Wanted IMU leader urges attacks in Germany

A German citizen who serves as a leader in the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and is linked to al Qaeda has urged jihadists to conduct attacks in Germany.

Mounir Chouka, who is also known as Abu Adam al Almani (“the German”), said that “jihad in Germany is only a matter of time,” in a video released on jihadist web forums on Feb. 9 by Jundallah Studio, the propaganda arm of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. The video, which supposedly was created on Dec. 13, 2011 in Waziristan, was translated by the SITE Intelligence Group.

In the video, Mounir claimed that Germany has publicly criticized the US while secretly supporting rendition of al Qaeda operatives to foreign governments for interrogations and “torture.”

“It is in the interest of the Americans to have the German media display them as the big criminal, because the Germans can continue their secret work,” he claimed.

Mounir claimed that the German government was deceiving its citizens on the scale of Nazi Germany’s extermination of the Jews in World War II.

“After the fall of Hitler’s regime, many, or rather, most of the German people, were shocked how that [the Holocaust] could happen in such a short period of time. It is a shock that is still visible until this day, and it is shown in the memorials erected for the Jews in every large city,” he said.

He also accused the Germans of working with the Uzbek government to interrogate the “mujahideen.”

“As the German mujahideen, along with their Uzbek brothers here in Afghanistan and Pakistan, raise high the flag of jihad, the Germans cooperate with the tyrannical dictators like Karimov in Uzbekistan and sit together at a table, and the German secret service interrogate the mujahideen of the IMU in Uzbek prisons and forget about human rights under the tyranny,” he said.

Mounir then accused the Germans of aiding the US to kill Germans in drone strikes, and said the German Army is in Afghanistan to kill Muslims. He cited the Sept. 2008 airstrike in Kunduz that killed scores of Taliban fighters and civilians.

“Let me ask you something else: what would you do if someone followed the example of the military attack in Kunduz on 14 September 2008, and came to German soil and killed dozens of people? What would you do?! For us, Islam doesn’t allow that. The question of jihad in Germany is only a matter of time.”

He said that “the target is the German politicians and the executives who work for the Jews in the background. Allah willing, there must also be a series of attacks against the people also, because attacks in Germany are a type of revenge and reaction.”

Mounir is not the first German citizen to use jihadist media outlets to issue propaganda threatening to carry out attacks in Germany. In 2009, Bekkay Harrach, who was also known as Al Hafidh Abu Talha al Almani, warned that Germany would suffer an attack if Chancellor Angela Merkel was reelected. Harrach worked with both al Qaeda and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan along the Afghan-Pakistani border before he was killed while leading an assault on Bagram Air Base in 2010.

The Choukas, brothers in jihad

Mounir and his brother Yassin, also known as Abu Ibrahim, were added late last month to the US’s list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists for serving as “fighters, recruiters, facilitators and propagandists for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan,” which in itself is on the list of designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

The two brothers “carry out operations as members of the IMU along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border” and “are also senior members of Jundallah Media, the IMU’s media production arm.”

As senior leaders in Jundallah Media, the Chouka brothers have released numerous propaganda and martyrdom statements. According to State, Monir said the IMU was behind the deadly Oct. 29, 2011 suicide attack that targeted an armored bus in Kabul. Five Americans, a Canadian, eight ISAF civilian employees, three Afghan civilians, and a policeman were killed in the attack.

Mounir also said that the IMU was involved in the May 19, 2010 suicide assault on Bagram Air Base. One US soldier was killed in the attack. According to the IMU propaganda tape, the Bagram assault was launched “in coordination and cooperation with other jihadi groups,” and the assault team included “Turks, Tajiks, Arabs, Pashtuns, and Afghans.” Bekkay Harrach is thought to have been killed while leading the assault on Bagram. Harrach led a team of 20 fighters made up from the ranks of al Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban, and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, according to a previous statement released by the IMU. The various terrorist groups carry out military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan under the aegis of the Lashkar al Zil, or the Shadow Army [for more information, see LWJ report, Al Qaeda’s paramilitary ‘Shadow Army’].

Yassin, Mounir’s brother, has also released propaganda for the IMU. In February 2011, Yassin published a report that described his travels from Europe to Pakistan, which included a stop in Yemen and several meetings with Anwar al Awlaki, the wanted American-born terrorist who served as a senior ideologue and operational commander for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula before he was killed in a Predator strike.

In June 2011, Yassin announced the death of “Abdullah from Essen,” a German citizen from Afghanistan who was known as Miqdad. The German was killed while fighting US forces in northern Afghanistan, according to Yassin.

One of the brothers was rumored to have been wounded in a US drone strike. In August 2011, the Victorious Sect, a terror group with ties to the IMU, issued a statement indicating that Mounir may have been wounded in a US Predator airstrike along the Afghan-Pakistani border. The report was never confirmed.

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.

Tags: Afghanistan, germany, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Taliban