CAIRO — The main websites that normally carry messages from the al-Qaeda terrorism group remain inoperable more than a month after they went down just ahead of the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The Web forums that typically carry messages and videos from al-Qaeda and its allied groupings had ceased functioning around Sept. 10, just as the group said it was set to release a new video message.
Only a site called Hesbah and a new one named Faloja now function intermittently, more than a month later, and carry messages from al-Qaeda and its allies in Iraq, Somalia, Pakistan and the Palestinian territories about recent operations.
Al-Fajr Media Center, the extremist group’s communications wing, issued a terse statement Sept. 29 blaming the problems on “technical reasons” and denying that the sites had come under a cyber-attack as has been widely speculated in the media.
“We deny reports published by the media of the tyrants regarding the fall of some of the headquarters of these networks into the hands of the enemy,” the statement said, according to the U.S-based SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist sites.
Contributors to the forums also have worried publicly that some kind of Western cyber attack targeted the websites.
One prominent jihadi poster, quoted by SITE, suggested extremists should strike back by infiltrating other, more-moderate Islamic discussion forums and flooding them with extremist rhetoric to turn them into al-Qaeda discussion groups.
In the past week, a new website called “the Electronic jihad” also has resurfaced to counter renewed attacks on Islam online, according to its founders.
It is not clear, however, whether the site has any connection with al-Qaeda.
Al-Qaeda over the years has appeared to increasingly turn toward online forums, apparently so that it no longer has to rely on news stations to air video and audio messages.
