| A Conservative party Facebook post has spurred accusations that the government is using fear-mongering to promote its proposed anti-terror legislation. And at least one Alberta Tory politician has publicly suggested his federal cousins have gone too far. On Monday, a screengrab from a video by Somalia-based terror group al-Shabaab was posted to the official Facebook page of the federal Conservatives. The group, linked to al-Qaeda, attacked Kenya’s Westgate Mall in September 2013 and murdered close to 70 people. The Facebook post highlighted a threat made near the end of the 77-minute video, posted to YouTube last week, in which a masked al-Shabaab spokesperson urges similar attacks on western shopping centres, including Alberta’s West Edmonton Mall. "If just a handful of mujahedeen fighters could bring Kenya to a complete standstill for nearly a week, then imagine what a dedicated mujahedeen in the West could do to the American or Jewish-owned shopping centres across the world," the man says in the video. "What if such an attack was to occur in the Mall of America in Minnesota, or the West Edmonton Mall in Canada, or in London's Oxford Street, or any of the hundred or so Jewish-owned Westfield shopping centres dotted right across the western world?” The threat forced the West Edmonton Mall to take extra security precautions last week. At the bottom of the Facebook post, followers are told “Jihadi terrorists are threatening Canada” and asked to click a link to the Conservative website, where they can add their name to a petition supporting Bill C-51. “Sign your name if you support our efforts to keep Canada glorious and free,” the site reads, with supporters invited to provide their names, emails, and postal codes. Such data is commonly collected by political parties to build up voter databases.
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