© Rubbettino

Centro Militare di Studi Strategici - Roma

© Rubbettino

Rubbettino

Islamist and Middle EasternTerrorism: A threat to Europe?

Maria do Céu Pinto(University of Minho Portugal)

© Rubbettino

© 2004 - Rubbettino Editore88049 Soveria Mannelli - Viale Rosario Rubbettino, 10 -Tel. (0968) 662034

www.rubbettino.it

Copyright © by CeMiSSCentro Militare di Studi Strategici

Piazza della Rovere, 83 - 00165 Roma (RM)e-mail: relest.cemiss@casd.difesa.it

© Rubbettino

Index

Abstract: 7Introduction 9I Islamist and Middle Eastern Terrorism in Europe: The Background 11

I.1. Palestinian Terrorism 11I.2. Iranian Terrorism 17

II New Patterns of Islamist Terrorism in the 1990s 21II.1. A New Age of Terrorism 21II.2. Religious Terrorism 22

III The Web of Terror in Europe 31III.1. Interlocking Terror Plots 31III.2. Al-Qaeda: an Umbrella Network 32III.3. Mosques: Recruitment and Indoctrination 36

IV Groups and Activities of Islamic Terrorists in Europe 41IV.1. England 41IV.2. France And Belgium 49IV.3. Italy 53IV.4. Germany 62IV.5. Spain 65IV.6. The Netherlands 71

V Evaluating the Terrorist Threat to Europe’s Security 75V.1. Al-Qaeda’s European Infrastructure after 11th September 75V.2. Islamic Communities in Europe: A Breeding Ground

of Terrorists? 76Conclusion 77Bibliography 79

5© Rubbettino

© Rubbettino

7

Abstract

During three decades Middle Eastern terrorism in Europe was largely aspillover from problems in the Middle East. Europe was a preferential oper-ational area for Arab, Palestinian and Iranian terrorists fighting each other. Inthe 1990s, a new Islamic threat emerged as a result of the activities of “ad hoc”terrorist groups, which lack a well-established organisational identity and tendto decentralise and compartmentalise their activities. These new groups, be-longing to the al-Qaeda transnational network, seek to punish the West by in-flicting heavy civilian casualties. The 11th September hijackers are prime ex-amples of this new breed of radical, transnational, Islamic terrorists. Thesegroups are well funded, and some have developed sophisticated internationalsupport networks that provide them great freedom of movement and increasetheir opportunities to attack on a global basis. Since the September 11th ter-rorist attacks, police and prosecutors in Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, Ger-many, Spain and the Netherlands have made scores of arrests and uncoveredwhat they suspect is a large and interconnected network of Muslim terrorists.America may be the primary target of Islamist terrorism, but Europe hasproved to be the breeding ground of the networks. Europe has played host toa sprawling network of terror groups whose activists were crucial to the 11thSeptember terror or were part of al-Qaeda plots. European police believe theynow hold some of the key players in what may have been a planned secondwave of terror attacks in Europe. There are large Muslim expatriate commu-nities in most EU countries. This also includes the large student populationsand businessmen who frequently travel to Europe. Geographically, Europesits in a strategic part of the world, with good communication links to theMiddle East, Asia and the United States. It itself offers attractive targets forterrorists. They can take advantage of the lack of intrusiveness of the author-ities into ordinary peoples’ lives. This makes it easy for Islamic terrorists tosend in operational elements. The tolerant and liberal European societies of-fer an ideal environment for al-Qaeda operatives seeking to blend into their

© Rubbettino

8

surroundings and, thus, evade detection by the authorities. They can pass un-noticed in the Muslim communities but they can also receive cover, shelter, lo-gistical aid from sympathisers and in-country support elements, who in turn,are a potential pool of recruits.

© Rubbettino

9

Introduction

The Middle East has been, since 1984, the major stage and/or source ofinternational terrorism on the world scene.1 Middle Eastern and Islamist ter-rorism remains a complex phenomenon spawned by a combination of factorsand motivations. Both traditional state-sponsored international Middle East-ern terrorism and that carried out by loosely organised groups of radical Is-lamists operate in a troubled national and regional environment: a context ofregional and factional rivalries, economic crisis, lack of political legitimacy, de-teriorating climate due to the failure of the Arab-Israeli peace process. Allthese factors fuel frustration and desperation and the belief that the politicalstalemate can only be overcome through the use of violence: those perceptionsincreasingly find expression in acts of terrorism.

In the aftermath of the Soviet bloc’s demise, the secure bipolar view of theworld collapsed, leaving, in its place, many uncertainties and unstable reali-ties. Furthermore, the growing invasion of globalisation, with its unifyingdrive, has impacted negatively on many cultures and has generated local re-sistance. The “terrorist spectaculars” that have characterised the last decadeof the XXth century and the first years of the XXIth century are the graphicillustration of a deeply transformed world. Religious terrorism has emerged asthe foremost expression of political violence against the prevailing political or-der. It could represent a symptomatic reaction to the global shifts in the struc-turing of the international political order after the end of the Cold War. In itsviolent outburst, it is the synthesis of real experiences of political oppression,economic destitution and inability to assimilate to the modern world.

The new fact about Middle Eastern terrorism is that ready access to in-formation and information technologies, coupled with the ability to commu-nicate globally via the Internet, fax, and other media, provides terrorists withnew tools for targeting, fund-raising, propaganda dissemination, and opera-tional communication. Members of al-Qaeda, the worldwide umbrella organ-

* Europe is employed here in the strict sense of European Union (EU) members.1 Cecilia Albino, “The Politics of Terrorism: A Contemporary Survey”, in Barry Rubin,

The Politics of Terrorism: Terror as a State and Revolutionary Strategy, Washington, D.C., TheJohns Hopkins Foreign Policy Institute, 1989, p. 222.

© Rubbettino

10

isation for Islamic terrorism, actively use the Internet in some manner: to com-municate with each other, organise actions (often through the use of pass-words and encryption to limit access to members and friends), rally support-ers and sympathisers, enlist new members, advertise successful actions, hon-our fallen comrades, and to convey grievances, threats and demands to theirtargets at home and abroad.

© Rubbettino

1 The PLO joined a global network of guerrilla and terrorist groups and built valuablelinks to the Soviet Union and its East European satellites. Palestinian operatives were sent totrain in the Soviet bloc, China and North Korea for training in guerrilla warfare that was oftendirectly transferable to terrorist skills.

2 “Terrorism after the Cold War: Trends and Challenges”, Orbis, vol. 46, nº 2, Spring 2002,p. 158.

3 B. Rubin, “The Political Uses of Terrorism in the Middle East”, in Rubin, The Politics ofTerrorism, p. 30.

4 Albin, op. cit., pp. 225-30.

I. Islamist and Middle Eastern Terrorism in Europe:The Background

I.1. Palestinian Terrorism

In the past four decades, sponsor states (Iraq, Syria, Libya and Iran) haveplayed a major role in terrorist activities in the region and abroad, namely inWestern Europe. In the late 1960s, a large number of Palestinian guerrillagroups had come into being. Libya, Syria, Iraq, the U.S.S.R. and China spon-sored specific groups1. Some groups, including major ones with several thou-sand members, received simultaneous Libyan, Iraqi, Syrian, Iranian and oth-er support. Those states supported international terrorism either by engagingin terrorist activity themselves, or by providing arms, training, safe havens,diplomatic facilities, financial backing and logistic support to terrorists.

In the case of Palestinian and PLO terrorism, state sponsoring was crucial toits durability and success2. For Arab states, international terrorism has been “mere-ly an extension of their domestic policies”3. For states, such as Libya and Syria,“small and weak states”, “terrorist strategies” help “gain international attentionand further overly ambitious foreign policy goals”. Those countries contributed tonumerous terrorist actions in Europe: in the case of Libya, mainly through the AbuNidal group, and, in the case of Syria, using Palestinian terrorists4.

The golden era of Palestinian terror was initiated on 23rd July, 1968. Onthat day, three armed Palestinian terrorists from a Popular Front for the Lib-

11© Rubbettino

eration of Palestine (PFLP)5 cell hijacked a plane en route from Rome to Lodairport in Tel Aviv and diverted it to Algeria6. That event ushered in modernterrorism in its form of “internationalization of terrorism” as a territorial andmedia phenomenon. Technological advances in the field of transportation al-lowed terrorists to travel with ease and to move around, inflinging human andmaterial damages on countries other than their own7. Furthermore, televisiongave terrorists a worldwide audience, which had a tremendous impact on theresonance and psychological effect of terrorist acts, sometimes bestowing po-litical legitimacy or respectability on terrorists8.

The PFLP was among the first of the Palestinian organisations to use ter-rorism as a means to attract international attention to its cause. The movementcarried out a long list of terrorist attacks, particularly spectacular hijackingsagainst aviation targets. Its members worked closely with German, Italian andJapanese groups. German terrorists of the Revolutionary Cells and from theRed Army Faction were allowed in Palestinian training camps and participat-ed in major PFLP operations9.

There were other Palestinian factions that targeted the West: the Fatah(namely its terrorist arm, the Black September Organisation), the Abu NidalOrganisation, also known as the Fatah-Revolutionary Council, thePFLP–General Command, led by Ahmed Jibril and the Wadi’ Haddad Fac-tion10.

12

5 The PFLP, a Marxist-Leninist group, was founded in 1967 by George Habash as a mem-ber of the PLO. Habash viewed the “liberation” of Palestine as an integral part of the worldCommunist revolution. Throughout most of its existence, the organisation combined Marxistideology with Palestinian nationalism, and saw the elimination of Israel as a means towards theultimate goal, Ely Karmon, “Fatah and the Popular for the Liberation of Palestine”, ICT, 25November 2000 (http://www.ict.org.il/), pp. 6-7..

