This story is now several days old, but the pitch and content of Semman’s rhetoric are instructive. Qur’an 9:5 paves the way for open-ended warfare against unbelievers (“wherever you find them”), while apostates from Islam are marked for slaughter according to Muhammad’s own command. “Mauritanian jihadist threatens attacks against France,” from Agence France-Presse, October 20:
NOUAKCHOTT–The leader of an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group on trial in Mauritania used a court appearance on Wednesday to threaten attacks against France and its interests in the northwest African country.
“I want here to promise them, black nights are awaiting France and (President Nicolas) Sarkozy,” Khadim Ould Semman, the leader of the Ansarou Allah (Supporters of God) organization, told the court in the Mauritanian capital.
Ould Semman is one of 19 suspected members of the group being tried for the 2008 murder of a policeman. His group is linked to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the north African wing of the terrorist network.
The militant singled out France among the “infidels and apostates” who would be physically liquidated in Mauritania by Islamic fighters.
Prosecutors are seeking the death sentence for Ould Semman, who exploited media coverage of a spiritual dialogue in Mauritania’s prisons at the beginning of this year by being filmed wearing a tee-shirt on which Al-Qaeda was written.
“I am a mujahideen. I have spent my life on this mission and ask the court to give me the death sentence and cut me into small pieces. This will increase my reward in the after-life,” he said….