Posts Tagged ‘al qaeda’
 
December 12, 2012 0

Shabaab Spokesman’s “Close Friend” Arrested

Two Amer­i­can cit­i­zens resid­ing in Alabama were arrested yes­ter­day in Geor­gia on sus­pi­cion of terrorism-related activity.

Randy “Rasheed” Wil­son was arrested in Atlanta attempt­ing to board a flight to Morocco. Wilson allegedly claimed to be a close friend of Omar Ham­mami, the Alabama native who became the pub­lic face of Al Shabaab, the Al Qaeda-affiliated Somali ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion. His co-conspirator, Moham­mad Abukhdair, was arrested at a bus sta­tion en route to Canada from where he report­edly planned to join Wil­son.  Both were charged with con­spir­ing to pro­vide mate­r­ial sup­port to ter­ror­ists in an Alabama fed­eral court on Monday.

Accord­ing to court doc­u­ments, Wil­son and Abukhdair expressed their admi­ra­tion for rad­i­cal American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and Osama bin Laden, as well as repeat­ing their com­mit­ment to carry out vio­lent jihad, to an under­cover FBI employee.  They even turned over a cache of jihadist pro­pa­ganda, includ­ing Awlaki lec­tures, to the under­cover employee for destruc­tion. Wil­son, who is 25, appar­ently believed that “one way or another everyone’s gonna have to fight… there’s no deed bet­ter than jihad,” accord­ing to the tran­scripts of recorded con­ver­sa­tions sub­mit­ted to the court.

Wil­son had pre­vi­ously report­edly con­spired with another mutual friend of Hammami’s (who later became a con­fi­den­tial infor­mant) to travel to Soma­lia to join Al Shabaab. Abukhdair had been detained by Egypt­ian author­i­ties on sus­pi­cion of involve­ment in ter­ror­ist activ­ity and was deported back to the United States.  He appar­ently admit­ted to the under­cover FBI employee that he had jihadist mate­r­ial on his lap­top at the time and believed that “Allah pro­tected him” because Egypt­ian intel­li­gence had not found it.

The two men, who met online in 2010, sup­pos­edly dis­cussed sev­eral pos­si­ble des­ti­na­tions, includ­ing trav­el­ing to Soma­lia via Sudan, where they report­edly expected spe­cial treat­ment because of Wilson’s rela­tion­ship with Ham­mami. Abukhdair alter­na­tively pro­posed that they carry out attacks in the United States because he feared he would not be allowed to travel inter­na­tion­ally after being turned away from a flight to Jor­dan ear­lier this year.  Accord­ing to the charges, Abukhdair allegedly sug­gested engag­ing in hostage-taking oper­a­tions in the U.S. and demand­ing the release of Mus­lim ter­ror­ists being held in Amer­i­can pris­ons in exchange.

The court doc­u­ments assert that Wil­son and Abukhdair made def­i­nite travel arrange­ments to go to Mau­ri­ta­nia via Morocco in October. The two also report­edly dis­cussed trav­el­ing to Mali from Mau­ri­ta­nia where Islamic mil­i­tants are active in the north of the country.

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August 10, 2012 0

Kenyan Al Qaeda Supporters’ Magazine Takes On Jews And Obama

A pre­dom­i­nantly Swahili-language online ter­ror­ist mag­a­zine, appar­ently writ­ten by Kenyan sup­port­ers of the Somali-based Al Qaeda affil­i­ate Al Shabaab, fea­tures English-language arti­cles that describe Jews as “the worst enemy of Islam,” as well as a “Wanted Dead or Alive” poster of Pres­i­dent Barak Obama.

Screen­shot from Gaidi Mtaani article

The mag­a­zine, titled Gaidi Mtaani, roughly trans­lated as “Ter­ror­ism Street,” is replete with the graph­ics and lay­out rem­i­nis­cent of Al Qaeda in the Ara­bian Penin­sula’s English-language ter­ror­ist mag­a­zine, Inspire. Two issues have been released since April 2012.

