A Plot to Kidnap Olympians?

China Claims it has Busted a Plot to Kidnap Olympians

April 11, 2008 (LPAC)--China's Ministry of Public Security spokesman Wu Heping told a news conference in Beijing on April 10 that the Chinese authorities have detained 45 "East Turkestan" terror suspects, and foiled plots to carry out suicide bomb attacks and kidnap athletes to disrupt the Beijing Olympics. Uighur militants have been agitating to establish an independent East Turkestan in China's predominantly Muslim northwestern region of Xinjiang bordering Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia. Chinese authorities cracked two terrorist groups, one of which belonged to the British-controlled East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM).

The East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) is a militant Muslim separatist group in the Xinjiang province in northwest China. The U.S. State Department listed the ETIM as a terrorist organization in 2002 during a period of increased U.S.-Chinese cooperation on anti-terrorism matters in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

China claims the separatist rebellion simmering in Xinjiang is being fueled by the terror groups of Central Asia and the Middle East. While Beijing is partially right in the sense that the Uighur terrorists do operate from Central Asia and Pakistan borders, and have fought along with the al-Qaeda, the brain of it is Hizbut Tahrir, an Islamic movement headquartered in London and virtually under the thumb of the British intelligence.