'Dead' Canadian jihadist reappears to warn of 'attacks in New York'

Farah Mohamed Shirdon, centre, in an image from an Islamic State propaganda video.

Six weeks after being declared dead on Twitter, Canadian jihadist Farah Mohamed Shirdon appears to have resurfaced, warning that the Islamic State is “going to make some attacks in New York soon.”

The Calgary man, who also goes by the name Abu Usamah Somali, apparently left for Syria earlier this year. He appeared in an ISIS propaganda video destroying his Canadian passport and making threats against Canada and the United States before reports of his death began circulating in August.

Now, in a Skype interview with Vice News, a man claiming to be Shirdon has returned to make threats against the United States.

“A lot of brothers, they’re mobilizing right now,” Shirdon said to Vice’s Shane Smith. “Mobilizing for a brilliant attack, my friend.”

Vice said the interview was conducted on Tuesday.

Shirdon, who said he was communicating from the northern Iraq city of Mosul, claimed to be one of between 10,000 and 15,000 foreign fighters in the area. The ISIS militants were “preparing to crush the Peshmerga,” he said, referring to the Kurdish forces.

Shirdon also claimed he had decided to join ISIS of his own volition.

“No one recruited me. Actually, no one spoke a single word to me,” he said. “All I did – I opened the newspaper, I read the Qur’an. Very easy.”

He claimed that CSIS had interviewed him several days before he left Canada for Syria, calling the intelligence workers “imbeciles.”

“I can’t believe how someone that has extremist, terrorist ideologies was sitting in front of you and you didn’t capture them,” he said. “The next time they saw me they saw me ripping up my passport.”

From a now-suspended Twitter account, Shirdon had previously expressed goals of martyrdom.

“Dear mother,” read one of the account’s final tweets on July 10, “I have sold my soul for the sake of Allah, we may never meet again in this life but InshaaAllah Allah will reunite us in Jannah.”

In the Vice interview, he said he was “tired of oppression.”

“We’re tired. I don’t want to fight. I want to be at home with my family,” he continued. “Give us our freedom. If we want Sharia law, leave us alone.”

Shirdon, whose demeanor seemed to shift between calm and agitated throughout the interview, said the extremists wouldn’t stop until the Islamic State flag was flying over the White House before the feed cut out.