The videos, to be broadcast Monday on ABC World News with Diane Sawyer, appear to support Abdulmutallab’s statements to the FBI that there are "others like me" who also trained with him in Yemen to carry out attacks against U.S. and western targets.
The tape also includes an apparent martyrdom statement in Arabic from the 23-year old Nigerian justifying his actions against "the Jews and the Christians and their agents." He says, "the enemy is in your lands with their armies, the Jews and the Christians and their agents." He reads several passages from the Koran and adds, "God said if you do not fight back, He will punish you and replace you."
Abdulmutallab was arrested on Christmas Day in Detroit after he allegedly attempted to set off a bomb on a Northwest Airlines jet. He has pleaded not guilty to criminal charges but U.S. authorities say he is now cooperating in the investigation. The videos, obtained by a Yemeni journalist working for ABC News, are the first to show Abdulmutallab with the al Qaeda group. In the video he and others use automatic weapons to fire at targets that include a Jewish star, the British Union Jack and the a symbol of the United Nations.
Some, but not all, of the faces of others at the training camp are blurred in the video released by al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula. Their logo is embedded in a corner of the screen. "The other people in the video are presumably the people we are still looking for," said Richard Clarke, an ABC News consultant and former White House counter-terrorism official. The video also shows the purported al Qaeda fighters in Yemen firing at what appears to be an unmanned surveillance plane overhead.
As ABC News first reported, the U.S. launched a series of cruise missile strikes against suspected al Qaeda camps in Yemen, beginning Dec. 18. There is no indication of when the tape was recorded but U.S. officials believe Abdulmutallab was in Yemen between August and left in mid-December of 2009 on his suicide mission. There was no immediate comment from Abdulmutallab’s lawyer about his statements on the tape.
Source: ABC News