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‘Osama Ally Is Turkey Attacks Mastermind’
Jerome Bastion
Agence France Presse, Arab News
ISTANBUL, 28 November 2003 — Turkish police believe an ally of Osama Bin Laden masterminded the Istanbul suicide attacks, press reports said yesterday, as the widow of the British consul general killed in one of the bombings appealed to the public for information.
Details about the probe have been restricted by a court-ordered media blackout, but the daily Hurriyet, quoting security sources, said Abu Mussab Al-Zarkawi, a Jordanian, was behind the two waves of suicide bombings that left 55 dead and nearly 750 injured in Istanbul.
Two car bombs exploded outside two Istanbul synagogues on Nov. 15 and similar attacks on Nov. 20 targeted the London-based HSBC bank offices and the British Consulate, where the Consul General Roger Short was killed.
His body was flown back to Britain in a Turkish military plane yesterday and his widow, Victoria, issued a public appeal to anyone with information about the bombings or about those involved in carrying them out.
“Please come forward and help stop another outrage from happening in Turkey,” she said in a statement issued by the British Embassy in Ankara.
Officials here have said Turkish nationals linked to radical Islamists were behind the bombings that were claimed by the Al-Qaeda network and a local extremist group, the Islamist Great Eastern Raiders Front (IBDA-C).
Hurriyet newspaper said Zarkawi leads an armed group called Hezbullah, based in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey, and quoted security sources as saying he and his men had trained extensively in Afghanistan.
The group has no connection with the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah.
Zarkawi is more widely known as the founder of Al-Tawhid, an extremist organization whose stated aim is to kill all Jews.
Turkish media said the authorities were questioning nine more suspects yesterday over the bombings.
Fifty-one people have now been detained and interrogated and 18 officially charged with belonging to or aiding an illegal organization, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python (Alquds, 1/25/03. |
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