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Sakra also linked to the Taliban
A Syrian with alleged links to Al-Qaeda who is suspected of plotting to attack Israeli cruise ships off the Turkish coast has said he was financed by the Taliban, a report said Tuesday. Louai Sakra told police he was given 50,000 dollars by the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar to carry out attacks in his name against Israeli targets, NTV television news channel said. He also claimed to have the approval of Al-Qaeda frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, it said.Sakra's lawyer was not immediately available for comment.
Tuesday's NTV report said he had told interrogators that a fire had broken out on August 4 in the premises where he was preparing his explosives, setting some of them off. "If there had been no explosion, I would have carried out my action the next day," he was quoted as saying. "I had planned, in the event that I was not able to act against a passenger ship, to target any NATO military ship that was nearby," he said, according to the news channel. Media reports said Sakra planned to use an inflatable boat packed with explosives to hit an Israeli cruise ship in Antalya, home to some of Turkey's most popular resorts that attract millions of foreign tourists each year. In an official statement on the case, police last August confirmed that two suspects were caught last week in an operation launched after a suspicious fire at a flat rented in Antalya by Middle Eastern tourists. The statement did not name the men and made no mention of a plot to attack Israeli ships. Pointing to Sakra, it said a suspect detained at Diyarbakir airport "is understood to hold a prominent position in a terrorist group linked to Al-Qaeda" and had undergone plastic surgery, apparently to disguise himself. He was present at the flat in Antalya at the time of the fire, which raised suspicions because of an intense smell of chemicals, police said. The documents seized at the flat suggested a link with the 2003 Istanbul attacks, in which suicide bombers detonated explosive-laden trucks five days apart outside two synagogues, the British consulate and the British-based HSBC bank, killing 63 people and wounding hundreds. The second suspect was detained Saturday while preparing to leave Turkey from a post on the Syrian vorder, police said. Posted by: Dan Darling 2006-02-22 |
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