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| Europe |
| Turkish police detain 37 in anti-Qaeda raids |
| 2009-04-22 |
| [Al Arabiya Latest] Turkish anti-terror police rounded up 37 people with suspected links to the al-Qaeda network in operations across southern Turkey Tuesday, Anatolia news agency reported. In simultaneous raids early in the morning, the security forces targeted suspected al-Qaeda cell houses, detaining 17 people in five provinces, the agency said. Police also seized guns and computers from suspected al-Qaeda cell houses. Public television TRT aired a video tape seized in the operation, said to be shot in Afghanistan, in which militants demonstrate the making of a bomb. One of those detained was believed to have links with a suspected al-Qaeda cell in the southern province of Gaziantep, which engaged police in a deadly firefight last year. Six of those detained in Gaziantep province had received training in Afghanistan, Anatolian said. A Turkish cell of al-Qaeda was held responsible for truck bombs against two synagogues, the British consulate and a British bank in Istanbul in 2003, which killed 63 people, including the British consul, and left hundreds injured. Seven men were jailed for life in 2007 over the bombings, among them a Syrian national who masterminded and financed the attacks. In January, a suspected al-Qaeda militant was killed and three others captured in a shootout with the police in Istanbul after the group attempted to rob a post office. A Turkish newspaper reported in March that Ankara had received U.S. intelligence that al-Qaeda militants could be plotting attacks on foreign targets in Turkey. |
| Posted by:Fred |