5th
January 2008
Hundreds
of crews gathered in Lisbon heard at the last minute
Friday that the organizers, the Amaury Sport
Organization, had called off the challenging 9,000-mile
Dakar Rally for the first time over terror threats. Five
suspects were detained by Mauritanian intelligence over
the murders of a French family of four on Dec. 24 and
three soldiers. Counter-terror sources report that the
suspects told interrogators in Nouakchott that Al
Qaeda’s next target in the series was to be the Dakar
Rally.
The jihadist group, they
said, had deployed terrorist teams in a wide net across
the Sahara, Mauritania and Senegal, poised to kill rally
participants and take hostages. Eight of the rally’s
stages transit Mauritania.
More than 600 cars,
trucks, motor-cycles and their crews were set to start
the 30th annual Dakar Rally, known as the Everest of
off-road racing, Saturday, Jan. 5 and ending at Dakar on
Jan. 20 after driving through harsh Saharan terrain.
More than 80 percent of the field had invested a year’s
hard work and private funds in preparing for the event.
In 2004, several stages
of the Dakar Rally were called off because of terror
threats in Mali - but never has al Qaeda succeeded in
forcing the cancellation of an entire major sporting
event. According to our counter-terror sources, al
Qaeda’s No. 2, Ayman Zawahiri, who directs the
movement’s Maghreb branch, is responsible for this
“success.” It has aroused fears in international
sporting circles that al Qaeda, having flexed its
muscles in Africa, will now try and force the
cancellation of the 2008 Beijing Olympics by
intimidation.
It is also a grave
setback for AFRICOM which the US established to combat
terror. Since the tough anti-terrorist Nicolas Sarkozy
was elected president, Al Qaeda appears to have set its
sights on French targets. Monday, Dec. 31, a French aid
worker was shot dead in Burundi and another injured.
Five people have been detained in connection with the
shooting.
Algeria is being used as
the base and jumping off center of al Qaeda in the
Maghreb, as well as its victim. Abdelaiz Bouteflika’s
intelligence services were unable to thwart recent
suicide attacks in the country.
