Bin Laden takes credit for airline bombing plot

BEIRUT — Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden claimed responsibility for the Christmas Day attempt to blow up an American civilian jet in an audiotape broadcast Sunday on Arab television.

U.S. intelligence officials quickly raised doubts
about bin Laden’s role and suggested the statement was an attempt to
score propaganda points for a plot already claimed by an increasingly
independent faction of his movement in Yemen.

In the clip, bin Laden said his group was behind the
failed attempt allegedly carried out by Nigerian national Umar Farouk
Abdulmutallab to blow up a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight.

Speaking directly to President Barack Obama, the al-Qaida leader vowed to continue launching terrorist attacks against the United States as long as Washington supported what he described as Israel’s unjust treatment of Palestinians.

“From Osama to Obama: Peace upon the one who follows
guidance,” he said on the tape, broadcast on the pan-Arab Al Jazeera
satellite news channel, his image appearing on the screen as he spoke.
“America will not dream of security until we experience it as a reality
in Palestine.”

U.S. intelligence officials on Sunday did not cast
doubt on the authenticity of the tape. But they expressed skepticism
that bin Laden or his lieutenants, believed to be based in Pakistan, played a meaningful role in conceiving or executing the Christmas Day plot.

“Al-Qaida in Yemen takes strategic guidance from al-Qaida’s leadership in the tribal areas in Pakistan,” a U.S. intelligence official said. “But we’ve never seen indications that the senior al-Qaida leaders in Pakistan have directed tactical, day-to-day operational planning for them in Yemen. Their relationship hasn’t really functioned that way.”

No evidence has surfaced to indicate that Abdulmutallab traveled to Pakistan
in preparation for the plot. Instead, U.S. spy agencies in recent weeks
have had to acknowledge their failure to recognize significant clues
that began to surface last year indicating a terrorist plot was taking
shape in Yemen, and that the Nigerian allegedly was being groomed by al-Qaida operatives there for an attack.

U.S. officials described the message from bin Laden as an attempt to take advantage of a plot hatched by al-Qa-da’s offshoot in Yemen to shore up his own reputation.

“Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula was behind the failed attack on Christmas Day.
That’s clear,” the U.S. intelligence official said. “So a message like
this — no matter whose voice it may be — should come as no surprise.”

In his message, bin Laden likened Abdulmutallab to the militants behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

“If our messages to you could be carried by words,
we would not have delivered them by planes,” bin Laden said on the
tape, which could not be immediately verified independently. “The
message we want to communicate to you through the plane of the hero,
the holy warrior Umar Farouk … is a confirmation of a previous message, which was delivered to you by the heroes of (Sept. 11) and which was repeated previously and afterward.”

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula,
an apparent offshoot of bin Laden’s loosely defined organization, had
claimed responsibility for the attempted attack, in which the
23-year-old Abdulmutallab allegedly tried without success to detonated
explosives attached to his underwear.

Many analysts have suggested that the Christmas Day attack was carried out without bin Laden’s input, in a sign of al-Qaida’s continued splintering.

The Yemen
branch has strengthened its leadership and has a more focused ideology
and strategy than years ago when militants in the country frequently
looked to militant leaders in Pakistan or Afghanistan for guidance.

The nature of the plot and the device employed were similar to a suicide bombing al- Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula carried out last year against the head of Saudi Arabia’s anti-terrorism program. Prince Mohammed bin Nayef survived that strike, in part because he may have been shielded from the force of the blast.

The attempt on Nayef appeared to be a precursor to the botched Christmas Day
attack. In both instances, the explosive PETN was used. Both devices
went undetected by airport security. The bomber targeting Nayef had the
explosive inserted into his rectum; it was triggered by a telephone
call. The bomber was killed and Nayef was lightly wounded.

But the Yemen group also has ties to bin Laden. The alleged leader of the Yemen branch, Naser Abdel-Karim Wahishi, trained in Afghanistan and once acted as a secretary to the al-Qaida leader, whose ancestral home is Yemen.

Wahishi’s second in command, Saeed Ali Shehri, a Saudi national who spent years in U.S. detention at Guantanamo, was captured in 2001 in the lawless tribal areas along the Pakistan–Afghanistan border, where bin Laden is believed to be holed up. Shehri was released from Guantanamo in 2007 and underwent a Saudi rehabilitation program before moving to Yemen.

Wahishi and Shehri drew together a scattering of militants arriving in Yemen from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
along with more than 20 extremists who escaped from a Yemeni prison in
2006. Shehri is believed to be behind a 2008 assault on the U.S. Embassy in Yemen that killed 19, including an American citizen.

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