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bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
=== News Update ===
Swiss Spy in a War of Words
By Sebastian Rotella, Times Staff Writer
May 22, 2006
An ex-informant who became a Muslim says his handlers wanted him to
frame an Islamic scholar. Officials say he's on a personal vendetta.
GENEVA — Along with banks and chocolates, this placid lakefront city has
another claim to fame: It is full of spies.
Claude Covassi, a broad-shouldered, gray-eyed martial arts expert, was
one of them. He became an informant for Swiss intelligence in early
2004, converted to Islam and infiltrated fundamentalist circles here in
his hometown. He followed the trail of holy warriors all the way to
mosques in Syria where aspiring foreign "martyrs" are groomed for Iraq.
But in February, the secret agent went explosively public. He revealed
his mission to its prime target, a Muslim scholar here who has been
periodically accused of extremism, and gave newspaper interviews
accusing his handlers of trying to frame the cleric. Since then, Covassi
has unleashed everything from confidential documents to details of
clandestine operations.
The former spy insists that he abandoned his masquerade because he found
faith.
"It is not great speeches that convinced me but the force of prayer and
understanding of the Koran," Covassi, 36, said in a recent interview by
e-mail from his refuge in Egypt. "Islam transformed my existence."
But Swiss anti-terrorism officials reject his allegations and accuse him
of a personal vendetta. It's unclear who was manipulating whom.
Covassi's story gives a rare street-level view of the fight against
Islamic extremism. All across Europe's Muslim communities, security
forces conduct aggressive surveillance of mosques, prayer halls,
bookstores, butcher shops, Internet cafes and other outposts where legal
fundamentalist activity converges with terrorism.
The case of the turncoat informant also reveals the risks involved for
spy agencies — and for a scruffy legion of secret soldiers on the front
lines.
Covassi alleges that he was a pawn in a turf war between domestic and
foreign services in Switzerland that resembles the conflicts among anti-
terrorism agencies in other countries.
"I think the situation would not have degenerated so seriously if our
different intelligence services collaborated even a little," he said.
"In reality, I have been able to observe that they are in continual
rivalry, trying even to damage each other."
His war of words has shaken the anti-terrorism forces of a small country
with a surprisingly active militant underworld. Questions abound about
Covassi's motivations. Is he retaliating over money or a grudge? Is he
in league with extremists? Adding to the uncertainty about his
credibility, a court last month sentenced him in absentia to eight
months in prison for dealing anabolic steroids while he taught Thai
boxing at a gym in 2002.
Some officials believe he's trying to pressure the government to avoid
the prison term.
"Sometimes you use a source and it goes wrong," said a Swiss security
official, who asked to remain anonymous. "How much of what he says is
rubbish to help him get out of the criminal case, I don't know."
The Los Angeles Times confirmed essential parts of Covassi's story in
interviews with Swiss legislative and security officials, European anti-
terrorism agents and others involved in or familiar with the events. And
Covassi supports his account by providing names and phone numbers of his
handlers and confidential e-mail exchanges with agents.
The intelligence oversight committee of the Swiss congress is
investigating the case. But doubts persist, especially regarding
Covassi's allegation that spymasters plotted to smear the controversial
Islamic scholar Hani Ramadan by linking him to Iraq-bound militants.
Ramadan's brother, Tariq, is an internationally known Islamic
intellectual.
Without commenting on specifics, Federal Police Chief Jean-Luc Vez said
he knew of no wrongdoing.
"The [domestic intelligence service] respects the law," Vez said. "We do
not know of a case in which they can be blamed for illegal activity."
But Vez said the Ramadans' history and high profile made them legitimate
subjects for scrutiny. "Their writings are sometimes ambiguous," he
said. "It is quite normal that they would get particular attention."
Hani Ramadan says he might sue the government, but will await the result
of the legislative inquiry. He has declined to comment further.
"As I have always said, the Islamic Center of Geneva has nothing to
hide," Ramadan said in a prepared statement. "The two years of secret
investigations by an agent … indeed prove that, because they have not
resulted in any official investigation or sanction."
Ramadan and Covassi are ambiguous figures in a city of shadows.
Geneva has long been a crossroads for intrigue because it is a base for
international institutions, including the United Nations, as well as a
haven for dissidents and a repository of colossal and dubious fortunes
from around the globe. Soviet and Western agents sparred in this
nominally neutral territory during the Cold War.
"It is a place that is crawling with spies," said former legislator and
author Jean Ziegler, a friend of the Ramadan family.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, the cloak-and-dagger game has had a new focus.
Authorities have frozen millions of dollars of suspected terrorist
financiers and investigated local groups allegedly linked to Al Qaeda.
Muslims make up about 4% of the Swiss population of 7.5 million, mostly
Balkan immigrants considered moderates. But Geneva draws extremist
Muslim ideologues and holy warriors, who have become top priorities for
law enforcement.
