Titled "The Battle of Revenge for Egypt's Muslims-4," the 16-minute video of Imam Marie, 41, known as Abu Mariam, who claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing of the main police headquarters in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura on 24 December, opens with pictures of two Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis members who died in recent similar operations, with his picture in the middle. Released nearly four months after the attack, in which 16 people were killed, including 14 policemen, the video then shows Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim in the middle of the massive wreckage while a voice reads out a verse from the Qur'an saying that "infidels" should never think that their castles and fortifications would protect them, because God would get them in ways they would not expect, and "terrify their hearts." Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis, that claims affiliation to Al-Qaeda, surfaced shortly after the removal of former President and Muslim Brotherhood leader, Mohamed Morsi on 3 July following popular demonstrations backed by the army. The group declared responsibility for several major attacks in which scores of policemen and army officers and soldiers were killed and wounded, including an attempt to assassinate the Interior Minister in September, and suicide attacks against main police headquarters in Southern Sinai in October, Mansoura in December, and Cairo on 24 January. They were also believed to be responsible for dozens of attacks on pipelines in Sinai that provided natural gas to local factories, Israel, and Jordan, and the assassination of a senior National Security officer that handled the confrontation with violent political Islamic groups. A few days later, on 17 April, another group that was unheard of under Morsi, named Ajnad Misr, or the Soldiers of Egypt, released a 23-minute video claiming responsibility for eight attacks between November, 2013 and mid-April. On 22 April, the same organization carried out a daring attack against a senior anti-riot police officer, Brigadier Ahmed Zaki, who was killed by sticking a bomb to the car who was riding, an unidentified pickup truck that police officers have been using to hide their identity. Ajnad Misr said they used sophisticated monitoring techniques that allowed them to target Zaki at an early morning hour, and that "we could have assassinated at his home except for our fear of killing innocent women and children." The same group declared responsibility for a series of three local explosive devices in front of Cairo University in early April, killing a senior officer and badly wounding five others, including a major general. While both groups clearly vary in their terror tactics, with Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis depending on bigger suicide car bomb attacks that kill at random, Ajnad Misr developed a specialty in home-made targeted explosive devices that kill police and army officers by remote control. In their statements, Ajnad Misr repeatedly expressed their concern not to harm civilians, and claimed they possessed a detailed list of police officers who were allegedly involved in the killing and arrest of protesters over the past ten months. Moreover, Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis videos usually reveal the identities of those who carried out the suicide attacks a few months later, while the only video released by Ajnad Misr only showed the consequences of their terror bomb attacks, and used pictures taken from private and state television in which officers explained the damages they suffered, clearly aimed at satisfying feelings of revenge among their sympathizers. In the videos released recently by the two groups, terrifying "the enemy," revenge and allegedly providing relief for the families and relatives of their "brothers" killed in clashes with police and army, or those held in prison and allegedly tortured and humiliated, are the main themes. Anasr Beit Al-Maqdis and Ajand Misr also both quote verses from the holy Qur'an to confirm that God calls for revenge, and even made it a duty upon his followers. The Ajnad Misr video said that its bomb attacks came in the framework of a campaign titled: "In Revenge there is life," using part of a verse from the Quran. According to some strict Islamic interpretations, taking revenge from those involved in killing believers is the only to deter more bloodshed, thus saving lives. Aiming at providing justifications for the terror attack that inflicted heavy damage on the Mansoura police headquarters and nearby buildings, the next few minutes in Ajnad Beit Al-Maqdis video, titled "killing in cold blood," displayed pictures of police and army soldiers clashing and using gunfire against Islamist protesters opposing what they describe as the "military coup" against Morsi, and most likely in their minds, against Islam itself. Both groups, before providing pictures to prove responsibility for their attacks later in the videos, extensively used the most famous and widely circulated videos of the bloody dispersal of the sit-ins held by Morsi supporters in the Cairo Squares of Rabaa and Nahda on 14 August. According to expert on Islamic group, Sameh Eid, those videos are "the most influential mobilization and propaganda tools used by extremist terrorist groups to recruit new members." Other charges in Abu Mariam's video, accompanied with pictures, included "destroying the homes of innocent civilians in Sinai," "violating the privacy of homes and women," "terrifying children," and attacking "free Muslim women." A former leader of the group who was killed in an earlier confrontation with police, Abu Omar Al-Baghdadi, could be heard saying, "Our blood is cheap in defense of religion and our honor." While showing the Mansoura police building before the bombing, the following words were written on the screen: "Its task is to protect the man-made law which clashes with the rule of God, arrest Muslim men and women, raid the houses of the innocent, and commit massacres against demonstrators." This is followed by pictures of hands using duct tape and wires while preparing barrels filled with explosives which Abu Mariam used in blowing up the Mansoura police building. Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis then provides a rather short CV of Abu-Mariam, praising his commitment to religion and desire to die "by providing him with vehicle that would dig into the bodies of the enemies of God, relieving his heart and those of the believers." They also revealed that he was involved in several confrontations with the "infidel regime in Egypt," fought in Syria, and was hit with a bullet in one of the big demonstrations that followed Morsi's removal in July. Six minutes into the video, Abu Mariam finally delivers his martyrdom speech, with two machine guns in the background. He largely appeared hesitant, and clearly not an expert in citing Quranic verses and sayings, or hadith, of Prophet Muhammad, as in similar videos by those involved in suicide or "martyrdom" attacks. His key argument was that, as a Muslim, it is not enough to preach religion and wait for the day people voluntarily accept the establishment of an Islamic state, but one has to practice Jihad against the infidels who would not allow such a state to exist in the first place. "Out path is that of Prophet Mohamed: A book (the Quran) that guides us, and a sword that brings us victory," Abu Mariam said. "It is impossible that our enemies will allow us to implement Sharia, fight the Jews or to liberate Al-Aqsa mosque without resorting to our weapons," he added. For Abu-Mariam, "Advice doesn't work with army and police who kill us. We don't speak with those who kill us, but we must kill them so that this becomes a lesson for anyone who dares to kill a Muslim." He goes on to refer to a list of common charges against Egyptian army and police which extremist Islamic groups repeat, topped with refusing to implement God's law while imposing secular Western laws, and accepting normalization of relations with Israel while killing Islamists who want to go for Jihad to liberate Palestine. However, ironically, some of Abu-Mariam's charges seemed clearly outdated. He said Egyptian army allowed foreign troops to invade Iraq, which was 11 years ago, and that they also protected "dirty infidel Jews in Taba and Sharm El-Sheikh who lie naked on our sands," while clearly the wave of terror attacks in Egypt over the past 10 months left no single tourist in Sinai. In the last two minutes of the video, Abu Mariam is seen in dark pictures while driving the vehicles he used to blow up Al-Mansoura Police headquarters. While his beard was shaved, he tried to appear confident, insisting that all what he did was for the sake of God, and asked "my brothers to prepare tens, if not hundreds like me who are committed to the path of Jihad."
