More Al Qaeda pre-US election attacks forecast: Americans quietly lifted out

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

Just five weeks before America’s presidential election, US intelligence reports signs that al Qaeda leader Ayman Zuwahiri is preparing a string of terrorist attacks as the sequel to the murders of US ambassador Chris Stevens and three other US officials in Benghazi on Sept. 11, according to evidence collected across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

His twin goals are to influence the poll’s results and to build up his reputation as a master of spectacular terrorist operations. Eager to impress Al Qaeda’s franchise chiefs, Zuwahiri is reported to be celebrating his “Benghazi feat” – his first as Al Qaeda leader - and boasting of the harm to the Obama campaign caused by his administration’s stammering denials that it was an act of terror. The new terrorist chief claims his tactics had an instant, devastating impact on Washington and they were therefore superior to those of his predecessor, Osama bin Laden.

The Al Qaeda leader is now seen - not only by US intelligence experts, but by most experts in the West, the Middle East and Israel - to be impatient to capitalize on this success and so dramatically expose to the Muslim world America’s perceived weakness and his own worth as commander of the jihadist movement.

His planning for a new offensive has taken advantage of the Arab Spring upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa and turned them around to strike at the heart of the Obama administration’s Middle East policy objectives. The Arab revolutions have let Islamist extremist and fundamentalist Salafi groups off the leash in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, while Lebanon Jordan, Iraq and Syria teeter on the brink of chaos. The extremists now enjoy free rein to organize for political action while also gaining access to vast stocks of modern arms.

In the view of Western counterterrorism experts, Salafi groups have long maintained clandestine relations with al Qaeda, especially Ayman Zuwahiri, who joined al Qaeda in the first place as head of the violent Egyptian Islamic Jihad and stayed in close touch with its secret cells.

Al Qaeda planning also took advantage of the US counterterrorism focus in the last couple of years on the Arabian Peninsula franchise (AQAP) based in Yemen. Less US attention was devoted to the Islamist extremism simmering in North African and other Middle East arenas. It was there that Zuwahiri went to work to fashion new terrorist networks alongside Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM) from the Salafi groups now rampant across a broad geographical area encompassing Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Mali and thrusting into the Middle East through Egyptian Sinai.

America is therefore confronted with a broad new al Qaeda front, armed with scanty intelligence.

Worst of all, Washington can’t trust the new regimes and local military and intelligence organizations, thrown into power in the post-“Arab revolt” countries, for cooperation in fighting terror.

Instead of confrontation, the Obama administration has opted for retreat.

debkafile’s exclusive sources report that an administration team has hurriedly put together a list of 20 endangered countries where US diplomatic, military and economic may be targeted for al Qaeda attack.

The list is prioritized according to the level of risk and US security capability for protection.

The highest-risk locations have been quietly evacuated – either to the US or West European countries - leaving only a skeleton staff behind for emergencies. A senior American source told DEBKAfle Tuesday that Tunisia, Libya, Mali, Nigeria and Egypt have been virtually denuded of a US presence.

Middle East intelligence observers have told debkafile that they don’t recall US diplomatic military and intelligence personnel, businessmen and technical staff with their families being withdrawn from the region on this scale or at comparable speed.

President Obama made American retreat his order of the day after refusing to heed calls for a US military operation against AQIM and its head, Abdelmalek Droukdel. It was Droukdel, according to accumulating intelligence who, acting on behalf of Zuwahiri, orchestrated the Libyan Ansar al-Shariah militia’s murderous attack on the US Benghazi consulate.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday, Oct. 1, that Obama also decided against a punitive attack against al Qaeda’s stronghold in Mali.

Al Zawahri personally ordered Al Qaeda to murder US Ambassador Stevens

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

The US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three staff members at the US consulate in Benghazi were deliberately murdered Tuesday night Sept 11 just after memorial ceremonies were held in America for the victims of the 9/11 outrage. debkafile’s counter-terror sources report exclusively that far from being a spontaneous raid by angry Islamists, it was a professionally executed terrorist operation by a professional Al Qaeda assassination team, whose 20 members acted under the orders of their leader Ayman al Zawahri after special training. They were all Libyans, freed last year from prisons where they were serving sentences for terrorism passed during the late Muammar Qaddafi’s rule.

In a video tape released a few hours before the attack, Zawahri called on the faithful to take revenge on the United States for liquidating one of the organization’s top operatives, Libyan-born Abu Yahya al-Libi in June by a US drone in northwestern Pakistan.

Its release was the “go” signal for the hit team to attack the US diplomats in Benghazi.
To mask their mission, they stormed the consulate on the back of a violent protest by hundreds of Islamists against a film said to insult Prophet Muhammed produced by a Florida real estate agent called Sam Bacile, who has been described as of Israeli origin.

