al-Qaeda "planning big British attack"

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AL-QAEDA leaders in Iraq are planning the first “large-scale” terrorist attacks on Britain and other western targets with the help of supporters in Iran, according to a leaked intelligence report.

Spy chiefs warn that one operative had said 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.

Another plot could be timed to coincide with Tony Blair stepping down as prime minister, an event described by Al-Qaeda planners as a “change in the head of the company”.

The report, produced earlier this month and seen by The Sunday Times, appears to provide evidence that Al-Qaeda is active in Iran and has ambitions far beyond the improvised attacks it has been waging against British and American soldiers in Iraq.

There is no evidence of a formal relationship between Al-Qaeda, a Sunni group, and the Shi’ite regime of President Mah-moud Ahmadinejad, but experts suggest that Iran’s leaders may be turning a blind eye to the terrorist organisation’s activities.

The intelligence report also makes it clear that senior Al-Qaeda figures in the region have been in recent contact with operatives in Britain.

It follows revelations last year that up to 150 Britons had travelled to Iraq to fight as part of Al-Qaeda’s “foreign legion”. A number are thought to have returned to the UK, after receiving terrorist training, to form sleeper cells.

Yea I’m scared stiff, I’m sure the British are too. I hope they annihilate Iran very soon so I can feel safe again.

I haven’t been this afraid since Bush got on TV and told us that Iraq had a huge stockpile of chemical and biological weapons ready to use against America. Boy that was scary.

MADRID, April 11 — A Spanish judge indicted 29 people today in connection with the 2004 train bombings in Madrid, suggesting that the group attacked Spain for its support of the American-led invasion of Iraq and for its increasingly aggressive police investigations of Islamic radical groups.

In a long-awaited report running nearly 1,500 pages, Judge Juan del Olmo seemed to validate suspicions that the group deliberately timed the March 11 attacks to influence Spain's general elections three days later and to pressure the government to withdraw its troops from Iraq.

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of the Socialist Party won the general elections in a surprise victory on March 14, and fulfilled his campaign pledge to withdraw Spanish troops immediately after taking office in April.

Five of the men indicted today were charged with carrying out or conspiring to carry out the attacks, which occurred when 10 bombs exploded on four commuter trains on the morning of March 11, 2004, killing 191 people and injuring more than 1,700.

A sixth man was accused of acting as a "necessary collaborator," while the rest were charged with belonging to or aiding a terrorist group, or contributing to the attacks through support roles like providing explosives or falsifying documents.

The trial is expected to begin next spring.

Judge del Olmo's report, which focused on laying out the details of the case rather than on presenting any sweeping interpretations of them, contained few reassessments of the conclusions he had drawn in provisional court filings over the past two years.

The cell that carried out the attacks, according to his report, was made up mostly of Moroccan radicals, several with ties to Al Qaeda and to the Moroccan Islamic Combat Group, an extremist organization that seeks to establish an Islamist state in Morocco.

The cell came together in Spain initially under the guidance of a Syrian named Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, also known as Abu Dahdah, who was convicted by a Spanish court in September of conspiring to commit the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States and of leading a cell of Al Qaeda in Spain...

There is no indication in Judge del Olmo's report that Mr. Fakhet or Jamal Ahmidan, a Moroccan identified as the operational head of the cell, had any direct links to the top leadership of Al Qaeda.

Many Spanish investigators have said that the typically horizontal structure of Islamic terrorist networks suggests that the group probably conceived and carried out the train bombings on its own, without any order or message from Osama bin Laden or his top lieutenants.

But in explaining the major influences on the group, Judge del Olmo cited a document posted on a Web site run by Global Islamic Media Front, a group widely seen as a mouthpiece for Al Qaeda.

The document, which was apparently posted in late 2003, called for attacks on Spain before the general elections the following March, saying such attacks would help drive a wedge between the Spanish public, which overwhelmingly opposed the invasion of Iraq, and the government of Prime Minister José María Aznar, a firm supporter of the invasion.

"We do not think that the government will endure more than two or three hits, at most, before it is obligated to withdraw because of popular pressure," said the document, titled "The Iraq of Jihad: Hopes and Risks."

"If their troops remain after these hits, the victory of the Socialist Party will be practically guaranteed," the document said.

Yea I’m scared stiff, I’m sure the British are too. I hope they annihilate Iran very soon so I can feel safe again.

I haven’t been this afraid since Bush got on TV and told us that Iraq had a huge stockpile of chemical and biological weapons ready to use against America. Boy that was scary.

It's helping the US government to indulge in it's fetish to 'annihilate' places that got the UK in the fix it's in to start off with.

If our government has a shred of sense left they'll keep Britain out of Iran. If Bush wants to bomb it to it's knees then fine, but he can keep us (and Irans inevitable retaliations) out of it.

What is this a reference to? Iraq?

You know, in all honesty I do not understand how this isn't anything other then very crude anti-Americanism. The US isn't annihating or bombing the hell of of places yet this is repeatedly claimed as if it is obviously true. Do people have any idea that the U.S, the military, has built schools and hospitals in not only Iraq and Afghanistan but places we aren't even involved in combat operations?

I wonder whether this is a sort of denial. Terrible news about X...Oh, it is all because of Y, that's it.



For the record, I would not endorse "bomb(ing)" Iran "to it's knees" (I think that implies carpet bombing ala World War II). Right now, I would not endorse military action at all against Iran and President Bush certainly hasn't exactly called the nation to arms.

[quote=Mr_Winston"]I travel to the cities of Britain far too often to want to be thinking about this, and should anything happen, then both Bush and Blair should swing for it - simple as.