Word: al-zarqawi
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...Al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, was rumored to be gravely injured or dead just a few months ago. Since then, his organization is believed to have been behind barbaric attacks in Iraq and has even claimed responsibility for a failed rocket assault on a U.S. ship in the Red Sea. It's hard to separate the man from the mythology, but recent European intelligence reports reviewed by TIME suggest that al-Zarqawi's al-Qaeda franchise is expanding far beyond Iraq and that he now rivals Osama bin Laden in influence among Middle Eastern...
...Al-Zarqawi has been overseeing preparations by highly trained operatives for a "large scale" terrorist attack in Europe, the reports claim. In communications with another al-Qaeda leader, he has spoken of sleeper cells in Turkey and Iran. The reports imply that these cells may be in contact with European jihadist groups that previously had no links to al-Qaeda. "The fear is we'll see these disparate, relatively inexperienced groups around Europe hook up with Afghan-trained terror cells, all under the influence of Zarqawi," says independent French terrorism expert Roland Jacquard, who says he has seen intelligence similar...
...ties to bin Laden. U.S. and partner intelligence services have done such a good job running to ground members of the original group that there may be no connection with the remnants of al-Qaeda's command on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. We may also learn that the killers belong to a network being built by Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, who has emerged in Iraq as bin Laden's heir apparent...
Investigators are also looking into whether Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda's top operative in Iraq, may have helped supply explosives for the London bombers. Meanwhile, a U.S. intelligence source tells TIME that last Friday a Pakistani was detained outside London at Stansted Airport, allegedly with a map of the Underground system and the three bombed train stations circled. A British official confirmed that a Pakistani had been arrested but said there was no known connection between the event at Stansted and the bombings. A source close to the interrogation of Abu-Faraj al-Libbi, a Libyan arrested...
Those hunting the bombers are focused on cracking the supply chain of munitions. "We need to know more about how these cells are getting their explosives," says a U.S. counterterrorism official. One possible source of munitions is Iraq, where insurgents and terrorists such as al-Zarqawi are known to have stockpiles of weapons and explosives. A U.S. intelligence official tells TIME that investigators are "trying to see if there's any link in the forensics" between Iraqi explosives and the London bombs. In fact, an Italian intelligence source told TIME that British intelligence is looking into an al-Zarqawi connection...