HomeA man purported to be a US-born al-Qaida member on Saturday denied that the militant organisation was behind a series of bombings in Pakistan that killed hundreds of civilians, saying in a new English-language video that the extremist organisation “declare themselves innocent of these attacks.”
The man, believed to be US-born Adam Gadahn, who commonly delivers the organisation’s English messages, said the extremist network was being framed by US and Pakistani intelligence services for the bloodshed.
The video was acquired by AP Television from Intelcenter, a firm based in Alexandria, Virginia, that provides counter-terrorism intelligence services to the US government.
AP Television has no way of independently verifying the content, location or date of the video.
“The mujaheddin declare themselves innocent of these attacks and pronounce them part of a cynical, calculated and clandestine international campaign by the secular political forces, devious intelligence agencies, and obedient puppet media,” the man said in the video.
He insisted the attacks were “designed to drive a wedge between the mujaheddin and the same Muslim public, which has, for more than eight years, backed and supported them in their victorious jihad against the crusaders and their allies in the Pak-Afghan region.”
More than 500 people have died in a slew of attacks in Pakistan that began in October, just as the Pakistani army started waging a ground offensive against the Taliban network in South Waziristan, a tribal region bordering Afghanistan.
A single truck bomb in the northwest city of Peshawar killed more than 100 people at a market that sells mostly women’s clothes and children’s toys.
More recently, twin bombs at a similar market in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore killed nearly 50.
The video comes as support for Islamic extremism and militancy has recently taken a downturn in Pakistan, in light of the string of attacks, although anti-Americanism and conspiracy theories about western involvement in the country remain widespread.
Gadahn grew up in Los Angeles and then moved to Pakistan in 1998, according to the FBI. He is said to have attended an al-Qaida training camp six years later, serving as a translator and consultant for the group.