Author: Rashmee Z Ahmed, Times
News Network
Publication: The Times of India
- Internet Edition
Date: November 22, 2001
London: As the Western coalition
hunts Osama bin Laden down in Afghanistan, the man alleged to be his "spiritual"
ambassador to Europe remains free for the moment and in the comparative
comfort of his west London home, according to reports that the Spanish
authorities have identified 40-year-old Abu Qatada as a pivotal figure
in the al-Qaeda network.
Qatada, a Palestinian of Jordanian
nationality, figures in a "sealed judicial indictment" from the Spanish
authorities to Britain, according to The Independent newspaper.
On Wednesday, he remained cosily
esconsed in his small, book-lined home in suburban and boring Acton, west
London.
The indictment, which the paper
said it had obtained, pinpoints Qatada as al-Qaeda's spiritual envoy to
Europe and its key financial conduit. More crucially, the paper said, the
Spanish authorities believe he played an important support role in the
planning and execution of the September 11 attacks.
According to other reports, he is
said to have met nine suspected al-Qaeda agents across Europe in recent
months and 18 videos that he made were found in the Hamburg flat where
the World Trade Centre hijackers lived.
Britain is now under increasing
pressure to detain the cleric, though Scotland Yard is reported to be still
struggling to cobble together the evidence against him.
As a stopgap measure, however, he
is likely to be interned along with 24 other suspected terrorists under
the terms of Britain's proposed hardline anti-terrorism law.
But the Spanish, who are said to
be increasingly impatient with British caution, seem to be sure of Qatada's
importance in bin Laden's trans-national network of highly-motivated operatives.
The Spanish chargesheet said the
cleric had frequent telephone and physical contact with the Madrid-based,
Syrian-born, Spanish passport-holder Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas alias Abu
Dahdah, who was arrested earlier this week in Spain for being "directly
linked to the preparation and carrying out of" the US attacks.
Dahdah, who frequently spoke on
the phone to World Trade Centre "flying bomber" Mohammed Atta, is said
to have visited London nearly two dozen times.
The British authorities, who froze
Qatada's bank account last month and found it contained a bafflingly large
sum of 180,000 pounds, are now reported to be under increasing pressure
to detain him.
He has lived in Britain for seven
years as a refugee from Jordanian "persecution" and as a man dependent
on state handouts to feed his family.
Qatada, who has in the past, willingly
submitted to media interviews in which he acknowledged that he believed
in the philosophy of jihad and had "respect" for bin Laden, has now become
more tight-lipped and circumspect, bitterly accusing Britain of needing
no more evidence against him than "my picture", complete with flowing beard,
burning eyes and Arab clothes.
The Spanish investigation, which
led to 11 arrests in Madrid and Granada and the smashing of an al-Qaeda
nest, is said to be the end result of a four-year surveillance operation
of Islamist extremists by Spain and the US.
Commentators say that Spain has
identified a clear and crucial British connection to the American atrocities
and vindicated earlier criticism by India and other countries of the UK's
laxity in cracking down on suspected terrorists.
