Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) claimed responsibility Wednesday for last week’s attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices, saying it was in “vengeance” for the weekly’s publication of Prophet Mohammed cartoons, reports FRANCE 24.
In a video statement released exactly a week after gunmen attacked Charlie Hebdo’s Paris office, killing 12 people, a top AQAP commander said it was in retaliation for insulting the Prophet Mohammed.
"As for the blessed Battle of Paris, we, the Organisation of al Qaeda al Jihad in the Arabian Peninsula, claim responsibility for this operation as vengeance for the Messenger of God," said Nasser bin Ali al-Ansi, a senior AQAP leader.
“The leadership of the organisation,” said Ansi, " chose the target, laid the plan and financed the operation,” without naming an individual.
He added, without elaborating, that the strike was an "implementation" of al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri’s call on Muslims to target the West using any means they can find.
The group’s Yemeni branch “chose the target, laid out the plan and financed the operation,'' said Ansi and warned there would be more “tragedies and terror.''
Ansi is considered the main ideologue for AQAP, which is led by Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the second-most senior leader, after Zawahiri, in the network’s global hierarchy.
It was not immediately possible to verify the authenticity of the recording, which carried the logo of the al Qaeda's media group al-Malahem.
Gunmen killed 17 people in a three-day terror spree in and around Paris last week, which began with an attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris.
Reports that al Qaeda’s most dangerous branch was responsible for the January 7th attack emerged days later, when Chérif Kouachi, one of the two Charlie Hebdo attackers, told French TV station BFM: “I was sent by al Qaeda in Yemen, it was Sheikh Anwar Awlaki who financed me,” he said, referring to the US-born jihadist preacher who was killed in a September 2011 US drone strike in Yemen.
Kouachi's claim was made in a phone call to BFMTV during a siege Friday in Dammartin-en-Goele, a town northeast of Paris.
Chérif Kouachi and his elder brother, Saïd, were killed in Friday’s siege.