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http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nyt/20011228/ts/terror_cells_slip_through_europe_s_grasp_1.html
this is good info 4 the beginner..n read TIMES special
edition too. good luck....
PARIS Late last July in Afghanistan, after months of
terrorist training, Jamal Beghal, an Algerian-born
Frenchman, was summoned to the home of a senior aide
to Osama bin Laden.
The time for action had come, said the aide, Abu
Zubeida. Mr. Beghal was instructed to return to France
via Morocco and Spain and orchestrate a suicide
bombing of the American Embassy in Paris. According to
a senior French intelligence official, Mr. Beghal
shaved his beard, put on Western clothing, and, before
leaving, was given three gifts from Mr. bin Laden a
toothpick, prayer beads and a flask of incense.
On July 28 six weeks before Sept. 11 in the Dubai
airport transit lounge, Mr. Beghal's plan fell apart.
With his name on a watch list, he was arrested for a
forged visa extension. His lawyer said that he was
tossed into a darkened cell, handcuffed to a chair,
blindfolded and beaten and that his family was
threatened. After some weeks he talked and out poured
a wealth of information. Agents in half a dozen
countries went to work.
It was a real intelligence break, later recounted in
detail by senior French intelligence officials, but it
would prove too late to stop the World Trade Center
plot. Enough time and work could have led
investigators from Mr. Beghal to an address in Hamburg
where Mohamed Atta and his cohorts had developed and
planned the Sept. 11 attacks. But the hijackers had
already slipped into the United States and were within
days of carrying out their mission.
Those missed opportunities and the case of Mr. Beghal
tell a great deal about the world of Muslim militancy
that took root in Europe in the 1990's, its shifting
focus and varied structure, as well as the failure,
many intelligence officials now acknowledge, of most
European governments to understand its gravity, danger
and depth.
Terrorist cells formed, carried out specialized tasks,
dissolved and then re-formed elsewhere, careful to
maintain isolation and disguise their identities.
Mr. Beghal, who lived on the margins of French society
and wandered across Europe finding others like
himself, typifies the immigrant Muslims who fell under
the sway of Al Qaeda in the 1990's.
The mission he was leading was one of three known bin
Laden plots being hatched last summer in Europe,
including the World Trade Center attack and the
assassination of the anti-Taliban leader of the Afghan
Northern Alliance, Ahmed Shah Massoud. Mr. Beghal's
path crossed that of activists of the other two plots;
the way they made plans and built cells explains why
Europe became the forward operating base for Islamic
terror over the last decade.
European officials now ruefully admit that they were
not paying enough attention to these Islamic networks
in their midst. Their focus was largely domestic the
British worried about the militants in Northern
Ireland, the Spanish about the Basques, the French
about the Algerians. There was not enough cooperation.
Different countries had different political and legal
cultures, different traditions of police power,
different levels of concern for individual rights to
privacy and protection from the state. The reach and
sophistication of Al Qaeda was underestimated.
"The problem was bigger than we thought," a senior
British official said.
In Britain and Germany, security and immigration laws
are now being changed and toughened, and traditional
protections for religion-based communities, including
those that preach hatred, are being diluted.
But these laws amount to a belated reaction. By
following the path of Mr. Beghal from the time he
first came to the attention of French authorities
eight years ago until his confession, a picture
emerges that helps explain how the tranquillity of the
United States was shattered three-and-a-half months
ago.
A Radical's Journey: After Immigration, Jihad Offers
Meaning
Mr. Beghal's journey is typical of that followed by
thousands of Islamic radicals in Europe, who find
meaning in jihad after lives of alienation. Born in
1965 in Algeria, Mr. Beghal was brought to a gritty
suburb of Paris as a child.
He grew up there in the public housing projects of
Corbeil-Essonnes, where his name, until October, was
still on the intercom of the first-floor apartment of
building C-5. In some ways, Mr. Beghal integrated
well. He married a French woman, Sylvie, with whom he
has three boys. He speaks flawless French.
But like many immigrants he was stuck on the bottom,
drifting between menial jobs in grimy food stalls in
an outdoor market near Paris. For a man with
intelligence, charisma and a penchant for leadership,
it was a frustrating existence.
According to intelligence officials, he began to
frequent the mosques in the projects, where he was
exhorted to build the new Islamic society and where he
heard Western society excoriated for its decadence,
selfishness and godlessness.
He learned about Muslims in Bosnia, Chechnya, the West
Bank and Gaza Strip and Iraq. As an Algerian he was
also painfully aware of the annulment of the Algerian
elections in 1991 when Islamic parties swept to
victory only to be denied power. France played a
pivotal role in backing the military government that
broke the Islamic insurgency.
