New al Qaeda document sheds light on Europe, U.S. attack plans

New al Qaeda document sheds light on Europe, U.S. attack plans

By Paul Cruickshank, Tim Lister and Nic Robertson, CNN

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/20/world/new-qaeda-document/index.html

 

March 20, 2013 -- Updated 1243 GMT (2043 HKT)

The document is a letter written to Osama bin Laden in March 2010 by a

senior operational figure in the terror group.

 

    It was written by Younis al-Mauretani, a senior al Qaeda planner

    He is believed to have been behind an ambitious plan to hit "soft"

targets in Europe

    He proposed that al Qaeda recruits take jobs with companies transporting

gasoline

 

(CNN) -- A previously secret document found at Osama bin Laden's compound in

Pakistan sets out a detailed al Qaeda strategy for attacking targets in

Europe and the United States.

 

The document -- a letter written to bin Laden in March 2010 by a senior

operational figure in the terror group -- reveals that tunnels, bridges,

dams, undersea pipelines and internet cables were among the targets.

 

READ: Should we still fear al Qaeda?

 

It was written by Younis al-Mauretani, a senior al Qaeda planner thought to

have been behind an ambitious plan to hit "soft" targets in Europe in the

fall of 2010.

 

The U.S. Department of Justice passed the letter to German prosecutors last

year for use in an ongoing trial in Dusseldorf because it possibly refers to

one of the defendants, according to the German newspaper Die Zeit,

 

CNN has obtained details of the document from sources briefed on its

contents. The 17-page letter is in Arabic.

 

Al-Mauretani proposed that al Qaeda recruits take jobs with companies

transporting gasoline and and other sensitive companies in the West, and

await the right moment to strike.

 

He said targets should include tunnels, airports and even "Love Parades" --

gay and lesbian events held every summer in Germany. He said recruits should

infiltrate university courses in the West in key subjects useful to the

group including physics and chemistry, so that they could later be

re-activated and help the group, according to Die Zeit.

 

He also suggested attaching mines to undersea pipelines using

mini-submarines -- and appears to have researched ways to circumvent safety

valves on such pipelines. Al Mauretani also proposed that al Qaeda attack

financial centers and think-tanks -- specifically mentioning the RAND

Corporation, whose headquarters are in California.

 

Asked if it was aware of the threat, a spokesman for RAND told CNN that "as

a matter of policy, the RAND Corporation does not comment on specific

security issues or potential threats."

 

Yassin Musharbash, an investigative reporter with Die Zeit in Berlin, says

the document seems "to support information gleaned from other terror trials

that Al Qaeda in 2010 was trying to plan a comprehensive plot against the

West," and al-Mauretani appears to have been bent on "hitting Europe and the

U.S. by targeting critical infrastructure and economic targets."

 

Some of al-Mauretani's ideas may seem far-fetched, but they underline al

Qaeda's continuing fascination with bringing down airliners. He proposed

that men recruited into the Yemeni al Qaeda affiliate AQAP become pilots

with airlines, and then drug their co-pilots before flying the plane into a

target. One target he identified was the massive petrochemical facility at

Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia.

 

Al Mauretani suggested that Osama bin Laden signal the go-ahead for attacks

in Europe with a public message that al Qaeda's patience with Europe had run

out. And he had a clear sense of how to finance attacks, saying that al

Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) had "millions" and its leaders trusted

him, according to Die Zeit. Mauretani himself was originally from Mauritania

in north-west Africa.

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Sources briefed on the contents of the letter told CNN that al-Mauretani

wrote that al Qaeda Central in Pakistan could only cover the starting costs

of the operation against Europe and additional costs would have to be

covered by AQIM and others. Analysts tell CNN al-Mauretani's call for the

various nodes of al Qaeda to work together was emblemmatic of a shift within

the terrorist network towards greater coordination and pooling of resources.

