Two public statements from al Qaeda have been released - one in a Kuwaiti newspaper and the other in a video. Law Enforcement officers should note that al Qaeda has used public statements in the past to trigger attacks. The messages come as U.S. intelligence agencies have uncovered information about a possible al Qaeda terrorist plot on the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. The threat of attack in Kenya is deemed specific, credible and continuing, and officials are “taking it very seriously,” and have closed the embassy. A senior U.S. official said the threat information pointed to a plane or a truck bomb being used as the terror “weapon of choice.”
The first message, which appeared in the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Watan was allegedly authored by Al-Qa’ida’s chief of training Abu Muhammad Al-Ablaj and refers to an impending attack by the organization. It stated that al-Qaeda’s chief of training Abu Muhammad Al-Ablaj said Osama bin Laden is about to direct a “fatal blow” to the “head of the international media serpent that serves the American whims and interests.” He added that the upcoming phases against the U.S. will “cut off the wings of the American eagle, slice its arteries, and finally butcher it the Islamic way.”
In the second message, delivered via video, an Arabic-speaking guerrilla, his face wrapped in a black turban, said the al-Qaida terror network was behind suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia and Morocco and warned of more attacks. If authentic, the video would be the first al-Qaida claim of responsibility for the bombings of foreign housing compounds in Riyadh, which killed 35 people, and the attacks in Casablanca that killed 43 people and 12 suicide bombers.
The videotape was obtained by the Associated Press from a senior intelligence official for Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Afghan rebel leader allied with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terror network and the Taliban.
The man on the video, who identified himself as Abu Haris Abdul Hakim, said he was speaking on behalf of al-Qaida, the Taliban and Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami organisation. “The recent attacks in Riyadh and Morocco were planned and they were part of our martyrdom operations. You will see such more attacks in the future,” he said.
During the Taliban rule, Hakim was known to speak in the name of al-Qaida in interviews with the official news agency Bakhtar, run by the hard-line Islamic religious group.
“Jihad is compulsory for all Muslims in this present situation,” he said. “We are alive and have started operations again. And very soon we will bring the Americans and their agents to justice.”
Source - Informed Source; ERRI