Monday, October 04, 2010

Al-Qaeda planning for glory in Europe




The Latest Al-Qaeda Alarms -Bruce Riedel

Al-Qaeda planned a Mumbai-style, mass-casualty suicide attack in Denmark last year, the brainchild of Muhammad Ilyas Kashmiri, one of al-Qaeda's most dangerous operators.

His accomplice in the Copenhagen plot was an American of Pakistani descent, David Headley, who did the reconnaissance for the Mumbai attack.

He [did] the same in Denmark in 2009, visiting the target - the office of the newspaper that published the famous cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad - and photographed it and its surroundings, then delivering the videos to Kashmiri in Pakistan, who told Headley "the elders of al-Qaeda" were overseeing his mission.

Kashmiri also said al-Qaeda already had its hit team in Europe, and Headley met with them. They planned to storm the offices, execute all the Danes inside, and then fight to the death with the police.

We can derive from the Danish plot that al-Qaeda is indeed determined to replicate the Mumbai horror somewhere in Europe.
(Daily Beast)


Dozens of Europeans Terror Train in Pakistan -Kathy Gannon

Dozens of Muslim militants with European citizenship are believed to be hiding out in the lawless tribal area of northwestern Pakistan, Pakistani and Western intelligence officials say, training for missions that could include terror attacks in European capitals.

Al-Qaeda would likely turn to such extremists for a European plot because they can move freely in and out of Western cities.
(AP-Washington Post)
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UPDATES:

Euro Terror Alert -Raphael G. Satter

The discovery of an alleged terror plot against Europe owes at least some of its success to "voiceprint" technology that allows law enforcement to electronically match a voice to its owner.
The British eavesdropping agency GCHQ deployed voice identification software to help uncover the plot that officials say has targeted Germany, Britain and France - with famed sites such as Notre Dame Cathedral and the Eiffel Tower under close surveillance.
(AP-Washington Post)
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