IS AIRS NEW VIDEO CLIP FROM AL-BAGHDADI VIJAYALAKSHMI RAJU LAW CRITIQUE Sat, May 04, 2019, at ,12:15 PM Islamic State’s media network on April 29 published a threatening video message purporting to come from its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in what would be his first appearance since declaring the jihadists’ now-defunct ‘caliphate’ five years ago. In the 18-minute video from the Al Furqan network, a bearded man with Baghdadi’s appearance says the Easter bombings in Sri Lanka were IS’ response to losses in its last territorial stronghold of Baghouz in Syria.The group will seek revenge for jailed and killed members, he says, calling for militants operating in west Africa to multiply attacks against “crusader France and its allies”. The authenticity and date of the recording could not be independently verified.The video would be the first from Baghdadi since he was filmed in the Iraqi city of Mosul in 2014. More recent speeches have been released as audio recordings. In the video, he congratulated militants in Libya for a deadly attack earlier this month on the southern desert town of Fuqaha, where they later retreated, and militants in Burkina Faso and Mali for pledging allegiance to IS. At the height of its power, IS ruled over millions of people in territory running from northern Syria through towns and villages along the Tigris and Euphrates valleys to the outskirts of Baghdad. But the fall in 2017 of Mosul and Raqqa - its strongholds in Iraq and Syria, respectively - stripped Baghdadi of the trappings of a caliph and turned him into a fugitive thought to be moving along the desert border between Iraq and Syria. There had been conflicting reports over whether Baghdadi, an Iraqi, is still alive. The CIA had no immediate comment on the video.US air strikes killed most of Baghdadi’s top lieutenants, including ‘war minister’ Abu Omar al-Shishani, ‘governor of the Iraqi region’ Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, group spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani and ‘governor for Syria’ Abu Ali al-Anbari. Though it lost its last significant territory, the Syrian village of Baghouz, last month, IS has sleeper cells around the world and some fighters operate from the shadows in Syria’s desert and Iraq’s cities. In West Africa’s troubled Sahel region, Islamist extremists have been exploiting local conflicts to extend their reach, with most attacks blamed on groups loosely affiliated with al Qaeda. In Nigeria, a breakaway faction of the extremist group Boko Haram has pledged allegiance to IS. In the video, the speaker paid tribute to fighters who died in the Baghouz area, saying they included nationals from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, France, Australia, Chechnya and Egypt. He said the Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka that left more than 250 people dead were carried out “in revenge for their brothers in Baghouz”. The group had carried out 92 operations in eight countries in revenge for their losses, he said, without giving a timeframe for the attacks. Baghdadi’s last known audio recording was released in August 2018.