But credibility hard to pin down
DONNA BRYSON, The Associated Press
CAIRO, Egypt -- The boasts of responsibility for terror attacks tend to be untraceable and lacking in specifics -- just like the claims from a shadowy group with supposed al-Qaida links and an e-mail correspondent who says he works for Osama bin Laden, each declaring the terror network was behind Istanbul’s synagogue bombings.
Such claims may never be confirmed, but they serve to feed fear, confusion and al-Qaida’s reputation.
Turkish authorities, who have said an international group such as al-Qaida could be behind Saturday’s suicide bombings that killed 24, treated the claims that surfaced Sunday with caution.
“We are taking into considerations all organizations and possibilities,” Turkish Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu said during one of the victim’s funerals Monday in Ankara.
“It’s extremely difficult to decipher the authenticity of claims,” said Magnus Ranstorp, director of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St. Andrews University in Scotland.
But enough people will believe -- or want to believe -- what they read on Web sites and in newspapers and hear on broadcasts about the claims to create “a mirage of great coordination,” Ranstorp said. Some will be inspired to try to join al-Qaida or like-minded organizations, he said.
In the past, al-Qaida was known for never claiming responsibility for attacks. At the most, it would offer praise in language that could be read as a boast, or simply as encouragement for others to keep striking its stated enemies: the West, Israel, and governments in the Muslim world seen as insufficiently Islamic.
The flurry of recent al-Qaida claims could be from sympathizers of the group who want to offset the impression that bin Laden’s network has been weakened by the U.S.-led war on terror that followed the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
The claims themselves offer few leads. Their language is reminiscent of al-Qaida’s Quranic, anti-Western rhetoric -- a style easy to mimic and popular among a variety of Muslim militant thinkers.
The London-based daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi said Sunday it received an e-mail statement from a group calling itself the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades claiming to have bombed the synagogues because it believed Israel intelligence agents were inside. The e-mail offered no details that might lend credence to the claim, and determining who sent it would be difficult.
The Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades emerged as an Internet entity in recent months, with no track record of proven attacks or roster of militants. It’s main link to al-Qaida is a tenuous one: It takes its name from the alias of Mohammed Atef, bin Laden’s top deputy who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan in November 2001.
E-mail statements and Internet postings purportedly signed by the group have claimed responsibility for several attacks, including bombing of a Jakarta hotel that killed 12 people and wounded 150 in August to the massive August power outage in the United States. Indonesian investigators believe a local group, Jemaah Islamiyah, was responsible for the Jakarta bombings, and sabotage has been ruled out in the U.S. blackout.
Sunday’s other e-mailed claim was sent to the London-based weekly Al-Majalla. Al-Majalla said the claim was signed by an al-Qaida operative identified as Abu Mohammed al-Ablaj, whom officials in Washington have said in the past is believed linked to al-Qaida.
But whether al-Ablaj is behind e-mails to Al-Majalla -- including previous, vague statements that could be read as warnings of attacks that later took place in Saudi Arabia -- is impossible to say.
Al-Majalla said Sunday’s al-Ablaj e-mail claimed al-Qaida was responsible for both the synagogue attacks and for a car bomb outside Italian police headquarters in Nasariyah, Iraq, on Nov. 12 that killed 19 Italians and more than a dozen Iraqis.
U.S. military officials say they face a variety of foes in Iraq -- loyalists of ousted Saddam Hussein, other Iraqis who resent being occupied, and foreign Muslim militants.
They say the extent to which al-Qaida is organized and operating in Iraq is hard to determine, though U.S. President George W. Bush asserted Sunday in an interview on PBS-BBC’s “Breakfast with David Frost” that “there are some foreign fighters -- mujahedeen types or al-Qaida, or al-Qaida affiliates involved” in Iraq.
Along with the boasting, threats of more attacks are common to claims of responsibility.
“We tell the criminal Bush and his Arab and non-Arab followers (especially Britain, Italy, Australia, and Japan) that cars of death will not stop at Baghdad, Riyadh, Istanbul, Jerba, Nasiriyah or Jakarta,” the Sunday statement attributed to the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, referring to past attacks in Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Indonesia.
The al-Ablaj e-mail pledged: “The attacks against Jews and America will follow. Let America and Israel cry for their dead from today and the destruction that they will suffer.”
Japan said Monday it would not be cowed by such threats. Australia said it won’t change the level of its terrorism alert. Steve Ingram, a spokesman for Australian Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock, said there was nothing in them at this point to affect Australian anti-terror measures.