Jihadist cells urged to target Canadians: Al-Qa'ida; Website calls for attacks on oil, economic sites

Islam,Terrorism and Jihad

29 Jul 2008, NewAgeIslam.Com

Jihadist cells urged to target Canadians: Al-Qa'ida; Website calls for attacks on oil, economic sites

By IAN MACLEOD, Canwest News Service 29 July 2008 A virulent Al-Qa'ida website has issued a new call for followers to kill Canadians and other westerners and attack oil and economic targets. The message on the password-protected al-Ekhlaas.net forum was posted July 7, the third anniversary of the London transit massacre. The website is a favoured site of hardcore jihadists. Experts are debating the significance of the latest al-Ekhlaas threat calling for the targeting of Christians, especially those from Canada the U.S., Britain, Spain, Australia and Italy. Most unsettling, perhaps, is the instructional nature of the posting. Details of the Arabic-language posting, titled "Clandestine work inside the city," were recently translated and reported by the Jamestown Foundation, a conservative Washington think-tank. Under the nom de guerre Abu Hajar Abdul Aziz al-Moqrin (the former leader of Al-Qa'ida's Saudi wing killed in 2004), the posting explains how a four-unit jihadist cell should be properly trained in urban terror warfare before activation. Further, the intelligence cell that collects information on a target must not know the purpose of the information. Al-Moqrin warns jihadists not to attack religious figures because it harms the cause. Instead, urban cells should seek economic targets, such as Jewish investments in Muslim countries, international companies, international economic experts, exports from "Crusader countries" and raw materials being "stolen from Muslim countries by the enemies," with al-Moqrin calling for attacks on oil wells, pipelines and oil tankers. Terrorism experts are divided on the message's import. "The reference to Canada is fairly peripheral and embedded in a broad anti-'kufar' (non-believer) strategy targeting Jews, Christians, apostate Muslim leaders, and 'secular officials,' " said Wesley Wark, a security expert. "The main interest in the story would seem to me the effort taken on some jihadi websites to try to encourage professionalism and clandestinity in terrorist operations." Martin Rudner, founding director of the Canadian Centre of Intelligence and Security Studies, believes the specific threat to oil interests and possibly overseas corporate executives is worrying, especially for Canadian energy interests in such places as Yemen, where the offices of Calgary-based Nexen Inc. were shaken by a bomb blast in April. Source: The Gazette (Montreal) 2008 URL: http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=43a160cc-5a48-4aef-ab67-4969eb12bfa4