WASHINGTON -- Top al Qaeda leaders are saying that if they get their hands on Pakistan's nuclear weapons, they'll use them.

"God willing, the nuclear weapons won't fall into the hands of the Americans," al Qaeda leader Mustafa Abul Yazeed told the BBC in June. "And they will be seized by the fighters and used against the Americans."

Consequently, when a physicist at the CERN nuclear lab on the Swiss-French border was arrested earlier this month and charged with having ties to al Qaeda, counterterrorism officials took notice.

They believe he was in contact with a group known as AQIM: al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

Much like a corporation, al Qaeda maintains regional franchises around the world. One of the terror group's most active branches is based in the Maghreb region of North Africa - and Europe and America are in its crosshairs

The Maghreb extends from Morocco to Libya on down to Mali.

AQIM has carried out deadly bombings throughout the area. A number of its members have experience fighting U.S. troops in other al Qaeda hotspots.

"Some of them go to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq," said retired Air Force Lt. Col. Rudy Atallah, who worked until recently as African Counterterrorism Director in the office of the Secretary of Defense.

Now CEO of White Mountain Research, Atallah says AQIM's pipeline reaches into neighboring Europe.

"They have the connections to where they can move people, passports, that kind of stuff, into the European areas and back into the Middle East," he observed.

AQIM is on the record threatening Europe and the United States.

The group's leader, Abdelmalek Droukdal, told the New York Times in July 2008 that his followers share the goals of al Qaeda's hierarchy in Pakistan, saying: "Everyone must know that we will not hesitate in targeting (the United States) whenever we can and wherever it is on this planet."

One weapon AQIM uses against the West is kidnapping — including Christian missionaries.

They're often held for ransom in the remote Sahara desert region of Mali, where the group has several terror training camps.

"In the last year we've had Austrians, Swiss, UK citizens kidnapped," Atallah said. "That's interesting to me, because what you see is al Qaeda trying to make money any which way it can."

An Arab government official told CBN News that AQIM has become heavily involved in the African drug trade as a way to fund its operations. The official added that the terror group Hezbollah has also established a foothold in the region — it, too, works closely with drug cartels.
 

Erick Stakelbeck is a terrorism analyst for CBN News. This article appeared october 30, 2009 in Family Security Matters
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.4643/pub_detail.asp

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