The UK’s security minister has warned that a resurgent al Qaeda is seeking to carrying out fresh terror attacks on airplanes, using drone technology and jihadist sleeper agents working at airports.
Ben Wallace MP told The Sunday Times that with Islamic State on the decline, al Qaeda was regrouping and had already made grounds in Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Libya under the organisaton’s spiritual leader and Osama bin Laden’s inheritor Ayman al Zawahiri.
“The aviation threat is real,” Mr Wallace told the newspaper of record.
“Aviation is still a blue riband event for these terrorists. Al-Qaeda are resurgent. They have reorganised. They are pushing more and more plots towards Europe and have become familiar with new methods and still aspire to aviation attacks.”
“Al-Qaeda sat quietly in the corner and tried to work out what the 21st century looked like, while Isis became the latest terrorist boy band, but they have not gone away — they have reorganised. You’re seeing al-Qaeda appear in areas we thought were dormant,” he added.