Bin Ladin's Killing Will Not Disrupt Al Qa'idah - Russian Security Source
Moscow, 2 May: The destruction of Usamah Bin-Ladin will not lead to the disruption of Al-Qa'idah, and a new leader of it will soon emerge, a representative of one of the Russian intelligence services told RIA Novosti on Monday (2 May) when commenting on the destruction of the "number one terrorist". (Passage omitted: details of Bin-Ladin's killing in Pakistan early on 2 May)
"The elimination of Bin-Ladin will definitely inflict primarily a moral blow on Al-Qa'idah, but it will probably not lead to a disruption to the organization's activities. Bin-Ladin almost certainly had somebody who will replace him, this might be a more radical person, but everybody will learn his name soon," the source said.
He added that "now something else is obvious - that terrorism is continuing to spread to new countries, and this is largely caused by the different approaches to the fight against terrorism from the leading countries in the world".
The source noted that Al-Qa'idah leader Usamah Bin-Ladin should not be compared to the militants active in the North Caucasus, as he is a figure on a completely different scale.
"Having enormous financial funds, over the course of 20 years he has managed to create a terrorist organization on an international scale and get thousands of supporters involved in different countries around the world. It is also surprising that he did not accept responsibility for practically a single terrorist attack, even though the American intelligence services call him the number one terrorist," the source said.
Emissaries in the Caucasus
The source said that the Russian intelligence services observed the emergence of Al-Qa'idah emissaries in the North Caucasus where they started active propaganda activities in the early 1990s. According to Russian intelligence, Bin-Ladin established close ties with the so-called government of Ichkeria.
"One of Bin-Ladin's first emissaries in Chechnya was Abu Sayfa (as transliterated), who personally held talks with the Chechen government in the 1990s. At the same time, an Al-Qa'idah representative Bin-Khattab (as received) immediately set about organizing militant training camps upon arriving in Chechnya. All the first major terrorist attacks in Russia were carried out under his personal leadership. Primarily this meant the explosions of blocks of flats in Moscow," the source said.
Khattab was poisoned during an operation conducted by the Russian intelligence services in 2002.
"As regards the situation in the North Caucasus, in the last five years the Russian intelligence services have managed to carry out a whole series of special operations as a result of which around 10 quite influential Al-Qa'idah representatives (Abu Dzeyd, Burakhlya, Abu Aseyf (as transliterated from Russian) and others), who carried out terrorist activities in the North Caucasus and through whom funds were received for terrorist activities, were eliminated in Chechnya and Ingushetia," the source said.
He said that funding channels were cut off, as well as routes for Al-Qa'idah emissaries to enter the Caucasus across the border with Georgia. Most of the destroyed Al-Qa'idah militants arrived in Georgia on tourist visas, whereupon they entered Russia across the border, the source said.
"Nevertheless, it definitely cannot be said that there are currently no Al-Qa'idah representatives in the Caucasus. During recent successful special operations, including in Ingushetia's Sunzhenskiy District, the intelligence services have managed to obtain evidence that there are Al-Qa'idah emissaries in the Caucasus. In particular, at the militant base which was destroyed in Ingushetia, documents were found for citizens of a foreign state," the source said. (Passage omitted: background on killing of Al-Qa'idah emissary known as Mohhanad in Chechnya on 21 April)
(According to an Interfax news agency report, a source in the Russian law-enforcement agencies said that no additional counter-terrorist measures had been implemented as a result of Bin-Ladin's killing. "Additional security measures were adopted in Russia on the eve of the May holidays. No special instructions have been received to step them up following the destruction of Bin-Ladin," the source said. He said that "antiterrorist work in carried out in Russia on a regular basis".)
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