'The American' uses rap, video, to recruit for Somalia's Al-Shabab Islamist group

The National Post's Stewart Bell reports this morning a Canadian has been arrested in Somalia for allegedly planning to bomb leaders of a moderate political faction, according to local media reports that identified him as a member of the militant group Al-Shabab. Abdifatah Mohamad Ibrahim appeared in court yesterday in the central Galgudud region, where authorities showed his Canadian passport to spectators, according to Radio Garowe and the Somali-language news site allpuntland.com. The reports said he was arrested March 8 by clan militias loyal to Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jama, which has been battling Al-Shabab. Authorities are investigating whether he was attempting to assassinate top Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jama officers.
As Mr. Bell wrote on March 28, CSIS has been investigating the suspected recruitment of Canadians by a Taliban-like Somali extremist group called Al-Shabab, which has suspected links to al-Qaeda. The CBC, quoting an unidentified government source, reported this week that between 20 to 30 Canadians had joined Al-Shabab. Canadians have also travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan to train with and join armed Islamist factions, and security officials remain concerned about homegrown extremists who are not connected to foreign terrorist groups but consider Canada a legitimate terrorist target. According to reports by AFP, Somalia now shelters an estimated 450 foreign fighters who are working with the Shabab, a home-grown hardline Islamist group that has spearheaded a bloody insurgency since 2006. While foreign fighters wanted for links to Al-Qaeda have long used Somalia as a backyard, their numbers have swollen dramatically in 2009, experts say. "There were maybe 100 foreigners last year but now our estimate is up to 450," said Ismail Haji Noor, a former Somali security official who has established a secular militia bent on rooting out the Shabab and their foreign allies. In recent days, a propaganda video by Islamic extremists in Somalia (see above) features appeals to foreign recruits from an "American" fighter along with English rapping and songs, a U.S. monitoring group said Tuesday. The 31-minute video made public by the SITE Intelligence Group, which shows a purported ambush of Somali and Ethiopian troops in July 2008, has an on-camera narrator who is identified as "Abu Mansour the American." Representing the militant Islamic group Shabab, Abu Mansour makes a pitch for new overseas recruits after praising one militant fighter killed in the apparent ambush. "So, if you can encourage more of your children and more of your neighbors and anyone around to send people like him to this jihad (holy war), it would be a great asset for us," he says. The light-skinned and bearded Abu Mansour speaks in a soft US accent, possibly from the northern United States, and wears a camouflage hat and combat fatigues. He looks to be in his late 20s or 30s. Some of the lyrics feature lines such as: "Bomb by bomb, blast by blast, only gonna bring back the glorious past." "The American dream has fallen, Bush is going down like Stalin, the economy is crawlin', the widows are bawlin', you dead you be haulin', while our takbeers (chants of Allah is Great) keep callin'." http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/posted/archive/2009/04/07/the-american-uses-rap-video-to-recruit-for-somalia-s-shebab-islamist-group.aspx
With files from AFP -->