ISIS Uses Pet Cat Lucy to Recruit New Members?

To lure young individuals to join the Islamic State, an ISIS recruiter is said to be using photos of a cat sitting beside bombs and grenades.

Daily Mail reported that former supermarket security guard Omar Hussein is sending messages through the encrypted messaging application, Telegram from Raqqa, Syria.

It added that the majority of his posts are articles about hating non-Muslims, along with photos of his grey cat, Lucy.

In one of the photos he sent out, Lucy was seen sleeping beside a grenade, and in another, she was resting in a bomb belt.

According to Daily Mail, the photos came with the caption "Come closer and I'll blow the entire house down!"

Aside from these posts, he also shared photos of parks, shops and stores selling women's shoes and children's toys.

Express noted that cats have been a common sight in the accounts of the Islamic State. Last year, a Twitter account named "The Islamic State of Cat" surfaced, but has since been suspended for posting photos of cats with the rebels.

ISIS later transferred to Telegram after their Twitter accounts were shut down because of their posts, which were linked to violence and terrorism. With the new messaging application, the Islamic State can send secure messages to their friends.

Telegram, as per Breitbart, was developed in 2013 by Russian brothers Pavel and Nicolai Durov.

Forbes mentioned that it was the brothers' way to reach out to their friends "without interference from the Kremlin."

The app developers also claimed that they are aware that terrorists are utilizing Telegram, but noted that privacy is their main priority, as per CBC News.

"Privacy is ultimately more important than our fear of bad things happening, like terrorism. Ultimately, ISIS will find a way to communicate with its cells, and if any means doesn't feel secure to them, they'll [find something else]. We shouldn't feel guilty about it. We're still doing the right thing, protecting our users' privacy," Pavel was quoted by Breitbart as saying, during the TechCrunch Disrupt conference last month.

The CBC News report also mentioned that the privacy clause enabled terrorists to use Telegram during the Paris attacks which killed 129 people, and the Egypt bombing, which claimed 224 lives.

Telegram has since identified and blocked channels used by terrorists to plot their attacks.

"We were disturbed to learn that Telegram's public channels were being used by ISIS to spread their propaganda," the company said in a statement quoted by Business Insider.

Some of the sites were said to have re-emerged after getting blocked, but most were already shut down, while some reportedly still remain online.