Al-Qaeda Logistically and Spiritually Bankrupt: Prince Turki [View All]

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=1§ion=0&article=35369&d=21&m=11&y=2003

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JEDDAH, 21 November 2003 — The Nov. 8 bombings are a clear sign that the Al-Qaeda network is logistically and spiritually bankrupt, says Prince Turki Al-Faisal, Saudi ambassador to Britain and former intelligence chief.

In an exclusive interview with Arab News during his Ramadan holiday here, Prince Turki said the fact that Muslims and Arabs were targeted in Al-Qaeda’s latest attacks showed the group no longer had any coherent aims. “In the past the whole philosophy of Al-Qaeda was based on driving away the foreign ‘infidels’ from what they called the holy land. “First they started with the military, and then their fatwa in 1997 said all non-Muslims are fair game; that they not only had the right but the duty to attack women and children and the elderly, contrary to all the teachings of Islam and the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).

“The fact that in the latest attacks Muslims and Arabs were targeted is a clear indication that not only is their philosophy bankrupt but so are their methods. They chose those targets just for the sake of telling the whole world that they are capable of inflicting harm on innocent civilians.”

He cast doubt on speculation in the international media that terrorism grew out of the Mujahedeen movement in Afghanistan in the 1980s. “There is now a mixing of apples and oranges on the issue of the jihad of the 1980s against the Soviet Union, and what has happened since in the 1990s onwards. People are saying that the terrorists we are facing today are a result of the jihad of the 1980s, and that is totally wrong. The people who contributed to that jihad have come back to the Kingdom, and have reintegrated back into society and have also contributed to the Kingdom. It is those who went back to Afghanistan after the jihad ended in the early 90s to participate in the civil war and were then turned by Al-Qaeda into pools of terrorists who have been carrying out these attacks.”