Hailing the gunmen who carried out last week's attack on a French satirical magazine as "heroes of Islam," a senior commander of Yemen's branch of Al Qaeda declared Wednesday in an online video that the group had organized and financed the deadly strike.
The claim of responsibility by Nasr al-Ansi came in a nearly 12-minute video that surfaced one week after the assault on the Paris editorial offices of the weekly Charlie Hebdo, a publication known for lampooning religions of all stripes. The SITE intelligence group, which tracks jihadist activity, said the video, produced by an Al Qaeda media arm, was originally posted on Twitter.
The Jan. 7 attack on the magazine left 12 people dead, including two police officers. A total of 17 people were killed in the three days spanning the Charlie Hebdo attack, the manhunt for those involved and the seizing of hostages at a kosher supermarket in Paris.
At the time, the attackers cited cartoons published by the magazine depicting the prophet Muhammad, which they considered heresy -- a theme that was echoed in the video, which was subtitled in English. "Stop your insults on our Prophet and sanctities," al-Ansi admonishes in it.
Yemen's branch of Al Qaeda, considered one of the terrorist network's most dangerous franchises, had previously praised the attack, but stopped short of claiming to have been behind it. In the video, al-Ansi explicitly states that the Yemen group, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, "chose the target, laid out the plan and financed the operation."
The slickly produced video mocks the enormous solidarity rally that was staged Saturday in central Paris in support of freedom of speech, with a number of world leaders in attendance.
"Look how they gathered, rallied and supported each other," said al-Ansi, deriding the march, the largest in French history, as a token of "weakness ... dressing their wounds." France, he said, was targeted because "it is France that has shared all of America's crimes."
The video also suggested -- as Western investigators suspected -- that the strike was originally conceived by Anwar Awlaki, a U.S. citizen who was killed in 2011 in an American drone strike in Yemen. One of the two brothers responsible for the Charlie Hebdo attack, Said Kouachi, was believed to have met Awlaki during a visit to Yemen, U.S. officials have said.
Suspicion had quickly fallen on Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in the wake of the Paris attack. Months earlier, in an English-language magazine it publishes, the group had designated Charlie Hebdo and its editor in chief, Stephane Charbonnier, as targets.
Al-Ansi said the gunman in the attack on the kosher market, which left four Jewish patrons dead, had not coordinated in advance with the Kouachi brothers, but called the incident a fortunate coincidence.
Follow @laurakinglat on Twitter for news out of the Middle East
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles Times5:33 a.m.: This articles has been updated throughout with additional details and background.
This article was originally published at 2:41 a.m.
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