Author: Jerome Socolovsky, Associated
Press Writer
Publication: The Associated Press
Date: November 21, 2001
Madrid, Spain, Nov 21, 2001 (AP)
- In 1994, Palestinian- born Anwar Adnan Mohamed Saleh began passing out
leaflets on radical Islam to other young immigrants at one of Madrid's
main mosques. Over the next few years, Spanish prosecutors say, Saleh and
his Syrian successor, Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, persuaded at least a dozen
mosque- goers to fight in Muslim holy wars in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Indonesia.
They also allegedly raised tens
of thousands of dollars for Osama bin Laden's global network and established
a terrorist support cell which, according to prosecutors, played a preparatory
role in the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
A judicial indictment links Yarkas
and seven other suspects jailed last week to suicide hijacker Mohammed
Atta, believed to have flown the American Airlines jet that crashed into
the World Trade Center, and to senior figures in bin Laden's al-Qaida network.
More telling, is the detailed glimpse
into al-Qaida's operational methods that the 25-page indictment offers,
including how Yarkas, named as a bin Laden deputy, radicalized and recrfuited
young Muslims in a low-income, immigrant neighborhood of Madrid.
Over the last five years, Yarkas
allegedly traveled 20 times to Britain and visited Turkey, Belgium, Denmark,
Sweden, Indonesia, Malaysia and Jordan as part of his recruitment drive.
He also directed group members to raise funds for al-Qaida through fraud
and theft.
In Britain, he and his assistants
met with Abu Qutadah, described as "the maximum leader at the European
level of the mujahedeen," and handed over an unspecified amount of cash
from the Madrid group.
Qutadah, whose name has repeatedly
surfaced in European investigations into the Sept. 11 attacks, is also
wanted by Jordanian authorities, who consider him a senior associate of
bin Laden also involved in recruitment.
On Wednesday, Qutadah denied having
met Yarkas, bin Laden or any of the Sept. 11 hijackers and claimed he was
a religious scholar who gave advice on innocuous matters such as marriage.
"I am just a cleric for Islam,"
he said, speaking through an interpreter at his home in west London. "People
talk to me from all over the world. My phone number is (distributed) worldwide.
People call me all the time about Islamic matters."
According to the indictment, Saleh's
initial task in Madrid was to indoctrinate young worshippers by obtaining
propaganda material from fundamentalist groups in Algeria, Egypt, Afghanistan
and the Palestinian territories "and distributing them at the Abu Bakr
mosque."
He then formed a group called "Allah's
Warriors," which vied for control of the mosque.
A year later, Saleh - also known
in the indictment as Sheik Salah - went to Peshawar, Pakistan, to act as
a point man for al-Qaida's worldwide recruitment efforts and left the Spanish
group in the hands of Yarkas, who is also know as Abu Dahdah.
The indictment described how Abu
Dahdah then sent "recruits to his contact in Peshawar, that is Sheik Salah,
to be sent to training camps controlled by Osama bin Laden," and to other
camps in Bosnia and Indonesia.
Saleh is believed to have gone from
Pakistan to Afghanistan and according to the indictment, his last known
whereabouts was an al-Qaida camp in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.
Since Sept. 11, some of the biggest
break-throughs in the overseas investigation have come from Spain where
authorities have exposed at least two alleged al-Qaida cells and linked
both to the hijackers and other suspects in European custody.
The country, which faces North Africa
to the south, is home to half a million Muslims.
Jadicha Candela, a Spanish convert
to Islam and a Socialist party activist, said there was no evidence to
support charges that any suspects in custody were involved in the Sept.
11 attacks or in al-Qaida.
But she said the Spanish government
needed to be more supportive of liberal Muslim organizations and education
programs rather than turning the reins over to Saudi- funded conservative
establishments where radical preachers often hold sway.
"They should deal with us and not
with a group of people who have a mistaken understanding of Islam," she
said.
