Toyota, U.S. clueless about how ISIS got hundreds of brand new pickup trucks,Let’s go places — like Syria and Iraq.
The U.S. government can’t amount out how ISIS terrorists got their easily on hundreds of cast new Toyota auto trucks, and the Japanese automaker is stumped, too.
Top U.S. counterterror admiral probed the automaker about how the Islamic State acquired a agile of new cars afterwards souped-up Toyota pickups loaded with weapons and arranged with fighters began actualization in its advertising videos, ABC News reported.
“This is a catechism we’ve been allurement our neighbors,” said Lukman Faily, the Iraqi Ambassador to the United States. “How could these cast new trucks — these four-wheel drives, hundreds of them — area are they advancing from?”Toyota told admiral it has no abstraction how ISIS got so abounding of its vehicles. The auto behemothic supports the United States' investigation, said Ed Lewis, Toyota’s administrator of communications.
Lewis said while Toyota has a “strict activity to not advertise cars to abeyant purchasers who may use or adapt them for paramilitary or agitator activities,” it cannot clue trucks that accept been baseborn and resold. Abounding of the featured cars are earlier models, he said.
The ISIS videos appearance fighters active Toyota Hilux pickups, the across adaptation of the Tacoma. While some are older, repurposed models, others arise to be cast new.
In one clip, a band of white trucks emblazoned with ISIS’ atramentous seal, formed through Raqqa. Two thirds of those trucks were Toyotas, which rode alongside Mitsubishi, Hyundai and Isuzu pickups.
“Regrettably, the Toyota Land Cruiser and Hilux accept finer become about allotment of the ISIS brand,” said Mark Wallace, CEO of the anti-terror nonprofit Counter Extremism Project. “In about every ISIS video, they appearance a agile — a accompany of Toyota cars and that’s actual apropos to us.”
Wallace added that ISIS’ trucks go above advertising — the fighters aswell use them for alarm activities and aggressive operations.While Toyota acceptable never “intentionally profited” from the terrorists, they are now acquainted of the botheration and should do added to arrest ISIS’ acquisitions, Wallace said.
“They should be able to amount it out,” he told ABC News. “How are these trucks accepting there?”
Reports from Toyota appearance it awash 13,000 Hilux and Land Cruisers in Iraq in 2014, beneath than 2013’s 18,000 and added than 2011’s 6,000.
None of the Japanese automakers’ Iraq dealerships accept awash to terrorists, Toyota said — but the aggregation would yield activity if it abstruse one was. A above dealership in Syria chock-full affairs trucks in 2012, a agent said.
The U.S. government can’t amount out how ISIS terrorists got their easily on hundreds of cast new Toyota auto trucks, and the Japanese automaker is stumped, too.
Top U.S. counterterror admiral probed the automaker about how the Islamic State acquired a agile of new cars afterwards souped-up Toyota pickups loaded with weapons and arranged with fighters began actualization in its advertising videos, ABC News reported.
“This is a catechism we’ve been allurement our neighbors,” said Lukman Faily, the Iraqi Ambassador to the United States. “How could these cast new trucks — these four-wheel drives, hundreds of them — area are they advancing from?”Toyota told admiral it has no abstraction how ISIS got so abounding of its vehicles. The auto behemothic supports the United States' investigation, said Ed Lewis, Toyota’s administrator of communications.
Lewis said while Toyota has a “strict activity to not advertise cars to abeyant purchasers who may use or adapt them for paramilitary or agitator activities,” it cannot clue trucks that accept been baseborn and resold. Abounding of the featured cars are earlier models, he said.
The ISIS videos appearance fighters active Toyota Hilux pickups, the across adaptation of the Tacoma. While some are older, repurposed models, others arise to be cast new.
In one clip, a band of white trucks emblazoned with ISIS’ atramentous seal, formed through Raqqa. Two thirds of those trucks were Toyotas, which rode alongside Mitsubishi, Hyundai and Isuzu pickups.
“Regrettably, the Toyota Land Cruiser and Hilux accept finer become about allotment of the ISIS brand,” said Mark Wallace, CEO of the anti-terror nonprofit Counter Extremism Project. “In about every ISIS video, they appearance a agile — a accompany of Toyota cars and that’s actual apropos to us.”
Wallace added that ISIS’ trucks go above advertising — the fighters aswell use them for alarm activities and aggressive operations.While Toyota acceptable never “intentionally profited” from the terrorists, they are now acquainted of the botheration and should do added to arrest ISIS’ acquisitions, Wallace said.
“They should be able to amount it out,” he told ABC News. “How are these trucks accepting there?”
Reports from Toyota appearance it awash 13,000 Hilux and Land Cruisers in Iraq in 2014, beneath than 2013’s 18,000 and added than 2011’s 6,000.
None of the Japanese automakers’ Iraq dealerships accept awash to terrorists, Toyota said — but the aggregation would yield activity if it abstruse one was. A above dealership in Syria chock-full affairs trucks in 2012, a agent said.
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