NAIROBI: Somalia’s hard-line militant group Al-Shabab has released a 48-minute video documentary in which they proclaim their allegiance to Al-Qaeda supremo Osama Bin Laden.
The authenticity of the document — released for Eid Al-Fitr marking the end of Ramadan — was confirmed by an Al-Shabab official in Mogadishu.
Entitled “Labaik ya Osama” (At your service, Osama), the video was posted on Islamist Internet forums in recent days and is presented as a “gift to Muslims everywhere.”
Al-Shabab fighters on Monday distributed the video in several Mogadishu neighborhoods, including in Suqaholaha, where a public screening was also organized following the Eid prayers.
The video kicks off with an artistic animation of whirling flower tendrils and text in English and Arabic paying tribute to the mujahideen (holy warriors) in Palestine and the Arabian peninsula, as well as the Taleban in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The slick video production marks a new level in the propaganda capabilities of the Al-Shabab and is reminiscent of the videos made by As-Sahab — Al-Qaeda’s media production company — on Iraq and Afghanistan.
The video is a sequence of fighting scenes in the streets of Mogadishu and elsewhere, training sessions and news commentary lambasting the president of Somalia’s transitional federal government, Sharif Sheikh Ahmed.
