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Al-Qaeda Denies World Cup Terror Plot Alleged by Iraq / Attack on Dutch Team PDF Print E-mail

May 26, 2010

Source: Dutch News & Bloomberg

Al-Qaeda in Iraq denied it was planning to attack the soccer World Cup in South Africa, a week after officials in Baghdad said they had captured a member of the group who confessed to plotting a terrorist act there.

“We deny this news entirely,” the group said late yesterday in a statement posted on websites used by al-Qaeda. It described the charges as empty allegations and said its “dreams and aspirations” didn’t stretch as far as Johannesburg.

Iraq’s Baghdad Military Command announced in a televised news conference on May 17 the capture of an al-Qaeda member, who it said had worked with Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy to Osama bin Laden, “to plot terrorist attacks during the World Cup.”

The suspect was identified as Abdullah Azzam Saleh al- Qahtani, a Saudi Arabian national described as chief of the group’s security in Baghdad. The Iraqi military said he was a lieutenant in the Saudi army and had entered Iraq in 2004.

The arrest was announced by the Baghdad Military Command spokesman, Major General Qassim Atta, who didn’t provide details of the alleged plot on the world’s most-watched sporting event, which starts June 11 and ends on July 11.

Police in South Africa have been making inquiries into the Iraqi investigation, according to the South African Press Association. Saudi Arabian authorities are trying to verify the identity of the man in Iraqi custody, the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper said last week.

Qahtani said in an interview with the Associated Press on May 18 that he had merely discussed with friends the idea of attacking the Danish and Dutch team and their fans in revenge for “insults” toward the prophet Mohammad in Denmark and the Netherlands. Senior al-Qaeda leaders, including al-Zawahiri, hadn’t yet approved the plans for an attack, he said.

Cartoons in a Danish newspaper that depicted the prophet Mohammad sparked worldwide protests by Muslims in 2006. In the Netherlands, Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders released a film in 2008 that interspersed verses from the Koran with scenes of Islamist terrorism.
 
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"It is not for a believer, man or woman, when Allah and His Messenger have decreed a matter that they should have any option in their decision. And whoever disobeys Allah and His Messenger, he has indeed strayed into a plain error" (Translated meaning of the Qur'an - Surah al Ahzaab 33: Ayah 36)
 

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