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Politics : The Truth About Islam -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FJB who wrote (6988)	4/24/2007 2:41:16 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20106

Al-Qaida toying with radioactive weapons for mass-casualty attack against West canada ^ \| April 23, 2007 \| Ian MacLeod, CanWest News Service canada.com Al-Qaida leaders in Iraq are planning a mass-casualty attack against British and other western targets, possibly with radioactive-dispersal weapons, according to a secret British security intelligence assessment. The warning is one of two reported since Friday from British and European counter-terrorism officials that a reinvigorated al-Qaida is mustering fresh resources for a major strike against the West. "They have got to do something soon that is radical otherwise they start losing credibility," a British security source told London's Sunday Times. The newspaper reported Sunday that al-Qaida leaders in Iraq are planning "large-scale" terrorist attacks on Britain and other western targets with the help of supporters in Iran. The other western nations were not named. The information, from a leaked report by Britain's Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre - the country's premier organization for assessing international and domestic terrorist threats - appears to provide evidence that al-Qaida is active in Iran and has ambitions far beyond the improvised attacks it has been waging against British and American soldiers in Iraq, the newspaper said. Produced earlier this month, the intelligence assessment quotes one al-Qaida leader in Iraq saying he was planning an attack on "a par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki" in an attempt to "shake the Roman throne," a reference to the West. Analysts believe the reference to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where more than 200,000 people died in nuclear attacks on Japan at the end of the Second World War, is unlikely to be a literal boast, the newspaper said. Despite aspiring to a nuclear capability, al-Qaida is not thought to have acquired weapons-grade material. However, several plots involving "dirty bombs" - conventional explosive devices surrounded by radioactive material - have been foiled. What's more, an al-Qaida leader in Iraq last year called on nuclear scientists to apply their knowledge of biological and radiological weapons to "the field of jihad." "It could be just a reference to a huge explosion," a counter-terrorist source, referring to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki claims, told the newspaper. The assessment says al-Qaida would "ideally" like to carry out an attack before Prime Minister Tony Blair Blair steps down this summer. It also makes it clear that senior al-Qaida figures in the Iraq region have been in recent contact with operatives in Britain. But it says there is "no indication" an attack would specifically target Britain, "although we are aware that AQI (al-Qaida in Iraq) ... networks are active in the Britain." Details from the assessment follow a Friday report in London's Financial Times quoting unnamed European officials and terrorism specialists saying al-Qaida is reaching out from its base in Pakistan to turn militant Islamist groups in the Middle East and Africa into franchises charged with intensifying attacks on western targets. The efforts could see radical Islamist groups use al-Qaida expertise to switch their attention from local targets to western interests in their countries and abroad. . "For al-Qaida, this is a force multiplier," a British terrorism official told the newspaper. The more immediate concern, however, appears to be al-Qaida in Iraq, backed by Iran, and its suspected intent to stage a mass-casualty assault against the West. The concerns over a plot to attack Britain before Blair steps down stem from a letter written by Abdul al-Hadi al-Iraqi, an Iraqi Kurd and senior al-Qaida commander. According to the intelligence assessment, Hadi "stressed the need to take care to ensure that the attack was successful and on a large scale." The plan was to be relayed to an Iran-based al-Qaida facilitator. al-Qaida's attempts to expand across the Middle East and North Africa, while still at an early stage, follow the rebuilding of the group's core in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan, near the Afghan border, after six years of U.S.-led military action. The group's central organization appears to have reconstituted around about 20 senior figures in farms and compounds that also act as training camps, western officials told The Financial Times. While there is no evidence of a formal relationship between al-Qaida, a Sunni group, and Iran's Shi'ite regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, experts suggest that Iran's leaders may be turning a blind eye to the terrorist organization's activities. It was revealed last year that up to 150 Britons had travelled to Iraq to fight as part of al-Qaida's "foreign legion." A number are thought to have returned to the Britain, after receiving terrorist training, to form sleeper cells, according to the newspaper. The terrorist threat rating in Britain has remained at "severe," meaning an attack is "highly likely," since last August's discovery of alleged London-based plot to destroy a fleet of airborne trans-Atlantic jetliners bound for the United States. Ottawa Citizen © CanWest News Service 2007