Germany Finds Al Qaeda Attack Plans in Pornography

Documents found embedded in a pornographic movie have revealed a storehouse of information about al Qaeda’s plans for future terrorist attacks. In May of last year, a 22-year-old named Maqsood Lodin was traveling from Pakistan to Germany, and was stopped by the German police. The police, while interrogating him, found hidden in his underwear a pornographic video titled “Kick Ass” and a file called “Sexy Tanja.”

After weeks of work, the police cracked the code; they discovered the password to the file and more than 100 al Qaeda documents that included information about future terrorist attacks, such as seizing cruise ships, with the writer of the file saying:

“we could hijack a passenger ship and use it to pressurize the public.”

Investigative journalist Yassin Musharbash, from the German newspaper Die Zeit, who was the first reporter on the story, understood the threat to mean that the terrorists “would then start executing passengers on those ships and demand the release of particular prisoners,” including dressing passengers in orange jump suits, imitating the al Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and then videotaping their execution.

Among the documents discovered were terrorist training manuals in PDF format in German, English and Arabic.  Another document was called “Future Works,” which is believed to come from the innermost chambers of the al Qaeda leadership.  Lodin and Yusuf Ocak, a man who allegedly traveled back to Europe with him, are now on trial in Berlin. Western counter terrorism officials said that the men arrested had their names on a watch list.

Musharbash stated: “The document delivers very clearly the notion that al Qaeda knows it is being followed very closely . . . It specifically says that Western intelligence agencies have become very good at spoiling attacks, that they have to come up with new ways and better plotting.”