Al-Qaeda ‘preparing to attack’ Asian city

[beetbox]

Al-Qaeda ‘preparing to attack’ Asian city
By Martin Arnold in Paris
Published: August 25 2005 21:53 | Last updated: August 26 2005 03:02

Al-Qaeda is preparing an attack on a big financial centre in Asia, such as Tokyo, Sydney or Singapore, to undermine investor confidence in the region, France's top terrorist investigator warned yesterday.

Jean-Louis Bruguière told the Financial Times yesterday that several Asian countries were less prepared than the US or Europe for such an attack.

“We are somewhat neglecting the capacity or desire of the al-Qaeda organisation to destabilise the south-east Asia region,” said the respected judge, who has orchestrated the arrests of hundreds of terrorist suspects in the past 20 years.

“We have several elements of information that make us think that countries in this region, especially Japan, could have been targeted,” said Mr Bruguière.

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/33cb0c4c-15a8-11da-8085-00000e2511c8.html

[KyndCulture]

1. last time I checked a map Sydney is not in Asia....

weird article.

[saigon68]

13. more Smoke and Mirrors

[psychopomp]

20. And the threat is real

I live in Japan and I know that the government is taking the threat quite seriously. Non-Japanese, even westerners, are being sussed out for possible links to "al-Qaeda" even in outlying areas.

[StrafingMoose]

2. Fixed..

"Al-Qaeda is preparing an attack on a big financial centre in Asia, such as Tokyo, Sydney or Singapore, to warn China and South Korea not to use their incredible powers over America's economy with their huge shares of US Treasury bonds."

Fixed :P

[Roland99]

3. Considering the # of extremists around Indonesia, this is a surprise?

[Henny Penny]

4. translation.....

"When China finally pulls the plug on the dollar, we have set up a simultaneous attack on an asian financial target... so we can blame the terrawists for any subsequent economic collapse..."

[StrafingMoose]

15. You read my mind...

[DemoTex]

5. Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, or Jakarta .. logistically.

Singapore being the most "western" could be the one.


Sirius

[goforit]

6. LOL!!!!......Now Asian cities???

I guess Al Qaeda (*) isn't getting the respect they wanted.

[GoBlue]

7. I had to laugh...

I was going to comment on the possibility that this particular headline is deliberately calibrated to make the reader believe that hard intelligence is available which backs up the obvious speculation that any competent professional could proffer. Especially when they put 'preparing to attack' in quotes and no where in the article does such a quote appear.

But when I went to the FT article guess who was advertising on the page?

Singapore Airlines ' A New Class of Travel'.

Especially ironic when you think about the regular readers of FT.

[VegasWolf]

8. Humm, is Bush using Al Quaeda again to warn China? nt

[Javaman]

9. Wow, so now there is Asian "chatter", huh?

Bullshit detector going wild!

[leesa]

10. Yup. Japan announces they are pulling troops out of Iraq and, lo and

behold, an AlQaeda threat. The Neocons are at it again. How many times does this have to happen before people get the connection?

[wli]

11. they've already figured it out

We can only hope these fascists get stopped before they get us into a war that REALLY hurts us.

[beetbox]

12. al-Qaeda is a concoction from the minds of a larger group of terrorists

Using the anti-terrorist cause as a cover the United States has occupied Afghanistan, Iraq and will soon move to impose their “democratic order” on the Greater Middle East, Shebarshin said. “The U.S. has usurped the right to attack any part of the globe on the pretext of fighting the terrorist threat,” Shebarshin said.

Referring to his meeting with an unnamed al-Qaeda expert at the Rand Corporation, a nonprofit research organization in the U.S., Shebarshin said: “We have agreed that is not a group but a notion.”

“The fight against that all-mighty ubiquitous myth deliberately linked to Islam is of great advantage for the Americans as it targets the oil-rich Muslim regions,” Shebarshin emphasized.

[wli]

14. al Qaeda is also a CIA operation n/t

[mallard]

16. Re: Al-Qaida planning Asian attack, expert warns

Re: Taiwan News - 8/27/05 - Front Page (no link yet available)
Al-Qaida planning Asian attack, expert warns
AFP/London

"Al-Qaida is preparing an attack on a big financial center in Asia, such as Tokyo, Singapore or Sydney, to undermine investor confidence in the region, France's top terrorist investigator says.

"In an interview with the Financial Times newspaper, Jean-Louis Bruguiere added that several Asian countries are less prepared than Britain or the United Staes for such an attack.

"'We have elements of information that make us think that countries in this region, especially Japan, could have been targeted' by the al-Qaida network, the investigating magistrate said."


This Mr Bruguiere seems to have an inside track. It must be time for Tokyo to contract out some consultants in the domestic security overhaul business.

[Patrick_Star]

17. Is that FrontPageNews?

That's Farah's right-wing rag, right? Well, if Faux News confirms, it must be true!

[tocqueville]

18. Profile: France's top anti-terror judge

By Henri Astier
BBC News Online

Napoleon Bonaparte defined the examining magistrate as "the most powerful man in France". No French examining magistrate is more powerful than Jean-Louis Bruguiere.

An anti-terrorist judge for more than 20 years, he played a major role bringing to justice the man known as Carlos the Jackal and Libyan officials convicted of blowing up airliners in the 1980s.

Bruguiere has tracked down terror suspects for two decades
In recent years, Mr Bruguiere has rounded up hundreds of suspected militants at home, and earned a global reputation as a key player in the fight against al-Qaeda.

........

Mr Bruguiere, who once carried a magnum pistol and is still sometimes nicknamed "the sheriff", has set his sights on Islamic militants for the past decade.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3031640.stm

[tocqueville]

19. I would take this seriously

Brugière normally leaks to the FT and cannot be accused of "working for Bush"


France Finds 'Zero' al-Qaeda Links with Iraq

by Mark Huband
The Financial Times
October 4, 2002
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1031119928207&p=1012571727088


Years of investigations into radical Islamic groups have not produced a "trace" of evidence of a link between Iraq and Osama bin Laden's (pictured) al-Qaeda terrorist network, France's leading terrorist investigator said on Friday.

His remarks come after George W. Bush, US president, Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser, and Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, claimed last week that Saddam Hussein's regime and al-Qaeda were tied.

But Jean-Louis Bruguière told the Financial Times: "We have not found any link between al-Qaeda and Iraq. Not a trace. There is no foundation, according to our investigations, for the information given by the Americans."

http://billstclair.com/911timeline/2002/financialtimes100402.html

google Bruguière and Asia and you'll find that he has warned several times about such an Al Quaeda action

and the latest information above is published in serious French newspapers

http://permanent.nouvelobs.com/etranger/20050826.FAP8240.html?1533

[Deja Q]

21. You mean, they plan to help America's economy? Whew-boy...

I mean, with everything America makes, this can only help us...

Whoops, wait a minute... we make nothing except lawyers and lawsuits, (and homeless). Never mind!