The Sinai-based jihadist group Ansar Jerusalem (Ansar Bayt al Maqdis) today released a video about its Dec. 24, 2013 suicide car bombing attack outside the Daqahliya security directorate in Mansoura. The group, which was designated yesterday as a foreign terrorist organization by the US, had previously claimed responsibility for the Mansoura attack, in a statement released on Dec. 25, 2013.
In the video, Abu Maryam, the suicide bomber in the attack, is described by Ansar Jerusalem as a “heroic martyr,” according to a translation by Oren Adaki of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “He had many intrepid braveries against the apostates in Egypt,” the jihadist group says. In addition, he was “wounded by gunfire during the Ramses incidents,” likely a reference to August 2013 clashes between Egyptian security forces and Islamists in Cairo’s Ramses Square.
Ansar Jerusalem’s video also accuses Egypt’s security forces of “killing in cold blood,” “terrorizing children,” and “aggression against Muslim women,” among other offenses. The issue of assaults against women has been mentioned in a number of other statements from Ansar Jerusalem as well as from Ajnad Misr. For example, in November 2013 Ansar Jerusalem said its killing of Lieutenant Colonel Mohammed Mabrouk, a senior national security officer, was in response to the arrest and interrogation of Muslim women by Egyptian security forces.
After accusing Egypt’s security forces of these offenses, the video plays a clip from former Islamic State of Iraq leader Abu Omar al Baghdadi. “We are not those who shed tears, and sit crying like women, this was not and will not be our path,” Baghdadi says. Ansar Jerusalem had previously used a clip from Baghdadi in its video about its attack in October 2013 on the South Sinai Security Directorate in el Tor.
Following this, a speech from Abu Maryam is played. In it, the jihadist says: “The path to establishing the religion is not solely by da’wa as some people have said, but it is da’wa and jihad.” “You do not raise a weapon and they fight you. So what [would happen] if you raised a weapon?” he asks.
He goes on to say that “the enemies of Allah … are plotting against us, plotting against Allah’s religion.” In addition, he denounces Egyptian security forces for acting as “protectors of the Jews.” According to Abu Maryam, “He who proceeds and dares to kill Muslims, we do not advise him with words, rather we kill him as he has killed them.”
Ansar Jerusalem says “security reasons” prevented it from filming the explosion in Mansoura. Similarly, in a November 2013 video about its attack on the South Sinai Security Directorate in el Tor, the jihadist group had claimed that “security reasons” kept it from filming the actual bombing. In February, however, the group released a video showing its Dec. 29 bombing of a military intelligence building in Anshas.
The video from Ansar Jerusalem concluded with a 2007 clip from Abu Hamza al Muhajir (also known as Abu Ayyub al Masri), a deceased al Qaeda in Iraq leader, in which he calls on Muslims to protect the honor of their women.
