Svenske Gitmo-fångens vän dödad
Al Qaida har bekräftat att Abu Talha al Sudani dödats.
The Long War Journal berättar:
"... more than a year ago, our leader was martyred, the leader of the mujahideen in Somalia, Abu Talha al Sudani, while he was leading one of the battalions of the mujahideen ..."Minnesgoda läsare kommer ihåg att det finns en stark koppling mellan somaliesvensken Gouled Hassan Dourad, som bodde i Sverige i flera år innan han blev helig krigare, och Abu Talha al Sudani.
Wikipedia har en målande sammanställning över relationen:
While in Sweden, Gouled attended a Somali mosque, whose imam arranged for Gouled and his friend, future AIAI bombmaker Qasim Mohamed, to train in Afghanistan before joining the Somali war effort. Gouled trained at the Khalden camp in weapons and explosives from January through October 1996, and at another camp in Khost in assassination techniques for several months. By late 1996 he returned to Somalia.Med det senaste utspelet blir sambandet mellan Shabaab och al Qaida tydligare ändå.
Gouled became a member of AIAI in 1997 out of a commitment to support the Somali war against Ethiopia and to win the Ogaden region of Ethiopia back to Somalia. He fought against the Ethiopians in Ogaden off and on from 1997 to 2002 and trained AIAI fighters. He allegedly became associated with al-Qaeda because its members were in Somalia and his AIAI cell supported the al-Qaeda. Gouled was introduced to Abu Talha al-Sudani, who came to Mogadishu to hide following the Mombasa attacks in November 2003, in early 2003 by his AIAI cell leader. Gouled was recruited to work for al-Sudani, in part, because he had trained in Afghanistan: spoke Arabic, English, some Swedish and Somali, and had a high-school education.
According to the United States Director of National Intelligence, Gouled was the head of the Mogadishu-based facilitation network of al-Itihaad al-Islamiya (AIAI) members that supported al-Qaeda members in Somalia. Gouled was a member of a small, selective group of AIAI members who worked for the East African al-Qaida cell led by Abu Talha al-Sudani. Gouled's responsibilities included locating safehouses, assisting in the transfer of funds, and procuring weapons, explosives and other supplies. Gouled was privy to several terrorist plots under consideration by his AIAI cell, including shooting down an Ethiopian jetliner landing at an airport in Somalia in 2003 and kidnapping Western NGO-workers in Hargeysa, Somalia, in 2002 as a means to raise money for future AIAI operations.
Following Gouled's arrest, AIAI terrorists on March 19, 2004, tried unsuccessfully to kidnap a German aid worker and murdered a Kenyan contract employee in Hargeysa.
The disclosure was made in a tape released last night on jihadi internet forums by As Sahab, al Qaeda’s propaganda arm, Grace told The Long War Journal.Det ska bli roligt att höra reaktionerna från de svenska medborgarrättsrörelserna som skapats till Shabaabs fromma.
It is unclear if Sudani was killed while the fighting against the Ethiopian Army or in a US airstrike. The US military targeted both Sudani and Nabhan in an airstrike in early January 2007. Several other US airstrikes have targeted senior al Qaeda and Islamic Courts leaders over the past 20 months.
Sudani, also known as Tariq Abdullah, was al Qaeda’s ideological and strategic leader in East Africa. He was behind the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in Africa. Nabhan is wanted for his involvement in the 2002 car bombing attack in Kenya and missile attack on an Israeli airliner.
The videotape is the latest signal that Shabab, an offshoot of the Islamic Courts, seeks to formally merge with al Qaeda. While the group’s leader have numerous ties to al Qaeda and many of its members trained in camps in Afghanistan, Shabab has not officially joined the central al Qaeda organization.
Grace said Nabhan’s tape “seems to be Shabab's formal request to join al Qaeda."
