Dr Ruhakana Rugunda, the Uganda Minister of Internal Affairs, said: “We received information that a terrorist group linked to Al Qaeda, the Allied Democratic Forces, was planning to carry out terrorist activities at the Commonwealth meeting. The security services in Uganda neutralised these threats.”
He would comment on the nature of the attacks or reports about the Ugandan Armed Forces seizing a speedboat that was full of arms and homemade explosives. Those reports also claim that a numbers of suspected ADF guerrillas were taken into custody.
The commonwealth meeting in Kampala consisted of 16 presidents, and twenty prime ministers and for the first time it was attended by Queen Elizabeth and Prince phillips and Prince Charles and Camilla.
Al Qaeda’s deputy leader Ayman Al Zawahri directly addressed the Queen when threatening attacks on Britain last July, following the knighthood given to Salman Rushdie, who angered Muslims with his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses.
In a broadcast on Arabic TV channel Al Jazeera, he threatened: “I say to [Queen] Elizabeth and Blair that your message has reached us and we are in the process of preparing you for a precise response.”
Back in 2005, al-Qaeda had named Queen Elizabeth ""one of the severest enemies of Islam."
Buckingham Palace would not comment on the foiled attempt, but a former head of Royal Protection, Dai Davies, said "It will have huge implications globally for the Royal Family’s protection. It will obviously put forward planning into a huge new phase of concern."
Dr Rugunda did admit that a number of suspects had been arrested and that they stepped up security measures, neutralized the threat and in the end her visit went smoothly and without incident.
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