Chemical Weapon, Kotli and Cricket: Alleged Al Qaeda Ashes Plot May not be Farfetched !

By Animesh Roul

The “London Bombers”, who attacked the public transport system on July 7, 2005 were initially ordered by al Qaeda leadership to assassinate the England and Australia cricket teams using Sarin gas (a Chemical Weapon), during the 2005 Ashes Series. This revelation was made by a man claiming to be a family friend of one of the bombers to the Sunday Times newspaper. This report created a sort of debate over the purported claim made by this friend of bus bomber Hasib Hussain, who was involved in the bombing London's Tavistock Square.

Experts have disputed this claim. According to Rohan Gunaratna, acclaimed terrorism expert and author of Inside Al Qaeda (2002) the London bombers trained in the Malakand camp, not in Kotli in Pakistan as claimed by Mohammad Sidique Khan ( the Edgware Road bomber) and Shehzad Tanweer ( responsible for the Aldgate attack) who allegedly received the orders at a training camp near Kotli in December 2004.

While Gunaratna downplayed the Kotli camp claim as 'misleading', David Wright-Neville of Monash University, Australia said, "there's no evidence that Sarin nerve gas has ever really loomed in the al-Qaeda cells in Europe's thinking.”

Is this revelation contradictory with the information already available? Or, is it going to add more flesh to the investigations?

However, these questions notwithstanding, the fact remain that both Khan and Tanweer visited Pakistan during 2004, as information provided by Pakistani intelligence. In addition, one may ponder that how a so-called family friend of a terrorist can know ‘Kotli, not a famous city in Pakistan’s territory, by its name and existence of training camps there? Has he ever visited Pakistan to know such a place exists where terror training camps are operational? Is there any past evidence of Sarin plot by Al Qaeda cells?

I wish to put some open source information into perspective that Kotli has been a focal point of terror training of Islamic militant closely affiliated to al Qaeda and al Qaeda always has plans to use Sarin nerve agent (Chemical weapons).

Kotli camps came to limelight when there were instances of factional clashes in terror training camps. In early Oct 2000, couple of trainee militants of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) and another trainee affiliated to Jamaat-e-Islami were killed during an internecine clash between two factions of the outfit at a training cap in Kotli. In the same month, Jamaat-e-Islami had offered to provide more recruits to terrorist training camps in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK). The JI chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed had reportedly announced that the Jamaat would soon strengthen and expand its own training camps near Muzaffarabad and Kotli in PoK.

In Kotli, terror training camps have been operational since long with the collusion of Pakistan’s Inter Service Intelligence. According to a June 2001 report, about 400 young recruits from various groups (Hizb-ul-Mujahadeen, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Hizb-e-Islami) took arms training under direct supervision of Colonel Musa of the Special Operations intelligence unit of ISI and two other officers, Major Umar and Captain Hussan.

Again, in December 2001, Indian security agencies claimed to have arrested Ayub Ahmad Sarogi alias Ayubi, a resident of Kotli who was affiliated to al Qaeda network, and foiled a Qaeda- Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) plot to exterminate Jammu and Kashmir legislators and to target vital installations by fidayeen (suicide) attack. Ayub has also reportedly disclosed that the al Qaeda had spread its network in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), New Delhi, Mumbai and Uttar Pradesh, besides to a couple of other Indian cities much before the United States declared a war on Taliban and al Qaeda.

I doubted this ‘al Qaeda-in- India’ claim, even after recent July 2006 Mumbai blasts. However, nobody can deny the fact that they (Islamic terror outfits) are all intertwined and have close operational and logistic linkages. Most of avid terror watchers will agree that most of the Pakistan based Islamic outfits mentioned here (or those not listed here) have close ties with al Qaeda and follow the tenets of bin Laden, if not the Prophet’s. It is now a open secret that they are mushrooming in Pakistan ‘s territory.

Regarding Sarin nerve gas threat: Not long ago, British intelligence agency claimed to have cracked a Qaeda codes and foiled a chemical attack (involving sarin) on Parliament. This Sarin plot hatched in 2004 when the agencies have discovered coded e-mails on computers seized from terror suspects in Britain and Pakistan. Much before this the visuals of dogs being gassed at Qaeda training camp, could be a reminder to asses its WMD capability without underestimating it.

It is not hard to believe London terrorists' Kotli camp sojourn and Sarin gas threat against cricket players (cricket plot as Plan B). It may not be far fetched. The disclosure might give new perspective into the 7/7 case and clues to understand the capabilities of al Qaeda that we fail to know all these years.

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