6 Karmon, op. cit., p. 7.7 Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, 2nd ed., London, Indigo, 1999, p. 67-8.8 Brigitte L. Nacos, “Accomplice or Witness? The Media’s Role in Terrorism”, Current Hi-

story, vol 99, nº 636, April 2000, p. 1779 Those also included operations masterminded by the famous “Carlos” (Ilich Ramirez

Sanchez) on behalf of PFLP: the seizure of the OPEC headquarters in Vienna in 1975, the at-tempted bombing of an El-Al plane in Paris and the attempted hijacking of an El-Al plane inNairobi in January 1975, as, well as the hijacking of an Air France plane to Entebbe, Uganda,in June 1976; see Ely Karmon, “German and Palestinian Terrorist Organisations: Strange Bed-fellows”, ICT, 10 May 2000 (http://www.ict.org.il/).

10 It carried out the hijacking of a Lufthansa plane to Mogadishu, foiled by the interven-tion of a West German counter-terror unit.

© Rubbettino

The decision to attack Israeli and Western targets outside Israel and inWestern Europe was largely a consequence of internal developments in theArab world, in particular, the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and its impact on an em-battled Palestinian movement. The motive for the choice of the terrorist pathby the diverse radical fringes of the PLO was the wish to gain international at-tention and to enhance their status within the Palestinian movement11.

The PFLP and other radical groups within the PLO targeted Western coun-tries because of what they considered as “Western imperialists who supported Is-rael or Arab reactionaries who interfered with the Palestinian or regional revo-lution”12. But Middle Eastern terrorism in Europe was largely a spillover fromproblems in the Middle East. Europe was a preferential operational area for Araband Palestinian terrorists, like the Abu Nidal group and that of Ahmed Jibril,Libyan and Iranian agents eliminating political dissidents13.

Reflecting on this phenomenon, Pluchinsky said in 1987: “Middle Easternterrorist activity in Western Europe is a product of the numerous antagonistic re-lationships which exist in the Middle East between states, ethnic and religiousgroups and Palestinian and Arab personalities. More and more of these conflicts,feuds and disagreements are evolving into ‘mini-terrorist wars’ which are beingfought not in the Middle East, but in Western Europe–a substitute battlefield”14.

That author indicated the following reasons for Europe’s role as a battle-ground between rival Arab groups:

1. the presence of large Palestinian and Arab communities, constituting a“potential manpower pool, which facilitates the building and maintenance ofa logistical infrastructure”.

2. Western Europe’s central geographical position and proximity to theArab world, its “excellent transportation facilities and relatively easy cross-border movement”.

13

11. There was the pressure by extremist elements within the organisation who insisted onthe escalation of the struggle, to compete for power with the PLO and to win the sponsorshipof Arab states. Rubin, “The Origins”, p. 157.

12. Rubin, op. cit., p. 155.13. D. A. Pluchinsky, “Middle Eastern Terrorist Activity in Western Europe in 1985: A

Diagnosis and Prognosis”, in Paul Wilkinson and Alasdair Stewart (eds.), Contemporary Re-search on Terrorism, Aberdeen, Aberdeen University Press, 1987, p. 165.

14. Id., p. 166.

© Rubbettino

3. The presence in Western Europe of “enemy targets”, like Israelis, Pales-tinian rivals and Arab dissidents and opponents to regimes in the Middle East.

4. The level of publicity and impact on public opinion of terrorist acts car-ried out in Europe and against European targets is much higher than if thoseacts were committed in the Middle East.

5. European countries provide a “less risky and operationally easier” ter-rain than Arab countries (due to the authoritarian nature of those regimes)and Israel (due to its tight security measures)15.

Another reason for the hijacking operations was the wish to free Pales-tinian members who had been imprisoned or arrested during previous oper-ations in Western countries. Since most of the Western governments submit-ted to the terrorists’ demands for fear of antagonising terrorist organisationsor Arab governments, a vicious cycle was soon established: “Concessions,made to free one captive, invite the capture of others while diminishing theentire policy and all its citizens…”16. Several European countries, notablyFrance, Greece and Italy, have repeatedly been charged with ‘deal-making’with terrorists, quietly making concessions to regimes and groups involvedwith international terrorism so as to shelter their countries17.

Terrorist incidents of Palestinian/Arab matrix in Western Europe showedan increase until 1985 and a decrease thereafter. Palestinian terrorists, spe-cially those opposed to Arafat, were the major contributors to the spillover vi-olence: in the peak period, 1980-85, they conducted 40 per cent of all Middle-Eastern-origin attacks in Western Europe. The Mediterranean countries,Greece, Italy and Cyprus accounted for the highest number of incidents,along with France, Spain and the United Kingdom18.

The most outstanding act from this period was the concurrent hijackingof four Western passenger airliners to Jordan. On 6th September, 1970, the

14

15 Id., p. 165-6. See also A. Jongman, “Trends in International and Domestic Terrorism in We-stern Europe, 1968-1988”, in Terrorism and Political Violence, vol. 4, nº 4, Winter 1992, pp. 49-50.

16 Christopher C. Harmon, Terrorism Today, London, Frank Cass, 2000, p. 239.17 Ibid. and also p. 253; the leading British terrorism authority, Paul Wilkinson, argues again-

st the”dangerously counter-productive aspects of the hostage deals pursued by successive Frenchgovernments and the Reagan administration”, “British Policy on Terrorism: An Assessment”, inJuliet Lodge (ed.), The Threat of Terrorism, Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1888, p. 53.

18 See Jongman, op. cit., p. 49.

© Rubbettino

PFLP, simultaneously hijacked four jetliners. They demanded the release offedayeen imprisoned in Germany, Switzerland and Israel. A TWA and a Swis-sair airliner were diverted to Dawson airport in Jordan and a Pan AmericanBoeing 747 was flown to Cairo. Terrorists blew up all of the planes on theground after the passengers were evacuated in front of TV cameras, amidstbehind-the-scenes negotiations for the release of the passengers.

The PLO/Fatah19 (Fatah being the military arm of the PLO) was not averseto using the same bloody methods of its rivals within the Palestinian movement.The expulsion of Fatah from Jordan (following a relentless clampdown onPalestinian terrorist organisations in Jordan) and Egypt severely limited thegroup’s ability to launch cross-border operations into Israel. Thus, Fatah creat-ed its terrorist branch, Black September (BSO), and resorted to increased ter-rorist activities as a means to attack Israel20. Starting in November 1971, thegroup tried to assassinate Jordan’s ambassador to London. The following year,BSO members hijacked a Belgian airliner flying from Vienna to Tel Aviv, blewup a West German electrical installation, a Dutch gas plant and an oil refineryin Trieste. Western European countries took hurried steps to protect its airportsand industrial complexes and began to draw up protective measures.

The worst was yet to come. On 5th September, 1972, during the OlympicGames, the Munich Massacre and Palestinian terrorism became householdexpressions. Two Israeli athletes were killed when hooded Palestinians raidedthe Olympic grounds and took another eleven as hostages. The terrorists de-manded the release of 234 Arab and German prisoners held in Israel and inWest Germany21. Later, in a 23-hour drama, a German attempt to lure the kid-nappers failed and, in the ensuing shoot-out, nine more Israeli athletes werekilled, together with the eight gunmen and a German policeman. Pictures ofthe hooded gunmen were flashed all over the world: they became the face ofPalestinian resistance – for the West, the very face of terror.

In the mid-1970s, the PLO started exploring diplomatic options22, butterrorist activities were continued until the mid-80s. The turning point was the

15

19 Fatah is an acronym spelled backwards representing “Harakat al-Tahrir al-Filistini”,which translates as Palestine Liberation Movement.

20 Karmon, “Fatah”, pp. 12-3.21 It included the release of Ulrike Meinhof and Andreas Gang, who had been arrested

earlier in June, 1972.22 The first sign of this shift was in June, 1974, at the 12th meeting of the Palestinian Na-

tional Council (PNC) in Rabat, when a decision was made to abandon international terrorismand to accept the establishment of a national authority in any liberated part of Palestine; seeKarmon, op. cit., p. 14.

© Rubbettino

Achilles Lauro affair, in October, 1985, which taught the PLO leadership alesson. The attack against the Italian cruise ship, anchored in Alexandria,Egypt, was meant to be an anti-Israel operation, but it resulted in the assassi-nation of an American Jewish passenger and in the deterioration of the PLO’simage23. Interested in taking advantage of changes in Europe’s political out-look, the Fatah was reluctant to jeopardize the situation by attacking Westerntargets or carrying out overt terrorist activities in Western Europe.

Of all Palestinian factions, Fatah–Revolutionary Council was consideredthe most dangerous, active and murderous Palestinian terror organisations inthe 1980s24. The Abu Nidal organisation carried out terrorist attacks in 20countries (including the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Is-rael), killing and injuring almost 900 persons. The group traditionally carriedout operations against various Arab countries and also against Palestinian mil-itants considered too moderate.

Major attacks included the Rome and Vienna airports in December, 1985(killing 18 and wounding scores); Jewish interests, such as synagogues in Vi-enna, Rome and Brussels, a Jewish school in Antwerp, a Jewish restaurant inParis, and the City of Poros excursion ship attack in Greece in July, 1988. Theorganisation ceased its attacks on Western targets in the late 1980s.

The PFLP-General Command, led by Ahmed Jibril25, carried out dozens ofattacks in Europe and the Middle East during the 1970s-1980s, although the hey-day of its international activity was in the early 1970s. Over time, PFLP-GC hasmaintained links of varying degrees of intensity with three Middle Eastern spon-sors – Syria, Libya and Iran – that share its adherence to the rejectionist line26.

16

23 The attack was carried out by Abu Abbas’ Palestine Liberation Front, one of the PLO’sconstituent groups.

24 Headed by Sabri al-Bana (Abu Nidal) and founded in 1974 as a consequence of AbuNidal’s split from the Fatah organisation. The breakup and the foundation of the new organi-sation was the result of the Iraqi regime’s influence, which prompted Abu Nidal to launch in-dependent terrorist operations to serve Iraqi interests; Karmon, op. cit., p. 16.

