YEMEN:AL-QAEDA front man and radical preacher Anwar Al-Awlaki claimed the civil unrest sweeping across the Arab world would strengthen the terrorist network and open "great doors of opportunity" for Islamic fundamentalists.
Writing in the latest edition of the English language Inspire magazine, released yesterday by Yemen’s militant Islamic organisation, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Mr Awlaki said Islamists had been freed by the removal of anti-Islamic autocrats, referring to the fall of Tunisia’s Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali and former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.
“Our mujahideen [warriors of the Muslim faith] brothers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and the rest of the Muslim world will get a chance to breathe again after three decades of suffocation,” he wrote.
In the four-page article titled ‘Tsunami of Change’ the US-born cleric, described as a “senior recruiter for al-Qaeda” by the FBI, described Libya’s Muammar Gadafy as a “lunatic” while appearing to support the besieged ruler’s claims of an al-Qaeda presence in the north African state.
“Libyans have featured prominently in jihad work . . . al-Gadafy has filled the Libyan prisons with thousands of our mujahideen brothers,” the preacher wrote.
Col Gadafy has repeatedly accused Libya’s rebel movement of being members of the West’s most feared terrorist network.
Alongside photographs of the fallen leaders of Egypt and Tunisia, as well as those under threat – Col Gadafy and Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh – Mr Awlaki claimed the turmoil in Libya would strengthen an al-Qaeda sub-sect in north Africa.
“These brothers will have a chance to regroup again and connect with their brothers in the Maghreb. With the events in Tunisia, Libya and Algeria, the jihad in the Islamic Maghreb is witnessing a new dawn,” he wrote, referring to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s sister group, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.