A new Europe-wide police unit is being set up to scour the internet for the ring leaders behind Islamic State’s social media propaganda campaign, which it has used to recruit foreign fighters and jihadi brides.

The police team will seek to track down the key figures behind the estimated 100,000 tweets a day pumped out from 45,000 to 50,000 accounts linked to the Islamist terror group, which controls parts of Iraq and Syria.

Run by the European police agency Europol, it will start work on 1 July, with a remit to take down Isis accounts within two hours of them being detected.

Europol’s director, Rob Wainwright, told the Guardian that the new internet referral unit would monitor social media output to identify people who might be vulnerable and those preying on them. He said: “Who is it reaching out to young people, in particular, by social media, to get them to come, in the first place? It’s very difficult because of the dynamic nature of social media.”

The director added that the police team would be working with social media companies to identify the most important accounts operating in a range of languages that are “underpinning what Isis are doing”.

Europol said it would not name the social media firms who have agreed to help the police. It will use network analytics to identify the most active accounts, such as those pumping out the most messages and those part of an established online community.

Wainwright said the new unit would aim to “identify the ringleaders online”, but even then counter-terrorism investigators could not go through every one of the estimated 50,000 targeted accounts, as there were too many and new ones could easily be set up.

Last week, Isis’s ability to reach into British communities to gain recruits was demonstrated once again. One Briton, Talha Asmal, a 17-year-old from Dewsbry, West Yorkshire, is believed to have killed himself in a suicide bombing in Iraq, while three Bradford sisters are feared to have fled to Syria with their nine children in the hope of joining a brother who has been fighting the Assad regime.

A total of 700 Britons have travelled to territory controlled by Isis in Syria and Iraq – a problem shared with other European countries. Europol’s database tracking suspected foreign fighters in the two countries has 6,000 names. Some of those may be facilitators, or their associates. Wainwright said up to 5,000 were believed to have travelled to Isis-held territory from countries including Holland, France and Belgium, as well as from the UK.

He said some were “disaffected” youths migrating from teenage gangs in their own countries seeing Isis as a “bigger gang in Syria”. But he added that others being attracted are those who had bright futures in their home countries.

The new European initiative is in part based on Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism internet-referral unit. The hope is the new unit will boost efforts across European countries, with results passed back to nations to take action against the individuals running the accounts.



The unit is part of European governments’ response to the terrorist attacks on the office of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris in January.

Wainwright said money used to fund Isis activities will also be hunted down. He added: “Where you follow the money trail, it helps find who they are, what they are doing and who their associates are.”

The home secretary, Theresa May, stressed in a speech this week the need to tackle the cross-border threat of Isis. She said: “The threat … that we face is a common one shared by many of your countries. And if we are to defeat it, we need to work together.



“We have also supported the EU in setting up an internet-referral unit at Europol to address the increasing amount of terrorist and extremist propaganda available on the internet, and I am pleased to say the UK will be seconding a police officer to this unit.”

David Cameron last week said Isis was using the internet to lure western youngsters to its cause. He said: “It may be medieval in its outlook, but it is modern in its tactics, with the internet as the main tool to spread its warped worldview.”



