What terrorist groups are known to be seeking nuclear weapons?What do we know about their attempts?
Al Qaeda has been seeking nuclear weapons and the material needed to make them for more than a decade. Osama bin Laden and his followers have repeatedly attempted to acquire stolen nuclear material and to recruit nuclear expertise. In 2001, for example, bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri met at length with two senior Pakistani nuclear scientists and discussed nuclear weapons. As early as 1993, al Qaeda attempted to purchase what it believed was HEU in the Sudan. In the 1990s, the Japanese terror cult Aum Shinrikyo, which launched the nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway, also attempted to get nuclear weapons. Russian officials have confirmed that Chechen terrorist teams have carried out reconnaissance at Russian nuclear warhead storage sites, and in 2005, the Russian Minister of the Interior warned that Russia had intelligence that Chechen groups were planning “attacks against nuclear and power industry installation” intended to “seize nuclear materials and use them to build we
