Author: Peter Finn and Sarah Delaney
Publication: The Times of India
Date: October 24, 2001
Telephone wiretaps and listening
devices planted in the apartment of a 33 year-old Tunisian here have produced
evidence that a network of terrorist recruits trained at Osama Bin Laden's
camps in Afghanistan has fanned out to a half- dozen European countries,
according to Italian investigators.
The Tunisian, Essid Sami Ben Khemais,
moved to this city in March 1998 after completing two years of training
at the camps of suspected terrorist Bin Laden's Al-Qaida network, the investigators
said. Khemais was put under surveillance by the Italian authorities, who
found a trove of fresh information about terrorist cells sent to Europe.
Many members of the network may still be at large, law enforcement officials
said.
"In the past we had seen some links
to Afghanistan, but we saw them as more or less acting here without close
connections to Al-Qaida," said a senior German intelligence official. "Now
we are seeing more and more links between cells and to Al-Qaida. We are
rethinking everything."
"Before September 11, we had no
idea of the depth of the problem" added a senior Italian official. Details
of the Milan cell, which was run by Khemais, are spelled out in 300 pages
of Italian court documents, including police reports, arrest warrants and
transcripts of the bugged conversations and tapped phone calls. The documents,
obtained by The Washington Post, paint a picture of conspirators discussing
bombings and other attacks in Europe. They also made cryptic remarks about
a mysterious, dangerous chemical that suffocates people. It could be put
in a tomato can, they said, and released when the can is opened.
The records offer an example of
how the terrorist attacks on the US. have jolted Europe to the presence
of an interlocking set of terrorist cells that is believed to span Italy,
Germany, Spain, Britain, France and Belgium, with supporters in numerous
other countries, including Switzerland. Indoctrinated with combat videos
from Chechnya, absorbed into Al-Qaida by Bin Laden agents in Europe, and
trained in Afghanistan for operations against the West, these cells of
determined young men are a major challenge for law enforcement in Europe
and the U.S., according to investigators.
According to the European court,
police and intelligence sources, the cells were organised under two large
umbrellas. One was an Egyptian movement called 'Anathema and Exile'. The
other was an Algerian group called the 'Salafist Group for Preaching and
Combat'.
These umbrella networks, multinational
in membership, coalesced through the efforts in Europe of three key individuals
anointed by Al-Qaida, the sources said. The first is Abu Doha, 36, an Algerian
who moved to London in 1999 after a stint as a senior official at a terrorist
camp in Afghanistan. He was charged with organising attacks on the U.S.
and is in detention in London, fighting extradition to America. The second
is Mohamed Bensakhria, 34, an Algerian who was arrested in Spain in June,
after fleeing a police raid in Frankfurt, Germany, where he was based.
The third is Tarek Maaroufi, a Thnisian with Belgian citizenship. Maaroufi
is wanted on an Italian warrant issued by anti-terrorism prosecutor Stefano
Dambruoso, but remains free because of his Belgian citizenship, which prevents
his extradition to Italy.
According to European law enforcement
officials, the three men were tasked by Al-Qaida with forming strong links
among groups across the continent and organising terror attacks in Europe.
"These are the critical figures," said the German intelligence source.
The Milan cell was part of the larger network. When Khemais moved to Milan,
the sources said, the structure of terrorist networks in Europe was changing.
A group of violent, radical militants had left behind conflicts in Egypt
and Algeria, and wars in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya, all of which
were over or in abeyance.
The "brothers," as the militants
called themselves, soon found a new organising principle in Bin Laden's
campaign against targets in the West, according to Italian investigators.
"The Algerian situation, for years
the epicenter, has in the past few years lost its centrality in favor of
a new binding capability represented by the project of Bin Laden," according
to an April report by the Digos, the Italian anti-terrorism police. (LAT-WP-Svc)
