Terrorist Organization Profile:
al-Bara bin Malek Brigades

The formation of the group was announced in June 2005 in a posting on a Jihadist website by a man identifying himself as Abu Doujana al-Ansari, the leader of the Al-Bara bin Malek Brigades. The statement read: "We gladly inform our sheik Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi of the formation of al-Bara bin Malek Brigade." However, the group first emerged a month earlier when it claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of six Jordanians who were working in Iraq. The group released a video showing the abductees, and warned Jordanian companies not to cooperate with the United States. The fate of the hostages is as yet unknown.

Although al-Zarqawi most likely did not have a personal hand in forming the Brigades, the group can be considered a fully-incorporated outfit within al-Qaeda Organization in the Land of the Two Rivers. In general, any suicide mission claimed by al-Zarqawi could be said to have been carried out by the Brigades. The group's name comes from a famous Muslim hero al-Bara bin Malek, who, according to legend, sacrificed himself in battle by being flung over a castle's ramparts to engage the enemy. Many Islamist terrorist groups use this story as a justification for suicide terrorism. Although the Brigades are no doubt a vicious Jihadist group like other cells within the al-Zarqawi network, their full-fledged embrace of suicide tactics suggests that the group is superlative in their extremism.

Learn more about these U.S. Department of State classifications:

Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs)

Terrorist Exclusion List (TEL)