$5-million bounty for Tim Hortons-loving jihadi
The U.S. State Department’s “Rewards for Justice” program has added two Americans and $10 million in bounties to the list of wanted Al Shabab suspects (first reported by CNN’s Elise Labott Wednesday).
Somalia’s Al Qaeda group has diminished in membership and power in the last two years, but a suicide bombing in Mogadishu this week that killed at least 10 civilians was a devastating reminder that the Shabab still has active members who can reach the capital.
Omar Shafik Hammami and Jehad Serwan Mostafa both reportedly left the U.S. for Somalia in 2006, when a group called the Islamic Courts Union briefly took control of Mogadishu. According to the State Department: “Both are wanted for conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, which includes their significant contributions to al Shabaab’s media and military activities.”
The timing of the bounties is curious. Labott quotes an unnamed FBI source stating that the two “had a persistent interest in targeting U.S. interests.” But it appears it is not an imminent threat except that the reward is based “on actions (Hammami) has already taken.” Hammami is generally not regarded as leader in the group — especially since his very public fallout with the Shabab last year.
Millions in bounties for the Shabab leadership was first offered in June — the greatest reward of $7 million (U.S). for Ahmed Abdi aw-Mohamed Godane, the group’s leader, who also goes by the name Mukhtar Abu Zubair. The elusive and influential Ibrahim Haji Jama, also known as Ibrahim al-Afghani (a nickname because of his training in Afghanistan), was also listed.
But it was the Shabab leaders who were not listed that was most intriguing — and the widely held theory among analysts was that the bounties were less about the bounties themselves and more about the U.S. trying to further divide the leadership. So why now for the two Americans?
Hamammi is the better known of the two. He is a difficult character to take seriously — an Alabama-born “rapper,” with a taste for Tim Hortons, who waxes poetically in the tortured language of jihadists.
Most analysts, counterterrorism experts and journalists are fans of dark comedy (mea culpa), thus his story has been widely covered. He seems to consume it all.
Last Friday, he apparently read a blog post I wrote about the latest act in Terrorism’s Theatre of the Absurd, mentioning his Twitter feed (although there has been some doubt as to whether it is really him). The blog post stated: “Lately, his tweets have been about as exciting — and frequent — as the teenager who wants to tell you about the bagel she had at lunch, or when she’s off for a mani-pedi.”
He responded the next day on Twitter: “bagel? Canadian feminist humor?”
Then again Wednesday “he” — if @ abum american is indeed Hammami — was busy again, responding to various national security and foreign policy Twitter types. He seemed eager to compete in Twitter Fight Club (#TFC13. . . think, like, nerd online Olympics). Michelle Shephard A giant leap for space nerds
Call it one pretty cool underwater step for man, one giant leap for space nerds everywhere.
How else to describe the amazing visuals making the rounds of a cluster of twisted, burnt-out Apollo rocket engines recovered from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean during a three-week expedition led by Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.
The startling images adorn a Bezos blog post filed fresh from the deck of the Seabed Worker, which was headed back to Cape Canaveral after gathering up a nest of F-1 Saturn V rocket engines that lifted the Apollo missions to space during the 1960s and ‘70s.
“We found so much,” writes Bezos. “We found an underwater wonderland — an incredible sculpture garden of twisted F-1 engines that tell the story of a fiery and violent end, one that serves testament to the Apollo program.
“We photographed many beautiful objects in situ and now have recovered many prime pieces. Each piece we bring on deck conjures for me the thousands of engineers who worked together back then to do what for all time had been thought surely impossible.”
The team used a fleet of Remotely Operated Vehicles in the recovery effort, tethered by fibre optics and power cables pulsing more than 4,000 volts to depths of nearly 5 kilometres. Bezos said the team was struck by the “poetic echoes of the lunar missions” insofar as the apparatus operated in darkness and near weightlessness as it descended. “The blackness of the horizon. The gray and colourless ocean floor. Only the occasional deep-sea fish broke the illusion,” Bezos writes.
The Bezos team doesn’t know quite yet what it has, but NASA is expected to help piece together the precise provenance of the antique spaceware, which is eventually expected to be placed on public display.
Said NASA Administrator Charles Boden: “This is a historic find and I congratulate the team for its determination and perseverance in the recovery of these important artifacts of our first efforts to send humans beyond Earth orbit.”