Al Qaeda is Targetting All Oil Producers

Al Qaeda has a pretty well orchestrated plan. They are going after oil production sources, seeking to destabilize the government, kill foreigners and destroy oil facilities anywhere they can.
BakuSun > Baku terrorists thwarted

A group with Al-Qaeda trained operatives attempted to recruit young women as suicide bombers and target expatriate business in Baku during a failed bid to destabilize Azerbaijan, according to an investigation into the case released by the Ministry of National Security. Last month, a six-person cell was jailed for “planning terrorist attacks in areas dense with people in Baku, in places where many foreigners live and work, in the security ministries, in strategically important locations and infrastructure sites,” according to security ministry spokesman quoted by international media. Reports of a closed-door trial against six men said to have unspecified links to Al-Qaeda surfaced in January but the security ministry refused to release details of the case at the time, citing “state interests” and prompting rights groups to say that the case was unfounded.

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Baku terrorists thwarted
Baku Sun Staff
BAKU — A group with Al-Qaeda trained operatives attempted to recruit young women as suicide bombers and target expatriate business in Baku during a failed bid to destabilize Azerbaijan, according to an investigation into the case released by the Ministry of National Security. Last month, a six-person cell was jailed for “planning terrorist attacks in areas dense with people in Baku, in places where many foreigners live and work, in the security ministries, in strategically important locations and infrastructure sites,” according to security ministry spokesman quoted by international media.
Reports of a closed-door trial against six men said to have unspecified links to Al-Qaeda surfaced in January but the security ministry refused to release details of the case at the time, citing “state interests” and prompting rights groups to say that the case was unfounded.
Led by Amiraslan Iskanderov, who the ministry said trained and fought with Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan where he learned to use explosives and “poisonous substances” between 1999 and 2003, the group’s six members were handed sentences ranging from three to 14 years last month. “Members of the group were active in training Shehid-Kamikazes (martyr suicide bombers), trying to attract young women with radical religious views and they were able to get some of them to agree (to blow themselves up),” a spokesman for the ministry told Agence France Press late last week.
They also planned “massive” attacks in the regions of predominantly Muslim Azerbaijan according to the ministry, “to which ends they acquired the recipes for a number of poisonous substances.”
Azerbaijan is the only Muslim nation with troops in the U.S.-led coalition fighting in Iraq and is home to thousands of Westerners who work predominantly in the Caspian nation’s oil industry.
Late last year, an audio tape said to have been recorded by Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden called on his supporters to attack Persian Gulf oil supplies. While no details of plans to specifically target oil-producing regions outside the Gulf surfaced, the porous nature of the terrorist network has worried the petroleum industry around the world.
Last week, Kazakh national security officials met with their Azerbaijani counterparts to take measures against the possibility of Caspian oil platforms and fields being subject to attacks. The two nations said their coast guards have stepped up security on fields and vowed to coordinate maritime border protection.
Meanwhile in Baku, an outspoken rights advocate cast doubt on the security ministry’s allegations, saying the charges against Iskanderov and the others were trumped up to please Azerbaijan’s Western backers.
“If they had real proof that these people were actually terrorists, they would have held an open trial for them so that journalists could monitor its progress,” said Leyla Yunusova of the Azerbaijan Peace and Democracy Institute who has studied court documents from the case. “In reality, the investigation did not have proof of their guilt,” she said.
Agence France Press and local media reports were used in this report
Programming by Ayten Alizadeh. Copyight by IntraNS. All rights reserved.