Yesterday, Shabaab announced on its Twitter account, @HSMPess (Harakat Al-Shabaab Al Mujahideen), that it executed three men who were “convicted of spying for Western Intelligence agencies” – the CIA and MI6. According to Shabaab, two of the men, Ishaq Omar Hassan and Yasin Osman Ahmed, were responsible for helping the CIA track and kill Bilal al Berjawi, a British al Qaeda operative, and “3 other Muhajireen [immigrant] brothers.” Berjawi was killed on Jan. 21. Shabaab claimed that Ishaq and Yasin had “planted tracking devices” on Berjawi’s vehicle.
Berjawi, who was also known as Abu Hafsa, “was second-in-command” to slain al Qaeda leader Fazul Mohammed, a US intelligence official who closely tracks al Qaeda in the Middle East and beyond told The Long War Journal in January. Fazul was the leader of al Qaeda in East Africa and a senior Shabaab commander before he was killed by Somali troops at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Mogadishu in June 2011.
In a series of tweets yesterday, Shabaab said it executed the three spies “after months of interrogations.” Shabaab then mocked Western technology and said it has “launched an extensive counter-intelligence campaign to cleanse the country of such spies.”
The @HSMPress tweets are reproduced below, in chronological order:
After months of interrogations, the Mujahideen have today publicly executed three men convicted of spying for Western Intelligence agencies [Link]
Mukhtar Ibrahim Sheikh Ahmed, 33, worked for Britain’s MI6 and was responsible for recruiting agents & gathering intelligence on HSM leaders [Link]
Ishaq Omar Hassan, 22, & Yasin Osman Ahmed, 23 were part of a ring of spies employed by CIA to specifically assassinate Muhajireen brothers [Link]
Hassan and Ahmed were both responsible for the deaths of Bilaal Al-Berjawi (Abu Uhud) and 3 other Muhajireen brothers [Link]
The two planted tracking devices in the vehicles of Al-Berjawi & his brothers which guided the missile strikes in the outskirts of Mogadishu [Link]
The three men were part of a wide network of spies deployed by the British and American intelligence agencies to spy on the Mujahideen [Link]
But for all their technological advancement, the Kuffar are still incapable of coordinating air strikes w/o relying on human intelligence [Link]
The Mujahideen intelligence, on their part, have launched an extensive counter-intelligence campaign to cleanse the country of such spies [Link]
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