Taliban release video of German who targeted US Afghan base

Islamabad — The Taliban have released a videotape of the last statement by a German of Turkish origin who carried out a suicide bomb attack earlier this month on a US post in eastern Afghanistan, a Pakistan press report said Thursday.

German-born Cuneyt Ciftci, also known as Saad Abu Furkan, blew himself up in a delivery truck near a US base in the Sabari district of Khost province on March 3, killing two soldiers with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and two Afghan workers. Six others were wounded.

The videotape, issued in Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province, also contains images of the scene of the attack, the daily News reported.

"Three of our cameramen filmed the attack when it was taking place from three sides," Taliban sources told the English-language newspaper The News’ Peshawar bureau chief, Rahimullah Yousafzai.

In the videotape Ciftci, 28 called his attack a sacrifice for Islam.

"I am giving away my life for the glory of Islam," Ciftci was cited by Yousafzai, who watched the video, as saying. Some parts of his statement were in German, he told DPA.

Ciftic also made appeal to other Muslims to join him in what he calls jihad against the infidels.

"Time has arrived to give sacrifices for Islam. Since we lack resources to fight the enemy (Western powers), we will have to turn our bodies into bombs. We will have to sacrifice our lives," he said.

The reports of Ciftci’s involvement in the Khost bombing first came up last week in the German press, including Der Spiegel, Focus and Bild. He had lived near Ansbach in the southern German state of Bavaria with a wife and two children and had been under observation by the security services for some time, according to those reports.

Ciftci, the first German Islamist who carried out a suicide bombing in Afghanistan, is believed to have had links with Islamist terrorist cell broken up last September 5 in Germany.

The plotters, who included two German converts to Islam and a Turkish Muslim, had allegedly been planning large bomb attacks on U.S. facilities in Germany.

All have been linked to the Uzbek terrorist group Islamic Jihad Union.

The videotape released in Peshawar also includes a message of Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani, one of the most wanted commanders in Afghanistan.

Haqqani praised the Khost suicide bombing and eulogized the services of Taliban and other mujahidin who laid down their lives for the cause of Islam and Afghanistan, the report said.

DPA with Expatica