Wednesday, August 29, 2012
A Pakistan newspaper is claiming terror organisation Al-Qaeda recruited two young Somali students in Karachi to carry out a terrorist attack on The Hague.
A Pakistan newspaper is claiming terror organisation Al-Qaeda recruited two young Somali students in Karachi to carry out a terrorist attack on The Hague.
Independent paper The Friday Times made the claims this week saying the two men ‘were to be sent to The Hague to carry out a 26/11 type attack,’ a source told the paper. That string of coordinated bombings and shootings across Mumbai in 2008 killed over 160 people and injured over 300.
The two men intended to travel to Europe as Christians - one as David Azubuike, 21, with a Spanish passport and the other as Jonathan Boipelo (no details) - on stolen passports, The Friday Times said, quoting sources.
Taskforce
The Telegraaf claims the Dutch security service AIVD set up a special taskforce to combat the terror threat. The Telegraaf said the Somalis had Dutch nationality.
The AIVD refused to answer the Telegraaf’s questions.
‘We take all these threats very seriously,' the Netherlands embassy in Karachi told The Friday Times. ‘We are working closely with our Pakistani counterparts to eliminate such threats.’
Alert
The Netherlands has never been hit by a terrorist attack although several suspect terror groups have been rounded up and jailed.
A spokesman for the Dutch counter terrorism organisation NCTV told news agency ANP the Pakistan paper report concerns 'old information that was known to all the security services.'
The information had been weighed up and had not led to an increase in the official Dutch terror alert, he said.