25 Jibril, a former captain of the Syrian Army, split from the PFLP in 1968, claiming it wan-ted to focus more on pure armed struggle and less on politics. It opposed Arafat’s political shift,in particular, the 1974 PNC’s decision to halt international terrorism.

26 David Tal, “The International Dimension of PFLP-GC Activity” (http:-//www.ict.-org.il/Articles/pflp-gc1.htm), p. 3.

© Rubbettino

The first international terrorist incident organised by the group was themidair bombing in February, 1970, of a Swissair airliner destined for Israel,killing all 47 passengers and crew. When the organisation resumed interna-tional operations in the mid-1980s, it was serving interests alien to the Pales-tinian cause. From 1985-89 the PFLP-GC members were involved in terror-ist activities perpetrated in Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands, whichwere facilitated by its infrastructure in Western Europe and its dormantcells27. It is believed the organisation played a role in the attack of Pan Amflight 103 which exploded in midair over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December,1988, (allegedly paid by Libya at the behest of Iran) and in the bombing of theFrench UTA airliner in September, 1989 over Niger (commissioned by Iran)28.

In 1986, the United States responded to a spate of anti-American attacksin Western Europe with the bombing of Tripoli and Benghaze. The air raidshelped bring about a significant lull in Middle East state sponsorship of in-ternational terrorism, particularly in the attacks carried out in Europe29. Eu-rope, too, tightened its counter-terrorism policy after the capture of Syrian-sponsored terrorists sent to carry out acts of sabotage against Britain and WestGermany. Following this incident, diplomatic ties between Britain and Syriawere severed and the European Community imposed economic sanctions onSyria30.These measures significantly curbed terrorist activities by Syria andLibya-sponsored organisations, particularly the Abu Nidal Organisation, re-sulting in a sharp drop in attacks by the more extreme Palestinian organisa-tions in the late 1980s31.

I.2. Iranian Terrorism

One of the major irritants in European-Iranian relations was the Khome-inist regime’s determination to pursue its opponents on European territory.Iranian security and intelligence officials were active in Europe, working fre-quently out of the Iranian embassies and monitoring, at first, the activities of

17

27 Id., pp. 7-8.28 Id., p. 5.29 Specifically, the expulsion of more than 100 Libyan ‘diplomats’ from European capitals

made it much more difficult for Qadhafi to use Libyan People’s Bureaus (the Libyan equiva-lent of embassies) there for terrorist missions.

30 Karmon, op. cit., p. 25.31 Harmon, op. cit., p. 265.

© Rubbettino

the Pahlavi regime’s officials. The most striking of these attacks was Iran’s as-sassination of former Prime Minister, 70 year-old Shahpour Bakhtiar, andthree bodyguards on 8th August, 1991. French prosecutors concluded, in1994, that the Iranian government was directly linked to the assassination. Se-nior French, German, Israeli and American experts believe Iranian assassina-tions were not the result of radical fringes of the Iranian apparatus: there areclear links between those acts and the Iranian Supreme Council for NationalSecurity, which includes Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ex-President Rafsanjani andHojatoislam Ali Fallahiyan, the head of Iran’s secret services. It is also clearthat senior members of the Iranian Foreign Service and Ministry of Informa-tion are either actually intelligence agents or under their direct control32.

The elimination of Tehran’s opponents had a harmful effect on diplomaticrelations with several Western European countries. Iranian intelligence agentsand hardliners have attacked or intimidated Iranian dissidents in Austria,France, Italy, Switzerland and Germany33. No concerted European approachwas put in place to tackle the problem of Iranian terrorist activities in Europe.Although the European countries concerned sought the cooperation of en-forcement agencies of its neighbours, they ultimately chose to deal with theproblem on a unilateral basis. Some of those countries chose to expel severalwould-be Iranian assassins from their soil.

In the late 1980s, Iran stepped up terrorist attacks against members of theopposition and Iranian exiles. In 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini condemned theBritish author, Salman Rushdie, to death on the charge of apostasy due to thecontent of his book, the Satanic Verses. Starting in 1995, Iranian officials be-gan airing a new position: that the fatwa against Salman Rushdie had only the-oretical religious validity and would not be implemented. In September 1998,Iranian Foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, announced that his governmenthad no intention of threatening the life of the British author. He also said thathis government was dissociating itself from the $2m bounty which had beenput on Rushdie’s life by the Khordad Foundation, a semi-official organisation

18

32 Anthony Cordesman and Ahmed S. Hashim, Iran: Dilemmas of Dual Containment,Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1997, p. 148

33 Iranian agents seem to be responsible for assassinating Fereydun Farokhzad, a radiopersonality in Germany in August, 1992; Abd al-Rahman Boroumand, a Bakhtiar supporter inParis in April, 1991, and Ali Mohamed Assadi, a monarchist opposition figure in November,1994; see Cordesman and Hashim, op. cit., p. 158.

© Rubbettino

with connections to radical elements in the regime34. But officials stressed thatthe fatwa could not be reversed as it can only be rescinded by the religiousleader who pronounces it35.

In the 1990s, Iran’s eradicationist campaign in Europe also targetedmembers of the Kurdish parties and the Mujahedin-e Khalq (the People’s Mu-jahideen)36, opposition movements which have often used terrorism and as-sassinations in attacking the Iranian regime. Prominent on the list of Iranian-ordered murders was the September, 1992 murders of four Kurdish opposi-tion leaders in the “Mykonos” restaurant in Berlin, including the Kurdish De-mocratic Party of Iran’s chief, Sadegh Sharafkandi. Already in March, 1996,Germany’s Federal Court of Justice had ordered the arrest of Iran’s Intelli-gence Minister, Ali Fallahiyan, suspected of ordering the killing of the four ex-iled Iranian Kurdish leaders37.

The Berlin murder highlighted the high degree of coordination among di-verse Iranian government agencies and entities in the planning and execution ofassassinations. It exposed, according to a French official, that “the whole Iranianstate apparatus is at the service of these operations”38. The German court, whichjudged and condemned one Iranian and four Lebanese for the murders, statedthat the Iranian government followed a deliberate policy of liquidating theregime’s opponents who lived outside Iran. The key groups involved in the Berlinassassination were the Revolutionary Guards and the Intelligence Ministry. Theextra-legal committee also included the minister of Intelligence and Security, theForeign minister and the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei39.

19

34 CNN.com, “Iran Dissociates Itself from Rushdie Death Sentence”, 24 September 1998.35 Yet, Western experts believe that Iranian agents killed the Japanese translator of the Sa-

tanic Verses on 12th June, 1991, and attempted to kill the Italian translator nine days earlier;Cordesman and Hashim, op. cit., p. 157.

36 Agents of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security caused the death of KazemRajavi, the head of the party in Geneva on 24th August, 1992, and Mohamed Hussein Naghdi,a leading member of the National Council of Resistance in Rome on 16th March, 1993. In 1994,the Swiss government requested the extradition from France of two Iranians indicted in the1991 murder in Geneva of Karem Rajavi, brother of the leader of the People’s Party. Instead,the French government expelled the suspects to Iran in December, 1993. The two were among13 Iranians indicted by the Swiss for the murder (the other 11 were at large at the time of theindictments); id., p. 155.

37 In 1989, Iranians killed Sharafkandi’s predecessor, Abdul Rahman Qassemlou, and twoassociates in Vienna after arranging a fake meeting allegedly to “negotiate” with the Iranian go-vernment; id., p. 156.

38 Thomas Sancton, “The Tehran Connection”, Time, vol. 143, nº 12, 21 March 1994, p. 52.39 T. Sancton, “Iran’s State of Terror”, Time, vol. 148, nº 20, 11 November 1996, p. 82.

© Rubbettino

The “Mykonos” trial created considerable ill will between Bonn andTehran. Within hours of the ruling, the European Union (EU) presidencycondemned Iran in the “Mykonos case” and declared its behaviour totally un-acceptable. It agreed to suspend official ministerial visits to Iran and invitedthe 15 member states to recall their ambassadors for coordinated consulta-tions on future relations with Iran40. But the possibility that all 15 governmentswould endorse dramatic new measures was not welcome and the EU opted in-stead, in April, 1997, for a mainly symbolic package of measures to protestagainst the Tehran regime41.

Since the mid-1990s, Iranian policy evolved away from high profile ter-rorist actions in the heart of Europe in favour of less conspicuous acts in lesspolitically sensitive locations, like Pakistan, Iraq and Turkey42.

20

40 Saeed Barzin, “Bitter Fruits of Mykonos”, MEI, nº 548, 18 April 1997, p. 11.41 “European Union Declaration on Iran”, n° 26/97, 29 April 1997 (at http://www.euru-

nion.org/news/press/1997-2/pr26-97.htm).42 Michael Eisenstadt, Iranian Military Power: Capabilities and Intentions, Washington, D.

C., The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1996, p. 66.

© Rubbettino

II. New Patterns of Islamist Terrorism in the 1990s

II.1. A New Age of Terrorism

In the 1990s, the phenomenon of terror has changed both quantitativelyand qualitatively. Terrorist groups not only have increased in number, but theyhave become more active and more violent. Five of the seven states that havebeen branded by the U.S. government as sponsors of international terrorism–Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria – are located in the region1. Moreover, ofthe 33 major international terrorist groups described in the State Department2001 report on global terrorism, more than half are based in the Middle Eastand North Africa2. In the last decade – and starting in 1993 with the attack onthe World Trade Center (WTC) in New York – Islamist groups have attract-ed world attention as they have launched a systematic terror campaign againstAmerican and other Western allies.