The operation is rated by terror experts as the most ambitious outrage al Qaeda has pulled off in the last decade. According to our sources, the gunmen split into two groups of 10 each and struck in two stages:

1. They first fired rockets at the consulate building on the assumption that the ambassador’s bodyguards would grab him, race him out of the building and drive him to a safe place under the protection of the US secret service;

2.  The second group was able to identify the getaway vehicle and the ambassador’s armed escort and lay in wait to ambush them. The gunmen then closed in and killed the ambassador and his bodyguards at point blank range.

debkafile’s intelligence sources report that the investigation launched by US counter-terror and clandestine services is focusing on finding out why no clue was picked up of the coming attack by any intelligence body and how al Qaeda’s preparations for the attack which took place inside Libya went unnoticed by any surveillance authority.

Was Iran behind coordinated Islamist attacks on Egypt and Israel from Sinai?

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis

The initial Egyptian and Israeli accounts of the attacks in which 16 Egyptian soldiers were killed and the Israeli border crashed Sunday night, Aug. 5, don’t match up: Egypt points the finger at the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip; Israel at Sinai Salafits. debkafile postulates a third option: Tehran put Gaza Strip Islamists and/or Palestinian proxies together with a Sinai al Qaeda cell for a coordinated attack on Egyptian and Israeli military targets to avenge the presence of al Qaeda in the anti-Assad revolt in Syria under the Western-Arab aegis. That would signal the spillover of the Syrian crisis into two more Middle East countries.

The gunmen first stormed an Egyptian commando post in Sinai with bombs, grenades and sidearms, killing at least 16 Egyptian soldiers, wounding many more and taking several hostages. A quantity of weapons and two armored vehicles were seized.

According to Egyptian sources, all ten gunmen infiltrated Sinai from the Gaza Strip through the smuggling tunnels. They were disguised as Sinai Bedouin.

In contrast, the Israeli military spokesman tagged the gunmen as Sinai Salafist Bedouin tied to al Qaeda. He denied there was any connection with the IDF’s targeting of two Popular Resistance Committees earlier Sunday after they were identified as the perpetrators of the June 18 shooting of an Israeli border fence workman.

The IDF also claimed it had been forewarned of the plot to attack the Kerem Shalom terminal opposite the Egyptian post and were therefore prepared for the gunmen’s incursion aboard two captured Egyptian vehicles for the purpose of snatching Israeli soldiers. Israel bombed the vehicle that got through from the air and by artillery. Seven terrorists were gunned down as they fled. There were no Israeli casualties.

The army spokesman did not indicate whether the Egyptians had also been forewarned.

The IDF version, if it is correct, exposes the most ambitious operation al Qaeda has ever mounted from Sinai. The jihadists, even in their biggest outrages in Iraq and Afghanistan - or Syria today – rarely carried through an operation this complex against one military base after another in two different countries.

Its features do, however, recall Palestinian terrorist strikes on Israeli military positions in the Gaza Strip at the height of their 2000-2003 war on Israel. In that sense, the Egyptian version pointing to Gaza as the source rings true. And indeed, the enclave’s Hamas rulers hastened to condemn the attack and block the Gaza-Sinai smuggling tunnels first thing Monday, Aug. 6, and a Hamas leader, Mahmoud A-Zahar, admitted Palestinians may have been complicit.

Neither Israel nor Egypt has mentioned a third option, which in the view of debkafile’s counter-terror analysts is the most sinister of them all, namely that Iran’s proxy in the enclave, the Palestinian Jihad Islami, which operates under the command of the Al Qods Brigades operations center in Beirut, was told to muster al Qaeda jihadists in Sinai for the coordinated attacks. Iranian officers posted in Beirut would then have orchestrated the combined operation, bringing to bear their long experience of setting up terrorist campaigns against Western and Arab targets – Saudi Arabia in 2003 and 2004; Iraq up to the present day and Afghanistan, against US and NATO forces.

If that is what happened, it would be the first time Tehran has harnessed al Qaeda to lash out out against Egyptian and Israeli military targets as a riposte for the presence of al Qaeda fighters in the revolt against Bashar Assad.

Just a few hours earlier, Iran’s Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani declared: "The fire that has been ignited in Syria will take the fearful (Israelis) with it.”

That was also the first time Tehran had explicitly threatened that the Syrian conflict would spill over into Israel.

Al Qaeda 'plot to blow up passenger jet' in run up to Olympics uncovered by security forces•Terrorist group recruited a western Islamic radical in an attempt to evade security procedures

By Daily Mail Reporter

A terrorist plot to blow up a U.S. passenger jet timed to coincide with the Olympics has been uncovered by security agencies, according to intelligence sources.

Al Qaeda intended to use a radicalised Norwegian Islamic convert to attack U.S. planes in the build-up to the London Games - which start in 26 days on July 27 - it is understood.

The plan centred on using the so-called ‘clean skin’ – a terrorist with no previous criminal record and are unlikely to raise suspicions among the security services – in order to evade airport security.

