Al Qaeda Says It 'Laid the Plan' for Paris Massacre

An al Qaeda affiliate directly claimed responsibility for the massacre in Paris last week, saying in a new video its leadership "chose the target, laid the plan and financed the operation."

A high-profile member of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula appeared in a video that circulated online overnight calling the gunmen who killed 12 people last Wednesday in an attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo "heroes" and saying the attack was a "blessed battle."

The AQAP figure, identified as Nasser bin Ali al-Ansi, says the attack was done following the will of the late al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and that arrangements were made by American al Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Al-Awlaki was killed in a U.S. drone strike in September 2011, five months after bin Laden was killed by a team of U.S. Navy SEALs in Pakistan.

Al-Ansi says the assault on Charlie Hebdo was revenge for the magazine printing "offensive" cartoons, including those that show the Prophet Mohammed.

"We have warned you before about the consequences of these deeds that your governments collude with under the pretext of 'freedom of press' or 'freedom of ideas.' The freedom that is always tamed except when spreading vile and waging war on Allah and his messengers and defaming the religion," Al-Ansi says, referring to the French as the "party of Satan."

Al-Ansi does not say AQAP directed the second attack in Paris, the one carried out by Amedy Coulibaly in which he killed five people including a police officer, but Al-Ansi praises him as well. In a video made before Coulibaly was killed by police last Friday, he claims he's a member of ISIS, a rival terrorist group to al Qaeda.

Said and Cherif Kouachi, the brothers who carried out the attack on Charlie Hebdo, called a local television station shortly before they too were killed by police last Friday and said they had been financed by AQAP, specifically by al-Awlaki.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said today the U.S. intelligence community believes the video itself to be an authentic AQAP video, but said the community is "not assessing whether the claims being made in the video are valid."

Earlier today, White House National Security Council spokesperson Alistair Baskey said, "If genuine, this is only the latest example of the wanton brutality that is al Qaeda's calling card and which it has visited upon innocents of all faiths."

Prior to this most recent AQAP video, al-Ansi appeared in another clip from the terror group making the demands for the release of American hostage Luke Somers late last year. Somers was killed in a failed rescue attempt by U.S. special operations forces in early December 2014.