Global Islamic Media Front

The former was a distribution list set up on June 29, 2001, in one of the virtual groups spaces offered free of charge by Yahoo to its e-mail account users and was followed later by a website.

Six months after it was created, GIMG had over 600 subscribers, a figure that grew constantly until it reached 7400 by the time the group disappeared in the spring of 2004.

The list was administered from Canada by a man nicknamed "Abu Banan" to distribute ideological and propaganda manuals and texts.

In May 2004, following the publication of the video showing the beheading in Iraq of American contractor Nick Berg by the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the website disappeared after being targeted by anonymous hackers.

The second group, the GIMC, was closely linked from its beginnings to Ahmad al-Wathiq Billah, the anonymous author of numerous Internet texts on the global jihad strategy.

[4] The Global Islamic Media Front was first recognized as an extension of Al Qaeda in March 2003 when GIMF published a strategy paper on its Yahoo!

[1] The repackaged videos are converted to various sizes and formats and uploaded to free file-hosting sites for easy download for viewers.

The other major task that the Global Islamic Media Front undertakes is to provide testing and confirmation services for validating that the materials it releases are authentic.

[13] The benefit of these videos to members of Al Qaeda is that they can be viewed anywhere there is internet access, allowing for the mobility of and increasing in training sites.

Instead of relying on television networks and other news media to publish its videos, Voice of the Caliphate enabled jihadists to spread messages and propaganda without censorship.