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Jihadist cells urged to kill Canadians
Target petroleum facilities
Ian MacLeod , Canwest News Service
Published: Monday, July 28, 2008

OTTAWA - A virulent al-Qaida website has issued a new call for
followers to kill Canadians and other westerners and attack oil and
economic targets.

The message on the password-protected al-Ekhlaas.net  forum was posted
July 7, the third anniversary of the London transit massacre. The
website is a notorious and favoured site of hardcore jihadists.

Experts are debating the significance of the latest al-Ekhlaas threat
calling for the targeting of Christians, especially those from Canada
the United States, Britain, Spain, Australia and Italy.

Most unsettling, perhaps, is the instructional nature of the posting.
Details of the Arabic-language posting, entitled "Clandestine work
inside the city," were recently translated and reported by the
Jamestown Foundation, a conservative Washington think-tank.

Under the nom de guerre Abu Hajar Abdul Aziz al-Moqrin (the former
leader of al-Qaida's Saudi wing killed in 2004), the posting explains
how a four-unit jihadist cell should be properly trained in urban
terror warfare before activation.

An urban cell needs a commanding unit, an intelligence unit, a
logistics unit and an execution unit, it explains. The units are to
communicate indirectly through using the dead letter box technique (or
"save draft" drop box on a shared e-mail account.)

Further, the intelligence cell that collects information on a target
must not know the purpose of the information. The cell that secures
weapons and equipment must not know the target or the time of
execution.

Al-Moqrin warns jihadists not to attack religious figures because it
harms the cause. Instead, urban cells should seek economic targets,
such as Jewish investments in Muslim countries, international
companies, international economic experts, exports from "Crusader
countries" and raw materials being "stolen from Muslim countries by
the enemies," with al-Moqrin calling for attacks on oil wells,
pipelines and oil tankers.

Human targets, according to the Jamestown synopsis, should be
prioritized as follows:

1. Jews: Jews from Israel and the United States have priority over
Jews from Britain and France.

2. Christians, especially those from Canada, the United States,
Britain, Spain, Australia and Italy.

3. Apostates, particularly Muslim leaders who keep close ties with
Jewish and "Christian governments," such as Egyptian President Husni
Mubarak and the leaders of the Gulf States.

4. Secular individuals, including "spies and security officials" who
"protect Jews and Christians."

Terrorism experts are divided on the message's import.

"The reference to Canada is fairly peripheral and embedded in a broad
anti-'kufar' (non-believer) strategy targeting Jews, Christians,
apostate Muslim leaders, and 'secular officials'," says Wesley Wark, a
security expert and visiting research professor at the University of
Ottawa's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.

"The main interest in the story would seem to me the effort taken on
some jihadi websites to try to encourage professionalism and
clandestinity in terrorist operations.

"This is surely a response to the knowledge that home-grown and
loosely affiliated terror networks will normally be lacking in
operational knowledge and experience, especially around surveillance
and security. The website is another reminder that the Internet is a
powerful tool for jihad and al-Qaida and recognized by them as such."

Martin Rudner, founding director of the Canadian Centre of
Intelligence and Security Studies, believes the specific threat to oil
interests and possibly overseas corporate executives is worrying,
especially for Canadian energy interests in places such as Yemen,
where the offices of Calgary-based Nexen Inc. were shaken by a bomb
blast in April.

That followed a federal government threat assessment, obtained by The
Canadian Press last fall, that said Canada's international - and
domestic - oil facilities represent an "ideologically attractive and
strategic target," to al-Qaida.

In February 2007, The Al-Qaida Organization in the Arabian Peninsula,
the same group once led by al-Moqrin's namesake, called for terrorist
strikes against Canada's oil and natural gas facilities to "choke the
U.S. economy."

The latest message, Rudner said Monday, should be viewed with real
concern, but not alarm, for three reasons:

. al-Ekhlaas is a legitimate militant Islamist website;

. the call to target oil and energy infrastructure and individuals is
specific;

. and, the message may be a formal warning required by Sharia law
before jihadists can attack.

© Ottawa Citizen 2008

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