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TORONTO, April 17, 2010 -- "Do you know who I will kill with this gun?"
a little boy says into the video camera, waving his toy pistol.
"Who will you kill with this gun?" the cameraman asks.
"The infidels."
The scene appears in a new video by the al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab that
shows the Somali militant group indoctrinating children, some of whom
appear to be toddlers.
Among those seen in the 28-minute video urging the children to fight and
become "martyrs" is a former Toronto resident, Omar Hammami, alias Abu
Mansour the American.
The video, distributed on the Internet this week by Al-Shabaab's
propaganda arm, shows a "children's fair" hosted by Al-Shabaab leaders.
The boys and girls, identified as the children of "martyrs," are given
balloons and snacks and rewarded with toy guns for correctly identifying
the late leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, from a
picture.
"What brought us together today is the blood of the martyrs," Mr.
Hammami tells the children, according to a translation by the SITE
Intelligence Group. "So on the necks of the attendants today rests the
responsibility of blood. Each of us should assume a part of this
responsibility.
"As men, we have to continue the fighting started by those heroes. We
have to abide by the principles for which those heroes were martyred.
They honored the responsibility on them."
Mr. Hammami then urges their mothers, who appear to be seated at the
back of the room, to encourage the children to "learn military sciences"
and tells the kids they "have to work hard and try to be like their hero
fathers who were martyred in this path."
The children are later shown holding their plastic guns while waving
black Al-Shabaab flags in a pose reminiscent of terrorist videos. One
child crawls prone on the floor with his rifle while another grimaces
and aims his toy AK-47 at the camera.
"We are horrified by these images and by the exploitation of these very
young Somali children by senior leaders of the Al-Shabaab terrorist
group," said Ahmed Hussein, president of the Canadian Somali Congress.
"The central role played by Omar Hammami in the recruitment of these
very young children to Al-Shabaab proves to us that foreign extremists
will stop at nothing to bring further misery to Somalia," he said.
"We hope that this video will unmask the true nature of the Al-Shabaab
and make Somalis everywhere realize the fact that this group has never
cared about the welfare of Somalis despite its rhetoric of doing so."
Al-Shabaab is a Taliban-like armed extremist group that is fighting to
overthrow Somalia's United Nations-backed government. It is notorious
for its suicide bombings and assassinations of government officials,
activists and journalists.
Ottawa outlawed Al-Shabaab last month due to concerns it was attempting
to radicalize and recruit young Somali Canadians. Federal security
officials are investigating six Toronto youths who allegedly joined Al-Shabaab
last year. One of them, Mohamed Elmi Ibrahim, a University of Toronto
student, has reportedly died.
Al-Shabaab has attracted recruits from Canada, Europe, Australia and the
United States. Mr. Hammami is an Alabama-born American Muslim who moved
to Toronto in 2005 and married a Canadian Somali. The following year, he
travelled to Somalia to join Al-Shabaab.
In its annual report to Parliament on Wednesday, Canada's intelligence
service described Somalia as a "magnet for international terrorists" who
have converged in the African nation to create a Taliban-like state.
It also warned that Canadians who travel there to participate in the
conflict "may be drawn into global jihad circles, where they are
subsequently recruited to carry out attacks against perceived enemies of
Islam."
The RCMP and FBI have said they are concerned that Canadian and U.S.
recruits could return from Al-Shabaab's camps to conduct terrorist
attacks in North America. The CSIS report called the Somali conflict "a
direct threat to Canadian and international security."
Source: National Post, April 15, 2010
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