Al-Qaeda's front organisation in Iraq has announced new leaders to replace those killed in April in a US-Iraqi operation, an Internet monitoring service reported on Sunday. The US-based SITE Intelligence Group said that the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) made the announcement on May 15 in posts on jihadist forums.The new leaders are "Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi al-Husseini al-Qurashi, the Emir of the Believers of the Islamic State of Iraq" and "Sheikh Abu Abdullah al-Hassani al-Qurashi is his prime minister and deputy," it quoted a statement from the group as saying. The ISI statement is likely to have used noms de guerre for the two new leaders.
"We ask Allah... to protect (the new leaders) and complete through their hands what the two martyred sheikhs began, in raising the banner of jihad, seeking to empower Allah's sharia, and building a strong Islamic state," ISI said, according to SITE.
| "Jeeves, make sure to keep spare copies of the executive washroom keys this time. You remember what trouble it caused the time before last -- nobody could get in for a week, until the locksmith finally arrived. You'd think a team of bomb-makers and suicide trainers could pick a bloody lock, but nooooo! they know nothing outside their areas of expertise, that lot! Too much turnover of the Number Threes, that's what I say, and where's a Number Four to get the training he needs before he's promoted and killed? As soon as you've got those copies made, I'm off for Pakistan and the protection of the Inter-Services Intelligence." |
The monitoring service also said that Abu Suleiman had announced a military campaign dubbed "The Attack of the Monotheists in Revenge for Honours in the Prisons of Apostates,"
Funny, that's the name of my favorite medieval theological treatise.
and vowed that the ISI will continue to wage jihad.