A new video featuring al-Qaeda’s number two Abu Yahya al-Libi, who the United States said was killed last week after a drone strike in Pakistan, was posted online Tuesday, monitoring services said.
Both the SITE Monitoring Service and IntelCenter, which keep tabs on jihadi websites, said it was not clear when the video had been made.
The US-based SITE said the video production date only indicated it had been produced by al-Qaeda’s media arm As-Sahab some time after November 2011.
In the video, Libi — a charismatic figure beloved by rank-and-file radicals — denounces Syrian president Bashar al-Assad as a ‘tyrant’ and calls his government a ‘criminal regime,’ according to SITE’s translation.
He urges the Syrian people to continue fighting and calls on fighters in Iraq, Jordan and Turkey ‘to rise to help their brothers and to sacrifice themselves for them.’
Libi also accuses ‘the West and their agent assistants’ of being complicit in the crimes perpetrated by Assad’s regime.
SITE said the message post accompanying the video refers to Libi with honorific titles normally reserved for the living.