‘If you are blowing up aeroplanes you are likely to be killing Brits or having a big impact on the European or British economy. [So it] would in effect be an attack against Britain,’ a Whitehall official told the Sunday Times.

It is believed the suspect tasked with the attack uses the Islamic name Muslim Abu Abdurrahman, had converted to Islam in 2008, and was recruited in a terrorist training camp in Yemen, sources told the Sunday Times.

It is not thought to have been aimed specifically at the Olympics in London, but security forces protecting the Games said intelligence on any possible threat was constantly reviewed.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: 'We have planned against the four main areas of threat: terrorism, serious and organised crime, public disorder and natural hazards.

'We are working closely with Games organisers to deliver an end to end operation to ensure everyone is safe and secure. Alongside LOCOG’s in venue security operation, police will be present for the detection and prevention of crime.

'Our intelligence is kept under constant review. For operational reasons we do not discuss the exact detail of how we monitor any individual or group.'

Terrorists from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular (AQAP), based in Yemen, are understood to be behind this latest plot.

The same group were revealed to have been behind at least four other attempted attacks in the last four years.

Nigerian-born British student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was ordered to carryout a suicide mission for AQAP when he attempted to detonate a bomb in his underpants as the plane, en route from Amsterdam, approached Detroit.

It failed to fully detonate aboard the flight, which was carrying nearly 300 people, but caused a brief fire that badly burned his groin.

Passengers pounced on Abdulmutallab and forced him to the front of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 where he was held until the plane landed minutes later.

In 2009, months before the attack, he travelled to Yemen to see Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric and one of the best-known al Qaeda figures, according to the government.

In February, this year, a U.S. court jailed him for life without parole.

AQAP were said to be responsibility for a sophisticated attempt to blow up a cargo plane with bombs hidden in ink cartridges.

At least one of the bombs planted on cargo planes heading for Chicago was primed to explode once the aircraft reached the U.S. mainland.

The terror plot was thwarted after the two devices - hidden inside printer cartridges - were intercepted at airports in Nottingham and Dubai on October 29, last year.

Both bombs contained quantities of the powerful explosive PETN. The device discovered in the UK contained 400 grams of the lethal ingredient – 50 times more than needed to punch a hole in the aircraft’s skin – and was wired to a mobile phone.

The device, discovered at East Midland airport, was timed to explode during flight after it entered U.S. air space, Scotland Yard officials said at the time of the plot's discovery.

In May, this year, it was revealed security agencies had thwarted another AQAP plot to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner.

The attack was prevented because the intended bomber was actually a double agent who infiltrated the group and volunteered for the suicide mission, it was revealed.

Saudi Arabia's intelligence agency placed the undercover operator inside AQAP where he convinced his handlers to give him the new type of non-metallic bomb.

The agent, who was in Yemen, was liaising with the CIA before handing the device over to intelligence services.

Al Qaeda Offshoot Offers Camels for Obama's Head, Hens for Hillary Clinton's

By MOHAMED IBRAHIM

The al Qaeda affiliate in Somalia has mocked the new $33 million bounty on its top leaders heads by offering its own bounty for President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – 10 camels for Obama and 20 chickens for Clinton.

"Anyone who helps the Mujahideen find the whereabouts of Obama and Hillary Clinton will be rewarded with 10 Camels to the information leading to Obama and 10 hens and 10 cocks for Hillary," said senior Shabaab commander Fuad Mohamed Khalaf in a statement reported on numerous websites.

Earlier this week, the U.S. offered a total of $33 million through the State Department's Rewards for Justice program for information leading to the capture of seven different Shabaab leaders, including Khalaf.

The U.S. offered $7 million for founder and commander Ahmed Abdi Aw-Mohamed, AKA Godane or Mukhtar Abu Zubeir, five million for Khalaf and three other men, and $3 million apiece for two other leaders.

The announcement of the U.S. bounties came as Somali and other African military forces have begun to squeeze Shabaab into a smaller and smaller section of Somalia. In a statement, the Somali government said the rewards would help crush the al Qaeda affiliate.

"The announcement from the U.S. government . . . will certainly help the Somali government's efforts to end al Qaeda's reign of terror in Somalia," said Somalia's transitional government in a statement Thursday. "This is an important juncture in Somali history, where the possibility of full recovery from years of chaos is within reach."

In his response to the U.S. rewards, Khalaf said that "infidels" offering bounties for Muslims was "nothing new."

"There is nothing new in the fact that infidels pay to have Muslim leaders killed," said Khalaf. "They already did that by offering camels for the head of Prophet Mohammed, and the dollar is the camel of today."

Khalaf was referencing a passage in the Koran in which 100 camels were offered for the Prophet Mohammed as he fled Mecca for Medina.

"I can assure you that these kind of things will never dissuade us from continuing the holy war against them," said Khalaf.