A senior Kuwaiti security official said Kuwait had arrested an al-Qaeda member who confessed to planning the attack against a French supertanker off the coast of Yemen last month and a car bomb attack (that was prevented) against a hotel in the Yemeni capital, San'a. He identified him as Mohsen al-Fadhli, 21, a Kuwaiti citizen arrested with two other Kuwaiti members of al-Qaeda on November 4th. The official said Fadhli began talking on Monday, detailing the planning of the tanker attack.
The disclosure that the Yemeni attack originated in Kuwait comes as a blow to the emirate, which only reluctantly conceded the presence of active al-Qaeda cells among its citizens after an attack by two Kuwaitis against US troops last month left one Marine dead. Kuwait State Security concluded that the two were linked to Muhammad Mansur Jabarah, 20, a Canadian citizen born in Kuwait who was arrested in Oman earlier this year.
Alexander Downer, the Australian Foreign Minister, told Australian television yesterday that Western states underestimated the international terrorist threat. "They have a network which has turned out... to be... much bigger than was understood immediately after September 11th. I think there are likely to be a lot more people involved in these terrorist organizations than was originally suspected." The plot to release poisonous gas in the London subway highlighted the continuing terror threat posed by al-Qaeda and allied organizations such as Jemaah Islamiah. Al-Qaeda probably planned the Bali blast on October 12th that killed more than 190 people.
