Qaeda's English language online magazine returns

Al-Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen has produced another issue of the magazine, despite the killing in September of two of top editors, Americans Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan.

The ninth edition of Inspire, which appeared online yesterday, mixes tributes to its departed editors with the more practical side of violent jihad. The issue includes a primer on building firebombs and a piece on the "qualities of an urban assassin."

Before Awlaki, a Yemeni American born in New Mexico was killed in a joint CIA-Special Operations drone strike he had emerged as one of al-Qaeda's leading propagandists, the Washington Post reported.

He and Khan, a Pakistani American, founded and directed 'Inspire', a publication that combined ideological tracts justifying terrorism with practical, illustrated guides on how to "make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom" and "remote control detonation."

Inspire first appeared online in July 2010 with the mission of radicalising potential recruits in the United States and Europe.

It was studied closely by intelligence analysts for insights into al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemen-based group in which Awlaki was both an ideologue and an operational leader, according to the Obama administration.

Some US analysts, predicting that the magazine would die without its founders had said that they would miss the glossy publication because of the window it offered into the thinking of some jihadists.

The magazine issue is riddled with clumsy English.

Apart from glowing appreciations, "Samir Khan: The Face of Joy," the issue also includes a long article by Awlaki on his life in the United States, including his account of his arrest in San Diego in 1996 for soliciting a prostitute.

Awlaki says he rejected repeated attempts to get him to cooperate with US authorities. PTI ASK AKJ ASK