When the first attack on the World Trade Center took place, many ana-lysts highlighted the existence of an “Islamist Internationale”, sworn to fightthe “Great Satan America” for the global supremacy of Islam. They pointedout these groups are centrally coordinated and act in concert to wage waragainst American targets. Terrorist acts were interpreted as part of a greaterwhole – an all-out attack on America itself, aimed not merely at American en-gagement in the world at large, but at American ideals. In the WTC bombing,federal investigators gathered evidence, showing that leaders or representa-tives of five different groups – the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, HAMAS, the Su-danese National Islamic Front (NIF), the Pakistan-based al-Fuqrah, andgroups funded by Persian Gulf donors – were involved in the plot and that

21

1 The others are Cuba and North Korea. See U.S. Department of State, Patterns of Glo-bal Terrorism 2001, May 2002.

2 See previous note.

© Rubbettino

22

they planned other attacks in the New York area. In fact, bin Laden came un-der the scrutiny of Washington immediately following the World Trade Cen-ter bombing. His name came up as one of the associates of Sheikh Omar Ab-dul Rahman – spiritual mentor of the WTC bombers – and as the financialbacker of the Martyr Azzam Hostel in Peshawar where Ramzi Ahmed Yousef– the leader of the WTC plot – had stayed3.

In the 1990s, terrorism by extremist individuals or groups claiming to actfor religious motives increased. Experts in the US security and intelligencecommunity have stressed that the greatest terrorist threat to the United Statescomes from fundamentalist Islamic extremists4. Some of these groups, such asthe Party of God–Hizbollah, the Palestinian group Hamas (Islamic ResistanceMovement), and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad fit the traditional terroristmould. These groups have hierarchical structures and receive support fromstate sponsors, such as Iran and Syria.

II.2. Religious Terrorism

Experts have said that religiously-inspired terrorism will likely increaseover the following decades due to economic difficulties, political tensions, es-pecially the persistence of unresolved conflicts in the Middle East and thesweeping changes in the regional and world environment5. The 1995RAND–St. Andrews Chronology of International Terrorist Incidents indi-cates that religious terrorist groups, in 1994, were 16 out of a total of 49. Thefollowing year they had increased to 26 of a total of 56 groups6.

In reality, violent religious terrorist activity has increased sharply since thelate 1980s and it has become one of the dominant forms of terror, surpassing innumber the traditional political/nationalist/separatist/Marxist-Leninist groups.

3 The Interagency OPSEC Support Staff, Intelligence Threat Handbook, April 1996, Sec-tion 4, “Terrorist Intelligence Operations” (http://www.fas.org-/irp/nsa/ioss-/threat96/-part04.htm).

4 “International Terrorism”, remarks by Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Amb. PhilipC. Wilcox, Jr., before the Denver Council on Foreign Relations, Denver, CO, 12 September,1996, p. 3.

5 Lt. Gen. Patrick M. Hughes, Director, Defense Intelligence Agency, “Global Threatsand Challenges: The Decades Ahead”, statement for the Senate Select Committee on Intelli-gence, 28 January, 1998 (http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1998_hr/s980128h.htm).

6 Mark Juergensmeyer, “Understanding the New Terrorism”, Current History, vol. 99, nº636, April, 2000, p. 158.

© Rubbettino

Religious terrorists differ from traditional ideological terrorists in that theformer are willing to sacrifice to obtain their objective. Religious terrorists aremore prone to use indiscriminate violence. Bruce Hoffman says that religiousterrorism tends to be more lethal than secular terrorism because of the radi-cally different value systems, mechanisms of legitimisation and justification,concepts of morality and Manichean world views that directly affect the “holyterrorists’” motivation7.

For the religious terrorist, violence “assumes a transcendental dimen-sion”8. Executed in the fulfilment of some divinely-ordained command, it isdevoid of the moral constraints that bind other terrorists’ actions. Hoffmansays: “whereas secular terrorists generally consider indiscriminate violence im-moral and counterproductive, religious terrorists regard such violence not on-ly as morally justified, but as a necessary expedient for the attainment of theirgoals. Thus religion serves as a legitimizing force – conveyed by sacred text orimparted via clerical authorities claiming to speak for the divine”9. Or, asStevenson, has put it: “Old terrorists are looking to bargain; new terroristswant only to express their wrath and cripple their enemy”10.

Islamist extremists see themselves as involved in a total war against theenemies of the faith. Islamist radicals think that the present societies are un-Islamic and illegitimate since God’s injunctions have been forgotten and vio-lated. In this context, they believe it is the duty of every Muslim to wage jihadin order to bring about an Islamic revolution by transforming society11. Is-lamic terrorists see themselves as alien to a world that has lost its sense. Theysee themselves as actors of an eschatological drama, a Manichean confronta-tion, pitting the forces of good versus evil on a political battlefield12.

Osama bin Laden, the terrorism mastermind who funds and coordinatesa host of terrorist groups, has as his main goal the overthrow of “heretic gov-ernments” and the establishment of Islamic governments based on the rule of

23

7 Bruce Hoffman, “The Confluence of International and Domestic Trends in Terrorism”,Terrorism and Political Violence, vol. 9, nº 2, Summer, 1997, p. 4.

8 B. Hoffman, ““Holy Terror”: The Implications of Terrorism Motivated by a ReligiousImperative”, RAND Paper P-7834, 1993, p. 2.

9 Ibid.10 Jonathan Stevenson, “Pragmatic Counter-Terrorism”, Survival, vol. 43, nº 4, Winter

2001-02, p. 35.11 See, for instance, Charles Tripp, “Sayyid Qutb: The Political Vision”, in Ali Rahnema

(ed.), Pioneers of Islamic Revival, London, Zed Books, 1994.12 Juergensmeyer, op. cit., p. 161.

© Rubbettino

the “Sharia”13. Radical Islamists of the bin Laden kind call on their brethren torenew the attacks upon the enemies of Islam, that is, the United States and Israel.They proclaim that these two countries represent the “crusader-Jewish pact” atthe root of an anti-Islamic campaign aimed at humiliating and conquering Mus-lim lands. Bin Laden’s aims avowedly are to expel all Americans and Jews fromMuslim Holy Lands and to overthrow the Saudi royal family.

A new Islamic threat is on the rise as a result of the activities of “ad hoc”terrorist groups. Walter Laqueur identifies this terrorism trend as follows: “Inthe future, terrorists will be individuals or like-minded people working in verysmall groups on the pattern of the technology-hating Unabomber…”14. Thesegroups are even more dangerous in many ways than the traditional groups be-cause they lack well-established organisational identity and they tend to de-centralise and compartmentalise their activities: “There is no recognizablecell/group before the attack, and there is no recognizable cell or group afterthe attack…they only exist as a very compartmentalized organization duringthe planning and conduct of the operation”14. After carrying out a terrorist at-tack, they can easily travel abroad to melt back into the civilian population ofany sympathetic nation15.

The new generation terrorist groups are capable of producing sophisticatedconventional weapons, as well as chemical and biological agents. Many of thetechnologies associated with the development of NBC weapons, especially chem-ical and biological agents, have legitimate civil applications and are classified asdual-use. The effectiveness of chemical and biological weapons, applied as ter-ror tools, is especially high against a civilian population16. The mere threat of em-ployment would have a tremendous psychological impact and could cause theparalysis or disruption of civilian life and economic activity.

Even very small quantities of cheaply produced and easily concealed bi-ological weapons can be lethal over very large areas, eventually larger than thearea covered by fallout from a nuclear explosion and much larger than the areacontaminated by chemical weapons17. Chemical weapons can also cause a con-

24

13 Islamic jurisprudence based on the Quran and the “Sunna”. 14 W. Laqueur, “Postmodern Terrorism”, Foreign Affairs, vol. 75, September /October,

1996, p. 6 (reprinted in Global Issues, USIA Electronic Journal 1/2, February 1997).15 Amy Grant, “Saudi Dissident and Fundamentalist Supporter Threatens U.S.…”, ENN

Daily Intelligence Report, vol. 52, nº 3, 21 February, 1997, p. 1.16 Ibid.17 John D. Steinbruner, “Hearings on United States Security Interests in the Post-Cold

War World”, Statement to the House Committee on National Security, 6 June, 1996, p. 3; Na-dine Gurr and Benjamin Cole, The New Face of Terrorism, London: I. B. Tauris, 2000.

© Rubbettino

siderable number of casualties: Aum Shinrikyo – the Japanese sect – demon-strated the ease with which a terrorist could develop chemical weapons anduse them in a mass attack. In 1995 the group left plastic bags containing thenerve agent Sarin on the Tokyo subway. Twelve people were killed and 5,000injured. The casualties were still limited because of the low potency of the tox-in. The group was also experimenting with VX, a nerve agent that can be 10to 1,000 times stronger than Sarin.

Most of the materials required to make weapons of mass destruction areincreasingly accessible to small states and non-state organisations. Revealing,in this regard, are clues indicating that, in the early 1990s, Osama bin Ladentried to buy nuclear weapons. Bin Laden’s agents unsuccessfully scoured for-mer Soviet republics for enriched uranium and weapons components thatcould be used to set off the fuel18. Later he decided to settle for chemicalweapons, which are easier to produce. During his five-year stay in Sudan, heallegedly tested, with the help of Sudanese officials, nerve agents that wouldbe dispensed from bombs or artillery shells. A news story says bin Laden triedto develop chemical weapons to use against U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf19.

In an interview with Time magazine, bin Laden proclaimed his intentionof intensifying efforts to obtain non-conventional weapons. He justified these ef-forts with the argument that “acquiring weapons for the defense of Muslims is areligious duty“. He added: “It would be a sin for Muslims not to try to possessthe weapons that would prevent the infidels from inflicting harm on Muslims”20.

