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| Europe |
| Police tight-lipped about Islamist links to Helsinki bomb scares |
| 2011-06-06 |
| A group calling itself a supporter of worldwide jihad has praised two bomb scares that happened in Helsinki this past weekend on an internet discussion forum. On Friday morning, police cordoned off an area in the Pasila district after a home-made device was found. Early Saturday, a petrol bomb was thrown into the yard of an unmanned service station in another part of the city. The group said online that it hoped fresh attacks would succeed. The Finnish Security Police (SUPO) says it is taking the matter seriously but does not wish to speculate for now. SUPO’s communications director said that police are responsible for investigating the incident, but that SUPO would give its expert assistance if a terrorist link was revealed. “Naturally we are employing our own channels. Previously we have not had such threats to civilian targets,” she noted. No one was apparently injured in either incident. The internet message was ascribed to Abu Sulaiman al-Nasser, who is considered to be one of the most followed al-Qaeda bloggers in the world. The same name was connected with a recent online threat made against Finnish peacekeepers in Afghanistan. Evan Kohlmann, author of Al-Qaida's Jihad in Europe, published this of the message on his Twitter feed IntelTweet: "On Friday, a homemade bomb was found in the capital of Finland Helsinki... We ask Allah that the next bomb is successful." Kohlmann says the message was "another apparent terror threat to Finland, written in both Arabic and Finnish." |
| Posted by:ryuge |