"In the suburbs many people belong to the Algerian
network although they are French nationals," said
Judge Jean-Louis Brugui�re, the French
magistrate-prosecutor who specializes in investigating
terrorist organizations. "They have no job. They have
no information, no hope for the future. One day they
meet a guy who is interesting, who has good knowledge
of Islam. They tell him, `I can give you something, a
task for you, for the future.' They explain Islam.
They bring a global conception of their life, teach
them a skill and they say, `We have a goal for you in
the future.' They say, `You can continue to deceive,
continue to forge papers, but now you do it as a sign
of the measure of God, for Allah.' "
In 1994, Mr. Beghal was picked up in a police sweep of
Algerian Islamic radicals who were waging a terrorist
campaign inside France. It is not clear whether he was
imprisoned.
Many Islamic radicals in France have prison records.
The French refuse to release figures on those of North
African descent in the prison system, but social
workers estimate that it runs as high as 70 percent.
The prisons have become more efficient recruiting
grounds than the mosques.
"Prison is a good indoctrination center for the
Islamic radicals, much better than the outside," said
a French Interior Ministry official. "There are about
300 Islamic radicals in prisons in Paris, and they
spend a lot of time converting the criminals to
Islam."
After his first encounter with the French police, Mr.
Beghal threw himself into work on behalf of militant
Islam. He began to speak in small storefront mosques
and Islamic centers. He raised money for Muslims
fighting in Chechnya and Bosnia. Then, one night in
1997, he packed his wife and children in a car and
left for London.
A Terrorist Vortex: Radicals' Plots Hatched in London
It was a trajectory similar to that of several leaders
of Islamic networks in Europe. London is filled with
Arab dissident groups, many of which fled there from
Beirut during the 1975-1991 civil war in Lebanon.
Others had fled the repression in countries like Egypt
and Saudi Arabia.
Many of the Muslim terrorist plots that have plagued
Europe and the United States have had crucial ties
with clerics in Britain. The perpetrators of three
plots the failed attempt to blow up the American
Embassy in Paris, the World Trade Center attack and
the assassination of Mr. Massoud all had London in
common. Several of the people involved had met there,
forging ties that would be cemented in Afghan camps.
In London, Mr. Beghal met another French child of
immigrants, Zacarias Moussaoui, according to British
intelligence officials and members of two London
mosques. While there is no evidence that Mr. Beghal
had any direct ties with the September attacks, Mr.
Moussaoui had a connection to the Hamburg cell of Mr.
Atta.
Now under arrest in the United States, Mr. Moussaoui
is believed by investigators to have been selected to
be the 20th hijacker.
It was from London that Mr. Beghal made frequent trips
to Europe, including Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium
and France. He built up a coterie of followers,
several of whom would go with him to Afghanistan to
train. While he was in France in 1999, French
authorities picked him up and questioned him about his
activities.
When he was in Britain, the French received reports
from British intelligence about his activities. Mr.
Beghal, like Mr. Moussaoui, frequented the mosque of
Abu Qatada, a 41-year-old Palestinian from Jordan,
sentenced to life imprisonment there for involvement
in bombings. The cleric fought in Afghanistan and was
granted political asylum in Britain in 1994.
Abu Qatada, born Omar Mohamed Othman, is described as
Al Qaeda's "spiritual guide." Videotapes of some of
his sermons were found in Mr. Atta's apartment.
Mr. Beghal and Mr. Moussaoui also attended the
Finsbury Park mosque, in north London, where Sheik Abu
Hamza al-Masri preaches jihad and the overthrow of the
impure governments of Islamic states like Saudi
Arabia, whose leaders they view as betrayers of Islam
because they have allowed American troops to be
stationed on Saudi soil.
Mr. Beghal was often seen with Abu Walid, the
right-hand man of Mr. Qatada, intelligence officials
said. He became part of a circle with Mr. Moussaoui
and Kamel Daoudi, another Algerian-born Frenchman whom
Mr. Beghal later recruited for his plot to blow up the
American Embassy in Paris.
Mr. Beghal and Mr. Daoudi were friends with Jerome
Courtailler, a French convert to Islam, who lived in
London as Mr. Moussaoui's roommate. Another friend of
Mr. Moussaoui, Xavier Djaffo, another French Arab,
died fighting in Chechnya in 1998.
