A Dutch gamer has become subject of US intelligence and widespread international media attention because of a self-made video-game movie. The video consists of footage of the game Battlefield 2 spiced up with different music and voiceovers. It was presented on 4 May 2006 at a meeting of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence as evidence of a militant campaign to recruit Muslim youth on the Internet.

Reuters reported on the video that was shown at the meeting and stated that it was a user-modified version of best-selling game Battlefield 2, a military simulation which features combat between U.S. forces and those of the fictitious Middle East Coalition (MEC) as well as the People's Republic of China. Reuters quoted a Pentagon official, Dan Devlin, as saying: "What we have seen is that any video game that comes out... (al Qaeda will) modify it and change the game for their needs".

The video starts with the voice of a male narrator saying: "I was just a boy when the infidels came to my village in Blackhawk helicopters. The infidels fired at the oil fields and they lit up as the eyes of Allah". This is in fact a very easy recognisable copy of a voice-over from the movie "Team America: World Police", an American satire by the makers of South Park. The video footage was not created with a modified version of Battlefield 2 at all, but with standard game footage from an add-on module, a retail product widely available in the United States and elsewhere. The Dutch maker Samir published the movie in the end of 2005 on a Battlefield 2 forum under the name "Sonic Jihad", a reference to a rap-album by rapper Paris. He took most of the sounds from the movie called "Lion of the Desert" starring Anthony Quinn.

Devlin spoke before the Committee, at which contractors from Science Applications International Corp (SAIC) gave lawmakers a presentation that focused on Iraq as an engine for Islamic militant propaganda. SAIC has a $7 million Defence Department contract to monitor 1,500 militant websites that provide Al Qaeda and other militant organisations with a main venue for communications, fund-raising, recruitment and training.

To present this material, that is completely build up from various pieces of western media content, as terrorist propaganda seems rather unconvincing. Various gamers have ridiculed it. Samir has explained the context of the video in various interviews in which he stated that the video shouldn't be taken seriously. The attention by US intelligence officials is however enough reason for him, a 25-year old quality manager in a hospital, to cancel his plans to visit New York out of fear of interrogation at arrival.

US accuses militants of using video games in youth appeal (07.05.2006)
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006%5c05%5c07%5cstory_7...

Was Congress misled by "Terrorist" game video? We talk to gamer who created the footage (11.05.2006)
http://gamepolitics.livejournal.com/285129.html?thread=23112137

Hearing on the Terrorist/Jihadist Use of the Internet for Strategic Communications (04.05.2006)
http://intelligence.house.gov/Reports.aspx?Section=134

Transcript of the Committee hearing (04.05.2006)
http://www.watercoolergames.org/archives/committee_hearing_part_one.do...

The video
http://www.archive.org/download/Sonic_jihad/Sonic_Jihad12.wmv

(Contribution by Joris van Hoboken - EDRI-member Bits of Freedom - Netherlands)