British targets found near body of al-Qaida leader (AP)

LONDON – The Ritz Hotel in London and the elite private school Eton were among a handful of possible British terror targets that a senior al-Qaida leader was considering before he was killed in Somalia last week, a British security official said Thursday.

Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 people, was killed when he failed to stop at a routine checkpoint outside of Mogadishu, Somalia's capital.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has called the 38-year-old's death a "significant blow to al-Qaida, its extremist allies, and its operations in East Africa."

British officials have said they see al-Qaida affiliates in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula as being a significant threat to British interests.

"He was a fairly big player, but there is nothing to suggest that any reconnaissance had been done or that any of the attacks were imminent," a British security official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in order to discuss intelligence matters.

It was not exactly clear how officials found the information on the British targets. There was no immediate evidence to suggest that Mohammed was working with British contacts or that he even understood where some of the intended targets were.

Amber Aldred, a Ritz spokeswoman, would not say whether extra security staff had been put on alert but said the hotel took security and threats seriously. The hotel has been named as a possible target in several terror plots in recent years.

Eton College, Britain's most elite private school where Prime Minister David Cameron and other politicians have been educated, is an hour outside of London.

Officials would not disclose details of the plots or other British targets, but said "now that he has been taken out, there's even less risk."

British intelligence officials have said dozens of youths have traveled to Somalia in recent years to attend terror training camps. Few have returned.

In 2009, a 17-year-old suicide bomber from the London suburb of Ealing blew himself up in a car bomb attack at a hotel in central Somalia, killing more than 20 people. Two Somali asylum-seekers were also among four men convicted of the failed attempts to bomb the London transport system on July 21, 2005 — just two weeks after four suicide bombers killed 52 commuters during morning rush-hour attacks in London on July 7.

Mohammed, a native of the Comoros Islands, is also believed to have played a key role in the 2002 attack on the Paradise Hotel in Mombasa that killed 13 people, and the failed missile strike on an Israeli charter flight on the same day.

He had been on the run for more than a decade.

___

Cassandra Vinograd contributed to this report from London.

View the original article here

Al-Qaida eyed oil tankers as bombing targets (AP)

By EILEEN SULLIVAN and MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Eileen Sullivan And Matt Apuzzo, Associated Press – Fri May 20, 10:46 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Osama bin Laden's personal files revealed a brazen idea to hijack oil tankers and blow them up at sea last summer, creating explosions he hoped would rattle the world's economy and send oil prices skyrocketing, the U.S. said Friday.

The newly disclosed plot showed that while bin Laden was always scheming for the next big strike that would kill thousands of Americans, he also believed a relatively simpler attack on the oil industry could create a worldwide panic that would hurt Westerners every time they gassed up their cars.

U.S. officials said the tanker idea, included in documents found in the compound where bin Laden was killed nearly three weeks ago, was little more than an al-Qaida fantasy. But the FBI and the Homeland Security Department issued a confidential warning to police and the energy industry Thursday. The alert, obtained by The Associated Press, said that al-Qaida had sought information on the size and construction of oil tankers, had decided that spring and summer provided the best weather to approach the ships, had determined that blowing them up would be easiest from the inside and believed an explosion would create an "extreme economic crisis."

Bin Laden's documents also revealed that in February 2010, the terror group identified New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and Chicago as important cities that should be attacked; and it eyed specific dates, including the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Christmas, July Fourth and the State of the Union address, according to a similar alert issued Friday, obtained by the AP. There is no information indicating that there are plots involving these cities, dates and tactics under way.

"We are not aware of indications of any specific or imminent terrorist attack plotting against the oil and natural gas sector overseas or in the United States," Homeland Security spokesman Matthew Chandler said in a statement Friday. "However, in 2010 there was continuing interest by members of al-Qaida in targeting oil tankers and commercial oil infrastructure at sea."

With about half the world's oil supply moving on the water, industry and security experts have warned for years that such an attack would be a jolt to global markets. That's particularly true if terrorists carried it out in one of the narrow waterways that serve as shipping chokepoints.

"You start blowing up oil tankers at sea and you're going to start closing down shipping lanes," said Don Borelli, senior vice president of the Sufan Group security firm and a former FBI counterterrorism agent in New York. "It's going to cause this huge ripple through the economy."

Still, even if al-Qaida were able to blow up one of the supertankers that move oil around the globe, it would barely dent the world's oil supply, said Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch and Associates, who has been trading oil contracts since the futures market opened on the Nymex in 1983. A tanker holds about 2 million barrels, or enough to supply world demand for about a half hour.

The terrorist threat to oil infrastructure is nothing new. Members of a British terror cell that hoped to hijack trans-Atlantic airplanes in 2006 had also made plans to attack oil and gas targets in Britain. And al-Qaida's franchise in Yemen has attacked pipelines.

Thurdsay's alert was significant mostly because it linked the scheme directly to bin Laden, meaning the idea probably has circulated among al-Qaida's most senior leaders.

The government encouraged companies to continue random screening, to warn employees about possible threats and to establish procedures for reporting suspicious activity. But there was no immediate effect on oil markets, and both shippers and security officials said it was business as usual on the water.

"This has been a possibility on everyone's minds for some time now," said Bill Box a spokesman for the International Association of Independent Tanker Owners. "Everyone is aware of what might happen."

Shippers have been on particular alert as threats of piracy have increased along the African coast. In 2008, Somali pirates captured the Sirius Star supertanker and held it for ransom. In 2007 the Japanese tanker the Golden Nori was hijacked carrying 40,000 tons of the highly explosive chemical benzene. Intelligence officials initially worried that terrorists might try to crash the boat into an offshore oil platform or use it as a gigantic bomb, but it proved to be another attack by pirates seeking ransom.

Then in 2010, two groups of pirates got into a shootout while arguing over the ransom for the Maran Centaurus, threatening to turn the ship into a massive fireball.

Pirates have had success with a relatively low-tech strategy. They fire at a ship to get it to slow down, then pull alongside in skiffs. Using lashed-together ladders or grappling hooks, the pirates climb on board with guns. Many ship owners are reluctant to have armed guards onboard, since the cargo is so flammable that sailors are even forbidden to smoke.

Somali pirates take the ships for money. The information taken from bin Laden's compound after he was killed May 2 suggests al-Qaida was interested in adapting that strategy to terrorize.

The U.S. has warned for years that such an attack in a narrow waterway, such as the Strait of Hormuz between Oman and Iran, would immediately send oil prices higher.

In Asia, concerns have centered on the continent's key oil chokepoint, the Strait of Malacca, located between Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. Last year, an Indonesian al-Qaida affiliate set up a training camp at the beginning of the strait, leading to speculation about an attack there and prompting Singapore to issue a warning.

"The good thing is that boats don't move that fast. It gives you plenty of time to interdict," said Crispian Cuss, the program director at Olive Group, one of the biggest private security companies in the Middle East. "If a vessel was hijacked by an al-Qaida organization and headed toward a major port, the authorities would not let that vessel get anywhere near that port."

___

Follow Eileen Sullivan and Matt Apuzzo at http://twitter.com/esullivanap and http://twitter.com/mattapuzzo

___

Sullivan reported from Detroit. Associated Press writers Chris Kahn in New York; Cassandra Vinograd, Raphael Satter, David Stringer and Meera Selva in London; Chris Brummitt in Islamabad, Pakistan; Kimberly Dozier in Washington and Katharine Houreld in Nairobi contributed to this story.

View the original article here