Wire: Somali al Qaeda Video is Hip-Hop Jihad

Off the Wire:

WASHINGTON, May 5, 2009 -- Newswires reported today that latest video from Somalia's al Qaeda-backed Al-Shabaab wing is as slickly produced as a reality TV show with its terror complete with a hip-hop jihad 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, CNN reported.

CNN noted the following details:

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 and comes on the heels of an audio message in March purportedly from Osama bin Laden. In that recording, the al Qaeda leader calls on his "Muslim brothers in Mujahid Somalia" to overthrow President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed for cooperating with the West.

Al-Shabaab is the militant Islamic wing in Somalia. It means "Youth" in Arabic.

Watch part of the video on CNN.

Ben Venzke of the IntelCenter, a Washington-based research group that tracks al Qaeda's development and messages said, "We're seeing perhaps their most sophisticated attempt so far to really reach an audience of potential recruits in America, and that's one of the things that made that video very significant."

(Report from newswire sources.)

Source: Al Qaeda exporting jihad with a hip-hop vibe

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