The Eng­lish arti­cles repeat­edly describe Kenya’s mil­i­tary incur­sion into Soma­lia to com­bat Al Shabaab as “a clear man­i­fes­ta­tion of hatred of Mus­lims” and part of “America’s global war on Islam.”  The mag­a­zine claims the objec­tive of this Amer­i­can proxy war is to “Crush Islam or Islamic Renaissance.”

The mag­a­zine casts “the Zion­ist with their Amer­i­can part­ners” as the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the “cru­sade” in Soma­lia and crit­i­cizes the Kenyan pres­i­dent for trav­el­ing to Israel to secure Israeli coop­er­a­tion for coun­tert­er­ror­ism efforts.  Although the Eng­lish arti­cles do not directly threaten Israeli or Jews, Israeli inter­ests had pre­vi­ously been tar­geted by Al Qaeda in Kenya, includ­ing an attempt to shoot down an Israeli air­liner and an attack on an Israeli-owned resort in 2002.

The authors warn that they will not “dif­fer­en­ti­ate between civil­ians and com­bat­ants” and call on Kenya’s cit­i­zens to “reflect on the mag­ni­tude of what is yet to come,” cit­ing the 1998 bomb­ing of the U.S. embassy in Kenya that killed over 200 people.

Al Shabaab and its sup­port­ers have been blamed for repeated grenade and gun attacks in Kenya since Kenya began mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in Soma­lia last October.

The Mus­lim Youth Cen­ter, a Kenyan orga­ni­za­tion sup­port­ive of Al Shabaab, has pro­moted the mag­a­zine via its Twit­ter account and blog, which was taken down shortly after the mag­a­zine was advertised.

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May 23, 2012 0

Alabama Jihadist Omar Hammami Resurfaces Online

Update: An audio lec­ture by Ham­mami posted online on May 25 may pro­vide insights into his appar­ent rift with Al Shabaab.  In the 45-minute lec­ture, orig­i­nally posted online in Jan­u­ary but quickly removed, he crit­i­cizes jihadist orga­ni­za­tions with a local focus, liken­ing them to a “can­cer­ous tumor.” He also calls for all Mus­lims to unite in a “jihad of the entire Ummah [Mus­lim nation]” under the ban­ner of restored Caliphate. 

Amid rumors of his death and his own dec­la­ra­tion that his “life may be endan­gered by” the ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion he joined in Soma­lia, Omar Ham­mami, an Alabama native who became the pub­lic face and voice of Al Shabaab, announced that he is still alive in part 1 of his autobiography.

In the auto­bi­og­ra­phy, dis­sem­i­nated online on May 16, Ham­mami describes his jour­ney from Alabama to his involve­ment in the cre­ation of Al Shabaab, the Al Qaeda-linked Somali ter­ror­ist group.

He calls join­ing jihad “the dream of any Mus­lim who has the love of the reli­gion burn­ing in his heart” and main­tains that it is “truly an indi­vid­ual oblig­a­tion upon all of us.” Ham­mami por­trays him­self as “a man with no regrets” despite his appar­ent falling out with Al Shabaab’s leadership.

In describ­ing his role as a ter­ror­ist pro­pa­gan­dist, Ham­mami advises that “being casual, when pos­si­ble, is a bet­ter approach when reach­ing out to those like myself in the West… my peers can smell a poser from a mile away.” He also stresses the impor­tance of media to the jihadist move­ment. “The war of nar­ra­tives has become even more impor­tant than the war of navies, napalms, and knives.

Ham­mami also dis­cusses his rela­tion­ship with Daniel Mal­don­ado, an Amer­i­can cur­rently serv­ing 10 years in prison for receiv­ing mil­i­tant train­ing in Soma­lia with him after they trav­eled together to the Mid­dle East.

Ham­mami con­cludes part 1 by urg­ing oth­ers to emu­late him. “Not that I’m extremely spe­cial, but then again I haven’t seen too many mid­dle class ‘white’ guys from Alabama in Jihaad these days. Hope­fully oth­ers will say to them­selves: ‘I can do that too!’”

On May 22, a photo of Ham­mami pos­ing with a com­puter dis­play­ing the auto­bi­og­ra­phy was released online, osten­si­bly to con­firm that he is indeed still alive and that the auto­bi­og­ra­phy is authentic.

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