BATTICALOA, Sri Lanka -- In a video released Monday, the leader of the Islamic State extremist group praised the Easter suicide bombings that killed more than 250 people in Sri Lanka, and he called on militants to be a "thorn" against their enemies.
The video of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was his first recorded appearance since 2014, when he delivered a sermon in Mosul, Iraq, urging Muslims around the world to join the Islamic State and obey him as its leader.
Meanwhile, in Sri Lanka on Monday, a government ban on face coverings took effect, more evidence emerged that the government had ignored detailed warnings about an imminent terrorist attack, and the island's top official in the Catholic Church urged Sri Lanka to crack down on Islamic extremists "as if on war footing."
The 18-minute video of al-Baghdadi included images of the extremist leader sitting in a white room with three others, assault rifles by their sides.
The attacks in Sri Lanka have "pleased the hearts of Muslims," al-Baghdadi said, adding that they are "part of the revenge that awaits the crusaders and their followers."
He also called on Islamic State-pledged militants in the island nation off the southern tip of India to be "a thorn in the chests of the crusaders."
Sri Lankan authorities initially blamed the Easter attacks, targeting three hotels and three churches, on a local militant named Mohammed Zahran and his followers. Then the Islamic State group on April 23 released images of Zahran and others linked to the suicide attacks pledging their loyalty to al-Baghdadi.
Police conducted a later raid in eastern Sri Lanka in which militants detonated suicide bombs in violence that killed at least 15 people, including six children. Explosives recovered by authorities bore hallmarks of the Islamic State group, as well.
Al-Baghdadi said the Sri Lanka attackers conducted the bombings as revenge for the fall of Baghouz, Syria, the last territory the extremist group held there or in Iraq. He said that the battle for Baghouz demonstrated the "barbarism and brutality" of the West and the "courage, steadfastness and resilience of the nation of Islam."
"This steadfastness shocked the hearts of the crusaders," he added.
MYSTERY MAN
Despite numerous claims about his death in the past few years, al-Baghdadi's whereabouts remain a mystery.
Many of his top aides have been killed, mostly by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes. He is among the few senior Islamic State commanders still at large after two years of steady battlefield losses that shrank the self-styled caliphate from an area the size of Britain to a portion of Baghouz in the Euphrates River valley.
Since then, he had only released audio messages through the Islamic State's media outlets.
In the video released Monday, al-Baghdadi appears to reassert his leadership over the group, alarming those who fought against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
"We are talking about a secret organization that is still operating," said Redur Xelil, a senior official with the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurdish-led militia that the United States backed to fight the jihadis. "It has a network, means of communication and a central command."
Al-Baghdadi made repeated references in the video to current events, including Benjamin Netanyahu winning the election in Israel and the fall of longtime dictators Abdelaziz Bouteflika and Omar al-Bashir in Algeria and Sudan, respectively.
Referring to the extremists' setbacks in battle, he said the "brothers" of the many fallen fighters "will avenge that, as they will not forget as long as they have blood in their veins, and there will be a battle after this one."
Al-Baghdadi called specifically on his followers to intensify attacks on France.
It is unclear when or where the video was filmed. Al-Baghdadi appeared to be in good health, although he spoke slowly and sometimes haltingly in the video.
With a $25 million bounty on his head, al-Baghdadi is the world's most wanted man, directing and inspiring terror attacks across continents and in the heart of Europe.
ANGER IN SRI LANKA
Anger against Sri Lanka's government has grown after the country discovered its security services had prior, specific warnings an attack loomed.
In a memo dated April 9 and labeled "Top Secret (Eyes Only)," the chief of national intelligence warned the country's police chief that "Sri Lanka based Zahran Hashmi of National Thowheeth Jama'ath and his associates are planning to carry out a suicide terrorist attack in Sri Lanka shortly." The bombings came 12 days later.
The memo, whose authenticity was confirmed by two high-ranking government officials, is the earliest one revealed so far to have so obviously conveyed a sense of urgency. A security memo two days later warned of "a possible suicide attack" but did not say when it was expected.
The April 9 memo said the Sri Lankan terrorist group was "planning to target some important churches" and the Indian High Commission in Colombo, the capital, and "may adopt any of the following modes of attack: suicide attack, weapon attack, knife attack, truck attack."
The memo closes: "It is important to alert the law enforcement agencies to be vigilant concerning the information."
President Maithripala Sirisena has said that he did not know the attack was coming, but several Sri Lankan officials said it would have gone against standard practice for the national intelligence chief to have shared such highly classified information with police officials without first sharing it with the president.
Sirisena appointed former army commander Shantha Kottegoda on Monday as the top official in the Defense Ministry. He earlier requested the resignation of Kottegoda's predecessor, Hemasiri Fernando, for intelligence failures before the bombings.
No extra police officers were deployed to stop the attacks. Roman Catholic leaders, anguished over the devastation, have said they would have canceled Easter Mass had they known about the warnings.
Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, the archbishop of Colombo and the Catholic Church's top official on the island, said the church may not be able to stop people from taking the law into their own hands if the government doesn't do more.
"All the security forces should be involved and function as if on war footing," Ranjith told reporters.
"I want to state that we may not be able to keep people under control in the absence of a stronger security program," he added. "We can't forever give them false promises and keep them calm."
Ranjith, however, sought to assure Muslims that the church will not allow any revenge attacks against them.
VEILS BANNED
Sirisena's ban on wearing the niqab veil in Sri Lanka took effect Monday. The niqab is a black veil made of thin fabric, often with a small opening for a woman's eyes. It's far more concealing than the hijab, a scarf covering a Muslim woman's hair.
Most Islamic scholars and experts say a woman is not religiously required to cover her face. However, strictly orthodox Sunni Muslims known as Salafists who advocate a literal return to centuries-old Islamic law believe women must cover their faces.
The majority of people in Saudi Arabia are Sunni Muslim, and the niqab is most commonly associated with that country.
Before Sri Lanka's civil war ended 10 years ago, the practice of wearing the veil was unknown on the island. But foreign money and ideas have entered the area, reflected in the current construction of a copy of Jerusalem's famed Al Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam.
Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe acknowledged to The Associated Press in an interview that authorities wanted to investigate the role of foreign money in the Easter attacks, saying in particular that money from Saudi Arabia had been going to religious organizations.
"Saudi Arabia or the Middle East has been the source of many of those funds, and some of it has gone into these extreme organizations," Wickremesinghe said on Thursday. "These are what we are investigating."
The Saudi government did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
Information for this article was contributed by Jon Gambrell, Krishan Francis, Gemunu Amarsinghe, Zeina Karam, Rishabh Jain and Bassem Mroue of The Associated Press; and by Jeffrey Gettleman, Dharisha Bastians, Ben Hubbard and Ivor Prickett of The New York Times.
A Section on 04/30/2019