An al Qaeda terrorist stated in a recent online posting that U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens was killed by lethal injection after plans to kidnap him during the Sept. 11, 2012 terror attack in Benghazi went bad.
The veracity of the claim made by Abdallah Dhu-al-Bajadin, who was identified by U.S. officials as a known weapons experts for al Qaeda, could not be determined. However, U.S. officials have not dismissed the terrorist’s assertion.
~~~ according to the March 14 posting on an al Qaeda-linked website, Abdallah Dhu-al-Bajadin, the al Qaeda weapons expert, stated that Stevens was given a lethal injection and that the injection was overlooked during the medical autopsy.
According to Dhu-al-Bajadin, “the plan was based on abduction and exchange of high-level prisoners.”
“However, the operation took another turn, for a reason God only knows, when one of the members of the jihadist cell improvised and followed Plan B,” he wrote on the prominent jihadist web forum Ansar al-Mujahideen Network.
Dhu-al-Bajadin’s claim of assassination also stated that it had been copied to the Ansar al-Mujahidin website from the closed and al Qaeda-accredited website Shumukh al-Islam. That site is only open to members and was initially posted by a member identified as Adnan Shukri for Dhu-al-Bajadin.
The reference to Shumukh al Islam has boosted the credibility of the claim among some U.S. intelligence analysts.
A western intelligence official said Dhu-al-Bajadin is a well-known jihadist weapons experts and a key figure behind a magazine called Al Qaeda Airlines.
~~~ On U.S. intelligence reports and testimony that al Qaeda is severely weakened since 2001, Dhu-al-Bajadin stated “within months the world will be stunned by the opening of a new front in the global war between the Islamic ummah [Muslims worldwide] and the Zionist-Crusader campaign.”
“And if your reports state that al Qaeda is dangerous, we will strike you on your own land with operations that will awe your security experts,” he stated. “We will be more dangerous than you might expect.”
The U.S. Northern Command recently warned that terrorists were planning an attack on the United States, but details of the warning could not be learned.
The posting by Dhu-al-Bajadin also said the next issue of the Al Qaeda Airlines magazine would be published.
That issue appeared online weeks later in April and provided detailed plans on how to produce and disperse deadly concentrations of hydrogen cyanide in public places. It called the improvised cyanide-producing device “Al Mubtakar al-Farid,” Arabic for “The unique innovation.”
The instructions were issued in both English and Arabic and urged terrorists to conduct “lone wolf” attacks using the chemical weapons.
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