Al Qaeda video shows bomber before strike at CIA men

CAIRO - A Jordanian Al Qaeda double-agent who in December killed himself and seven CIA agents in a suicide attack in Afghanistan, blamed US and Israeli “crimes” for his act, in a video aired on the al-Jazeera television network Sunday.

In the video, Humam al-Balawi, 32, is shown departing by car for the December 30 bombing, which killed seven CIA agents and wounded six others, and showing the camera the detonator he would use in the bombing.

The attack, which also killed al-Balawi’s Jordanian handler, raised questions in Jordan about that country’s role in supporting US counter-terrorism efforts in Afghanistan.

“We will get you, CIA team,” al-Balawi says in a transcript of the video distributed by Al Qaeda’s media arm and relayed by private, US-based monitoring service Intel Centre.

“We will bring you down … Look, this is for you. It’s not a watch, it’s a detonator, to kill as many as I can … This is my goal: to kill you, and to kill your Jordanian partner,” al-Balawi says.

The video praises attacks in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, North Africa and Afghanistan by Al Qaeda affiliated groups, before praising al-Balawi, “who taught the American CIA and Jordanian intelligence a lesson they will never forget”.

In the video, al-Balawi says he was inspired to join Al Qaeda after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, was unable to link up with insurgents in Iraq, and so turned to Islamist online forums instead.

He said that after he wrote an angry online article about Israeli warplanes’ bombardment of the Gaza Strip, Jordanian security forces detained him at his house, then recruited him to go to Waziristan and Afghanistan to spy on Al Qaeda.

He said he fed Jordanian and US intelligence fake coordinates for unmanned-drone strikes to earn their trust until he conceived of the idea of a suicide bomb attack against his handlers, who he said work with the direct approval of Jordan’s King Abdullah.