Nukes? AQAP Claimed Nukes?
No nukes, sorry. Not AQAP anyway. Access to chemical weapons for sure, but not nukes. But a LNG tanker, as opposed to an oil tanker, also makes a hell of a weapon.
The following is quite a good article at Jamestown by Abdul Hameed Bakier, on Wahishi’s statements and well worth a full read. Some excerpts below:
In a recent interview posted to jihadi websites, al-Qaeda’s leader in Yemen claims the organization possesses nuclear weapons and vows to attack U.S. and Western interests to compel them to withdraw their forces from the region (hanein.info, January 27).
According to the interview, the leader of al-Qaeda in Yemen, 33-year-old Nasir Abdul Kareem al-Wahayshi (a.k.a. Abu Basir), was Osama Bin Laden’s secretary until he was arrested by Iran and extradited to Yemen in February 2002. Al-Wahayshi has been a fugitive since he escaped from a Yemeni prison in 2006 (see Terrorism Focus, February 7, 2006; March 18, 2008). In 2008, the second man in al-Qaeda, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, commended al-Wahayshi and named him the Amir of Mujahideen in Yemen.
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In the meantime, al-Wahayshi believes it is necessary to also attack the interests of the supporters of Israel, the United States and Europe in the Arabian Peninsula: “The Crusaders’ campaign on our people in Palestine, Somalia and Afghanistan uses the Arabian Peninsula as a launching pad. The U.S., British and French fleets in the region are only there to protect the Jews in Palestine. The Arab leaders, among them the Yemeni leader [President Ali Abdullah Saleh], vigorously contribute military and logistical aid to the Crusaders’ campaign.”Al-Wahayshi further asserts that until the mujahideen are able to infiltrate into Palestine and fight the Jews, Western tourists are a legitimate target for the mujahideen, as the tourists are part of the Crusaders’ campaign. Western tourists are either Christian missionaries, depraved individuals, or Western government agents spying on Muslims. Al-Wahayshi justifies killing Muslims who protect Christian and Jewish interests such as embassies and cultural centers, referring to al-Qaeda’s attack on the U.S. embassy in Sana’a in September 2008 in which six Yemeni security personnel, six attackers, and four bystanders were killed. “Shame on those who protect the embassies of the Crusaders’ countries. Shame on them to watch U.S. rockets and Israeli white phosphorus shells tearing up and burning Gaza children and still protect their interests,” says al-Wahayshi…
Refuting President Saleh’s declaration that al-Qaeda extremists have no vision and only blow up and kill innocent people, al-Wahayshi said the Yemeni president has been stealing government funds and destroying the country for years without a vision or plan for the well being of the country and its people…
Finally, al-Wahayshi claims al-Qaeda possesses a nuclear weapon and only refrained from using it in the 9/11 attacks because those attacks were only al-Qaeda’s “first message” to the Americans…