Increasingly, defence reports and analyses have stressed that chemical orbiological weapons may become more attractive to terrorist groups intent oncausing panic or inflicting large numbers of casualties21. In fact, a 1999 U.S.Congress report states that at least a dozen terrorist groups (most of them lo-cated in the Mediterranean area) “have expressed an interest in or have ac-tively sought nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons capabilities”22.

25

18 National Defense University (NDU), INSS, 1997 Strategic Assessment: Flashpoints andForce Structure, chap. 11, “Proliferation” (http://www.ndu.edu/inss/sa97/sa97ch11.html).

19 Hugh Davies, “Bin Laden Aide “Tried to Buy Atomic Arms””, Electronic Telegraph1221, 28 September, 1998.

20 CNNInteractive, “CIA: Bin Laden Planned Chemical Attack on U.S. Troops in theGulf”, 19 November, 1998.

21 “Wrath of God”, Time, vol. 153, no.1, 11 January, 1999.22 (OPSEC, Section 4); Canadian Security Intelligence Service, “Chemical, Biological, Ra-

diological and Nuclear (CBRN) Terrorism, Report nº 2000/02, (http://www.csis-scrs.gc.ca/eng/miscdocs/200002_e.html).

© Rubbettino

While it is unlikely that al-Qaeda may have had access to nuclearweapons, it could have developed radiological devices – so-called “dirtybombs” – which use conventional explosive to scatter radioactive materialover a wide area23. In May, 2002, U.S. authorities arrested José Padilla, akaAbdullah al Muhajir, 31, for his alleged role in an al-Qaeda plot to detonate aconventional bomb combined with radioactive material in the United States.

The new terrorists are also less dependent and constrained by state spon-sors or other benefactors than more traditional terrorist organisations. Often,the so-called “rogue states” will use these groups to carry out their insurgentpolicies through loose teams of deniable political and religious fanatics. Ter-rorist groups offer the sponsoring state a deniable method to attack primaryWestern interests without fearing military retaliation or international sanc-tions. In turn, sponsoring states provide terrorist groups with funding, accessto weapons and advanced technologies, intelligence, target planning support,logistics support and secure communications23.

In the past, many Middle Eastern groups were funded by Iran or Libyaor supported by Sudan, while the emerging Islamist groups are not controlledor directed by any state. If anything, they are dependent on the phenomenonof weak or “failed states”, which terrorist groups exploit, as in the cases ofAfghanistan, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen24. They tend to be autonomous intheir planning and decision-making functions. Terrorism and security analyststhink that the main problem now is the increasing number of fragmented andfreelancing Islamic extremist groups supported by private sources25. The 11thSeptember suicide hijackers are prime examples of this new breed of radical,transnational, loosely-linked Islamic zealots.

The groups tend to be religious organisations that have major grievanceswith the West. They seek, in particular, to punish the United States for whatthey see as the United States’ hegemonic policies in the Middle East. Alongwith Washington, Islamist organisations also target other European and West-ern allies of Washington for siding with Washington in its campaign againstterrorism launched in the aftermath of 11th September. In carrying out those

26

23 U.S. Congress, Commission to Assess the Organization of the Federal Government toCombat the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Combating Proliferation of Weaponsof Mass Destruction, 104th Congress, 14 July, 1999.

24 Nigel Tandy, “Germany Says bin Laden Alive, al Quaeda Active”, UPI, 6 November,2002 (htpp://www.rense.com/general31/alive.htm).

25 See OPSEC.

© Rubbettino

punitive policies, Islamist radicals have revealed a willingness to inflict heavycivilian casualties among Western populations.

Both the traditional groups and the newer “ad hoc” groups have in-creased their capability to attack Western interests. These groups are wellfunded, some by private entities, and have developed sophisticated interna-tional support networks that provide them with great freedom of movementand increase their opportunities to attack Western interests on a global basis.Militant Muslim extremists have organised extensive infrastructures, particu-larly in Europe, taking advantage of Western democracy and exploiting itsfreedoms. In the last several years, using the latest technology, the militantshave managed to build up an impressive international infrastructure, which isgeared towards fund-raising, the recruitment of volunteers, and para-militarytraining26.

News stories and intelligence reports have indicated that radical Islamicmovements have found sanctuary in the West among large Muslim immigrantcommunities. Many of them take advantage of the Western political systemsto travel freely, organise politically, raise funds, recruit new members, supportunderground opposition movements in their home countries and, sometimes,to direct terrorist activities. It is believed that Europe has become, for severalyears now, a safe haven for Algerian, Tunisian, Egyptian and Palestinian fun-damentalists as well as former mujahideen who passed through Afghanistantraining camps and have been integrated in al-Qaeda. Some groups set upfront organisations under non-profit “religious charities”, self-defined reli-gious umbrellas and the politically correct buzzword of human rights27.

The loosely-linked informal webs of Islamic militants, often organised insmall groups around a charismatic cleric, are harder to track and infiltrate.These terrorist groups are often a collection of factions with common inter-ests. Thus, they form, change and regroup in response to specific agendas orplanned actions. They no longer depend, that much more, on states for accessto financing or technological means28. Al-Qaeda operatives are a case in point:what binds them together is common training, shared wartime experience andadherence to bin Laden’s peculiar view of Islam.

27

26 Carl Conetta, “Dislocating Alcyoneus: How to Combat al-Qaeda and the New Terro-rism”, June, 2002, (at http://www.ciaonet.org/teach/cp/cp03d.html), p. 2.

27 D. B. Ottaway, “U.S. Considers Slugging It Out with International Terrorism”, The Wa-shington Post (henceforth referred to as WP), 17 October, 1996.

© Rubbettino

An expert on terrorism explains the modus operandi of these militants:“Now you don’t have a group, you have an old boys’ network where peoplekeep in touch. This is not something that can be penetrated, because they mayjust come together for one operation and disperse again. They don’t have tohave an office and a car pool and stationery. All they need are their modems– one in the Philippines, one in New York and one in Peshawar – and you’vegot your group”29.

The expansion of international media and communication technologiesgive terrorists a much broader stage upon which to perform and dramaticallyincreases the danger of terrorism. Globalisation has given terrorists the abili-ty to become increasingly linked using the technologies-driving globalisation.

Financially independent, able to organise and deploy a significant militaryforce, and truly international in its reach and membership, al-Qaeda is aunique terrorist organisation with:

- a global goal and strategy: the recovery of Islamic purity and territorialcontrol from Spain to Indonesia;

- a global structure of associated military cells (Bosnia, Chechnya, Kash-mir, the Philippines, Indonesia) and terrorist cells (Yemen, Kenya, Tanzania,Europe and the United States),

- an organisational structure combining elements of an intelligence serv-ice, “a military, criminal, political and commercial enterprise”30.

Al-Qaeda’s affiliates are a multi-layered series of cells in a distributed andnetwork structure, each contributing in a small way to sophisticated terror op-erations whose scope and magnitude is known only to a select few. They aremostly cut off from one another to contain the damage of detection or infil-tration, and are guided by a limited number of people who move around as-sembling the fruits of each cell’s particular specialisation: false documents,funds or weapons. Initiative is highly decentralised and “most of the propos-als for terrorist operations appear to come from the operatives in the field,

28

28 Steven Emerson, “The Worldwide Jihad Movement: Militant Islam Targets the West”,Policy Forum 8, April, 1995.

29 S. Emerson, “Terrorist Ties OK at the White House”, Tribune–Review (http://users.-aol.com/beachbt/whterror.txt).

30 Ottaway, op. cit.

© Rubbettino

rather than from the center”31. The organisers who link these discreet cellscould then synchronise complex multiple attacks.

29

31 Quoted in Stanley Kober, “Why Spy? The Uses and Misuses of Intelligence”, CATOPolicy Analysis, 265, 12 December, 1996.

© Rubbettino

© Rubbettino

1. Diana Muriel, “Thwarting Terror Cells in Europe”, CNN.com, 23 January 2002.

31

III. The Web of Terror in Europe

III.1. Interlocking Terror Plots

Europe has played host to a sprawling network of terror groups whose ac-tivists were crucial to the 11th September terror or were part of al-Qaedaplots. European police believe they now hold some of the key players in whatmay have been a planned second wave of terror attacks in Europe1. A majorplot was disrupted in December 2000 when members of the Frankfurt ringwere arrested while preparing poison gas attacks in France, possibly withSarin nerve gas. They aimed to attack the synagogue or the Christmas marketin Strasbourg, France. Police found weapons, but also a handwritten instruc-tion booklet on making explosives and lethal toxic substances. The Frankfurtarrests led to arrests in Britain and confirmed the suspicions Italian police har-boured against a cell in Milan.

The Frankfurt, Milan and British cells were planning poison gas attacksin Europe. The most spectacular plan was aimed to target the European Par-liament, also in Strasbourg. While the Parliament was in session in February2002, terrorists would slip in and kill all those present with sarin nerve gas.The six arrested Algerians belonging to the London cell, police found out,were linked to Bin Laden.

When Djamal Beghal, a member of an extreme and puritanical Islamistorganisation affiliated to al-Qaeda – “Takfir wal-Hijra” (“Anathema and Ex-ile”) – was arrested at Dubai airport, in July, 2001, as he prepared to board aplane, police found out he was preparing to participate in a series of pan-Eu-ropean attacks against American targets. The murderous attacks on NY andWashington were to be repeated throughout Europe as well. French investi-

© Rubbettino

32

gators concluded Beghal was returning to France to give the go-ahead for asuicide attack on the U.S. embassy in Paris using a lorry or a helicopter. Beghal– who spent two years in London recruiting for his violent and bizarre organ-isation of fanatics – has emerged as one of the key British links at the centreof a worldwide conspiracy – the point of contact between bin Laden’s groupand a wider network of allied Islamist terror groups.

