Who Are the Jihadists Who May Have Brought Down the Russian Jet?

Bombing an airliner out of the sky would be a major step up in capabilities not only for Islamic State but particularly for the two men who have built the forces of jihad in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula into a major threat, according to analysts who monitor the groups.

As recently as two years ago, the jihadists of Sinai were a semi-organised group of former criminal elements, radicalised local youth, and some volunteers sent from Al-Qaeda’s arm in Yemen, numbering no more than in the low hundreds.

However, they have two charismatic leaders. Abu Osama al-Masri, Wilayat Sinai’s spiritual leader, is the man whose name has been attached to videos and the online statements claiming responsibility for the attack on the Russian tourists’ plane.

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Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, an expert on jihadist groups for the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies think-tank, said he was waiting to see the technical details of what had happened before judging how the step could have been achieved.

“They have done something they haven’t done before,” he said. He said the group’s overall numbers seemed to have been consistent in the last few years at the low hundreds but it seemed to have made technical advances as well as to have been able to find it easy to source new recruits to replace those killed.

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