Islamic State supporters expose their locations in Europe

Islamic State (IS) supporters in Europe may have given away their locations after a mass release of content of social media allowed analysts to geolocate them.

On Saturday, following the announcement that IS spokesperson Abu Muhammad al-Adnani would be releasing a new audio recording through IS’s al-Furqan media organisation, thousands of IS supporters tried to build anticipation of the event.

Photos released on Twitter - using the al-Furqan hashtag - and the messaging application Telegram showed supporters from countries including Germany, France and the UK holding up signs of support for the militant group.

Eliot Higgins, an analyst and founder of the open source data journalism site Bellingcat, asked his Twitter followers to help him geolocate the IS supporters based on the visual clues offered.

“We’re currently looking at a small number of photos, but we’re working through them one by one to keep people focused,” Higgins told Buzzfeed.

“Hopefully law enforcement will take notice, especially as the one in Paris appears to have been taken from a private home.”

One supporter who tweeted from Germany was tracked down by one of Higgins’ followers to an intersection in a northern suburb of the city of Munster:

Another supporter was tracked down to Holland, specifically Hoofddorp, a town near Amsterdam Schiphol Airport:

Yet another was tracked down to the Bruce Grove underground station in north London, based on the London Underground logo and a double decker bus:

According to counterterrorism analyst J M Berger, 150 of around 543 Twitter accounts that had carried the al-Furqan hashtag had been suspended by Saturday evening.

Higgins later described the Twitter campaign as having "backfired spectacularly".

Adnani’s speech attempted to keep morale high among IS supporters and seemed to hint at the possible loss of the Syrian stronghold of Raqqa.

"Will we be defeated if we lose Mosul, or Sirte, or Raqqa, or all the cities, and go back to how we were before?" Adnani said.

The three cities are IS's strongholds in Iraq, Libya, and Syria respectively.

"No. Defeat is only losing the desire and the will to fight," Adnani continued, in his first voiced speech since October.

The spokesman appeared to mock the US, which is leading a coalition of countries in an air war against IS in Iraq and Syria, for failing to definitively defeat IS.

He said even "20,000 air strikes" by the coalition had not destroyed IS.

Adnani also called for attacks on the US and Europe during the holy month of Ramadan, which starts this year in early June, an appeal he made at the same time last year when urging supporters to seek "martyrdom".