The uncovering in April 2001 of the so-called “Milan cell” produced evi-dence that a network of terrorist recruits trained at Osama bin Laden’s camps inAfghanistan has fanned out to a half-dozen European countries. In December2000, U.S. intelligence warned Italian authorities that a man using the alias“Umar al Muhajer”, was “joining a group of three Islamic extremists who werelinked to the Osama Bin Laden organization and, from Afghanistan, were plan-ning vague actions against American targets in Italy”2. U.S. intelligence provid-ed Italian authorities with a cellular phone number which, along with the alias,was later traced to the ringleader of the Milan cell: Essid Sami ben Khemais.3

Italian officials intercepted conversations, by phone or in person amongmen of mainly North African background living in several Western Europeancities by tapping phones and bugging ben Khemais’ apartment near Malpen-sa airport north of Milan. The records also offer an example of the scope andreach of the presence of an interlocking set of terrorist cells that is believed tospan Italy, Germany, Spain, Britain, France and Belgium, with supporters innumerous other countries, including Switzerland.

Italian court documents, including police reports and transcripts of thebugged conversations and tapped phone calls, paint a picture of conspiratorsdiscussing bombings and other attacks in Europe. They also made cryptic re-marks about a mysterious, dangerous chemical that suffocates people. It couldbe put in a tomato can, they said, and released when the can is opened.

III.2. Al-Qaeda: An Umbrella Network

When ben Khemais moved to Milan in 1998, Italian investigators believe,the structure of terrorist networks in Europe was changing. A group of vio-

2 Leo Sisti, “Arrested Italian Cell Sheds Light on Bin Laden’s European Network”, 3 Oc-tober 2001 (http://www.public-i.org/story_01_100401.htm), p. 2.

3 Ibid.

© Rubbettino

33

lent, radical militants had left behind conflicts in Egypt and Algeria, and warsin Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya, all of which were over or in abeyance.According to a DIGOS4 report, “The Algerian situation, for years the epi-center, has in the past few years lost its centrality in favor of a new binding ca-pability represented by the project of bin Laden”5. “The real problem in Eu-rope before 1998 was Algerian nationals, who were involved in mostly singleepisodes that weren’t coordinated”, says Stefano Dambruoso, the Milan pros-ecutor handling the case against the Milan cell.6

The “brothers”, as the militants called themselves, soon found a new or-ganizing principle in bin Laden’s campaign against targets in the West, ac-cording to Italian investigators: “After that, bin Laden began to connect andcoordinate all these cells that already existed, rendering the phenomenonmuch more radicalized and potent”7. According to European court, policeand intelligence sources, the cells were organized under two large umbrellas.One was an Algerian group called the “Salafist Group for Preaching andCombat” (in French, “Groupe Salafiste per la Prédication et le Combat”, thusGSPC). The second group was an Egyptian movement called “Anathema andExile” (“Takfir wal-hijra”).

The “Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat” (GSPC), is a militantoffshoot of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group, GIA (in French “Groupe Is-lamique Armée”), formed in 1996. The Salafist movement had its origins inXIX century Egypt. It was born as a reaction and a refusal to accept Europeansuperiority at a time when Arab countries were becoming colonies of Englandand France and were subjugated by the European dominance in the culturaland scientific domain. Salafism advocates a return to the values and principlesof the earliest Muslims (Salafis): “The doctrine of salafiya argued that theproblems of the Muslim world were not a function of the Muslim religion it-self but rather its corruption through dilution and blending with other ideasand values which had led to backwardness and superstition”8.

The movement later spread to Saudi Arabia and the Maghreb countries,especially to Algeria, and it played an important role in the Afghan jihad and

4 Divisione Investigazioni Generali e Operazioni Speciali.5 Peter Finn and Sarah Delaney, “Al Qaeda’s Tracks Deepen in Europe: Surveillance Re-

veals More Plots, Links”, The WP (online), 22 October 2001, p. 2. 6 Ibid.7 Bruce Crumley et al., “Hate Club”, Time (online), v. 158, nº 18, 5 November 2001, p. 3. 8 Michael Willis, The Islamist Challenge in Algeria. A Political History, Berkshire, Reading,

Ithaca Press, 1996, pp. 8-9.

© Rubbettino

34

Afghan training camps. The main Salafist ideological principle is Takfir, theperception that Muslim society is heretical. The new Salafists have broughtSaudi Wahhabi principles together with the idea of holy struggles against theinternal and external enemies of Islam.

According to the 2001 State Department annual terrorism report, the GSPC“has eclipsed the GIA since approximately 1998, and currently is assessed to bethe most effective remaining armed group inside Algeria”9. In Europe, GSPCmembers “maintain contacts with other North African extremists sympathetic toal-Qaida”10. Both the GIA and GSPC developed early ties with al-Qaeda11.

“Takfir wal-hijra”, a radical hardline Islamist movement, also originatedin Egypt, in the late 1960s, as a splinter group of the Muslim Brotherhood,where it suffered from heavy repression12. The Takfirist relate to the histori-cal event of Islam: the flight (Hijra) of Prophet Muhamad from the corruptionof Mecca to the outlying city of Medina in the year 622. Believers emerge frommodern exile to kill non-believers and those condemned as takfir, or apos-tates. The group believes that everyone who does not adhere to their views,including less devout Muslims, should be counted as “infidels” and are legit-imate targets in any “holy war”.

“Takfir” then created a strong base in Algeria and many of its membersjoined the Afghan jihad. It became an al-Qaeda-allied group13. These move-ments have their own networks in France and other European countries. Op-erating in highly secret cells, the terrorists are very independent and disci-plined. Its members make a point of concealing their strict fundamentalismbehind a Western façade. They are entitled to do so under the principle oftaqiya, which allows believers to hide their inner reality for protection’s sake:“The goal of Takfir is to blend in to corrupt enemy societies in order to plotattacks against them better”, says a French official. “Members live together,form businesses together, will drink alcohol, eat during Ramadan, become

9 U.S. Department of State, op. cit., p. 109.10 Ibid.11 Rohan Gunaratna, “Blowback”, Jane’s Intelligence Review, vol. 13, nº 8, AugU.S.t 2001,

p. 44.12 The group fled to the Egyptian desert and set up a society in exile. Takfir’s founder,

Shukri Mustafa, was executed following the group’s kidnapping and murder of a rival cleric in1977.

13 Martin Bright et al., “The Secret War”, part II, p. 4 (http://www.observer.co.U.K./fo-cus/story/0,6903,560658,00.html).

© Rubbettino

35

smart dressers and ladies’ men in order to show just how integrated they are”,says an investigator14.

These umbrella networks, multinational in membership, coalescedthrough the efforts in Europe of three key individuals appointed by al Qaeda.According to European law enforcement officials, the three men were taskedby al-Qaeda with forming strong links among groups across the continent andorganizing terror attacks in Europe.

The first is Haydar Abu Doha, 36, an Algerian who moved to London in1999. His arrest in early 2001 followed the appearance of his London tele-phone number during investigations in the United States carried out after thearrest of an Algerian, Ahmed Ressam, the lone executor of the plot to bombthe Los Angeles airport on New Year’s Eve 1999.

The second is Mohamed Bensakhria, 34, an Algerian who was arrested inSpain in June, after fleeing a police raid in Frankfurt, Germany, where he wasbased. He was “Ben Khemais’ boss in the European cell”15.

The third is Tarek Maaroufi, a Tunisian with Belgian citizenship.Maaroufi is wanted on an Italian warrant issued by anti-terrorism prosecutorStefano Dambruoso because of his involvement in a planned attack on theU.S. embassy in Rome in early 2001. In December, Belgian authorities arrest-ed him and charged him with providing stolen passports and fraudulent visasfor those involved in the assassination of Ahmed Shah Massood, the Afghancommander of the Northern Alliance.

Maaroufi was the leader of the Tunisian Combatant Group, TCG (alsoreferred to as the Tunisian Islamic Fighting Group). It was founded, proba-bly in 2000, by Maaroufi, and the Tunisian Seifallah Ben Hassine. The TCG’sgoals reportedly include establishing an Islamic government in Tunisia andtargeting Tunisian and Western interests. The group has come to be associat-ed with al-Qaeda and other North African Islamic extremists in Europe whohave been implicated in mainly anti-U.S. terrorist plots there. Tunisians, asso-ciated with the TCG, are part of the support network of the internationalSalafist movement. According to Italian authorities, TCG members, there, en-gage in false document trafficking and recruitment for Afghan training camps.

14 Crumley, op. cit., p. 7.15 Sisti, op. cit., p. 3.

© Rubbettino

36

Some TCG associates are suspected of planning an attack against the U.S., Al-gerian and Tunisian diplomatic interests in Rome in January, 200116.

III.3. Mosques: Recruitment and Indoctrination

The North London Central mosque in Finsbury Park is a magnet for theextremist Islamic culture. Richard Reid, the Briton accused of trying to blowup a transatlantic flight with explosives hidden in his shoe; Zacarias Mous-saoui, a Frenchman who was detained in Minnesota, in August 2001, anddubbed the “20th hijacker”; the Courtailler brothers (Jerôme and David) andDjamal Beghal, all attended prayers there. The mosque is well-known for thesermons of fiery cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, the mosque’s one-eyed, steel-clawed imam, who continually stressed the importance of jihad.17 The mosqueis dominated by adherents of “Takfir”. Until the 11th September, the policeand intelligence services were happy to write off their activities as that of anoisy but harmless group of hotheads playing at jihad. The police have tradi-tionally adopted a policy of “watchful tolerance” of extremists, aimed at keep-ing them above the ground and under observation. The problem is that policelaxity tends to allow extremists out of the public eye.

