FBI fears al-Qaida will use female attackers
The al-Qaida terror network may turn to using women for surprise attacks after having its ranks thinned by a series of recent arrests, FBI officials warned today.
For the first time in the war on terror, the agency has issued an alert for a woman, a Pakistani neurological expert, wanted for questioning in connection with Osama bin Laden’s group.
Analysts are also examining claims made by another woman in an Arabic newspaper that she was recruited by bin Laden to open training camps for female terrorists.
Female attackers, successfully used by other terror group like the Palestinian Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, would represent a major tactical shift for al-Qaida after years of being aligned with the Afghan Taliban regime that oppressed women and treated them as second class citizens unworthy of taking part in the Islamic jihad, officials said.
Several US intelligence agents said they have no credible information suggesting there is an imminent attack plan to be carried out by women – but said analysts are wary of the possibility.
“We are aware it is an option and one that was used recently against the Israelis and could easily be adapted by al-Qaida,” one official said.
FBI spokesman Mike Kortan said the bureau was constantly looking for trends to help prevent attacks.
Several factors in the last month have led the FBI to prepare for the possibility that al-Qaida might turn to women.
US officials learned of an interview in the Asharq al Awsat newspaper based in London in mid-March in which a woman claimed al-Qaida was setting up training camps for female “martyrs”.
The woman identified herself only as Umm Usama, which translates “mother of Osama”.
“We are building a women’s structure that will carry out operations that will make the US forget its own name,” the woman claimed.
She cited the success of Palestinian female suicide bombers used against Israel in recent months as an impetus for al-Qaida’s planning. “The organisation thought about this before, but interest increased after the female martyr attacks in Palestine and Chechnya,” she said.
US officials said while they had some suspicions about the interview because it was carried out across the Internet using chat rooms and e-mail, it illustrated that women are considered an option for future al-Qaida attacks.
The FBI recently put out a global alert for 31-year-old Aafia Siddiqui and her 33-year-old estranged husband, Dr Mohammed Khan.
It was the first time an FBI bulletin sought a woman since the war on terrorism began, officials said.
The FBI said Siddiqui, who has a doctorate in neurological science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, may be in Pakistan, but lived in Boston while attending MIT.
FBI officials said they were not claiming she “is connected to specific terrorist activities” but that they wanted to question her about possible contacts with people under suspicion of terrorist activities.
A third reason to suspect a tactical shift, FBI officials said, is that bin Laden’s network has suffered several losses in its senior ranks and is aware documents and interrogations have yielded substantial information about its planning and tactics.
In testimony last week, FBI Director Robert Mueller said more than 212 suspected terrorists have been charged with crimes since September 11, 2001 - 108 who already have been convicted. Several were on US soil and in a position to launch attacks, officials said.
The use of women in terrorist attacks is rare but not new.
Young Palestinian women carried out four dramatic suicide bombings in Israel last year, completely foiling the military’s security profiling and shaking both the Palestinian and Israeli populations.
In 1991, Tamil Tigers fighting for independence in Sri Lanka used a woman, who detonated explosives strapped to her body, to assassinate Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi during a political rally.
