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Al-Qaida link to London blasts in Iraq

Sep- 4-2005 » Filed Under: 1/25 SBCT

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By PAMELA HESS, UPI

MOSUL, Iraq, Sept. 4 (UPI) -- A man captured in August north of al-Qaim, Iraq, had a computer "thumb drive" that contained planning information about the July 7 London suicide bombings, a U.S. military officer has revealed.

Col. Robert Brown, commander of the 1st Brigade 25th Infantry Division in Mosul told United Press International the man was connected to the al-Qaida terrorist network.

He declined to discuss the specific nature of the information on the small computer drive, variants of which store between 8 and 256 megabytes of data, but said it indicated al-Qaida involvement in the attacks on London's bus and subway system.

The drive is the latest piece of information linking the al-Qaida leadership to the bombings, in which four British Moslems killed themselves and 52 others

The Arabic language satellite channel Al-Jazeera last week aired parts of a videotape in which al-Qaida's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, claimed responsibility for the near-simultaneous blasts, believed to have used a potent but easily manufactured home-made explosive called TATP.

The video -- which was sent to al-Jazeera by al-Qaida's al-Sahab media production arm -- also contains the now-traditional martyrdom message from one of the bombers. [...]

"I don't think anyone's done a good enough job explaining" the nexus between Iraq and al-Qaida, Brown said.

U.S. Central Command estimates about 100 to 150 "foreign fighters" cross Iraq's porous borders each month. These men by and large man the suicide bombs, "martyring" themselves in the most devastating weapon the insurgents and terrorists have in their arsenal.

Lt. Col. Mike Gibler, commander of the 3rd battalion of the 21st Infantry Regiment, said the suicide bombers are comprised of two kinds of people. Some are jihadists who think they are coming to Iraq to fight Americans with guns or bombs and don't know they have been recruited for suicide missions. They are isolated, forced to watch videotapes of propaganda to brainwash them, and finally told if they refuse their mission their families will be killed.

He said a number of would-be bombers have been captured during raids and interrogated.

The second group, says Gibler, "is blind with rage, blind with anger for just what America stands for. It's the 'haves' and the 'have-nots,' and a lot of the 'have nots' believe it's our fault.

"They are usually college kids who have a degree and want to make a million dollars. They know it can be done but they are not gonna be offered the opportunity because 'America is preventing it.'"


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