Zawahiri’s Latest Rant

In Ayman Al Zawahiri’s latest rant he mentions the usual places and regions, but then calls out four specific ports in two separate pairs. I don’t know if that’s coincidence, or meaningful, but there are things to worry about with that specificity.

“I bear you witness to we promise Allah that we ourselves will not abandon our weapons and will never stop our Jihad and will never abandon our belief and will not abandon Andalusia, Sebta, Melilla, Bosnia, Kosovo, Cyprus, Jerusalem, Haifa, Um Rashrash, Baghdad, Kabul, and Kashmir and Grozny even if they have many conferences in Oslo or Annapolis, and one thousand conferences in London and Salah Al-Din. Do not let the eyes of the cowardly sleep.”

First he mentions Sebta and Malilia (Really Ceuta, Territory of Spain) and he also mentions “Um RashRash” which is really Eilat, and Haifa.

During Operation Enduring Freedom, the US led coalition forces captured several Taliban fighters in Afghanistan including 17 Moroccans. During their interrogation at Guantanamo Bay, it was revealed that a Saudi recruiter working for Osama bin Laden was located in Morocco, and had established a three-man Al Qaeda cell of Saudi nationals. The Moroccan wives of two of the men were also involved. The cell had plans to launch suicide bomb attacks on American warships transiting through the Gibraltar Strait and on the British naval repair and logistics facility at Gibraltar, some 19 kilometres off the northern city of Tangier at the mouth of the Mediterranean. Their plan was to reenact the USS Cole incident; allegedly, they had been preparing to pack inflatable rubber speedboats with explosives and crash them against naval assets. The women were allegedly to act as couriers for these operations.

Moroccan police arrested the three Saudi nationals who were planning suicide operations against American and British warships in the strait of Gibraltar. The three men, between the ages of 25 and 35 claimed to belong to Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaida network. Reportedly, the suspects said that they planned to sail an inflatable dinghy loaded with explosives from Sebta and Melilia into the Strait to blow up warships on patrol.

The other spots he mentions are all non-specific regions or countries with the exception of Kabul, which is almost always mentioned. Could be nothing or might be worth looking into.