A Melbourne-based Islamic State sympathiser once identified as among the most influential online cheerleaders for foreign jihadis has returned to preaching using a video chat site.
Musa Cerantonio participated in an online event on 25 December hosted by Abdullah el-Faisal, a Jamaican champion of Isis who served four years in a British prison for soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred.
In July 2014 Cerantonio, from Footscay in Melbourne’s west, was revealed to be one of the two most important “new spiritual authorities” among foreign fighters in Syria, and was “explicit in his endorsement of violent jihad”, King’s College London research found.
In posts seen by the Guardian on Cerantonio’s Facebook page, deleted after the King’s College report was published, the 30-year-old appeared to call for assassinations and war against the United States and spoke glowingly of the al-Qaida terrorists who bombed the USS Cole in Yemen in 1998.
He was quoted in an influential piece on Isis published in the Atlantic magazine last year saying he believed “Islam has been re-established” by the militant group and that its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, “fulfils the requirements” of a legitimate Islamic ruler.
Cerantonio stopped short of saying he pledged allegiance to Isis, saying: “I’m just going to wink at you, and you take that to mean whatever you want.”
He was arrested in the Philippines in July 2014 days after claiming online he had arrived in Syria to support the “caliphate” newly declared by Isis. He was deported under heavy security to Melbourne a fortnight later and released without charge.
An Australian federal police spokesman said at the time that the 30-year-old’s social media postings “are considered offensive and disturbing [but] have been assessed as not breaching Australian law”.
He largely disappeared from social media for months afterwards, but has resurfaced recently, including on Facebook, where his profile picture shows the Christian-born preacher holding a shahada flag at St Peter’s basilica in the Vatican.
Among the commenters on the photo is Wissam Haddad, the former owner of the Al-Risalah bookstore, which was frequented by Cerantonio and a number of Australians who later joined Isis, including Khaled Sharrouf and Mohamed Elmoar.
Cerantonio also appeared in October in lectures uploaded to Youtube and on Twitter in November.
In the 25 December event, described as a “unity conference”, Cerantonio gave an hour-long lecture on the importance of shariah law.
“You cannot uphold the Sharia while living in the land of the kufr (disbelievers),” he said in the lecture, encouraging listers to “make hijrah (emigrate) for the sake of Allah”.
“If you’re able to leave and you don’t then you’re not serious about supporting the ummah (Muslim community),” he said.
Another preacher, Abu Sulayman, gave a rambling lecture entitled “Who Are the Enemies of the Khalifah”, identifying the Vatican, the trilateral commission and the illuminati.
Faisal, whose website hosted the event, also spoke. The cleric, deported from the UK in 2007, is said to have played a part in radicalising the shoe bomber, Richard Reid, and the 7/7 bomber, Jermaine Lindsay.
In a 2013 conference, also hosted on Paltalk, Faisal endorsed the capture and enslavement of women and children by Isis as “the spoils of war”, and condemned other Muslims for not “doing everything humanly possible for the success of the [Islamic] state”.
Cerantonio could not be reached for comment. The AFPsaid it did not comment on specific social media activity.
