The website of Rugby League team the Keighley Cougars has been hacked and replaced with a page featuring the message: “I love you Isis”.
The West Yorkshire club’s home page displayed a black screen with the words “Hacked By Team System DZ” at the top.
“It’s sinister what’s happened and whatever organisation, wherever it is in the world, should not be hijacking other people’s media,” the chairman, Gary Fawcett, told the Keighley News. “And I hope police find out who’s done this wherever they are and bring them to account. It is a concern that children might see some of those nightmare images.”
Fawcett said that counter terrorism police were involved in removing the site and also that he believed other sites had been targeted in the same way. “I found out at about 8pm [on Sunday] when I was texted by fans to say it had been hijacked and I’d been on the site half an hour earlier so it must have been between 7.30pm and then,” he added.
“While we developed the site, we don’t host it, that’s done by a company in London and they were contacted by one of our directors. It was obviously done on a Sunday night when it would be most difficult for anyone to take quick action. Unfortunately it’s a terrorist statement and I understand West Yorkshire police have passed it on to anti-terrorism police.”
The website featured text including the words “I love you Isis” and contained a message “to all the population and the government, especially” claiming the “State of Islam” is expanding.
The site also featured images of jets which it referred to as “warplanes of making America”, pictures of the wreckage of “Muslim homes” and images of people injured in fighting.
A rolling message on the site proclaimed: “This is a time of Islam and victory. The alliance of the world against the state of Islam will not succeed and will offer to martyrdom and jihad. Damn America.”
Keighley play in the Kingstone Press Championship, the second tier of the game.
