Qaeda plans to bomb US plane at Olympics Britain plans

Missile deployment

London, July 1: Al Qaeda is plotting to blow up an American airliner in the run-up to this month’s London Olympics and has trained a Norwegian Muslim convert in an attempt to evade airport security, a media report said on Sunday.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has trained the Norwegian convert and is understood to have also selected a target, believed to be a US passenger jet, The Sunday Times quoted intelligence sources as saying.

“The Norwegian recruit goes under the name of Muslim Abu Abdurrahman. He is understood to be in his thirties and a ‘clean skin’, with no previous criminal record,” it said.

The plot confirms fears among US and British intelligence agencies that al Qaeda is seeking to recruit radicalised westerners in an attempt to evade airport security.

The Norwegian was believed to have been in the Britain is planning to deploy surface-to-air missiles on six sites in London, amidst reports that al Qaeda is plotting to blow up an American airliner before the Olympics. southeastern town of Azzan, the longtime home of AQAP, until last month.

He then moved to Dammaj, a town in the north. The new plot is the terror group’s fourth to be detected since 2009, when AQAP sent a Nigerian-born British student on a plane with an underpants bomb.

The bomb failed to detonate over Detroit and the man was arrested and jailed.

In 2010, it sent two bombs hidden in printer cartridges on cargo planes destined for Chicago. They were intercepted and defused in Dubai and Britain, the paper said. — Agencies