Yet another Stoffel video?

Shortly after defense contractors Dale Stoffel and Joe Wemple were murdered in Iraq last December, a video was released by an unknown Iraqi terror group, Brigades of the Islamic Jihad.

Now a second video has been released by yet another unknown terror organization, Rafidan [The Two Rivers]—The Political Commitee of the Mujahideen Central Command. (Actually, there are two videos, the second being a kind of supplement to the first and narrated by the same individual.)

In this new release, the "jihadi" reading the text and some of the images displayed are different from those of the Brigades video; a fair number are the same, however, suggesting that the makers of the second tape had access to the stash of captured documents used in the first video. The jihadi in the new videos is very odd-looking: he has a bodybuilder's physique and is sporting what appears to be a "golfer's tan." (See photo above.) Unlike the jihadis in the original Brigades video, this one isn't very convincingly Middle Eastern.

(I've created an album of still images from the first video here; stills from the second video can be found here. You can download a .rar file of the video in Windows Media format here. I have yet to find a streaming version on the Internet that works properly. A second supplementary video gives a breakdown, in Arabic, of Stoffel's resume and examines his licenses to import explosives and carry firearms. I can't find a transcript for this one.)

The Information Clearing House site includes this transcript of the text:

From the Political Committee—Rafidan
(The Political Committee of the Mujahideen Central Command)

On the 14th of Safar 14:26H, the 24th of March 2005M

In the Name of God Most Merciful Most Graceful

Congratulations to our Great Army

We congratulate you on the demise of Dale  C. Stoffel a CIA shadow manager in Iraq, and a close friend of George Bush. He is more important than Bremer and his lot of generals. He was killed on the 8th of December 2004 after close monitoring of our moles by the hands of the Islamic Jihad Brigades. This was at the hour of 16:30.

He is the engineer of darkness to the destruction of Iraqi army assets forever. We have in our hands thousands of documents which have been assessed over the past few months.

We will present these documents translated and will declare them internationally.

We reserve the right as Iraqis to bring to justice all the war criminals and the traitors like [Iraqi politician Ahmed] Chalabi, [Interim Prime Minister Iyad] Allawi, [Minister of Defense Hazim] Shalan, [Defense Ministry spokesman Raadhi] Bader and  the Peshmerga Militia.

Rafidan with the arms of its military factions will not fall short of bringing justice to those. For each Iraqi killed, we will kill ten of the invaders and the traitors.

This criminal was eradicated; there was to be a film directed by Hollywood for this criminal’s adventures by orders from Bush.

We will release in the coming days documented evidence to a new scandal. God has given us this graceful land of all prophets and our victory will come eventually and our army will return to be the protector of the people with God’s will.

We hold the prophecy given by God.

Rafidan—The Political Committee

(I can't attest to the accuracy of the translation, which appears to have been furnished by the "terrorists" themselves.)

After the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, a previously unknown group, calling itself the Organization for Victory and Jihad in the Levant, sent a videotape to al-Jazeera. Similarly, after a remote controlled blast killed Elie Hobeika, a leader of Lebanon's Christian Phalange party, an unknown group called Lebanese for a Free and Independent Lebanon sent a fax to a Reuters office in Cyprus.

And, now, yet another unknown group claims responsibility for Stoffel—more than three months after the fact.

Very strange indeed.

UPDATE: Dr. Rusty Shackleford at The Jawa Report has some thoughts on this latest bizarre plot twist in the Stoffel saga:

This is the same group that produced another propaganda video in English aimed at pursuading the American people the justness of the terrorist cause. One terrorist expert has told me he is not even sure whether this group is even Iraqi. My own assessment of the Mujahideen Army in Iraq is that they are probably Baathist remnants given the nationalistic themes of their propaganda.

So much for my contention that the Mujahideen Army was previously unknown. But that still doesn't make the appearance of these new videos any less bizarre. And what is the Mujahideen Army's relationship to the so-called Brigades of Islamic Jihad (if such a group exists)? I've compared the Brigades video carefully against the more recent ones of the Mujahideen Army and they were clearly filmed and edited by very different hands.

Dr. Shackleford points to two earlier videos by the Mujahideen Army (in Windows Media format), which can be found here and here. Transcripts are located here and here. They are both quite long and narrated in English.

More than ever, I suspect the hand of a foreign intelligence agency in all of this. And Syria would seem the most likely culprit.