According to CBS News, a statement warning, “London shall be bombed,” was posted to a jihadist website in the hours preceding the failed June 29, 2007 twin car bombings in downtown London. This warning was posted approximately 17 hours before the first car bomb was discovered outside of the Tiger Tiger nightclub. The posting was on the “General Discussions” section of the online forum hosted on the al-Hesbah website, which is a well-known and long-standing destination for online jihadists,
The author of the statement, a user with the handle Abu Osama al-Hazeen, wrote, “In the name of God, the most compassionate, the most merciful. Is Britain Longing for al Qaeda’s bombings?” Abu Osama then criticized the British government’s decision to knight author Salman Rushdie writing, “This ‘honoring’ came at a crucial time, a time when the whole nation is reeling from the crusaders attacks on all Muslim lands.” He concluded his statement writing, “We say to Britain: The Emir of al Qaeda, Sheikh Osama, has once threatened you, and he carried out his threats. Today I say: Rejoice, by Allah, London shall be bombed.”
Is the Warning Credible?
ABC News calls the authenticity of this statement into question. According to ABC News, this statement was “not from al-Qaeda.” ABC News drew this conclusion because the above statement was posted to the “General Discussions” section and not the “Public Statements” section which typically hosts official statements from al-Qaeda affiliated media organizations and other terrorist groups. Further, ABC News also points out that the user Abu Osama has not previously acted as an official spokesman on al-Hesbah.
The Shape of al-Qaeda
While there is merit to these points, the conclusion that al-Qaeda did not post the warning is becoming increasingly irrelevant. As al-Qaeda’s ideology has proliferated, primarily through the Internet, individual terrorist sympathizers have become empowered to act in al-Qaeda’s name. Therefore, while Abu Osama may not be a “core” al-Qaeda operative, he or she still may have been connected to the group that carried out the failed attacks in the United Kingdom.
The Significance of Al-Hesbah
Additionally, it is worth noting that unlike a handful of other jihadist websites, al-Hesbah employs a strict vetting process for membership registration process. The site administrators typically manually review each membership applications before granting a user access to the site. Moreover, in some cases jihadist website administrators exercise editorial control over user generated content. It is not unusual for an administrator to delete controversial statements from their websites. Presumably, this strict registration and moderation process adds a degree of credibility to the statements posted to the site. However, it is still possible that an al-Hesbah user with no direct connections to al-Qaeda could post the above statement and the al-Hesbah administrators would be interested in leaving the thread online in order to garner increased attention in the aftermath of the failed London attacks.
Conclusions
Regardless of the site, users, or statements credibility, we believe it is unlikely that a well-trained terrorist operative would post a warning online immediately prior to the planned attack. While this “warning” was not specific in terms of the timing and location, its mere presence could tip authorities to a pending attack and cause them to take actions that may disrupt the potential attack.
Moreover, it is unlikely that a terrorist group would derive a significant benefit from posting a statement online prior to an attack. As a result, we do not believe that a serious terrorist operative would take this risk for such a small benefit.
However, given the relative incompetence of the London and Glasgow terrorists it is conceivable that they would jeopardize their operational security by posting warnings online immediately prior to their planned attacks.