From The National Post Canada
Related: Militant Group Trains Children to Kill Infidels.
Extremists praise Somali Canadian in online eulogy
Stewart Bell, National Post Published: Tuesday, May 04, 2010
TORONTO — A Canadian who was being investigated for allegedly joining a Somali militant group died in a “fierce battle,” according to a eulogy posted on an extremist website.
“During the fight, he received a fatal wound to the point that he was unable to participate,” it says. “The mujahedin that were with him carried him and placed him in a safe area.”
It says he gave the others his weapon “to continue to defend the religion of Allah” and they left him and went back to fight. When they returned he was dead, it says.
Mohamed Elmi Ibrahim, 22, was one of a half-dozen radicalized young Somali-Canadians who allegedly left Toronto last year to join the al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabab.
The Al-Qimmah Somali Internet forum said in March he was dead. It provided few details but this week a eulogy appeared on the same extremist website.
The eulogy offers no proof he died in combat, however, such as videos or photos, and there is contradictory evidence that he may have actually died of natural causes.
Members of Canada’s large Somali community say they are worried that some youths are becoming radicalized by Al-Shabab propaganda on the Internet.
Two Toronto mosques that serve Somalis have urged their young congregants not to return to Somalia to fight, and some parents have reportedly been hiding their children’s passports.
Somalia has also become an increasing focus of Western counter-terrorism agencies, which are reporting than radicalized youths are traveling there to join Al-Shabab.
The RCMP and FBI have said they are concerned that Canadian and U.S. recruits might conduct terrorist attacks in North America. In its annual report to Parliament, CSIS called the Somali conflict “a direct threat to Canadian and international security.”
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews announced in March that Canada had added Al-Shabab to Ottawa’s list of outlawed terrorist groups, in part because of its efforts to recruit Somali-Canadian youths.
But that may have come too late for one of the so-called Somali Six. Known as “Canlish” after his neighbourhood in Scarborough, Ont., Mr. Ibrahim was an English major at the University of Toronto and the author of an extremist blog.
The eulogy says he was born in Boramo, Somaliland, in 1987, just before civil war erupted in the region. He was still a toddler when he moved to Canada with his family.
“As Allah willed, he was to grow up in the lands of infidelity and corruption, but he was never swayed in his determination in pleasing Allah and striving to perfect his mannerisms,” it says.
It quotes his younger sister saying that he was “the glue that held the family together.” His parents were helping him “in settling down and getting married” when he left the “kaafir [infidel] land of Canada permanently.”
Together with a group of youths from his mosque, he traveled to Saudi Arabia, and from there crossed to Somalia, where he became Abu Hamzah Muhammad al Muhajiri and died within a year.
Al-Shabab is a Taliban-like armed group that has been using suicide attacks and roadside bombs to impose extremist rule in Somalia. Hundreds of foreigners have reportedly made their way to Somalia to join what they claim is a Muslim holy war.
They include Canadians, Australians, Europeans and at least 20 young Americans. Several are confirmed dead. An American-Somali and a Danish-Somali both died while carrying out suicide bombings.
A common thread among some of recruits is that they were followers of Anwar Al-Awlaki, the America-born extremist ideologue whose English-language on-line lectures encourage Muslims to commit acts of terrorism.
Al-Awlaki has been linked to two recent terror attacks, last November’s shootings at the Fort Hood military base in Texas and the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound passenger plane on Christmas Day. The Toronto 18 terrorists also watched Al-Awlaki’s videos. U.S. President Barrack Obama recently authorized al-Awlaki’s targeted killing.
Mr. Ibrahim’s blog, Gardens of Paradise, featured several video and audio lectures by the radical cleric. In one of them, Al-Awlaki says, “Allah loves those who fight in his way.”
National Post
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