Al-Shabaab recently released a 44-minutes video which featured jihadists from Canada and the USA. The video release was intentionally timed to coincide with the immediate aftermath of Charlie Hebdo Massacre, and should be viewed as a coordinated signal by Al-Shabaab to show solidarity with the Al Qaeda global jihadi franchise. The video was initially released on Al-Fida Forum.
The video documents the military operations of Al-Shabaab against Somalia’s legislative and judicial systems. Background interviews and the overall content of the video displays the jihadists justifying their actions and also urging jihadists living in the west to conduct attack against apostates and infidels living in the West.
The video shows a group of jihadists including the Canadian-Somali Jihadist, Mahd Ali Duri (whose photo appears above) attacking the main court complex in Mogadishu in 2013. Mahd Al Duri had signed up for a suicide mission. Also shown is the American-Somali jihadist Ibrahim ‘Abd Al Rahman Muhammad leading a group of 7 jihadists in an attack against the parliament building in 2014. The ensuing battle lasted 3 hours, and the jihadists were ultimately defeated.
In the video, Al Shabaab declares Somalia’s parliament to be an apostate entity which enacts impious laws which are implemented by another apostate institution, the judiciary. Alshabaab used this justification to sanitize the murder they perpetrated and also elevate the status of their dead jihadists who participated in the two attacks.
The video shows that western intelligence agencies cannot effectively stop the flow of jihadists coming from the west and joining Islamist insurgencies in Africa. This places extra load on regional intelligence agencies in their effort to degrade the overall capacity of Al-Shabaab and its affiliated terrorist organizations.
