Two articles on Al Qaeda threats to Maritime Industry one is from the UK and the other is from Australia/New Zealand. Have there been articles such as these recently in the U.S.?
#1 UK Article - 02-18-04:
Al Qaeda Threat to Maritime Industry Growing
18 Feb 2004 19:12:07 GMT
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L18608853.htm By Stefano Ambrogi
LONDON, Feb 18 (Reuters) - The global maritime industry, already plagued by organised crime, is increasingly vulnerable to seaborne attack by al Qaeda guerrillas, security experts said on Wednesday.
"We believe al Qaeda and its associates may be planning a maritime 'spectacular'," said Dominick Donald, a senior analyst with Aegis Defence Services, a leading London-based risk and security consultancy.
"We think there are enough indications now that al Qaeda would like to do this, is thinking hard about it, and is probably beginning to prepare for it," said Donald, speaking at an oil and transport security conference in London.
He said oil and gas tankers and cruise ships were prime targets for al Qaeda -- blamed for the September 11 attacks -- because of their respective economic and "iconic" importance.
Donald acknowledged the threat was not new but said it was growing more acute as militant Islamist groups became more adept at sharing information on how to carry out seaborne attacks.
"There is no doubt about it: the industry is vulnerable and more attention is focused on it as a likely target," said Chris Austen, formerly a counter-terrorism specialist with Britain's Royal Navy and now managing director of Maritime Underwater Security Consultants.
Citing a surge in piracy attacks and ocean crime, he said the building blocks for an attack were already in place, particularly in little-patrolled waters around the Horn of Africa and in Southeast Asia.
"Terrorism is imitative; it learns from other terrorists, and from organised crime. If organised criminals are using the maritime environment, terrorists will follow," he said.
The International Maritime Bureau (IMB), the world's top ocean crime watchdog, said last month that piracy attacks jumped 20 percent in 2003 to 445.
Violent crime also jumped with 21 seafarers killed, 88 injured and 71 crew or passengers listed as missing.
The IMB has said it has not found any evidence linking militant groups to acts of piracy and ocean crime but said the growing lawlessness could help militant groups to gain a foothold.
Donald said militant groups could learn how to use a merchant ship as a delivery vessel for a "dirty bomb" by interrogating kidnapped mariners.
"Piracy is the perfect mask for maritime terrorism," he said.
#2 - Article from Australia/New Zealand 02-20-04:
Maritime Terrorist Act Imminent, Experts Warn
Friday, 20th February, 2004
http://www.portfocus.co.nz/news.php?cat_name=aus&s=782 A British Intelligence group has joined, visiting UN and Australian experts warning that world ports and shipping are vulnerable to a major terrorist attack
AL-QAEDA and its associates could be planning a "maritime spectacular," Dominick Donald of Aegis Research and Intelligence told a London security conference this week.
"If a boat that didn't cost $1,000 managed to devastate an oil tanker of that magnitude, imagine the extent of the danger that threatens the West's commercial lifeline, which is petroleum," he said.
Donald was referring to concerns raised since the attack on the oil tanker VLCC Limburg.
Addressing delegates at the Intermodal Petroleum Transportation event, Donald warned that the maritime sector was an obvious and easy target.
"Maritime attacks can deliver results, as 90 per cent of world trade moves by sea and maritime traffic has a number of vulnerable choke points [such as the pirate infested] Malacca Straits, Bab-el-Mandab and the Suez and Panama Canals".
Both the tanker and the cruise sectors are "iconic and economic", Donald said.
Meanwhile former Australian transport minister Peter Morris, who nows heads the International Commission on Shipping (ICONS), has also raised the alarm that shipping could be used as a weapon of mass destruction on Australian cities.
"Any one of the thousands of foreign ships which dock each year in Australian ports, particularly Sydney, has the potential to become a weapon of mass destruction," said Mr Morris.
"The ships themselves may be the weapon," he said. "They can carry enough innocent-looking cargo - fertiliser and diesel fuel - to become the biggest bomb ever detonated in an Australian capital city or major port in war or peace."
Mr Morris said the United States, the world's largest trading nation and a prime target for terrorists, has already acknowledged the danger.
"But Australia is making itself more vulnerable than most countries by suppressing Australian shipping in favour of foreign shipping and relying almost totally on offshore-registered ships where the real owners or operators of freighters, tankers, and bulk carriers are easily concealed."
Most ships calling in Australian ports are registered in countries like Liberia and Panama, which fail to even make a pretence of knowing the real ownership of those ships.
A recent bipartisan review of Australian shipping conducted by Mr Morris and the former Minister for Transport in the Howard government, John Sharp, warned that there was conflict between the Federal Government's two aims of cheap shipping and the simultaneous strengthening of our border protection.