Twitter suspends Al Qaeda account after five days
Al Qaeda’s first official Twitter account, which opened on Tuesday, has been suspended.
The account has now been closed
The account was described by the Washington Post as “an official clearing house for Al Qaeda members to communicate and issue propaganda statements.”
The account- @shomokhalislam - had made less than 50 tweets by the time of its suspension. The account and its tweets can now no longer be accessed by users.
J.M. Berger, a U.S. based terrorism analyst, told The Associated Press : “The person who runs their Twitter account has obviously invested a lot of energy in the process of grabbing headlines, and for Shabab, the account allows them to amplify the message that they wish to send with the attack itself.”
Counterterrorism analyst Patrick Poole said: “We’ve seen terrorist groups make increasingly effective use of social media, particularly Twitter and Facebook, in recent years. Not only is this important for propaganda purposes but also recruitment.”