Reuters reported on May 25, 2012 that “the leader of al Qaeda’s North African wing has put his group’s fighters in Mali’s north at the disposal of Ansar Dine rebels seeking to impose Islamic law across the West African state, the first public comments officially linking to two groups.
Fighters should impose sharia only gradually and look to collaborate, not clash, with separatist rebels also operating in Mali’s north, the head of AQIM said in speech posted on the internet and translated by the SITE jihadist monitoring service.”
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