June 30, 2014
Terrorists (al Qaeda, ISIS, etc.) Teaming Up To Build Next Generation Of Bombs; Leveraging Fighters With U.S./European Passports
ABC News reported last week that “an alliance has been building inside war-ravaged Syria, with al-Qaeda-linked terrorists there now — working alongside hardened operatives from the prolific al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen — to develop a new generation of [homemade] bombs — that could be smuggled aboard civilian airliners,” without being discovered by current conventional detection methods. ABC reports that “the U.S. government had obtained intelligence that associates of al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria — the al-Nusrah Front — and extreme elements of other radical groups — were being joined by operatives from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, — the Yemen-based group behind the failed Underwear Bomb plot on Christmas Day on 2009; and, the plot later that year to take down cargo planes over the United States — with explosives packed into printer cartridges.” And, ABC reports, “the groups are jointly working to produce new and “creative” designs for nonmetallic explosives, — leading U.S. [intelligence] analysts to believe the group of radicals — who have worked with the al-Nusrah Front — might be looking to target a U.S. and/or European-bound plane.”
“al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the al-Nusrah Front are “now leveraging each other,” as one source put it to ABC, — with some linked to al Nusrah Front leveraging their Yemen counterparts for their bomb-making expertise; and, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leveraging the al Nusrah Front for its array of foreign fighters with U.S. and European passports.”
“Speaking in Washington D.C. today (Mon. June 30, 2014), FBI Director James Comey reiterated his concern about,” U.S. citizens who have joined the fight in Syria. “We’re spending a tremendous amount of time and effort trying to identify those who go, so we can know when they come back. The challenge for us,” he said, “is if we don’t know that they have gone….American citizens travel back to the United States, hundreds of thousands on a regular basis every month. So, it’s tougher to spot them that way.”
Asked about the deteriorating situation in Iraq, Syria’s neighbor, Comey said “the situation there changes the overall concern about foreign fighters “in degree, not in kind.” “We’re still very concerned, as we’ve talked before, about Syria as a breeding ground and a staging ground for terrorists,” Comey said. “To the extent that the activities of this [Iraqi terrorist] group expand that safe-haven — that launching ground — it’s obviously a [big] concern here.”
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