3 Arrested In Bomb Plot
Three suspected al Qaeda members have been arrested in what Norwegian and U.S. officials say was a bomb plot linked to similar plans in New York and England.
Authorities in the U.S. and Norway had been watching the three men for more than a year and said Thursday they planned a bombing similar to the one thwarted in the New York subway system in 2009. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has called that one of the most serious terrorist plots since 9/11.
Officials said it was not clear the men had selected a target for the attacks but were attempting to make peroxide bombs, the powerful homemade explosives that prosecutors say were attempted in both New York and England.
The Norwegian Police Security Service said only that the three were arrested on suspicion of "preparing terror activities."
Officials believe the Norway plan was organized by Salah al-Somali, al Qaeda's former chief of external operations, the man in charge of plotting attacks worldwide.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case. The Norwegian Police Security Service said only that the three were arrested on suspicion of "preparing terror activities."
Al-Somali, who was killed in a CIA drone airstrike last year, has been identified in U.S. court documents as one of the masterminds of the New York subway plot. Two men have pleaded guilty in that case, admitting they planned to detonate explosives during rush hour. A third man awaits trial.
A news conference was planned for later Thursday.
On Wednesday, U.S. prosecutors revealed the existence of a related plot hatched in Manchester, northwest England.
According to prosecutors, the September, 2009 plot to attack the New York Subway system involving Najibullah Zazi - a legal resident living in Colorado - "was also directly related to a scheme by al Qaeda plotters in Pakistan to use Western operatives to attack a target in the United Kingdom."
"These charges underscore the global nature of the terrorist threat we face," David Kris, the Justice Department's top national security prosecutor said.
Two of the men indicted Wednesday in the U.K., Abid Naseer and Tariq Ur Rehman, were linked to a previously undisclosed companion plot in England.
The third man named in Wednesday's indictment was Adnan Shukrijumah, who was on the FBI's list of most-wanted terrorists and is thought to have been a key al Qaeda planner.
Who is Adnan Shukrijumah?
Although Shukrijumah, 34, has been among the FBI's most sought after suspects for about seven years, this is the first time that formal, public charges have been levied against him, reports CBS News producer Phil Hirschkorn. However, the scope of the charges against Shukrijumah, compared to his large al Qaeda profile, are rather small, limited to actions in the 16 months covering the time frame of the Zazi-led NYC subway plot, from Sep. 2008 to Jan. 2010.
In Washington, Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd had no comment on the arrests made in Norway.
Officials did not say why Norway was a target, but al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri has called for attacks on the country, among many others.
Magnus Norell, a terrorism expert at the Swedish Defense Research Agency, said Norway's 500 troops in Afghanistan could be a factor, as could the 2006 controversy sparked by a Danish newspaper's publication of 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.
Norell said the controversy has extended to neighboring Norway and Sweden after newspapers there republished the cartoons and later published similar cartoons. Images of Muhammad, even favorable ones, are considered blasphemous by many Muslims.
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