Sofia al-Qaeda links denied (Evidence of Al-Qaeda big in Bulgaria)

THE Director of National Security Service, General Ivan Chobanov, has rejected reports by a newspaper published in Montenegro that an associate of Osama bin Laden was living in Sofia.

Last week, the Dan newspaper wrote that this figure was co-ordinating Albanian extremists and Islamic fundamentalists to mastermind strikes against Serbia's main cities.

Boiko Borissov, Chief Secretary of the Interior Ministry, said that police and special services of Bulgaria, Albania and Serbia and Montenegro maintain a daily exchange of information on international terrorism. He categorically denied the existence of any information that there was any representative of al-Qaeda active in Sofia.

This stance was supported by the former chief of Bulgaria's National Security Service, General Atanas Atanassov, who said it was unrealistic to discuss any Sofia connection and that terrorism in Serbia was an entirely domestic problem contained within the former Yugos-lavia.

Violence against Serbian people in the southern parts of the country and Kosovo has been escalating recently. Two Serbian children were shot last week in a Kosovo village and a similar attack took place this week.

The German radio station, Deutsche Welle, also reported last week that the militant Islamic factor within the region is growing more dominant in the illegal Albanian National Army (ANA). The station reported that mujahidin who had withdrawn from Bosnia have joined the ANA and maintain contacts with al-Qaeda through Albania.

Similar reports surfaced in March 2002, when the Bosnian Dveni Avas newspaper wrote that the CIA had alerted the Bosnian government to a clandestine meeting of bin Laden aides in Sofia, thought to be planning an attack against the US embassy in Sarajevo. At the time, the US State Department denied having any information on such a meeting.

General Atanasov said that similarly unrealistic information often appears in foreign publications.

Bulgaria is a Christian country which has a large Turkish Muslim minority where al-Qaeda can hide.

Here is the story from 03/23/2002:

Al-Qaida Plot Revealed in Sarajevo "in Sarajevo something will happen to Americans similar to 9/11"

Al-Qaida terrorists planned a devastating attack on Americans in Sarajevo after meeting in Bulgaria to identify European targets, a high-ranking Bosnian official said Saturday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press that intelligence reports on the meeting in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, prompted a special government session Thursday night to discuss threats against the U.S. Embassy and embassies of European countries. He did not name the countries.

At the Sofia meeting, members of al-Qaida decided that "in Sarajevo something will happen to Americans similar to New York last September," said the official. He did not say when the al-Qaida meeting was held or who attended.

The U.S. Embassy in Bosnia shut down to the public on Wednesday after receiving word of a possible terrorist threat. The embassy closed entirely on Friday.

(click on link to read the full article)

What is al-Qaeda showing an interest in Bulgaria? Control of energy corridors of course!

This may also be part of the European jihad funnel...

From: What Is France Nervous About? (The Balkan Connection) foxnews.com ^ | Wednesday, February 05, 2003 | Special Report with Brit Hume

MANSOOR IJAZ, FOX FOREIGN AFFAIRS ANALYST: Exactly right. Because now al Qaeda has reduced itself to carrying all if its messages and all the most dangerous things that it does by hand carriage, if you will, by hand messengers.

Now, that is where we come back to what President Bush said in October of last year when he identified a senior al Qaeda leader who had gone to Iraq, received medical treatment to have a leg amputated that was blown up in the Afghan bombing campaign and then proceeded to a northern Iraqi terrorist outfit. What we have not yet heard and this is what my sources are telling me over the past two or three days, is that that leader was in fact, transported through southern Turkey using Albanian mercenaries to transport him into...

BRIT HUME, HOST: What is his name, by the way?

IJAZ: Abu Masab al-Zawkawi. He was transported through southern Turkey into the Balkans and then ended up in Paris sometime just before Ramadan started...

HUME: Last fall?

IJAZ: ... in 2002, last fall.

Now, the thing that is the most important about this is that when they uncovered the cells in Paris two weeks ago, in the apartment where they uncovered those cells, they found traces of ricin. And those traces of ricin are linked directly to this man Zawkawi.

The mention of Zarqawi's route (through southern Turkey) is quite curious given that around the same time that he was leaving Iraq there was this story that was published in the Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A42876-2002Dec11&notFound=true

It doesn't mention Zarqawi, but given what we know about him and his relationship with other al-Qaeda attacks in Europe using chemical weapons (re: Collin Powell's speech at the UN and the State Department report on global terrorism for 2002) this would seem to elevate Ali Ahmeti to the status of a top Zarqawi deputy, making him far more than simply a cog in al-Qaeda to being a major player. You recall no doubt that Zarqawi is only a small step below bin Laden himself in the organization's hierarchy.

That seems to be my understanding as well. I'd be interested to see what you think of my own take on the events of the last several months.

I've never bought the idea of Saddam as a puppet of al-Qaeda or vice versa, but there appears to have been at least some kind of understanding set up between the two to work towards the elimination of their mutual enemy (i.e. the US). The Iranian, Saudi, and Sudanese government probably have a lot more ties to al-Qaeda on an operational level going all the way back to the early 1990s, and I suspect that this is also the case within a solid chunk of the Pakistani intelligence establishment. My own hunch was that Saddam was trying to play both sides off against the middle and that he tried to use information on the Chechens that he got from al-Qaeda to get Russia on his side diplomatically both before and during the war (as well as providing what sounded like a plausible explanation at the time for why he was in contact with them to begin with). He could have passed information on the GIA and GSPC to the French as well for much the same reasons, all the while giving al-Qaeda his tacit approval and in some cases actual sanctuary and aid (re: Zarqawi and Co.) inside of Iraq. The post-Saddam collusion between the old Mukhabarat, Fedayeen, and Special Republican Guard is too extensive to ignore.

Prior to the war, there was from August to October 2002 a wave of conventional terrorist attacks all orchestrated by groups that were either linked to or were directly under the control of al-Qaeda, with the grand finale being Basayev's hostage stand-off in Moscow that was coordinated by al-Qaeda operatives across several countries from the UAE to the Ferghana Valley in Uzbekistan. I believe that this was intended to deter a US invasion of Iraq, as were the thwarted plans by Zarqawi's minions and the Algerian GIA/GSPC network in Europe to use chemical weapons against the UK, Russia (the Russian Embassy in Paris was targeted to "avenge" the dead Chechen jihadis in Moscow), Spain, and Italy.

I think the US tracked these plots all the way back to Zarqawi and finally got his superior, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Mohammed's capture threw al-Qaeda into disarray and all of the terror plots that were supposed to be launched at the onset of the Iraq war were put on hold until Saif al-Adel could reconstruct the network. This took about a month, and shortly thereafter we had Riyadh, Casablanca, and similar suicide bombings in Chechnya, with even a recent attack in July in Moscow itself. As the difference between al-Qaeda and Basayev's "rebels" is largely one of semantics and we can both recognize that it is all part of the same enemy, it seems foolish to treat them as separate enemies.

Sorry for the length, but that's basically my own reading of events.

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