The November 15 suicide bombing in Istanbul fits clearly into the pattern of al-Qaeda’s targeting of Jewish interests, as well as its determination to punish the United States’s allies for supporting the invasion of Iraq, counter-terrorism experts said this week.
Over the past 18 months there have been al-Qaeda related attacks on synagogues and Israelis in Kenya, Tunisia and Morocco.
In April last year Islamist militants destroyed a historic synagogue in Tunisia and killed 21 people — most were foreign tourists. In November a hotel occupied by Israeli holidaymakers near Mombasa was hit by a car bomb and an Israeli charter flight narrowly avoided disaster when it was targeted by a shoulder held anti-aircraft missile as it took off from Mombasa’s airport. In May a Jewish centre and restaurant were torn apart by suicide bombings in Casablanca.
A claim of responsibility for the Istanbul outrage was made on November 16 by an al-Qaeda source.
In an e-mail to the London-based Arabic newspaper al-Quds, an intermediary, Abu Mohammed al-Ablaj, warned: ”We tell the criminal Bush and his Arab and Western tails — especially Britain, Italy, Australia and Japan — that cars of death will not stop at Baghdad, Riyadh, Istanbul, Nassiriya, Jakarta, etc, until you see them … in the middle of the capital of this era’s tyrant, America.”
Washington confirmed it believed Ablaj was linked to Osama bin Laden.
Synagogues across Europe were now at risk from the phase of al-Qaeda operations, warned Mike Whine, of the Community Security Trust. ”The targeting of Jewish interests has become more prominent in al-Qaeda’s ideology thanks to the influence of Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri [the Egyptian surgeon who is Bin Laden’s deputy],” said Whine, whose group organises security at Britain’s synagogues.
”Egyptian Islamic jihad had always targeted Jews. After one attack on a bus load of German tourists in Cairo in the 1990s, the group explained they thought they were Israelis.”
The Istanbul attacks served many of al-Qaeda’s interests, explained Jonathan Stephenson, an expert in counter-terrorism at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
”It was a political message that Jews and Muslims should not mix,” he said. ”[It was retribution for the fact] that Turkey and Israel have a close military alliance and that Turkey had been considering sending troops to help in Iraq.
”Turkey is seen as modern secular and not sufficiently Islamic.
”Synagogues are easy to hit. Al-Qaeda is in a mode now that it takes targets where it finds them.”
The large number of Muslims killed in recent al-Qaeda attacks in Saudi Arabia and Turkey might be damaging to their cause, he agreed.
”Some Saudis who would have been sympathetic have turned against the organisation after seeing Arabs killed,” Stephenson said.
”That may apply less in Turkey where [al-Qaeda might] consider it a political coup simply to penetrate the country.” — Â