The latest video from Somalia's al Qaeda-backed Al-Shabaab wing is as slickly produced as a reality TV show, but with a startling message with a hip-hop vibe.
The latest video from Somalia's al Qaeda-backed Al-Shabaab wing is as slickly produced as a reality TV show, but with a startling message with a hip-hop vibe.
"Mortar by mortar, shell by shell, only going to stop when I send them to hell," the unidentified voice raps on the video, which runs at least 18 minutes.
The video also shows a man reported to be Abu Mansoor al-Amriki, dubbed "The American" by al-Qaeda. He apparently is now in Somalia training and counseling Somalis from North America and Europe. He speaks in American English.
"Away from your family, away from our friends, away from ice, candy bars, all those things is because we're waiting to meet the enemy," says the man believed to be al-Amriki.
Intelligence experts say the video was probably made in recent weeks. It comes on the heels of an audio message in March, purportedly from Osama bin Laden.
"We're seeing perhaps their most sophisticated attempt so far to reach potential recruits in America, and that's one of the things that made the video very significant," said Ben Venzke of the IntelCenter, a US research group that tracks al-Qaeda's messages.
"They're casting it in a way that's going to speak to the youth," said Venzke. "Most of the time, what we're seeing in their videos parallels what the groups are doing operationally, what they are targeting, where they're recruiting."
Sheik Ahmed Matan, a Somali in UK, said he knows of hundreds of young Somali men who have returned to Somalia for terrorist training.
"A lot of young people from here, from America, from everywhere from Europe they went there," he said. He added that these men were capable of being sent back to conduct terrorist operations.
Venzke added that Al-Shabaab has put out more videos than ever before in the past year. "If that's what they're doing publicly, we can only assume how their operations have developed," he said.
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