Borderless Rebels: Autonomous Cells Re-Form With Ease
The capture of Mr. Beghal in July was no accident. He
had been under surveillance for two years. The French
intelligence services, after a wave of bombings and
attacks by Islamic radicals in France in the early
1990's, were better equipped than most to follow
potential terrorists like Mr. Beghal. Their
prosecuting judges have enormous authority to order
surveillance on suspects. While American agencies have
too few Arabic speakers to translate intercepted
conversations, the French have separate translating
units for the 20 Algerian dialects alone.
But even as the French broke the Algerians terrorist
groups, they and officials in other countries began to
face a far deadlier, multinational terrorist mutation.
As efforts in the 1980's and early 1990's to overthrow
the governments in Algeria, Egypt, Syria and Saudi
Arabia stumbled, the focus of many Islamic rebel
groups shifted away from their home countries toward a
transnational war against the West, especially the
United States.
Pan-Islamists groups gravitated toward each other.
They were inspired by the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan
to the mujahedeen or Islamic holy warriors. They were
also encouraged by the Islamic revolution in Iran.
Meanwhile, Western economic sanctions against Iraq,
the Russian war in Chechnya and the growing acceptance
and power of Israel fueled their anger.
But no longer did they meet only in mosques or Islamic
centers or stay within structured groups, all habits
that made them easier to track and destroy. Rather,
they broke into autonomous cells that, to mask their
activities, did not show outward signs of traditional
Muslim piety and had only loose connections to one
another.
Many even adopted the outward habits of the West,
drinking and dating in the belief that jihad required
such deception. The new terrorist cells became a huge
intelligence headache, since many carried out one
attack, dissolved and re-formed with new members
across the porous European borders.
"For these groups, there are no borders," said Judge
Brugui�re. "They may consider it better or easier to
have explosive materials in some countries and support
bases in other countries, electronic matters in
others, and financial support forged papers, or forged
credit cards and so on in still others."
Most of those in the European cells were equipped with
European passports, some of them false, making
movement between states easy. Various responsibilities
were divided among different parts of Europe, with
many cells specializing in narrow and specific tasks,
French and Spanish intelligence officials said.
The centers for forged documents were in Spain and
Belgium. Spain also seemed to be a frequent meeting
point for operatives and a source of funds through
petty crime and credit card fraud. (In apartment
raids, equipment was seized that is used to alter the
magnetic strips on the cards.)
A card stolen anywhere in Europe could be shipped
overnight, copied 10 times and given to members who
could run up several thousand dollars in bills before
the number was reported stolen, intelligence officials
said. Usually the men bought electronic gear or
gasoline, which could be resold for cash.
The leader of the Al Qaeda cell arrested in Madrid in
November, Eddin Barakat Yarkas, known as Abu Dahdah,
was said by Spanish authorities to be the chief bin
Laden aide in Europe. He was known to have made dozens
of trips across the continent, including 20 to London.
His number was found in Mr. Atta's papers and in the
diary of Said Bahaji, one of his Hamburg roommates.
Phone conversations to Abu Dahdah had been taped,
including one on Aug. 27 that picked up a phrase used
by a North African named Shakur. He said, "In our
lessons we have entered the field of aviation and we
have cut the bird's throat." The police believe now
that this was a reference to the World Trade Center
plot. Other clues found among the Madrid cell's
apartments were videotapes on airplanes and a CD-ROM
on the infrastructure of an American airport.
Britain was generally used as a way station for those
sent to Afghanistan. France was more often the home of
the foot soldiers who carried out the attacks.
A cell uncovered in Milan, where Italian authorities
recorded conversations by a Tunisian, Essid Sami Ben
Khemais who trained in Afghanistan, showed that some
operatives were little more than Osama bin Laden
hopefuls, aspiring radicals who had never had direct
contact with Al Qaeda but who reached out to fight on
its behalf anyway. They contacted radical groups in
Germany, Britain and Spain in the hope of being
brought into the network. Mr. Khemais was arrested in
April.
The cells also mutated, changing their style
frequently, intelligence officials say.
"We may have a grasp of some cells, what they did, but
we can't use this knowledge for the future," Judge
Brugui�re said. "Everything changes. If you have good
knowledge of the network today, it's not operational
tomorrow. I compare these networks to AIDS. It's a
virus. It's a moving shape. It's impossible to grasp
it and to destroy it."
Certainly, Germany missed some important clues. Mr.
Atta, a leader of the Sept. 11 plot was registered in
Germany with three different passports and no one
noticed.
With no global ambitions outside Europe and careful of
their own business interests in the Middle East, the
Germans tended to be more worried about domestic
terrorism and neo-Nazis. Given Germany's Nazi past and
its strict laws protecting privacy, the German
prosecutor was more meticulous than his French
counterpart about requiring substantial evidence
before authorizing arrests and investigations.
