[Ha'aretz ] Amos Harel - Israel Police and the Shin Bet Security Service have arrested six Arabs - two of them Israeli citizens and the other four Palestinian residents of eastern Jerusalem - with alleged links to the al-Qaeda terror network. A gag order lifted on Friday revealed that the suspects planned to attack U.S. President Bush's helicopter during one of his recent visits to the region. According to an indictment issued at the Jerusalem District Court, the suspects had been in contact with al-Qaeda over the Internet with the purpose of establishing a terror cell in Israel. One of the suspects - a student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem - provided al-Qaeda with photographs from his cellular phone of the U.S. president's planned landing site near the university stadium. According to the Shin Bet, the student - Nazareth resident Mohammed Nijam - lived in a college dormitory overlooking the landing pad and sent a message to a Web site linked to al-Qaeda and asked about shooting the helicopter down. The Shin Bet said that investigators found bomb-making instructions on the personal computers of several of the suspects.
2008-07-18 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive