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Al-Qaeda 'UK link' at terror summit
THE man alleged to have been al-Qaeda's UK operations chief and recently seized in a police raid attended a summit of terrorists in Pakistan just five months ago, according to reports yesterday. Abu Musa al-Hindi, who officials believe had been working on a plan to attack Heathrow airport, attended the terrorist summit in Waziristan in March, according to US and Pakistani government officials interviewed by Time magazine. President Musharraf of Pakistan told Time that the meeting had exposed the "second string" of al-Qaeda's leadership and was "extremely significant". Some US officials fear that the meeting may have been a key planning session, similar to the 2000 meeting in Kuala Lumpar that gave the final go-ahead for the September 11 terror attacks. Mr al-Hindi was arrested after a tip-off from Pakistani intelligence, which says that he had been in close contact with Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, an alleged al- Qaeda computer operative seized in Pakistan this month. The capture of Mr Khan triggered the recent arrests in the UK and Pakistan and information on his computer led to the terror alerts at financial institutions in New York, Washington and New Jersey. Officials insist that Mr Khan, whose alleged role was to send coded orders to al-Qaeda agents around the world, had been in direct contact with Mr al-Hindi about a Heathrow operation and had visited Britain at least six times in recent years. A US official said: "This was a meeting of cold-blooded killers who are very skilled at what they do." A senior counter-terrorism official said analysts were studying the recent pattern of terrorist activity against previous large attacks. This had contributed to the worry that at least some members of a strike team were already in the US. Posted by: Howard UK 2004-08-16 |
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