Accolades to Egypt!
Last update - 20:13 10/10/2001
haaretzdaily.com.
Report: Egypt busts bin Laden group planning attacks
By Reuters
CAIRO - Egypt has in recent weeks broken a sleeper cell belonging to militant Osama bin Laden's al Qaida network, the target of the U.S.-British campaign against Afghanistan, a leading magazine said Wednesday.
"The task of this sleeper group was to carry out a huge operation in Egypt with diverse and serious targets," the article by Makram Mohammed Ahmed, editor of state-owned weekly al-Mussawar said in an advance copy of its October 12 issue.
The article, which did not specify the group's size or targets, said two of its members had trained as pilots at the same schools attended by Mohammed Ata in the United States. U.S. investigators believe Ata, an Egyptian, was at the controls of one of two aircraft that crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center on September 11.
The magazine said that according to documents seized, "the sleeper group belongs to al Qaida and was preparing to carry out a serious of terrorist operations like those which happened in Kenya and Tanzania and Washington and New York."
The United States believes bin Laden's al Qaida group, based in Afghanistan, was behind 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Egypt has cautiously backed the U.S.-British air strikes in retaliation for the attacks on U.S. cities which killed some 5,600 people, saying it too has suffered from terrorism. Radical Islamist groups fought from 1992 to 1997 to replace President Hosni Mubarak's rule with a purist Islamic state. Around 1,200 people, mainly police and militants, were killed during the failed insurgency.
Several of bin Laden's senior aides are Egyptian, including Ayman al-Zawahri and Mohammed Atef, also known as Abu Hafs al-Masri. Both are wanted by the Egyptian authorities.
A U.S. embassy spokesman said he had been unaware of any arrests and was seeking clarification from the government. Egypt's Interior Ministry offered no comment. |
