Qaeda Group Threatens to Attack World Cup
(Updated at 2:38 p.m. ET)
The North African terror group al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has threatened to attack this summer's World Cup games in South Africa.
"How amazing could the match United States vs. Britain be when broadcasted live on air at a stadium packed with spectators when the sound of an explosion rumbles through the stands, the whole stadium is turned upside down and the number of dead bodies are in their dozens and hundreds, Allah willing," reads a statement the group published in a recent issue of the Jihadi online magazine Mushtaqun Lel Jannah (Longing to Paradise).
The statement also highlights recent actions by the terrorism group such as the December suicide bombing that killed seven CIA employees and a Jordanian agent at a base in Eastern Afghanistan last December and the Christmas Day bombing attempt that resulted in the arrest of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who has been cooperating with the FBI and providing information about his contacts in Yemen and the al Qaeda affiliate that operates there.
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"Al Qaeda, who managed to deliver 50 grams of explosives to the Detroit plane, after infiltrating dozens of U.S. security barriers, al Qaeda, who enabled brother martyr Abul Kheir (Abdullah Asiri) to get into the palace of Mohammed bin Nayef, al Qaeda, who humiliated the world's greatest intelligence apparatus through the operation of Mujahid Abu Dujana al-Khorassani (Humam al-Balawi), who shattered the pride of the CIA and the Jordanian intelligence combined," the statement says. "Al Qaeda will have a presence in the games, Allah willing."
In addition to the U.S. and U.K. teams, the teams representing France, Germany and Italy are also on the group's list of targets.
"All those countries are part of the Zionist-Crusader campaign against Islam," the statement says.
The group says they will use some undetectable explosive that will be able to circumvent security checkpoints at the games. The statement appears to directly challenge FIFA's president Joseph Blatter.
"All the security checks and X-ray machines that America will be sending after reading this article would not be capable of detecting how those explosives made it into the stadium and that for a simple reason that we will be announcing in due course," the statement says. "So are your preparations for this event up to scratch, Mr. Platter? (sic)"
South Africa had announced last October that its security forces had foiled an al Qaeda plot to carry out a terrorist attack during the 2010 football World Cup. According to reports published then, South Africa's National Intelligence Agency, senior police forces and American agents jointly conducted the operation, which led to the arrest of a number of suspects linked to the group in Somalia and Mozambique working on a plot to carry out bomb attacks during the games.