Al-Qaeda's online publication inspired Patna, Boston bombers

NEW DELHI: There is a chilling similarity between the Boston marathon bombings in April last year and the blasts at Narendra Modi’s Hunkar rally in Patna last October. Terrorists learnt to make bombs in both these cases from an online publication of Al-Qaeda, according to the investigative agencies in the two countries.

“The accused had learnt the art of bomb making from ‘Inspire’ magazine of Al-Qaeda,” India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) has said in its charge-sheet on August 22 against ten alleged terrorists of Students Islamic Movement of India or SIMI, including their leader Ali Haider, for triggering bombs at the rally with an aim to harm Modi.

In an indictment last June against Boston bombings suspect Dzhokhar A Tsarnaev, the US had similarly said that “he learnt how to make the pressure cooker bombs used in the bombings from an online magazine called Inspire, an English-language publication of Al Qaeda”.

While the US police had found copies of the magazine in Tsarnaev’s computer, the NIA seized the printouts of the magazine from the hideout of SIMI’s Haider.

The NIA says the Patna accused turned to Inspire to build “pipe and elbow bombs” after the cylinder bombs failed at Bodh Gaya in July 2013.