Egyptian-born sheikh Abu Hamza, living in Britain since 1978, is thefounder of the “Supporters of Shariah”, which promotes jihad against theWest and “tyrants in the Muslim world”.18 He is a mujahideen veteran whohas claws for hands and only one eye, the other being lost during a raid inAfghanistan. In 1999, the Yemeni police caught eight men with plans andequipment to bomb British targets in that country. Six of those young Mus-lims, all of Pakistani origin, held British passports. The Yemeni courts triedand convicted them of conspiracy to commit terrorism. Journalists traced theroots of their mission back to a London mosque and to Abu Hamza. His gen-eral contention was that, as Muslims, they must fight for the conversion of theworld to Islam. He was proud that his own stepson was one of the six con-victed in Yemen19.

16 U.S. State Department, op. cit., p. 128.17 Early in 2001, the Charity Commissioners banned him from preaching at the mosque;

“Hamza’s Horrid – But We Must Tolerate Him”, The Guardian (online), 28 August 2002, p.1.18 Assif Shameen, “Secrets of the Mosque”, Time Europe, 6 May 2002, vol. 159, nº 18, p. 8.19 Id., p. 6.

© Rubbettino

37

Radical Islamic preachers say openly that they support the jihad, that thelaws of men do not matter and that only the Quran, as interpreted by them,can govern the behaviour of Muslims. Omar Bakri Mohamed is the leader ofthe London-based “al-Muhajiroun” (“The Emigrants”), an organisation ded-icated to establishing a world Islamic state, starting in the U.K. Bakri’s fol-lowers first appeared in the early nineties. They shun multiculturalism andhave imported the hardline extremism creeping across the religious schools,or madrasas, in Egypt and Pakistan20. Bakri has admitted to sending hundredsof followers to be trained in Afghanistan and Kashmir21.

Al-Muhajiroun is part of a larger movement, “Hizb ut-Tahrir” (“IslamicLiberation Party”), which champions the return of a Caliphate for the 1.2 bil-lion-strong worldwide Ummah (the “Community of the Believers”). Since11th September, “al-Muhajiroun” has been the noisiest and most mutinoussection of the Muslim community in Britain, recruiting young, disenfran-chised British nationals into its ranks. British members of the movement havealso been confirmed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Kandahar, Afghanistan.22The organisation has had several propaganda coups, namely the declarationsof an activist in Lahore warning that British volunteers in Afghanistan wouldreturn “to strike at the heart of the enemy”23.

Another prominent member of the Islamist fringe is Abu Qatada, a Pales-tinian-born cleric, whose real name is Omar Mahmoud Othman Abu Omar.He is alleged to be a member of al Qaeda’s fatwa committee, which providesIslamic authority for the group’s war on the West. He fled his home aroundChristmas, 2001, just before he could be detained under new antiterrorist leg-islation, but was arrested in a raid in a London apartment in October, 2002.

Abu Qatada is close to the Takfirist and Salafist networks. A number ofhis followers, including Jerôme Courtailler and Nizar Trabelsi, joined “Taqfirwal-Hijra”. Abu Qatada, a Palestinian citizen of Jordan came to London in1993, claiming political asylum and was granted refugee status. He was sen-

20 Burhan Wazir, “The Talibanising of Britain Proceeds”, New Statesman, 11 February2002, p. 32.

21 Sebastien Berger and Jon Hibbs, “British Muslims Sent to Islamic Training Camps”,Electronic Telegraph, nº 1327, 12 January 1999; Peter Foster and Danielle Demetriou, “Lon-don’s ‘Safe Haven’ is Shattered by Dawn Raids”, Electronic Telegraph, 19 February 2001.

22 “Looking for Trouble: Al-Qaeda Recruiters Scour Britain’s Mosques for Operatives likeSuspected Shoe-Bomber Richard Reid”, Time International, 21 January 2002, p. 15.

23 Ibid.

© Rubbettino

38

tenced, by Jordan, to life imprisonment for a series of alleged terrorist of-fences, including a plot to kill American tourists around the time of the Mil-lennium24. Qatada is one of several radical Islamic preachers who have beengiven shelter in Britain, which prides itself on a tradition of generous politicalasylum. Qatada is considered “one of the foremost European proponents ofthe bin Laden doctrine of jihad”25.

Qatada has emerged as a link to some of the networks that have beenpicked up in Europe during the mid-1990s in the context of the French in-vestigation concerning the GIA terrorist attacks in 1994-95. The investigation,carried out by French counterterrorism judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, led backto London and to Abu Qatada’s community centre in the heart of London.Qatada was, until 1996, the chief editor of “Al-Ansar”, described as “the voiceof jihad in Algeria and in the world”26. The publication was undoubtedly themouthpiece of the Algerian GIA. According to an infiltrated agent in Qata-da’s mosque, in one of his fatwas, he “said it was legitimate for fighters wag-ing the holy war in Algeria and other Arab countries to kill the women andchildren of members of the security forces”27.

Qatada has not been directly linked to specific terrorism acts – apart fromproviding support and finance to several jihad causes. However, investigatorsin the United States, Spain, France and Algeria, consider him a key envoy ofOsama bin Laden in Europe28. Baltasar Garzón, a National High Court judgecharged with leading Spain’s al-Qaeda crackdown, says he is “the spiritual

24 Terrorists intended to use a powerful truck bomb to destroy the Radisson SAS hotel inAmman, which would be thronged with New Year’s visitors. Other plans included using ma-chine guns to mow down American sightseers at such tourists sites as the Temple of Herculesin Amman.

25 Michael Dobbs, “Probe Targets Cleric in London”, Washingtonpost.Com, 28 October2001. According to an Algerian journalist who went undercover to Qatada’s «prayer meetings»,he is a “criminal”: “He was saying that if there is no Jihad, you cannot go to paradise, becauseparadise is held by two swords. You need a sword to get to paradise, so everyone has to do thiskind of job, otherwise there’s no paradise for all”; see Newsnight broadcast transcript(http://www.bbc.co.U.K./1/hi/events/newsnight/1712707.stm).

26 Alain Chouffan, Maureen Cofflard, Diddier Pavy and Elsa Vigoureux, “”Le «Londo-nistan»”, Le Nouvel Observateur (online ed.), nº 1928, 18th October, 2001, p. 1.

27 David Leppard, “Terror Link in Europe”, The Sunday Times (online), 25 November2001, p. 2.

28 Audrey Gillan et al., “Allies Point the Finger at Britain as al-Qaida’s ‘Revolving Door’”,The Guardian (online), 14 February 2002, p. 2.

© Rubbettino

39

leader of Mujahideen across Europe”29. The Spanish judge has spoken of thealleged regular contacts between the cleric and a Spanish-based counterpartaccused of being directly linked to the 11th September attacks30. Qatada alsohelped channel money from the Spanish terrorists to a group in Jordan whoplanned a series of attacks at the turn of the Millennium31.

Qatada played a pivotal role in shaping the ideology and worldview ofyoung Muslims who gravitated to al Qaeda. In Hamburg, numerous videos ofQatada’s preachings were found in the flat used by Mohamed Atta, who ledthe 11th September attacks on America. Illustrative of the influence enjoyedby Qatada is the case of Djamal Beghal, an Algerian-born Frenchman, de-tained in France on suspicion of plotting to attack U.S. targets, including theU.S. embassy in Paris. In 1997, Beghal moved to Britain from France to studyunder Abu Qatada. In his religious training sessions, the imam talked aboutthe need for Muslims to flee the “infidel countries” of the West and preparefor jihad in Afghanistan32. Ben Khemais, the Tunisian, accused in Italy ofheading a terrorist cell, was heard, in an intercepted phone conversation, re-porting Abu Qatada’s exhortation for Muslims to donate all their money to Is-lamic guerrilla fighters33.

29 Paul Harris et al., “Britain’s Most Wanted”, Electronic Telegraph (online), 5 May 2002,p. 1.

30 “Britain’s al-Qaeda Connections”, BBC News (online), 29 January 2002.31 Gillan, op. cit., p. 2.32 Dobbs, id.33 Dobbs, id.; Leppard, op. cit., p. 2.

© Rubbettino

© Rubbettino

41

IV. Groups and Activities of Islamic Terrorists in Europe

IV.1. England

Britain, with a two-million Muslim population and with its strong civil-rights groups and traditions of free speech, has become a harbour for Islamicextremists. The British Muslim community is not more radicalised than otherEuropean communities, but extremists have greater liberty to operate. Theyhave recruited many local Muslims, especially in London, Leicester and Birm-ingham. British officials say between 500 and 600 British-based Muslims spenttime in al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan before 11th Sep-tember1. Of those, about 200 could have fought for Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan2.

Investigators have highlighted the role played by London as a key centreof operations for Islamic extremists. That is what the French media ironicallydub “Londonistan” to accuse the British of harbouring Islamic terrorists com-ing from the so-called “Stans” (states like Afghanistan and Pakistan and, ingeneral, the Muslim world)3. For the past decade, as the governments of manyMiddle East countries cracked down on Islamic fundamentalists, radicalshave taken advantage of the relatively tolerant atmosphere in Western Euro-pean countries to spread their doctrines of jihad. Britain, in particular, hasbeen a haven for fundamentalists who enjoy traditional British liberties and agenerous social welfare system even as they rail against the culture that has giv-en them refuge.

1 Richard Norton-Taylor and Nick Hopkins, “Dozens of al-Qaida Linked Extremists inU.K.”, The Guardian (online), 5 September 2002.

2 “Two More Britons Named as Al Qaeda Suspects”, APS Diplomat Recorder, 2 February2002.

3 Dominique Thomas, “Explosif Londonistan”, Le Monde.fr, 29 October 2001; Chouffan,op. cit., p. 1.

© Rubbettino

According to the French expert on Islamic movements, Gilles Kepel,those militants “gathered in London where they found, for many of them, po-litical asylum, and they were able to organize their networks. Probably thecondition for the deal, but this was never made explicit… was that they wouldnot have any activity against British interests on British soil”4.

