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| Europe |
| Turkish justice minister says Istanbul bombings were an al-Qaeda attack |
| 2003-11-28 |
| Turkey’s justice minister has been quoted as saying Chechens and Turks with links to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network helped prepare suicide bombs that killed dozens of people in Istanbul this month. The Chechen connection is a new one, though by no means unsurprising. I do hope Basayev’s men haven’t taken to slumming ... Cemil Cicek also said militants who bombed the British consulate and an office of the London-based HSBC bank last Thursday had narrowly evaded a pre-emptive attempt to arrest them after they were alerted to a planned police raid. Time for some heads to roll there ... Ankara has said the November 20 bombing and attacks on two Istanbul synagogues five days earlier were carried out by Turks, but it has been investigating suspicions of al Qaeda links. "It is now known who carried out the terror attacks and who aided and abetted them," Cicek told the Milliyet daily on Thursday . "Foreign connections have been established, they came and went to al Qaeda (camps). There are people with Chechen roots among them." Cicek did not name the suspects or elaborate further. Eighteen people have been charged already over the attacks. Many Turks trace their roots to the Caucasus and Istanbul is home to a sizeable number of exiled Chechens who are widely regarded as fellow Muslims fighting foreign oppression by Russians. Moscow has repeatedly criticised Ankara for tolerating what it regards as "Chechen terrorists" on its territory. I suspect that they just wore out whatever welcome they had ... Moscow says Chechen rebels are closely linked to an "arc of instability" of Islamic militants stretching from the Philippines to the Middle East, though the guerrillas deny this. That "arc of instability" is also known as bin Laden’s International Islamic Front ... Experts say up to 4,000 Turkish radicals have fought in conflicts overseas, including Chechnya, Bosnia and Afghanistan, some training at al Qaeda camps that existed in Afghanistan before the U.S. invasion of the country two years ago in response to the September 11 attacks on the United States. Turkish authorities have lashed out at local media, accusing them of hampering the investigation by naming suspects connected with the synagogue bombings. Nine more suspects were transferred to a state security court on Thursday for questioning of whom two were charged and held in custody. The Turkish courts have now charged 20 people in connection with all four bombings. They stand accused of belonging to and aiding and abetting an illegal organisation. Homemade bombs comprised of ammonium nitrate were used in all of the attacks, Yilmaz said. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #3 Centralized through/in Iran? |
| Posted by: Lucky 2003-11-28 11:53:30 PM |
| #2 Chechnya's a major front for al-Qaeda, so all of the top-tier members or at least their designated flunkies seem to have to visit there or at least send cash periodically. What I'm more interested to know is whether or not the Iranian branch of al-Qaeda (of which Zarqawi is part of) was operating independently of the Pakistani branch run by KSM. We know at least that the Africa and Europe branches are all working for the Iranian branch because of Zarqawi's plots and that Suleiman Abu Ghaith, who is in Iran, claimed responsibility for the Mombasa attacks. If all major nodes of the network are still operating as one, then we're still dealing with a centralized force rather than disorganized fragments. |
| Posted by: Dan Darling 2003-11-28 2:10:11 AM |
| #1 If Zarqawi was indeed the man running the show in Turkey, it's not very surprising, considering his trip to Chechnya/Pankisi in '02. It is somewhat surprising, though. You would think that al Qaeda would make more of an effort to keep its operations compartmentalized. |
| Posted by: Pete Stanley 2003-11-28 2:02:43 AM |