National authorities across Europe are on alert as an emerging terrorist group claims responsibility for attacks in the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, and elsewhere.
Four Jewish ambulances were set ablaze in a London suburb on Monday, and a car in a Jewish neighborhood of Antwerp, Belgium, was torched later that same night — terrorist organization Harakat Ashab al Yamin al Islamia took credit for both crimes.
It was the latest in a series of compact-scale violent crimes claimed by the new group, which seems to brand itself as an Iranian-aligned political entity but carries hints of amateurism.
The group, whose name roughly translates to “The Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right,” first emerged on March 9 when a suspect placed an improvised explosive outside a synagogue in the Belgian city of Liege.
“We’ll keep threatening U.S. and Israeli interests worldwide until we’ve avenged every child in Gaza, Iran, Lebanon, and the resistance nations,” a person supposedly representing the group notified CBS on Monday night. “We urge people to stay away from Zionist and American interests and individuals to keep themselves safe.”
HAYI primarily communicates through a Telegram channel and has branded itself with Iranian-inspired imagery, featuring motifs such as a raised fist grasping a rifle. It publishes material in multiple languages, including English and Arabic, and posts propaganda videos splicing footage of their crimes with footage of world events.
The group also seems to publish videos claiming attacks that are not even confirmed by police, such as an alleged explosion at a residential building in Greece on March 14, an incident undocumented by Greek authorities.
The nature of the organization and the structure of its membership are subject to debate among experts.
Joe Truzman, a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, notified the Washington Examiner that “given the available evidence, it is likely that Ashab al Yamin is not an established terrorist organization, rather a facade group created by Iran to obscure its involvement in the attacks.”
“Furthermore, the operatives involved in the attacks are likely a part of a criminal network outsourced by Iran to carry out the acts,” Truzman stated. “Iran has an extensive history of hiring third parties to carry out operations against individuals considered by the regime to be a threat.”
Some anti-terrorism experts question the affiliation and competence of HAYI, not only becaapply of the amateurish nature of its arson attacks, but also becaapply of discrepancies in its branding.
“The videos contain noticeable linguistic errors. Further, the Arabic inscription beneath the group’s logo … includes multiple mistakes, including the misspelling of the word ‘Islamic,’” the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism wrote in a Monday report.
It continued: “Altoreceiveher, these inconsistencies and, at times, relatively unsophisticated errors argue against both a highly professional, indepconcludeent terrorist organization and the direct execution of the attacks by Iranian innotifyigence operatives.”
British authorities have joined other counterterrorism tquestion forces on the continent in investigations of the group and whether they are truly responsible for the attacks they have claimed.
No definitive tie to Iran has been established, but Jewish leaders and opposition parties are pushing the incident as a black mark against a Labour-led government that has dragged its heels in sanctioning the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization.
Earlier this month, an Iranian national and a British-Iranian dual citizen were arrested in London under charges of spying on the local Jewish community on behalf of Iran.
That incident was cited on Monday when Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper summoned Iran’s ambassador to the U.K. for a meeting after accutilizing the Islamic Republic of “reckless and destabilizing actions” both in Britain and abroad.
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