A Jordanian suicide bomber who carried out a devastating attack in Afghanistan that killed seven CIA agents and one Jordanian intelligence officer recorded a “martyrdom” video.
In the grainy video the bomber, former Jordanian doctor Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, promises that US forces will suffer further attacks and says that he was motivated to avenge the death of the Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud.
“We will never forget the blood of our Emir Baitullah Mehsud, God’s mercy upon him,” Balawi said as he sat next to the current senior Taliban leader in Pakistan, Hakimullah Mehsud, who succeeded the slain militant.
In the video Balawi is wearing dark green combat fatigues and is heavily bearded, while Hakimullah Mehud has an assault rifle on his lap.
Balawi’s attack on Dec. 30 sent a shock wave through US intelligence services. It was the worst attack against the CIA since the US embassy in Beirut was bombed in 1983. It happened after intelligence operatives agreed to meet Balawi, believing he was working with them to track down al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders in the mountainous border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Instead Balawi detonated a bomb, killing himself, the CIA agents and a man supposed to be his Jordanian intelligence handler.
Speculation has been rife about whether Balawi was a triple agent from the beginning or changed sides during his work for the CIA. But in the video he dismissed the idea that he had ever worked with the Americans. That supports similar statements made by his widow to reporters. Balawi said in the video that the US had offered him “millions of dollars,” but that he had remained pure in the cause of Islamic jihad.
“The jihadist who follows God’s way does not put his religion up for auction,” he said.
Balawi said he wanted to target the drone teams, controlled by the CIA, which are often used to target militants in aerial missile strikes. Such a strike killed Baitullah Mehsud last August in the Pakistan tribal region of South Waziristan. It was followed by a huge Pakistani army operation in the region aimed at driving out militants that saw hundreds of people killed and thousands forced to flee their homes.
Balawi said there would be further attacks against US targets and those who operated the drones.
“This jihadi attack will be the first of the revenge operations against the Americans and their drone teams,” he said.
Attacking jihadis only motivated them further, he said.
“We never forget our martyrs, we never forget our prisoners,” he said.
The video, which surfaced on Saturday morning and has been broadcast on the Arabic satellite TV station al-Jazeera, will raise further questions in an already fierce debate as to how Balawi was able to meet so many CIA officers without being adequately checked. Reports have claimed that he was recommended to the CIA by Jordanian intelligence and that he led a double life, posing as a very useful informant while he plotted his spectacular attack.
Meanwhile, details have emerged about Balawi’s attack. The Washington Post said on Saturday that he was driven on to the US base in a red station wagon and emerged with one hand in his pocket.
As he was about to be patted down by a security official, he triggered a bomb, which was packed with thousands of steel pellets, the paper said..
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
DEMONSTRATIONS: A protester said although she would normally sit back and wait for the next election, she cannot do it this time, adding that ‘we’ve lost too much already’ Thousands of protesters rallied on Saturday in New York, Washington and other cities across the US for a second major round of demonstrations against US President Donald Trump and his hard-line policies. In New York, people gathered outside the city’s main library carrying signs targeting the US president with slogans such as: “No Kings in America” and “Resist Tyranny.” Many took aim at Trump’s deportations of undocumented migrants, chanting: “No ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], no fear, immigrants are welcome here.” In Washington, protesters voiced concern that Trump was threatening long-respected constitutional norms, including the right to due process. The
RSS