Second al-Qaeda magazine edition features ‘proud to be US traitor’s’ testimony

CANBERRA - The Al-Qaeda has released the second edition of their English-language magazine ‘Inspire’ featuring a North Carolina man who says he is “proud to be a traitor to America.”

“I am a traitor to America because my religion requires me to be one. We pledge to wage jihad for the rest of our lives until either we implant Islam all over the world or meet our Lord as bearers of Islam,” 24-year-old Samir Khan, a U.S. citizen now believed to be in Yemen, wrote in the magazine.

Fox News quoted Khan’s article as strongly criticizing the United States for “killing millions of Muslims around the world” and “getting away with it wearing a tuxedo.” He also claimed that he had become a staunch Muslim and therefore “could no longer reside in America as a compliant citizen.”

According to U.S. officials, the first edition of Inspire, which was released in July, indicated that Khan was likely a key player behind the magazine because his old website and blog’s graphics had a strong resemblance to the graphics found in the magazine.

The cover story of the second edition of the magazine, relates to operations taking place in Abyan, a region of Yemen where militants have carried out deadly attacks on Yemen’s military forces. Yemen’s government has been struggling to root out Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, the group that trained and equipped Nigerian Umar F. Abdulmutallab for his bombing attempt over Detroit in December.

The 74 pages long magazine also features “exclusive” comments by radical cleric Anwar Awlaki on “The Mardin Declaration,” a condemnation of terrorism issued in March by Muslim scholars meeting in the Turkish city of Mardin.

Awlaki, who is now hiding in Yemen and has been tied to the Fort Hood shootings and the failed Christmas Day plot, has called the declaration a “disgrace” and “not worth the ink and the paper it’s written on.”

The first edition included articles by Osama bin Laden and Awlaki. It encouraged the Western readers to “conduct attacks in the West and to join the ‘jihad.’ Awlaki’s article titled “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom,” provided “step-by-step instructions for constructing a pipe bomb using readily accessible items,” the report said.

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) note in July said: “DHS and the FBI are concerned … that the sophisticated, colloquial English-language magazine could appeal to certain Western individuals and inspire them to conduct attacks in the United States in the future.” (ANI)