A new audio tape said to be from Osama Bin Laden that claims responsibility for the Christmas Day airline bombing attempt in Detroit has warned of further attacks against America.
The short recording purporting to be from the al-Qaeda leader, which was aired on Al Jazeera television, said: “The message delivered to you through the plane of the heroic warrior Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a confirmation of the previous messages sent by the heroes of the September 11.”
On Christmas Day, Mr Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian national, allegedly attempted to blow up the Northwest Airlines flight he was sitting on as it approached Detroit Metro Airport. But the bomb he was said to have been hiding in his underwear failed to explode.
He told police shortly afterward he had been trained and instructed in the plot by al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen.
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More than 60 messages have been broadcast by bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahri, al-Qaeda’s number two, and their allies since the September 11 attacks in 2001.
The tape was aired after MI5 raised the terrorist threat level in Britain from "substantial" to "severe" — meaning that counter-terrorism agencies believe that an attack is "highly likely".
It is believed that intelligence whispers from America that an al-Qaeda affiliated group is close to finalising another atrocity coupled with a conference on Yemen and Afghanistan in London this week led to the decision.
The measure was approved by the Government's Cobra emergency committee and announced by Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, who said he wanted to stress that “there is no intelligence to suggest than an attack is imminent.”
David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said today that it would “very stupid” of him to comment on the intelligence behind the change in threat level.
“The fact is though that these people will stop at nothing; they will try every trick in the book, they will use advanced technology, they will use all the mechanisms of open society that we depend on for their own terrible purposes.
“And they will try to strike Christians, Muslims, Jews randomly.”
The Government had a responsibility to keep the terrorist threat to the UK “under very careful scrutiny”, he added.
“We think it’s right to keep the public informed about the general threat level.”
Mr Miliband said the Christmas Day attack demonstrated “the links that can exist between different terrorist groups”.
But he told BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show that he would wait to see whether the tape was authentic.
“Let’s wait to see what he actually says; we know that the al-Qaeda senior leadership are in the badlands of the Afghan-Pakistan border, probably on the Pakistan side,” he said.
“We know too that the Detroit attack was the first time that al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula, which is a sub-group of the al-Qaeda franchise ... represents an attack on the West rather than an attack within the Middle East.
“Let’s see what he says but it obviously demonstrates both the dangers that exist but also the links that can exist between different terrorist groups.”
Mr Miliband said that there was an important meeting about Yemen on Wednesday. The meeting in London, called by Gordon Brown, will be attended by representatives of the Yemeni government, regional powers and Britain’s allies, probably including US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
It will come one day before a key conference in London on the future strategy of allied forces in Afghanistan, to be attended by President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan.
Source:The Times
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