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Al-Qaeda Denies World Cup Terror Plot Alleged by Iraq / Attack on Dutch Team |
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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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