Mogadishu -– Somalia’s Shabaab militants, al-Qaeda’s main affiliate in Africa, on Friday praised the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly in Paris as a “heroic” act.
| It would be perfectly okay with me if the French, after taking care of business at home and certain other locations, came to Mogadishu and extirpated the Shaboobs... |
“They made millions of Muslims happy by taking action. Some misguided people claim that freedom of expression was attacked, but that is not the case, and the two heroic people acted accordingly,” Radio Andalus, the official mouthpiece of the militants, said in a commentary.
“They cut the head of non-believers who insulted our beloved prophet,” the radio said, adding that Osama Bin Laden had “told the West that if freedom of expression has no limit, then you have to expect your blood to be shed.”
It said the satirical magazine had “insulted our prophet and annoyed millions of Muslims”, and described the attackers as “our two brothers [who] were the first to take revenge”.
Alluding to early eyewitness accounts, the radio also noted that the two brothers suspected of carrying out the killings had “declared that they are part of al-Qaeda”, the Islamist network to which the Shabaab are also affiliated.
The Shabaab were also linked to Mohamed Geele, a Somali man who was convicted of a 2010 axe attack against Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who had faced numerous death threats since his caricature of the Muslim prophet Mohammed appeared in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten in 2005. Geele is serving a 10-year sentence for the attack.
| Not nearly long enough... |
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