Al-Shabab Al-Mujahideen, the Somali arm of Al Qaeda, on Thursday released an hour-long video asking Muslims around the world to follow in the footsteps of homegrown terrorists and launch attacks against the West, like that of a British soldier hacked to death on a London street in May.
This file image taken from video, and provided by U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group Thursday Sept. 30, 2010 shows a foreign hostage who was among seven seized in Niger by an Al Qaeda offshoot, according to a group that monitors terrorism. The Somalia-based Al-Shabab has released a new video calling for attacks against the West. (AP)
The video's release comes at a time of growing concern among the U.S. and its allies with recruits from Western nations returning home after receiving terror training.
Al-Shabab's video, "Woolwich Attack: It's an Eye for an Eye," focuses on the May 22 Woolwich attack in London where British soldier Lee Rigby was murdered in broad daylight by two terrorists wielding butcher knives.
The terror group portrays the attack in London "as a logical response to the U.K.'s crimes against Muslims around the world," said Steve Stalinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute in a report issued Thursday. The group monitors the Internet and provides timely translations of reports issued in the media and on the web from the Middle East.
"Al-Shabab urges Muslims living in the West to follow the footsteps of the Woolwich attack perpetrators, as well as the perpetrators of other attacks in the West, such as Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter; Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square bomber; and Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab, the 'Underwear Bomber,'" the report states.
Included in the video are several British Muslims from different ethnic backgrounds who traveled to Somalia to train and fight alongside Al-Shabab.
FBI officials have been investigating a number of incidents in the United States where young Somali American men have been recruited to fight for Al-Shabab overseas. U.S. law enforcement officials believe the young men are recruited not only by members overseas on the Internet but by extremists in their own communities living in the United States.
"We're extremely concerned with recruits leaving the United States and traveling abroad to fight," said a U.S. official familiar with Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. "Our main concern is their indoctrination overseas and if they are being trained to conduct attacks in the United States or other western nations upon their return."
Al Qaeda affiliate Al-Shabab has released a new video calling for attacks against the West. (Image via Middle East Media Research Institute)
Stalinsky said the video was released days earlier to top jihadi forums but most download links and the video itself were corrupted or deleted.
It suggests "that it was the subject of a deliberate digital alteration attack," the MEMRI report states.
"The U.S. and its allies also wage war on the Internet against these groups," another U.S. official said. Both officials spoke on the condition that they not be named due to the nature of their work. "They are being watched, sometimes they are taken down but it's like a cockroach they always find a way to come back."
The latest video from Al-Shabab survived a number of attempts by Western intelligence agencies to destroy it.
It was uploaded to a suspected terrorist's Twitter account and on YouTube. In the first part of the video, Al-Shabab condems prominent British Muslim figures who condemned the Woolwich attack and blames the British government for invading Muslim lands.
"It wasn't just by mere coincidence that such attacks by Muslims occur in the West, but that they were the direct result of the invasion of Muslim lands, and the slaughter of hundreds of innocent Muslims by the Western crusaders," the Al Shabab video translated by MEMRI states.
The video goes on to say that the Muslims who conducted the attacks were not "troubled individuals, nor do they suffer from psychological or social ineptitude." Rather, they were men who "had enough of the Western crusade against Islam and Muslims."
Al Qaeda affiliate Al-Shabab has released a new video calling for attacks against the West. (Image via Middle East Media Research Institute)
Muslims are all a part of a bigger struggle to destroy their enemies, and thus, "Al-Shabab urges Muslim living in the West to make a decision as to which side they are on in that struggle," the video, believed to have already been viewed by extremists around the world, states.
Al-Shabab also says Muslims from the United States, Britain and other European nations that have joined their struggle are "courageous" and "have left their mark on all the battlefields of jihad."
The video notes that besides the British men, a number of jihadists come from countries with diverse backgrounds like Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Jamaica, Ethiopia, Eretria and Somalia. It then goes on to name some of the British Muslims who have joined its ranks.
According to the report, some of the British members of the terrorist group named in the video are "Asmat, an Indian Muslim who arrived in Somalia in 2006, and Shaker, an Ethiopian convert to Islam, who fought against Ethiopian forces in Somalia."
Also joining the two men on the battlefield, says Al-Shabab in the video "were many British Somali Muslims from London, Liverpool, Cardiff, Bristol and Birmingham."
"Among them were Yousuf, Abu Mariam, and Daoud, an Eritrean convert to Islam. Al-Shabab says that all previous five men were martyred. Al-Shabab also presents Abu Laith Al-Muhajir, aka "the lion of Jamaica," who had lived at one point in the U.S. prior to moving to U.K. Al-Muhajir was killed in a U.S. strike in Somalia in 2007," the translated video goes on to say.
Watch the video below, via MEMRI. Content warning -- contains graphic images:
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