Report: Al-Qaida planning to crash U.S. airline during London Olympics

Comment: The same old story is trotted out one more time – The mythical white Al Qaeda is going to hijack a plane and blow it up. Time to be scared.

Anshel Pfeffer
Haaretz
July 1, 2012

The al-Qaida branch in the Arabian Peninsula is believed to be planning a terror attack during the Olympic Games in London, scheduled to begin at the end of the month. According to a report in today’s Sunday Times, quoting intelligence services, the organization has recruited a Norwegian Muslim convert who was supposed to hijack a U.S. passenger plane and crash it on a suicide mission. It is not clear though that the attack targeted one of the Olympic venues, despite the timing.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has been involved in a number of attempts to carry out high-profile attacks on Western targets.

Jonathan Evans, head of MI5, Britain’s domestic security service, said in a rare public address last week that “the games are not an easy target, and the fact that we have disrupted multiple terrorist plots here and abroad in recent years demonstrates that the UK as a whole is not an easy target.” Despite the successes in foiling terror attacks, Evans warned that “in back rooms and in cars on the streets of this country there is no shortage of individuals talking about wanting to mount terrorist attacks here,” and spoke of the threat of Western Muslim citizens who have been radicalized and trained in camps in countries such as Yemen and Sudan, traveling back to the West to carry out attacks.

According to the sources quoted in The Sunday Times, a Norwegian citizen in his mid-30s and who names himself Abu Abdulrahman converted to Islam in 2008 and has in recent months been undergoing training at AQAP bases in Yemen. There have been a number of reports over the last few months of Western citizens who joined al-Qaida and are involved in its operations in Yemen against the local Western-backed security forces.

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US Planning to Stage New Covert Raids in Pakistan

Fars News Agency
June 23, 2012

TEHRAN (FNA)- US military and intelligence officials have considered launching secret joint US-Afghan commando raids into Pakistan to hunt down the so-called military groups, sources revealed on Saturday.

The White House knows that such a move will be ensued by the intense diplomatic blowback from Pakistan, the sources added.

Members of the Haqqani tribe have been targeted by pilotless US drone aircraft, but sending American and Afghan troops into Pakistan would be a serious escalation and could potentially be the final straw for Pakistan, which already is angered over the US violations of its sovereignty.

The al-Qaida-allied Haqqani tribe runs a mafia-like smuggling operation and occasionally turns to terrorism with the aim of controlling its territory in eastern Afghanistan. The Haqqanis use Pakistani towns to plan, train and arm themselves with guns and explosives, cross into Afghanistan to attack NATO and Afghan forces, then retreat back across the border to safety.

The officials who were briefed told the AP that recent discussions of clandestine ground attacks have included Gen. John Allen, the senior US commander in Afghanistan, as well as top CIA and special operations officials.

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Tags: drones, Foreign Affairs, Terrorism, War

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