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February 25, 2008 (KHARTOUM) — The walls in the Sudanese capital as well as another major city have been smothered with Graffiti supporting the Al-Qaeda terrorist Islamic militant group, multiple sources told Sudan Tribune.
- Osama bin Laden
Residents of Khartoum and Omdurman woke up to paintings showing Islamic symbols such as the crescent with the words “Al-Qaeda Organization in Sudan” on them.
The pro-government Al-Rayaam said that the drawings appeared in Al-Thawra, Al-Harah Al-Sadisah and Ali Abd Al-Latif Street close to the US embassy.
There have been numerous reports of an increase in the activities of Islamic militant cells in Sudan. Last year the Sudanese authorities said that they have foiled a plot to blow up several Western embassies as well as UN building.
Earlier this month the Sudanese authorities announced that they have arrested two suspects in the killing of a USAID officer in Khartoum on new years.
Sudanese police said in a statement that there was an exchange of fire between them and the suspects that led to some injuries before they were taken into custody.
The New York Times (NYT) quoting unidentified Sudanese law enforcement official, said that one of the suspect was an army officer who was “the ringleader of a small cell of terrorists, and was not acting on behalf of the Sudanese government”.
A second Sudanese official told NYT that the cell was formed last year following President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir rejection of UN forces in Darfur and portrayed them as colonialists. The official said that the cell included operatives from other Arab countries and it planned to attack American and British officials in Sudan.
The Graffiti also appeared in upscale areas of Khartoum with large presence of foreigners such as Number 2 district”.
But Sudanese security officials talking to Al-Rayaam downplayed the importance of these drawings saying it is the “work of children”.
Sudan has welcomed Bin Laden in the 1990’s but expelled him in 1996 under intense US pressure. Since 2001 the Sudanese Security Services cooperated with the US law enforcement agencies to track down suspected terrorists in East Africa.
The intelligence cooperation between the US and Sudan was publicly exposed in 2005 when the Los Angeles Times disclosed that the CIA sent a jet in April 2005 to Khartoum to ferry Gosh into Washington for meetings on nabbing terror suspects in East Africa.
The same newspaper revealed in June that Sudan has secretly worked with the CIA to spy on the insurgency in Iraq despite the strained relations with Washington over the Darfur crisis.
In 2006 Al-Qaeda’s second-in-command Ayman Al-Zawahri called on Muslims in a video released on Friday to launch a holy war against proposed U.N. peacekeepers in Sudan’s Darfur region.
(ST)
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