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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1687360.ece

Their April story on the “Hiroshima and Nagasaki” threat has been validated.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article2042342.ece

From The Sunday Times
July 8, 2007

Car bombs are linked with Iraq’s Al-Qaeda
David Leppard (excerpt)

AT least one of the suspects being quizzed over the alleged plot to set off car bombs in Britain was in recent contact with Al-Qaeda in Iraq, senior security officials said yesterday.

Scotland Yard’s Counter Terrorism Command SO15 is understood to have uncovered evidence that in the months leading up to the attacks one or more of the suspects communicated by telephone or e-mail with terrorist leaders in Iraq.

The development has fuelled a theory that the failed attacks in London and Glasgow were designed as a farewell to Tony Blair to punish him for his role in Iraq. Details of the Al-Qaeda role in the three failed car bombings are expected to emerge over the next few days.

The development suggests that intelligence received by MI5 earlier this year about a possible Al-Qaeda attack to mark Blair’s departure was accurate. A report in April by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) warned that a senior Iraqi Al-Qaeda commander had outlined details of a big attack on Britain.

The report said the commander “stressed the need to take care to ensure the attack was successful and on a large scale”. It was aimed “ideally” to take place before Blair stepped down. It said JTAC, which is based at MI5’s London headquarters, was “aware that AQI [Al-Qaeda in Iraq] . . . networks are active in the UK”.

Thanks for the link NW. What a terribly evil person to be a suicide bomber.

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In Morocco's 'Chemist,' A Glimpse of Al-Qaeda Bombmaker Typified Resilient Network
Saturday, July 7, 2007

CASABLANCA, Morocco -- On March 6, Moroccan police surrounded a cybercafe here and arrested a fugitive who many people assumed had fled the country or was dead. Saad al-Houssaini, known as "the Chemist" because of his scientific training and bombmaking skills, had vanished four years earlier after he was accused of helping to organize the deadliest terrorist attack in Moroccan history.

It turned out that Houssaini hadn't gone anywhere. Since 2003, according to Moroccan police documents, he had remained underground in Casablanca as he rebuilt a terrorist operative network and recruited fighters to go to Iraq. He also spent time honing his bombmaking techniques, designing explosives belts that investigators believe were used in a string of suicide attacks this spring, including one that targeted the U.S. Consulate in this North African port city.

"The Chemist" provides a vivid example of how veteran members of al-Qaeda's central command have continued to plot major terrorist attacks around the world, particularly in Europe, North Africa and Iraq, despite the capture or deaths of many of the network's top operatives since Sept. 11, 2001. His long underground career demonstrates the limits of stepped-up anti-terrorism cooperation between governments in the past five years -- Houssaini, now 38, eluded not just Moroccan authorities but intelligence agents from France, Spain and the United States who feared he was involved with sleeper cells in Europe.

Excerpted

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/06/AR2007070602304.html?hpid=topnews

Suicide bomber kills 105 in Iraq village
July 08, 2007

A SUICIDE truck bomber ripped the heart out of a northern Iraqi village today, killing at least 105 people and demolishing dozens of homes and shops, police and medics said.

Ambulances and private cars ferried dozens of bloodied corpses and wounded civilians to clinics in the nearby town of Tuz Khurmatu and the provincial capital Kirkuk, where desperate relatives waited for news of the missing.

Officials were stunned by the scale of the blast, which devastated the main market in Emerli, a small rural community of people from Iraq's Shiite Turkmen minority living in an area notorious for al-Qaeda militants.

Excerpted

http://www.news.com.au/sundaytelegraph/story/0,22049,22037458-5012771,00.html