NEW YORK: US and Pakistani authorities fear a meeting of terrorist leaders in Pakistan was the precursor to a major al-Qa'ida attack on America, according to Time magazine.
Authorities discovered a "second string" of terrorist leaders met in the remote northwestern province of Waziristan in March, the magazine reported yesterday.
"The personalities involved, the operations, the fact an explosives expert came here and went back, all this was extremely significant," Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said.
Some US officials fear the summit meeting might have been a key planning session ahead of a major attack -- just as the September 11, 2001, strike on the US was preceded by an al-Qa'ida gathering in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, 11 months earlier.
A US official described those at the Pakistan summit as "cold-blooded killers who are very skilled at what they do and have an intense desire to inflict an awful lot of pain and suffering on America".
Participants included Abu Issa al Hindi, an Indian convert to radical Islam and surveillance specialist living in Britain; Adnan el Shukrijumah, a commercial pilot and bombmaker of Arab-Guyanese origin; and Mohammed Junaid Babar, a Pakistani-American who arrived at the summit with cash, sleeping bags and ponchos, Time reported.
Al Hindi is now under arrest in Britain, and Mohammed Babar was arrested in New York in April.
Others, including Shukrijumah, 29, are still at large. Shukrijumah "speaks English and has the ability to fit in and look innocuous", an FBI agent told Time.
Shukrijumah was born in Guyana and raised in Florida, where his late father, a Saudi-Yemeni cleric, preached hardline Wahhabism at a small mosque. He reportedly holds passports from Guyana and Trinidad, and may also have Canadian and Saudi passports. He can easily pass for Hispanic and authorities fear he may cross the Canadian or Mexican borders.
The FBI said Shukrijumah could be the "next Atta", a reference to Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian ringleader of the September 11 attacks.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Authorities are testing a suspicious powder mailed to the U.S. Embassy in Malaysia to determine whether it is anthrax, officials said Monday after the second such scare at a U.S. mission in Asia within a week.
The powder was mailed with an intimidating leaflet from an unknown group called Jemaah Muhajirin Mohamad, demanding Washington remove its troops from Iraq “or face the consequences.” It threatened to blow up the embassy and kill or kidnap Americans in Malaysia, said Abdul Aziz Bulat, Kuala Lumpur’s police chief of criminal investigations.
“We think that it’s just a hoax and this group is nonexistent, but we will take precautions by investigating this seriously,” Abdul Aziz told The Associated Press.
"Shukrijumah was born in Guyana and raised in Florida, where his late father, a Saudi-Yemeni cleric, preached hardline Wahhabism at a small mosque. He reportedly holds passports from Guyana and Trinidad, and may also have Canadian and Saudi passports. He can easily pass for Hispanic and authorities fear he may cross the Canadian or Mexican borders."
This has been my concern for the past couple of months. It
is almost like the powers that be are reading our thread.
FNC did report today the last time they had a meeting such as this was pre 911