The British capital has become one of the primary locations for the in-doctrination of jihadists and an important way station en route to bin Laden’straining camps in Afghanistan. Notorious terrorists, such as Zacarias Mous-saoui and Beghal used London as a point of transit to and from Afghan camps.British mosques, such as the Brixton mosque, the Finsbury Park mosque andAbu Qatada’s prayer room in Baker Street have been identified as centres offundamentalist culture and a favourable recruiting ground for al-Qaeda op-eratives. Extreme Islamic organisations have risen dramatically among immi-grant communities in Britain. “Al-Muhajiroun” and “Supporters of the Shari-ah” have also used the Internet to enlist support for the jihad in Kashmir,Chechnya and Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda talent spotters, trusted men of battle-hardened experience, scour these mosques to tap into new recruits and dis-patch them to training camps around the world.

In the aftermath of the attacks in America, Scotland Yard’s anti-terroristbranch were surprised by the extent of the “roots of al-Qaida in this country.”5They have depicted the top end of the network as “more sophisticated thanany of U.S. thought”. Investigating magistrates, police and intelligence offi-cers in those countries believe at least seven top bin Laden lieutenants oper-ated out of Britain in recent years. But investigators in the U.K. are not sureof the exact role Britain played in the conspiracy which led to the 11th Sep-

42

4 “The Recruiters”, transcript of a CBCNews programme conducted by Terence Mcken-na (at http://www.cbc.ca/national/news/recruiters/qatada.html). For years the French wereunable to get London to extradite suspected members of the Algeria-based GIA, responsiblefor a wave of bombings in Paris in 1994-95. That is particularly the case of Rachid Ramda, ac-cused of bankrolling the Paris attacks from England, where the GIA’s European headquarterswas situated. Ramda was arrested in Great Britain but the British have repeatedly refused toextradite him to Paris on grounds he would not receive a fair trial in France. British court do-cuments suggest the judges may have partly based their decision on the possible police mi-streatment of two of his accomplices held in France.4 The United States has also been trying toget the extradition of Khalid al-Fawwaz, a London-based Saudi alleged to have set up an offi-ce for bin Laden in 1994 and involved in the African embassy bombings.

5 Gillan, op. cit., p. 1.

© Rubbettino

tember attacks. They are convinced that “the U.K. has never played host to aformal al-Qaeda network”6.

However investigators in France, Spain, Italy and Germany are adamantthat most of the attacks planned or executed by al-Qaeda in the past four yearshad links to Britain and that the latter is a centre of coordination and direc-tion: “Britain acted – and, to some extent, may still act – as a kind of filter forparts of al-Qaida. The main European centres for spiritual indoctrinationwere London and Leicester; any weak links were weeded out there. The newrecruit would then be sent to suffer in the camps in Afghanistan. After pass-ing both tests, the mojahid could take his place in the sleeper networks in Eu-rope”7.

European law enforcement officials claim that Islamist clerics based in theU.K. played a key role in the indoctrination and possibly the legitimisation ofterrorist operations. Allowed to spread subversive ideas against Western cul-ture and to preach jihad, they may have played a role as important, or, in thevery least, complementary to al-Qaeda’s operational command given the dis-persed and multi-layered nature of bin Laden’s movement. Clerics as AbuQatada or Omar Bakri were “spinning a ‘revolving door’ to radical Islam andon to terrorism”8.

This situation has its root in the 1980s when a new Muslim leadership ofimams and muftis, financed by various Islamic powers around the world, be-gan setting up mosques and schools in Britain, thanks to an immigration lawloophole that allows clergyman open-ended permission to stay. Muslimyoungsters attracted to the radical preaching came under the domination ofthe new imams, who offered a simplistic vision of the world and promisedmembership in an organisation that would rule over the globe. The multicul-tural divide came dramatically to light in 1980 with the Rushdie affair. TheBritish Muslim community and its leaders uncritically echoed AyatollahKomeini’s call to kill the author. Significantly, very few were those who daredto oppose the dominant trend. The assimilation policy revealed itself a failure.

Second-generation Muslims whose parents arrived from South Asia morethan 30 years ago, often unemployed, uneducated and dissatisfied, have not

43

6 Crumley, “Hate Club”, p. 5.7 Gillan, op. cit., p. 1.8 Ibid.

© Rubbettino

integrated well into British society. They claim that they have been caught be-tween two cultures and they see Islam as the only alternative to the despairand racism they face on a daily basis. Many embrace the culture of funda-mentalist Islam. In the words of Ataullah Siddiqi, a research fellow at the Is-lamic Foundation in Leicester: “young second-generation Muslims who wereborn here are increasingly turning toward religion because they need an iden-tity, and the faith gives them that”9. These new zealots were brought up in atraditional way by parents whose religious views were generally orthodox butnot fundamentalist.

Members of the Milan-Gallarate cell, disrupted in April, 2001, were inregular contact with al-Qaeda supporters in London, including an Algerianman called Abu Doha, who was indicted for the Los Angeles airport bombplot. Abu Doha is the pseudonym of a 36-year-old Algerian (who also goes bythe names of Amar Makhlulif, Rachid Boukhalfa and Rachid Kefflous). Hemoved to London in 1999 after a stint as a senior official at a terrorist campin Afghanistan. He is wanted by U.S. officials in connection with the plot toblow up the Los Angeles airport during Millennium celebrations, using aCanadian cell. He is in detention in London, fighting extradition to the Unit-ed States. Italy’s special operations police identified him as the leader of an al-Qaeda-affiliated network made up principally of Algerians10.

Yacine Akhnouche, a 27-year-old Franco-Algerian, arrested in February,2002 around Paris, and suspected of close links with the Frankfurt cell, whichplanned an attack on Strasbourg (currently detained in France), implicatedAbu Doha in the Strasbourg plot. Akhnouche told police he met Doha in al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and characterised him as the “recruit-ing sergeant” of bin Laden’s European operation11. Ressam named Abu Do-ha as a gatekeeper to Islamic militant training camps in Afghanistan, whereRessam underwent months of firearms and explosives training in 1998.

Upon his arrest, Ressam had a business card with Abu Doha’s phonenumber in London and calling cards that showed he had placed calls to Do-ha as recently as 11 days before his 14th December, 1999 arrest. Abu Doha’sLondon apartment contained papers with notations for the same explosive

44

9 See Shameen, op. cit., p. 1.10 Piero Colaprico, “La mappa del tesoro della ‘Jihad’ in Italia”, La Reppublica.it, 27 April

2001, pp. 2-3.11 Gillan, op. cit., p. 3.

© Rubbettino

chemical mixtures found in Ressam’s car. Police also found fake passports,passports with recent stamps and a visa to Pakistan12. Ressam identified Do-ha as a leader of the Algerian group in the training camps who facilitated thetravel of recruits like Ressam to the camps and then to countries where theiroperations were to occur. Doha would facilitate such travel by obtaining, forthe terrorists, various forms of false identification and travel documents. Do-ha was also responsible for establishing means of communication among thevarious cells, including Ressam’s Algerian cell, that were associated with thevarious jihad training camps in Afghanistan13.

Members of Ressam’s Algerian cell agreed that they would travel to Cana-da, from where they would launch plans to carry out a bombing in the Unit-ed Sates in the period of the Millennium celebrations. According to the crim-inal complaint filed against Doha in a New York court, “Doha participated inthe discussions and agreed to help facilitate the travel of many cell membersto Canada so that they could participate in the proposed U.S. operation, and[get] out of the United States and Canada upon the completion of the opera-tion so that they could hide in Europe or Algeria”14.

A British-based terrorist network, composed of five men, was arrested inBritain in February, 2001 (including Abu Doha) for plotting to set off a bombin the Christmas market of the French city of Strasbourg. The tip-off camefrom Italy. German counter-terrorism experts were, then, warned fromBritain, on Christmas Eve, 2000, that an attack was imminent. British investi-gators had intercepted “a telephone conversation between Abu Doha in theUnited Kingdom… during which a certain Kamal… told his English [sic] in-terlocutor of a planned terrorist attack at around the end of the year, in whichhe himself was to take part”15. Two days later, police and intelligence officersraided several addresses in the Frankfurt area and arrested four men. The fifthwas arrested in April, 200116.

Leicester, a manufacturing town in the English Midlands with a largeMuslim community and exemplary race relations, is emerging as a hub of sus-

45

12 Affidavit filed in the U.S. Southern District of New York before the Honorable AndrewJ. Peck, Violation of 18 U.S.C § 2332a, 2 July 2001, p. 4.

13 Id., p. 5. 14 Id., p. 4.15 John Hooper, “Al-Qaida Bomb Plot Led from U.K., Trial Papers Say”, The Guar-

dian.Unlimited (online), 15 April 2002, p. 1.16 Ibid.

© Rubbettino

pected Algerians in the English Midlands. Two Algerian asylum-seekers werearrested in Leicester in September, 2001, the first operatives to be charged inBritain with direct links to al-Qaeda: Baghdad Meziane, 37, was charged withbeing a director of operations for bin Laden’s terrorist outfit; Brahim Ben-merzouga, 30, was accused of helping to finance operations and of owningequipment that could have been used in bomb attacks. They were arrestedwith Franco-Algerian terrorist suspect Daoudi. A five-month Europe-wide in-vestigation identified Leicester as a centre, since 1998, for bin Laden’s plan tobomb the U.S. embassy in Paris and targets in other European cities. Securi-ty chiefs believe that bin Laden’s chief recruiting officer, Beghal, used Leices-ter as a base before his arrest in July, 2001. French brothers, David and JeromeCourtailler, fanatical converts to Islam, (the latter arrested in the Netherlandsfor directing the Rotterdam cell), Beghal’s associate – Kamel Daoudi – also ap-parently stayed in Leicester17.

Al-Qaeda operatives can easily blend in amid this tolerant and multicul-tural town, as one third of its population consists of visible minorities. In Jan-uary, 2002, police rounded up a secretive network of 17 Algerian extremists.

A p