Source: www.persecution.org
Date: January 20, 2022
Mozambique (International Christian Concern) – A video has surfaced on social media depicting Juma Saide Mussa, a captured rebel leader in Mozambique, confessing jihadist intent behind the country’s ongoing insurgency.
“I was captured in Pangane village more than a year ago…” Mussa said in the video, speaking Kiswahili. “The core purpose of the fighters is to ensure that Islam rules (Mozambique) and help in creating a global Islamic rule.”
According to Zitamar News, Mussa was forcibly abducted by insurgents less than two years ago and rose to a position of leadership before the date of his capture.
Sources who knew Mussa prior to his recruitment say that he had never been linked to radicalization and worked as a sailor in his village.
Beginning in 2017, armed militants, bearing the Islamic State flag, have wreaked havoc primarily in the northern Mozambique province of Cabo Delgado. Calling themselves Al-Shabab, the group espouses radical Islamist propaganda, however the amount of ideological motivation has been debated.
In March of this year, Al-Shabab killed dozens in a coordinated attack on Cabo Delgado’s capital of Palma, an area where believers are often kidnapped, forced to flee, or killed at the hands of extremists.
In a statement after this attack, IS boasted that its affiliate had killed dozens of security personnel—and Christians, including westerners from what the statement termed “Crusader nations.”
HOW TO PRAY: Continue to pray for peace in Mozambique, as well as for the hearts of those who persecute the church, that the love of Jesus would bring them from darkness to light. Pray for an end to religiously motivated violence in Mozambique. Pray for tensions within the region to ease. Pray for protection for the nation’s Christian community.