Sixteen held as police 'foil plot aimed at NATO summit'

Published on Tuesday 4 May 2004 01:00

TURKISH police said yesterday they had foiled a bomb plot targeting a NATO summit in Istanbul at the end of June which is to be attended by world leaders including Tony Blair and George Bush.

Police arrested 16 men they said were believed to belong to the militant Islamic group Ansar al-Islam.

They were detained last Thursday in the town of Bursa, 160 miles south of Istanbul.

The police also seized guns, explosives, bomb-making booklets and 4,000 compact discs featuring training instructions from the al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Anatolia, the state news agency said a further nine men had been held in Istanbul, but a state prosecutor later released them, saying they had no proven links to Ansar al-Islam.

Turkish security has been stepped up since four devastating suicide bomb attacks in Istanbul last November that killed 61 people. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attacks which targeted British and Jewish sites.

Ansar al-Islam is a militant group from Kurdish northern Iraq accused by Washington of being an ally of al-Qaeda and a force behind attacks on US troops occupying Iraq.

"After a successful operation the organisation planning this attack has been destroyed. This is the result of a year-long operation," Bursa governor Oguz Kagan Koksal said in a statement carried by Anatolia.

Mr Koksal said Ansar al-Islam had planned to carry out more attacks on US troops in Iraq after the two-day NATO summit due to begin on 28 June.

NTV television said some of those held had already taken part in the insurgency in Iraq.

The Ansar al-Islam suspects appeared before a court in Bursa yesterday, where they could face charges including membership of a terrorist group, possession of explosives, violating gun laws and holding fake identity documents.

The group’s leader, identified as Alpaslan Toprak, was among those detained, he said. Television footage showed him being escorted by police, grinning.

"The group, which was in the middle of an attack plan, has been rendered ineffective," Anatolia quoted Mr Koksal as saying.

The men arrested in Bursa had also been plotting an attack on a synagogue in the town as well as a bank robbery to raise funds for their operations, Mr Koksal said.

The men had been found to hold fake identity cards. They had also been involved in the manufacture of fake software including computer games to raise money, Mr Koksal said.

He said the suspects planned to flee to Iraq to fight US troops there once they had carried out a major attack in Turkey.

A NATO spokeswoman yesterday said the alliance was not reconsidering its plan to hold the summit in Istanbul.

"At the moment there is no consideration of that," she said. "The Turkish authorities are responsible for security and we have confidence in them."

The governor of Istanbul, Muammer Guler, said the authorities were taking every precaution against a possible attack before or during the NATO summit.

"There is no reason for concern about the meeting," Anatolia quoted him as saying.

Dozens of leaders including Mr Bush, Mr Blair and Jacques Chirac, the French president, will attend the summit, where Iraq’s future will feature high on the agenda.

Mr Guler insisted that the city, which will also host the Eurovision song contest later this month, and a meeting of foreign ministers from Islamic countries in June, is safe.

"There is no question of a situation that will affect the [NATO] meeting," he said.

"We have taken every precaution."

Turkish television showed pictures of timing devices, guns and explosive materials said to have been seized by the police in Bursa.

Since the November bombings, Istanbul - Turkey’s commercial hub and largest city - has witnessed several other much smaller attacks, the most serious of which targeted a Masonic lodge and killed a waiter and one of two suicide bombers.

Turkey, the only Muslim member of NATO, is viewed as a prime target for militant Islamist groups due to its secular democracy and close security ties with the US and Israel.