Canadians among targets on al-Qaida website
Ian MacLeod
Canwest News Service
Published: Tuesday, July 29, 2008
OTTAWA — A virulent al-Qaida 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 notorious and 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, entitled “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-Qaida'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.
An urban cell needs a commanding unit, an intelligence unit, a logistics unit and an execution unit, it explains. The units are to communicate indirectly through using the dead letter box technique. Further, the intelligence cell that collects information on a target must not know the purpose of the information. The cell that secures weapons and equipment must not know the target or the time of execution.
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.”
Human targets, according to the Jamestown synopsis, should be prioritized as follows:
1. Jews: Jews from Israel and the U.S. have priority over Jews from Britain and France.
2. Christians, especially those from Canada, the U.S., Britain, Spain, Australia and Italy.
3. Apostates, particularly Muslim leaders who keep close ties with Jewish and “Christian governments,” such as Egyptian President Husni Mubarak and the leaders of the Gulf States.
4. Secular individuals, including “spies and security officials” who “protect Jews and Christians.”
