>>19
Interesting that, as the al-Jazeera article points out, the supposed al-Qaeda message contains errors in the Qu'ranic verses quoted. I would agree that this seems like something al-Qaeda wouldn't do.

That's not to say that al-Qaeda weren't connected to this, but the supposed claim of responsibility should be taken cum grano salis.

Related to this... I heard an interview with a British intelligence officer who made a remark that I found surprising, and which the interviewer, oddly enough, didn't pursue. He said that al-Qaeda had ceased to be a strong threat as a result of the post-9/11 events, and that many of the activities usually attributed to the group were actually the work of what, according to him, the intelligence community called "green shoots", autonomous groups emulating al-Qaeda and acting in their name.

Now, all this al-Qaeda talk aside, there are a number of alternate scenarios that fit the facts just as well. One of them (though I don't ascribe any particular credibility to this) is psy-ops by a Western intelligence agency. Another one (that I like better, because it fits extremely well with the mangled Qu'ranic verses) is that this might be an operation by an anti-Islamic radical group. God knows, Britain (and Europe in general) has its share of those.