QAEDA FIGURE ZARQAWI SAYS HE'S IN IRAQ FOR 'HOLY WAR'
May 26, 2004 — DUBAI (Reuters) - A statement purportedly from al Qaeda-linked militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi says he is in Iraq, waging "holy war" against U.S.-led occupation forces to establish a Muslim state.
"I am in Iraq now waging holy war with my brothers to establish a nation for Islam and a state for the Koran," said the Arabic-language statement claiming to be from Zarqawi and recently posted on Islamic Web sites.
Zarqawi and his group, Jama'at al-Tawhid and Jihad, have claimed a series of suicide bombs and attacks in Iraq on U.S. troops and on Iraqi officials in recent months.
Washington accuses Zarqawi of being the leading operative of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network in Iraq. It says Zarqawi, who has a U.S. bounty of $10 million on his head, beheaded American Nicholas Berg in Iraq this month.
The Jordanian-born Islamic militant said he had earlier been in Afghanistan which he described as "the land of hopes where we are establishing the faith of God."
An earlier statement said to be from Zarqawi, which was included in a video of Berg's beheading, called on Muslims to take up the sword of Islam in Iraq against America.
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/reuters20040526_98.html
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DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources reveal that US counter-terrorist authorities are focusing on tracking down two key suspects: a 32-year old Pakistani woman called Aafaya Siddiqui, doctor of neurology who attended a university in the Boston area, and Adnan G. Al Shukrijmah, an al Qaeda activist known to have spent time in Florida.
Our sources add that American and foreign counter-terror and intelligence agencies are also hunting for
Midaat Mursi, known as Abu Khabab, prominent member of al Qaeda’s operational partner, the Egyptian Jihad Islami, who is considered the organization’s top expert on radiological bombs. Mursi heads a number of terrorist rings who have been instructed to infiltrate the United States through Canada for a dirty bomb attack. They may have made the crossing already.
The price on the head of Musab Zarqawi, Osama bin Laden’s top operative in Iraq, may be raised from $10m to $25m after he was identified as the terrorist who beheaded Nicholas Berg. All his nets are the subject of intensive search, some composed of Saudis and Chechens trained for chemical or biological attacks and buried somewhere in Europe for some time. Efforts are also underway to locate underground terrorist cells of al Qaeda’s Far Eastern ally, Jemaa al Islamiyah, which are thought to be on their way to seize a merchant freighter or supertanker for use as a massive seaborne bomb vessel.
Several sleeper cells are also known to have infiltrated the United States in ship’s containers in 2003 and early this year. Some of these containers were spotted at important US ports with signs of occupation by men with weapons and explosives who were never caught. They may have been decoys to distract attention from landings of large parties of armed terrorists on American shores, whom intelligence sources believe headed undetected for safe houses inland to await orders to strike. (SNIP)