Somali-Canadian ISIS member resurfaces and threatens New York in erratic video
Six weeks after he was declared dead, a Canadian in the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham resurfaced on video Thursday, vowing the terrorist group was preparing to bomb New York and fly its flag over the White House.
Interviewed from Iraq by the U.S. website Vice.com, Farah Mohamed Shirdon, a former Calgary movie theatre employee, appeared erratic and became increasingly enraged as he dished out threats and claimed God was on his side.
“God willing, we will make some attacks in New York soon, a lot of brothers are mo- bilizing there right now in the West, thanks to Allah,” he said. Smiling, he added they were “mobilizing for a brilliant attack, my friend.”
ISIS was conducting beheadings because “you attack one of us, we will attack one of you,” he said, adding, “We will stop when we behead the kuffar [disbelievers] and when we turn his children into our slaves.”
But as if to undermine his boasts, he said he was under attack “day and night” and would have to go, apparently because of yet another assault. Calling himself Abu Usamah, Mr. Shirdon was eulogized online by fellow terrorists in August but later returned to Twitter to say he had been injured but was alive.
He is one of several SomaliCanadians thought to have joined ISIS, prompting the Canadian Somali Congress’s western branch to appeal for government help. A Hamilton, Ont., man presumed dead in ISIS fighting was also a Somali-Canadian.
“No one recruited me. Actually no one spoke a single word to me. All I did, I opened the newspaper, I read the Koran. Very easy,” he said. Five days before he left, Canadian authorities interviewed him, he claimed. “All their intelligence workers are imbeciles,” he said, although he then named the FBI before correcting that it was the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
The nephew of the former prime minister of Somalia, Mr. Shirdon has made grandiose threats before. After arriving in Iraq, he appeared in an ISIS video in which he burned his passport and threatened Canada and the United States.
The departure of dozens of Canadian extremists to Syria and Iraq has prompted a crackdown by Ottawa, which has begun cancelling their passports, laying criminal charges and tracking them in case they attempt to return to Canada.
The government added ISIS to its list of outlawed terrorist organizations on Wednesday.
The move makes it simpler to investigate, prosecute and deport those who have joined the group or who are otherwise supporting it.