Bin Laden’s new weapon: torpedo man

This May, the Moroccon police annihilated a terrorist group connected with Al-Qaida. The organization prepared operations against the US and British ships in Gibraltar, official Morocco sources report. Three Saudis between the ages of 25 to 35 years were detained, but their identities are being withheld. The arrested admitted to their belonging to Al-Qaida. They intended to use inflatable rubber dinghies filled with explosives to attack US and British military ships. British ships are always based in Gibraltar, while the Americans use a neighbouring NATO base in the city of Rota (Spain) for their ships.

The boats of the suicide bombers were to depart from Spanish encloves of Ceuta and Melilia, situated on the Moroccon coast. A similar operation was carried out October 12, 2000, in Aden (Yemen). At that time, the US destroyer Cole was attacked and 17 military sailors were killed. Annihilation of this Al-Qaida group became the first successful operation of the kind in North Africa. According to Moroccon sources, the operation was carried out in cooperation with the special services of certain “friendly countries.” The three Saudis were arrested in Rabat and Casablanca. They have Moroccon wives and had long ago integrated into local society; however, they were not implicated in any cases connected with terrorism, either in Morocco, or in other countries.

Bin Laden's associates cannot leave the US special services alone. As a confirmation of this fact, there is yesterday’s report from the US. US Attorney General John Ashcroft said that US authorities have averted a nuclear attack against the United States planned by Al-Qaida terrorists. According to Ashcroft, nuclear explosions were planned with a so-called “dirty bomb.”

“We detained a well-known terrorist who headed the creation of a nuclear device and worked on a plan to attack the US,” – Ashcroft stated. According to Ashcroft, US citizen Abdullah al-Mujahir, also known as Jose Padillah, was detained May 8, after arriving in Chicago from Pakistan.

Al-Mujahir was already once arrested in the US, in the early 1990s. After serving time, he departed for Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to the US special services, he was trained in Al-Qaida training centers and studied explosive devices. According to Ashcroft, Al-Qaida expected that, if Al-Mujahir had US documents, he could travel through the US without drawing attention to himself. According to CNN, referring to an official source, the terrorists’ target was most likely Washington.

Dmitry Litvinovich PRAVDA.Ru Translated by Vera Solovieva

Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/main/2002/06/11/42497.html