Al-Qaeda 'plans attack on sea route' to hit global trade

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Al-Qaeda 'plans attack on sea route' to hit global trade

RHIANNON EDWARD


AL-QAEDA is set to stage a waterborne 11 September-style attack in the next 12 months, UK security experts claim today. The terror "spectacular" would not even have to succeed to throw the global economy into chaos.

Simply capturing a ship on the key Red Sea route between Europe and Asia could cause a world trade crisis. And an attempt can be expected following the recent appointment of the maritime terrorism specialist Saud Hamund al-Utaibi as the head of al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia.

The warning comes from Aegis Defence Services, the British firm headed by Lieutenant-Colonel Tim Spicer, which holds a $293 million United States government contract to provide "security services" in Iraq. The firm’s intelligence director, Dominic Armstrong, said: "Ideally from their point of view it would be a spectacular - a big bang to get people’s attention - but it would not need to be."

Even if attempts to blow up a vessel carrying chemicals or another hazardous cargo were foiled, the impact on shipping insurance premiums could put the Red Sea out of bounds. That would roughly double the shipping time for goods from China to the West, drastically hitting global trade. Osama bin Laden has repeatedly urged fellow fanatics to pick targets which will damage Western economies. Utaibi, thought to be behind the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden, which killed 17 American sailors and injured 37, has the experience to make it happen.
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