Norway: Suspects bought bomb materials

Norway: Suspects bought bomb materials

VG Nett reports that the men thought they had bought all the ingredients for a bomb. One of the materials they needed was hydrogen peroxide, which they bought in a pharmacy. They were told that they needed to come back later, by which time the PST ensured they were sold non-dangerous materials instead.

The men bought all the materials by late winter, and then lay low.

This article was prepared by the Islam in Europe blog - islamineurope.blogspot.com

The PST has several theories on what they thought to do: Either smuggle the materials out of Norway, prepare a bomb and detonate it in another country or use the bomb in Norway.

The head of the PST, Janne Kristiansen, says they have a solid case. In April Janne Kristiansen went to the US to discuss the investigation. The FBI, CIA and several American departments worked closely with the Norwegian authorities on this case.

The US Treasury Department says they helped the Norwegian investigation by giving them data from TFTP (Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme) on bank accounts linked to the suspects.

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Via New York Times:

Three men who were arrested in Norway and Germany on Thursday on suspicion of terrorism were “one node” in the global terror network that plotted the foiled attack against the New York subway and planned to blow up a shopping center in Manchester, England, European and American counterterrorism officials said.

The three Muslim immigrants to Norway — a Uighur from China, an Iraqi Kurd and an Uzbek — had ties to operatives of Al Qaeda in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Also linked to those operatives were Najibullah Zazi, who tried to organize the subway attack, and men arrested in Britain in April 2009 in the Manchester plot.

The separate terrorist cells in the three countries were “three parallel efforts or undertakings that all trace their lineage back to Pakistan,” said a senior American intelligence official. The plotters all had ties to Saleh al-Somali, a Qaeda leader who was killed by a C.I.A. drone strike in Pakistan last year, the official said.

A European intelligence official said the three men were members of the Turkistan Islamic Party, a Uighur separatist group based largely in the lawless Pakistani tribal area of Waziristan, which has become a haven for Al Qaeda and other militant groups. The official said the Uighur suspect had visited Waziristan in the past two years and had made contacts with Al Qaeda.

(more)

Der Spiegel (via Dagbladet) reports that the suspect visited an al-Qaeda training camp and that he might have recruited his fellow suspects here.

The 39 year old was supposedly recruited by al-Qaeda in 2001, two years after he came to Norway as a quota refugee. The man became a Norwegian citizen in 2007.

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Aftenposten reports that the Uighur suspect is suspected of leading the cell. Two of the suspects have children in Norway.

One of those is the 37 year old Kurdish Iraqi who was arrested in Duisberg, Germany. According to one report, the man was arrested on the street, but according to his wife, he was arrested in bed. The man, his wife and two children (aged one and three) were in Germany on vacation.

The wife says they know one of the other suspects, and had met in family events. She says that they always spoke Arabic and that she would have understood if they would have spoken about terrorism, which she denies they every did. The family turned to a Norwegian lawyer whose firm deals a lot with the Kurdish community.

According to one news report, all three know each other but deny the allegations against them.

Sources: VG, Dagbladet 1, 2, NRK 1, 2, Aftenposten (Norwegian), New York Times