Facebook Removes Jihadist Preacher’s Page

Facebook confirmed Thursday it removed the page of a radical preacher from Australia who reportedly used social media to encourage terrorist acts, The Guardian reports.

Musa Cerantonio, a Muslim preacher from Melbourne, was using his Facebook page to urge followers to kill American politicians. Cerantonio posted in December, for example, that “if we see that Muslims are being killed by tyrant leaders of the U.S.A. then we must stop them with our hands. This means that we should stop them by fighting them, by assassinating their oppressive leaders, by weakening their offensive capabilities etc [sic].”

The removal of his page comes after academics at London’s King’s College found that Cerantonio was among the most “liked” preachers among western jihadists who’ve traveled to Syria to fight. That finding came after researchers analyzed for more than a year the social media behaviors of 190 Syria-based Western fighters fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The Guardian claimed another radical preacher from the U.S., Ahmad Musa Jibril, has twice praised the deaths of British Muslim fighters killed in Syria on Twitter. Jibril reportedly deleted his account after the researchers published their report.

[The Guardian]