The German police, in 2000, did smash a terrorist cell
in Frankfurt plotting an attack on Strasbourg, France.
But officials earlier that same year dropped an
inquiry into the group in Hamburg that was busy
planning the Sept. 11 attacks. The federal prosecutor
felt there was insufficient evidence to continue
surveillance on the apartment where Mr. Atta and at
least four other plotters lived. Mr. Moussaoui was
apparently not on any American watch list; nor was Mr.
Atta.
A Transnational Mix: Sleeper Cells Bond and Wait to
Strike
In November 2000, Mr. Beghal left London for
Afghanistan, intelligence officials said, shortly
after Al Qaeda operatives bombed the destroyer Cole
off the Yemeni coast, killing 17 American sailors. The
1998 attacks on the American Embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania were considered resounding successes and the
American responses tepid.
Mr. Beghal was already the leader of an eclectic group
of followers, most of whom appeared to move easily in
European society. The transnational mix included
French converts to Islam nicknamed the "Gauls" or "the
white moors," along with students, petty criminals,
computer specialists. All looked to Mr. Beghal. He
would soon be anointed to lead what would have been an
audacious strike in the heart of Paris.
"He oversaw a group of mixed nationalities, although
there were a fair number of Tunisians, who are some of
the most zealous militants," said the French Interior
Ministry official. "These people had time in
Afghanistan to get to know each other and plan
activities. They ate the same food. They lived in the
same conditions. It is like the bonding that comes
from military service. Once these groups return to
Europe their loyalty is to the cell, even if members
come from different countries. They forget their past,
their origins."
After he departed for Afghanistan, French intelligence
officials lost track of Mr. Beghal. They put out a
watch for him, but while they wanted him stopped, they
did not want him arrested because they hoped to follow
him.
As it turned out, he headed last July to Morocco,
where he was to pick up $50,000 to carry out the Paris
attack, and move on through Spain. But the Central
Intelligence Agency, which had put out a warning of a
possible terrorist attack against American interests a
month before, insisted he be held and questioned.
Mr. Beghal's lawyer, Fabrice Dubest, said that after
his arrest in Dubai, he was repeatedly interrogated
about strikes against American targets.
According to French intelligence transcripts of his
interrogation, Mr. Beghal said he planned to buy a van
at the Salon de l'Auto car fair in Paris. A former
soccer player, Nizar Trabelsi, born in Tunisia and
living in Brussels, would drive the van into the
embassy compound and blow it up in a suicide mission.
Operatives in Brussels had already begun to collect
chemicals for transport to Paris, French intelligence
officials said. In the final weeks before the planned
attack, Mr. Beghal intended to rent a house, start a
business as a cover for the activities of the group
and open a small cybercafe so he could communicate in
code with Mr. bin Laden's operatives in Afghanistan.
Most codes, French intelligence officials said, were
hidden in pictures transmitted over the Internet. The
final approval to strike, they said, was to come from
Afghanistan.
"Beghal did not give us the names of the other Islamic
terrorists in Europe he was working with, but he gave
us addresses and physical descriptions," said a French
official. "All of them used pseudonyms."
Mr. Beghal was known as Abu Hamza and Mr. Trabelsi was
known as "le Noir," French intelligence officials
said.
"We checked our files and matched his descriptions to
those we suspected of involvement in terrorist
activities," said a French intelligence official. "It
was a perfect fit. Then we began to follow everyone."
On Sept. 23, shortly before he was turned over to the
French, Mr. Beghal signed 32 documents in Arabic with
16 questions that summarized his confessions. Once in
France, Mr. Beghal retracted his confession, telling
his lawyer that he was forced to sign the papers,
which he had not been allowed to read, after being
tortured.
Some European officials say that after the arrests in
Europe and the collapse of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan,
the group has been crippled for now. A Spanish police
commander estimated recently that "probably 50"
members of Al Qaeda had been jailed in the European
sweeps. He expressed confidence that many others "fled
and are now fearful because of the information we
have." He is convinced, he said, that "the hard core
has been jailed, and I don't believe there are other
cells."
But others say they are bracing for a new wave of
attacks. The nature of sleeper cells people apparently
integrated into society makes it hard to know.
French officials estimate that as many as 100 French
Muslims of North African descent were fighting
alongside Mr. bin Laden. They say that after escaping
to Pakistan they are working their way back to France.
"These fighters did not cross into Pakistan and head
for the mosques," said a senior French intelligence
official. "They are headed back here to set off
bombs."
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