Al-Qaida Publicists Angrily Reject Hoax Communique on U.S. Soldiers

By Evan Kohlmann

For some time, speculation has been rife about how various Al-Qaida affiliates and Iraqi insurgent groups manage to so precisely coordinate the distribution of their propaganda on Arabic-language Internet chat forums on a daily basis. Clearly, there is a logical intellect lurking behind the mysterious process, given that a virtually identical set of communiques and videos from Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, the Palestinian territories, and beyond are disseminated in a select group of highly credible forums nearly simulaneously. Recently, the brains behind this distribution network stepped forward from the shadows, and began to issue their own occasional statements--identifying themselves as the "Al-Fajr Media Center." It should be noted that, for some time, Al-Qaida and Mujahideen Shura Council communiques published on the Internet have been likewise consistently tagged with the watermark of the Al-Fajr Media Center.

This evening, the Al-Fajr Media Center issued a new statement concerning an erroneous communique published in Western media outlets and attributed to Al-Qaida concerning the brutal killing of two U.S. soldiers south of Baghdad. In its message, Al-Fajr angrily charged, "It should be noted that some of these news agencies--even though they know that the Al-Fajr Media Center is the exclusive publishing outlet for the Mujahideen Shura Council, Ansar al-Sunnah, and the As-Sahab [Foundation]" have printed stories about unauthenticated messages published by members of various forums "without any regard to the professional informational system" that was put in place by Al-Fajr. However, according to the latter, the failure of Western media agencies to follow that system simply "demonstrates the extent of the defeat of the crusader forces and their allies."

The implication here is that the purported Internet communique suggesting that the newly designated commander of Al-Qaida in Iraq Abu Hamza al-Muhajir personally beheaded two U.S. soldiers taken captive in Al-Yousifiyah--most notably published online on the debatably accurate Tajdeed.org.uk forum and *NOT* carried by any of Al-Fajr Media Center's preferred online distribution outlets--was a total hoax. This should serve as yet another reminder that the Tajdeed forum is a popular haven for spies and copycats and it should not alone be used as a reliable source for information about Al-Qaida. Even Al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia recently publicly accused Tajdeed webmaster Mohammed al-Massari of providing information to British intelligence services.

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