these would-be attackers. what we understand from british officials and german officials is that there was no immediate threat there is no immediate threat in britain or in germany at this time. that s because it appears that the information that sidiqi has provided has been given while there s been enough time, sort of relatetime intelligence if you will while many operatives planning this were in the pakistani border type regions which is where he had gone to a training camp. sidiqi is from hamburg, germany and left in 2009 with a group of other individuals to go to these terror training camps in the afghan border region. one of the significant things we re learning about sittdiqi attended the same mosque that muhammed atta, the lead 9/11 hijacker attended and had a group of people around him in
2000. we re learning from the same sources that sidiqi had connections with muhammed atta at that time. so his sort of radical tendencies, if you will, go back quite a long way. but now it appears he s given intelligence officials a lot of information allowing them to learn a lot about these plans and about the people behind those plans. nic robertson, cnn, abu dhabi, the united arab emirates. crunkshank is live in london. give us an idea of the structure of al qaeda today. when we hear top commanders have been killed, is there somebody in place to replace them? or does that matter less today where al qaeda operates in cells around the world. what s your sense of how big an accomplishment this is? the true headquarters of al qaeda is still in pakistan and it s from pakistan it s being hatched showing al qaeda is resilient and able to pressure the west.
american troops get on the ground that mission is more and more urgent because obviously these people are a massive threat to u.s. soldiers in afghanistan. then there s that complicated threat of terrorism which brings us to the other part of the story. let s go to nic robertson in abby dabby. . reporter: according to german counterterrorism officials, ahmad sidiqi was picked up in kabul in july and transferred to u.s. custody and they say he began to talk a lot and talk about the mumbai style plot to attack different cities in europe, in great britain and france and germany. being gunmen with explosives going into hotels or other similar soft targets where they could shoot people up. that has caused, according to a u.s. counterterrorism, u.s. intelligence officials, has caused an uptick in drone strikes in pakistan targeting