Mawji "has provided technical support on computer applications" to IS leaders while also using the platform to help guide the terror group's supporters on how to evade law enforcement scrutiny and raise money.
The statement accused Jamal of helping her partners by recruiting IS members to join the EHF platform and by procuring web servers needed to keep the platform online.
"Today's actions disrupt ISIS's ability to move funds, including through the use of cryptocurrency, and leverage its online presence to recruit and promote its terrorist ideology," said Treasury Department Undersecretary Brian Nelson, using another acronym for the terror group.
The department also levied sanctions against Faruk Guzel, a Turkey-based financial facilitator who helped funnel money to IS operatives in Syria.
In a separate statement on Tuesday, the U.S. State Department said the new designations and the resulting sanctions reinforce Washington's commitment to work with the more than 80 countries that are part of the Counter ISIS Finance Group, which aims to disrupt the organization's global financial networks.
Earlier this month, IS launched a new campaign of violence called "And Kill Them Wherever You Find Them," which coincided with a double suicide bombing that killed nearly 90 people near the tomb of a slain Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander in Kerman, Iran.
The most recent U.S. intelligence assessments estimate IS leadership in Iraq and Syria has access to about $25 million in cash reserves, down from as much as about $300 million following the collapse of its physical caliphate in 2019.
A separate report from the Pentagon's inspector general this past November said the IS leadership in Iraq and Syria is "unable to meet its financial obligations, particularly payments to family members of deceased and imprisoned ISIS personnel."
"ISIS also paid its leaders sporadically, probably several hundred dollars a month, while missing payments for fighters, likely to extend its limited financing," the report said.