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The latest attempted terror campaign in Europe involved eight German and two British recruits planning Mumbai-style attacks in France, the United Kingdom and Germany on orders from Osama Bin Laden. The plot may have been foiled, but the threat hasn’t subsided. Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups are looking upon the radicalism in the European-Muslim communities with glee and stand ready to dispatch more European recruits to bring jihad to the West.
The information about Al-Qaeda’s latest terror plots came from a German terrorist who was captured on his way to Europe. He told his interrogators that Osama Bin Laden had green-lighted the sending of operatives from Pakistan with European passports. Bin Laden has ordered his network to shift to attacks on soft targets, modeled after the shooting rampages in Mumbai, India in November 2008. The State Department has issued a travel advisory for Americans in Europe due to concerns that cells are already in Europe and have completed their surveillance in preparation for striking targets like airports and tourist hotspots.
Two other recent incidents may be connected. Shortly before the news about this terror campaign broke, a female suicide bombing in Paris was prevented and seven tons of Iranian explosives were seized in Italy, believed to be on their way to Syria. “The threat-reporting stream today is like what we were seeing in the summer of 2001,” one former senior U.S. intelligence official said.
There was a similar campaign planned by Al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban last year. In the spring of 2009, the British authorities arrested a dozen people suspected of being involved in plans to attack shopping centers around Easter as well as other targets in Spain, Germany, France and Portugal. The plot was broken up after an informant revealed the suspects had been trained in Pakistan and met a top Taliban commander in Waziristan.
President Obama was told when he first came into office that radical Muslims in the United Kingdom of Pakistani origin posed the biggest threat, and with good reason. At least 2,000 terrorism suspects are being monitored in the community, and reportedly 40 percent of the CIA’s operations aimed at preventing attacks on the U.S. are carried out in the United Kingdom. The British police have intervened to stop the possible radicalization of 200 youth, including some only 13 years old and radical Muslims gangs whose members openly aspire to become suicide bombers have formed, such as the Bang Bang Taliban. And these recruits are going to places like Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia for training and returning home. In June 2007, a Taliban videotape celebrated the graduation of British nationals from their terrorist education that pledged to carry out suicide attacks in their country.
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