LONDON - Al-Qaida sympathizers are planning to produce a children's cartoon film to inspire young Muslim viewers to take up armed violence against the West, security specialists who monitor militant websites say.
Such a development would add to an expanding repertoire of media tactics employed by the trans-national group, which is placing increasing reliance on online propaganda to shore up support in the absence of successful attacks in the West.
The British counter-extremism thinktank Quilliam said news of the planned movie was announced by a contributor calling himself Abu al-Laith al-Yemen on the password-protected Arabic-language al-Shumukh online discussion forum on Sunday.
Al-Yemen said he and several associates were in the final stages of creating a cartoon about al-Qaida's Yemen-based branch that would teach children the history of al-Qaida and inspire them to commit acts of terrorism, Quilliam reported.
