Al-Qaida planning massive attack says report

Al-Qaida has reorganised, recruited news members and is planning an attack against the United States on the scale of September 11, an Arabic magazine claims it has been told by a spokesman for the terror group

The claims were based on e-mail interviews conducted this week by the London-based magazine Al Majalla with Al-Qaida spokesman Thabet bin Qais.

“The Americans only have predictions and old intelligence left,” the magazine quoted bin Qais as saying. “It will take them a long time to understand the new form of al-Qaida.”

The magazine quoted bin Qais as saying al-Qaida remains ”way ahead of the Americans and its allies in the intelligence war, and American security agencies still are ignorant of the changes the leadership has made.”

US officials said they were aware of the report and that bin Qais has been authorised in the past to communicate messages on behalf of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network.

The officials cautioned, however, that e-mail interviews can be difficult to authenticate.

Western officials remain convinced that al-Qaida poses a threat despite the arrests of key figures and the loss of its base in Afghanistan.

The FBI’s counterterrorism chief, Pasquale D’Amuro, told a congressional committee in Washington that while al-Qaida may very well be in disarray, “it is a severe threat to this nation.”

Top legal and security officials from the United States and seven other major nations, meeting this week in Paris, said al-Qaida has apparently moved its operational centres to new locations in central Asia.