"I think the al Qaeda statement that came out recently saying that this is an attack in retaliation for what happened the 17th and 24th of December is unfounded, because we know that he bought the ticket a few days before that, so there's no link for the time being, " al-Basha said.

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Instead David spends 60 hours a week helping run Anonymous Operations, the supposedly elite arm of the troublemaking hacking group called Anonymous that orchestrated a massive computer network attack against MasterCard, Visa and PayPal in November in retaliation for their freezing donor payments to WikiLeaks.

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In July 2010, the group carried out a pair of deadly bombings in Kampala, Uganda, killing more than 70 people. it was the first attack the group launched outside Somalia, and was in retaliation, Al-Shabaab claimed, for Uganda's deployment of peace support forces in Somalia.

CNN: Mysterious al Qaeda 'envoy' dispenses aid in Somalia