 

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Al-Mauretani added that AQIM had a "great deal of trust" in him, according

to the sources. According to analysts the North African operative paved the

way for direct cooperation between AQIM and al Qaeda's senior leadership in

the late 2000s after he travelled to Pakistan. In late 2011 Moktar

Belmoktar, then a senior figure in AQIM, told a Mauritanian journalist that

al-Mauretani was the "first direct contact between us and our brothers in

Al-Qaeda."

 

Bin Laden appears to have liked the ideas in al-Mauretani's letter, and

assigned them high priority. Other documents found at his Pakistani compound

in Abbottabad suggest he forwarded it to at least one other senior figure in

al Qaeda.

 

In around June 2010, bin Laden wrote to senior Libyan operative Atiyah abd

al Rahman, then al Qaeda's head of operations in Waziristan, instructing him

to tell the leaders of the al Qaeda affiliates AQIM in North Africa and AQAP

in Yemen to "put forward their best in cooperating" with al-Mauretani "in

whatever he asks of them."

 

"Hint to the brothers in the Islamic Maghreb that they provide him with the

financial support that he might need in the next six months, to the tune of

approximately 200,000 euros," bin Laden wrote.

 

CNN has learned the document was sent to German prosecutors by the Justice

Department after they had asked for any information the United States might

have about three men from the Dusseldorf area charged with planning an

attack in Germany on behalf of al Qaeda in April 2011. CNN asked the Justice

Department about the document but has so far received no comment.

 

According to Die Zeit, the reason the letter was relayed to the Germans was

because al-Mauretani mentions a Moroccan in the document with exactly the

same date of birth as Abdeladim el-K, who prosecutors claim was the

ringleader of the alleged Dusseldorf cell and trained with al Qaeda in

Pakistan in 2010.

 

Sources briefed on the contents of the document told CNN that al-Mauretani

appears to suggest the Moroccan should travel to join up with militants in

Somalia if his mission failed.

 

Sources say three FBI officials will testify at the trial in Dusseldorf

Wednesday on the authenticity of the document. Defense lawyers say they have

"fundamental doubts" about the document.

 

As for al-Mauretani, he is unlikely to have any role in bringing his terror

plans to fruition. He was picked up by Pakistani police in Quetta in August

2011 and remains in detention.

 

Pakistani authorities appear to have uncovered some of his terror plans. In

announcing his arrest a month later, they stated: al-Mauretani "was tasked

personally by Osama bin Laden to focus on hitting targets of economical

importance in United States of America, Europe and Australia, including gas

pipelines, power generating dams and oil tankers."

 

Several of al-Mauretani's western recruits -- trained in the tribal

territories of Pakistan -- have been arrested on their return home.

 

American al Qaeda recruit Bryant Neal Vinas testified at his trial that that

he had drawn a map for al-Mauretani in mid-2008, showing Long Island

Railroad lines.

 

Al-Mauretani had decided the best scheme would be to launch a suicide

bombing on a train as it entered a tunnel. And he told Vinas that preferably

a white operative with Western travel documents would be tasked to carry out

the attack.

 

In 2010, al-Mauretani was seen as the mastermind of planned attacks in

Europe. Fears that such attacks would materialize led the U.S. State

Department to issue a travel alert in October 2010.

 

Sources briefed on the letter told CNN that al-Mauretani requested bin Laden

issue a statement saying al Qaeda's patience with Europe had run out

following the al Qaeda leader's previous offering of a conditional truce,

and that his statement needed to be choreographed with an attack shortly

afterwards.

 

"We ask you undertake certain steps in order to threaten Europe before the

attacks happen. And these steps should be in synch with the preparations of

those attacks. Inform Europe that patience has come to an end, as has our

hope that they end their campaign against us. Also [make clear] that they

have not understood our message thus far. One or two weeks after that we

will strike ... and then we will threaten them again. After we hit Europe we

will hit America, so we isolate the Americans," the sources said

al-Mauretani wrote in the letter.

 

Die Zeit's Musharbash says al-Mauretani's blueprint "has very likely little

operational value now. But certain ideas may have trickled down and may

still be alive elsewhere in the network."

 

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