Posted on 08/30/2002 9:28:47 AM PDT by knighthawk
AMSTERDAM - According the Dutch justice department a group of muslim-extremists arrested in Rotterdam plotted an attack on a nuclear target, just across the Belgian border with the Netherlands. It looks that they were not able to plan much of the operation, but for the justice department this information could be of great importance in the case against this group.
A French and an Algerian man that were arrested two days after September 11 in Rotterdam, and an Algerian ex-roommate that was later arrested in Canada, planned an attack on the NATO-base 'Kleine Brogel' in Flamish Limburg. At that base, somewhat to the south of Valkenswaard, are rumored to be ten American nuclear weapons.
Already in October an officer of the French department of justice announced that intelligence services had evidence that al-Qaeda was planning an attack on a nuclear target in the US or Europe. The airspace above American nuclear powerplants was closed for a while and France placed anti-aircraft weapons near it's nuclear plants. Experts agree that al-Qaeda is trying to somehow top the destruction of the World Trade Center.
That the 'Kleine Brogel' was a target, so close to the Netherlands, is frightening. But it's not said that the Netherlands escaped a disaster. The suspects belong, according to the AIVD (Dutch security service), to the radical islamic movement Takfir wal Hidjra, important within the al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden. In these circles, planning attacks is a daily occupation. This does not lead to action every time. There is a lot of fantacizing.
An attack on 'Kleine Brogel' was also very difficult. The nuclear weapons are well secured. But an attack on a nuclear target would have caused a lot of panic, and therefor could be effective even without destroying the base.
The question is what the role of the suspects arrested in Rotterdam was. Until now it looked like they only were involved in passports and credit-card forgery. And they also 'knew' a lot of people. Jerôme C. once lived together with Zaccarias Moussaoui, the 'twentiest hijacker', that is being held in the US. There were phone-calls with Nizar T., an Tunisian man from Brussels that wanted to bomb the American embassy in Paris. From them the information about the attack on the NATO-base orginates.
Until now it looked like the justice department in Rotterdam only arrested a supporting cell, low in the al-Qaeda hierarchy. Monday, when Jerôme C., Abdelkader R. and Adel T. reappear in court, the DA-office will make clear what their role in the planned 'Kleine Brogel'-attack was.
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Wow! would that be the home of Limburger cheese?
sorry, the devil made me do it. I LOVE Limburger cheese!
They should be careful what they wish for since islam will become extinct.
They'll find out to their detriment that it ain't so. They're christian countries and they're on the hit list as well.
I'd be really surprised if this were true. First, I don't think we'd deploy nukes there and secondly, I can't imagine that Belgium would allow us to.
That said, good job by the Dutch authorities for taking these guys off the street.
That's comforting. They just sit around all day planning attacks, but most of the time they don't do it. < /sarcasm>
If the authorities know this much, wouldn't it be a good idea to GET THEM OUT!?
Not if the U.S. military has let the terrorists inside.
Al Qaida In The Ranks? Non-citizen (Naval) reservist suspected of ties to terrorist network.
Scary stuff, though from the sounds of it this would probably have been more a propaganda attack than anything else.
I think you are absolutely 100% on the money. Their publicly expressed goal it to rule the entire world in the name of Islam. They literally intend to force their religion upon us, or kill us if we refuse.
OK, to a simple man like me, this is the same thing as declaring yourself to be my mortal enemy. Fine, I'm already packing my hollowpoints with bacon fat. But please explain how to distinguish between the "Islam/Religion of Peace" Muslims and the Jihadis, because they really do all look the same to me.
Who knows, maybe the only way to tell a good Muslim will be if he has converted to Christianity. Or if he's on a slab with a tag on his toe.
IMHO it would be much better for their cohorts to wonder and worry but not KNOW if they are going to be next on the agenda for being taken into custody.
A nuclear weapons storage dump would also be a poor target. Aside from the fact that its a small target, even if weapons were stored there they would be done so in "safe" mode. They aren't normally placed in combat mode until a short time before they are intended to be used. Only if they are placed in combat configuration is there a chance they can be cooked off by a conventional blast and fire, and even that is unlikely, since you need to actuate the detonation pulse exactly as you would have if you were deliberately setting it off. Just burning up the implosive charge won't cause a nuclear explosion. That would be similar to a "safe" detonation, wherein you destroy the weapon (deliberately) without it making a big boom (sometimes called single-point safe, because you start the implosion charge detonation from a single position, rather than multiple points, and that just blows up the core, rather than imploding it).
There have been instances of those occurring during the atmospheric testing program in the 1950s and early 1960s. The launch complex at Johnston Island had some plutonium contamination from a couple of launch failures during the high-altitude detonation testing program. The launch vehicle carrying the warhead either failed or went off course, and the safety officer destroyed the warhead and rocket (rather than having an intact nuke come down and possibly lie around somewhere unrecovered). Some of the fragmented plutonium core fell back down on the island. It was no big deal, they cleaned it up (unshielded plutonium particles are easy to find with and alpha-sensitive survey meter) and kept on with the tests.
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