Terror group: Birmingham is a top recruiting ground

Al Qaida-linked Somali jihadi group Al Shabaab issues new recruiting video targeting city

Sunday, November 17, 2013

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His face is hidden but the voice spouts a hate-filled message that is becoming increasingly familiar.

The hooded Islamic fundamentalist calls out to the “disbelievers who dominate our lives and lands”.

It is a well-rehearsed argument that for years now has featured in jihadist propaganda the globe over.

But never before has a terror video been so directly aimed at potential recruits in Britain.

The hour-long tape was released last month by the al Qaida-linked Somali jihadi group Al Shabaab which boasts about its British martyrs.

The masked narrator lists British towns and cities where he claims recruits have come from – and top of the list is Birmingham.

He also issues a chilling message to followers about bombs and other weapons – suggesting that if would-be terrorists cannot gain access to explosives they should improvise.

“A simple knife from your local B&Q will do the job,” he adds.

The subversive message is seen as so threatening that the content of much of the video cannot be reported because of legal reporting restrictions and laws forbidding the incitement of terrorism.

But the Sunday Mercury has viewed the hour-long tape released last month by the group.

Against the backdrop of sweeping shots of the London skyline, the English-speaking narrator names ten British militants who, he says, have been killed in the “armed struggle” in Somalia.

Called ‘Woolwich Attack: It’s an Eye for an Eye’, the production urges Muslims in Britain to go to Somalia to fight jihad or carry out terror attacks in the UK if they are unable to travel.

Alongside the guns and grenades of its daily battles, the militant group is known to be media-savvy and have used Youtube and Twitter in its long-term propaganda war.

The militant group was behind the attack at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, in which at least 67 people were killed in September.

The Shabaab production praises those behind the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby and describes the Woolwich killings as “a new and terrifying reality” and incites others to carry out attacks in the UK.

It also – for the first time – singles out specific British Muslims who have distanced “themselves from the mujahideen who carried out these attacks” as having “mutilated the teachings of Islam”.

Holding an automatic weapon in his hands, the narrator tells people to purchase knives: “Do not waste your time trying to reinvent the wheel.

“If you can’t afford to get hold of one of these then certainly a simple knife from your local B&Q will do the job.”

At the end, the narrator encourages others to follow the example of the Woolwich killers and not to let the security services put them off.

Released to coincide with the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, the video appears to have been made before the attack on the Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi, Kenya.

Terror expert Rafaello Pantucci, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute said: “There’s little doubt that Birmingham jihadists over the years have travelled abroad for jihad and this video clearly shows that Somalia is one of their destinations.

“The city has a real mix of Muslims from across the globe and it appears Al Shabaab is attracting recruits who are not necessarily of a Somali or even African background but from places like Pakistan and the sub-continent.”

Scotland Yard say they are “aware of the video and we are assessing its contents and looking into it”.

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