Plot to kill the Queen foiled

PLOT TO KILL QUEEN FOILED

Sunday January 13,2008
By Camilla Tominey
Sunday Express

AL Qaeda terrorists posing as TV crews planned to blow up the Queen by smuggling explosives into last year’s Commonwealth summit.

Two huge outside broadcast vans belonging to the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation were seized after a tip-off from intelligence agents.

As a result, UBC was unable to transmit live pictures of key summit events, including the Queen’s historic address to the Ugandan parliament on November 22.

Dr Ruhakana Rugunda, the Uganda Minister of Internal Affairs, said: “We received information that a terrorist group linked to Al Qaeda, the Allied Democratic Forces, was planning to carry out terrorist activities at the Commonwealth meeting. The security services in Uganda neutralised these threats.”

He refused to comment on the precise nature of the planned attacks or reports that Ugandan armed forces had seized a speedboat loaded with arms and home-made bombs.

A number of suspected ADF guerrillas aboard the boat on Lake Victoria are understood to have been taken into custody.

Dr Rugunda added: “A number of suspects have been arrested but I cannot comment on the specifics of this case. What I can say is that we stepped up security because of the Al Qaeda threat but it was neutralised by our security services. In the end the summit was incident free and Uganda was happy to receive such distinguished guests, led by Her Majesty the Queen.”

Ugandan army spokesman Paddy Ankunda said: “Plans to cause havoc were curtailed, fortunately. There were intentions to disrupt the meeting and to target delegates and the Royal Family but the security agencies worked well together to ensure nothing happened.”

An attack on the summit would have been devastating. The meeting in Kampala was attended by 16 presidents and 20 prime ministers, including Gordon Brown. For the first time the biennial event was attended by Prince Charles and Camilla as well as the Queen and Prince Philip. The incident is certain to prompt a review of the Queen’s security and that of other members of the Royal Family.

Dai Davies, former head of royal protection, said: “It will have huge implications globally for the Royal Family’s protection. It will obviously put forward planning into a huge new phase of concern.

“But the Queen’s security arrangements are very sophisticated. There would have been thorough advanced planning ahead of the trip to Uganda, an exit strategy would have been worked out, and so on.

“At the end of the day, the Queen is a great pragmatist – she’s a great believer in what will be will be. But she has absolute faith and trust in her protection team.”

It is feared Islamic terrorists may have stepped up their campaign against high-profile Western women following their most recent success in Pakistan with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi last month.

Al Qaeda’s deputy leader Ayman Al Zawahri directly addressed the Queen when threatening attacks on Britain last July, following the knighthood given to Salman Rushdie, who angered Muslims with his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses.

In a 20-minute tape broadcast on Arabic TV channel Al Jazeera, he threatened: “I say to [Queen] Elizabeth and Blair that your message has reached us and we are in the process of preparing you for a precise response.”

The ADF is one of a number of Islamic terrorist organisations set up in east Africa with Al Qaeda support in the early Nineties when Osama Bin Laden was living in the Sudanese capital Khartoum.

Its leader, Jamil Mukulu, who was trained at Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, launched his first attack in Uganda in 1996. A spate of bombings culminated in 30 students being abducted from their college in Kasese and massacred in 1998.

An explosion in Kampala last February killed two people and injured six.

Buckingham Palace refused to comment on the foiled plot.
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