AYman al-Zawahiri on Facebook
The site included images of the world’s second most wanted man and a number of video clips issued by terrorist groups.
One featured the leader of the Islamist Chechen rebel movement who is believed to be behind last month’s twin suicide bombings on the Moscow underground.
An investigation discovered that the page was one of a ring of interlinked jihadist Facebook sites that had attracted nearly 14,000 fans.
One group promoting Zawahiri’s page was established in the name of the Afghan Taliban and called the Voice of Jihad.
The Taliban site, one of two official Facebook pages, included six video clips issued by various terrorist groups.
One was a scene from a video issued by al-Qaeda which featured comments by Atilla Ahmet, the former bodyguard and assistant to the militant cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri.
Another video showed an American soldier being held hostage by the Taliban pleading for his life.
Also included was an audio recording of a leader of al-Qaeda in Yemen who is believed to have been involved in planning the attempt to bomb a plane in the USA on Christmas Day.
It also contained dozens of messages in English and Arabic claiming responsibility for attacks on coalition troops in Afghanistan.
One of a number of video clips on the site was an official al-Qaeda video issued by the terror network’s media wing As-Sahab.
Lasting over six minutes, the film follows the progress of a suicide truck bomber who attacked a military base in the province of Khost.
A second Taliban page was operated in the name of the groups’s official Arabic-language magazine.
The page contained some 300 messages which all contained links driving traffic to its official external website.
Another Facebook jihad page, set up in the name of the al-Qaeda-linked Chechen Islamic militants of southern Russia, counted 2,395 fans.
The group is suspected of being behind behind the Moscow Metro suicide bombings on 29 March, which killed 38 innocent commuters.
Yet another page was devoted to Turkish language versions of al-Qaeda and Taliban propaganda and had attracted 2,119 followers.
Many of the groups were disguised as legitimate companies and were listed in categories that included clubs, public transport, and education.
Neil Doyle
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