***
Helped Out of Jail
Enter Covassi. Acquaintances, and his own account, depict him as
engaging, athletic, restless and a slick operator.
The son of an Italian immigrant laborer, he grew up here and went to
Paris to study philosophy. But he also racked up two misdemeanor
convictions for fraud in Switzerland. Bouncing around Europe, he
befriended far-left activists in Italy and hung out with cocaine dealers
on the hard-partying Spanish island of Ibiza from 2001 to 2003,
according to his account. Those contacts helped him develop a sideline
as an informant for narcotics police in his hometown, said Covassi and
Swiss officials.
A boyhood friend in police intelligence introduced him to agents of the
domestic intelligence service, the Service for Analysis and Prevention,
or SAP. The agents helped him get out of jail after an arrest on charges
of credit card fraud in February 2004, he said, and enlisted him in a
mission dubbed Operation Memphis.
"The SAP had the air of being worried about a terrorist threat in
Switzerland," Covassi said. "I didn't know anything about Islam. The
project of Operation Memphis seemed useful. I did not get a salary. I
was repaid for expenses, along with some 'gifts.' I got paid a total of
about $12,200."
Covassi started attending the Islamic Center of Geneva, a mosque run by
Ramadan, 47. Ramadan and his brother, Tariq, have been watched by the
world's spy services for decades.
Their maternal grandfather was Hassan Banna, an Egyptian who in 1928
founded the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical, sometimes violent group
seeking to revive Islam and rejecting Westernization. The group's
philosophies have inspired Islamist movements across the world,
including those that spawned Al Qaeda.
After Banna's assassination in 1949, their father, Said Ramadan, helped
spread the group's influence across the Muslim world, but soon fled
Egypt amid a government crackdown.
The Ramadan brothers were born and raised in Geneva, where their father
was granted asylum in the 1950s. The two scholars say they have
renounced the intolerant aspects of their legacy.
But several top European anti-terrorism officials and academics see them
as sinister ideologues. The United States revoked a visa for Tariq
Ramadan in 2004 as he was about to begin a professorship at the
University of Notre Dame.
"We have been interested in the Ramadans for a very long time," the
Swiss security official said. "But we have found nothing for a criminal
indictment. They are fellow travelers…. They are preaching. They are
spreading radicalism."
In 2002, the local government fired Hani Ramadan from his job as a
French teacher in a public school because of an article he wrote about
Islamic law in which he defended the stoning of adulterous women. A
court later ruled the firing was excessive.
The Ramadans have defenders, too. The British government has appointed
Tariq Ramadan, now a professor at Oxford, to an advisory committee on
Islam. Ziegler, the former legislator, calls the brothers unfairly
maligned moderates.
"There is a campaign of permanent defamation against the Ramadan
brothers," Ziegler said. "Hani is an organizer, a pedagogue, less
brilliant than his brother. But there is a social dimension to his work
at the Islamic Center, assisting families…. If you want Muslim
immigrants to become European, you should support the Ramadans."
In order to infiltrate Hani Ramadan's inner circle, Covassi used his
real name and a classic cover story: He presented himself as a troubled
ex-convict looking for spiritual solace. Within two months, Ramadan
encouraged him to convert, Covassi said.
"With other Muslims I founded a newsletter, Al Qalam, and an association
to defend the rights of Muslims," he said. "I was therefore in close
contact with Ramadan and I spent many afternoons with him in his
office."
The SAP had to resort to an informant because domestic spying laws
prohibit its agents from undercover work and wiretaps. The tough
restrictions even put agents overseeing informants in danger of breaking
the law.
In addition to trying to learn everything he could about Ramadan,
Covassi investigated Islamic networks that recruit for Iraq, the new
magnet for holy warriors. Radicalization is difficult to combat even in
countries with robust anti-terrorism laws. The speeches and activities
of many hard-core ideologues are not illegal, even if they ultimately
push young men into violence.
"What's illegal?" the security official said. "Telling the 'brothers'
that the Iraq invasion was illegal and must be resisted? Giving someone
the address of a friend in Jordan?"
Covassi said he did not turn up anything connecting Ramadan to
terrorism.
"I won't tell you that all the Muslims who frequent the center are all
saints, but … the only men I met who were in contact with terrorist
groups belonged to intelligence services of foreign countries," he said.
As Covassi spent time at Ramadan's Islamic Center and Geneva's larger,
Saudi-run mosque, he says he realized they were swarming with fellow
operatives for European and Arab spy agencies. He briefed his handlers
about an ardent extremist at the big mosque; they told him the man was a
Syrian spy recruiting militants for combat in Iraq, he said.
Pursuing the Syrian connection, Covassi says, he accompanied Iraq-bound
militants as far as Damascus, the Syrian capital, in January of last
year. There, he spent time at the Fateh mosque and the Abu Nour Koranic
school, which have been identified in other European investigations as
hubs for international pipelines feeding the Iraqi insurgency. Militants
there charged $600 for passage into Iraq and $4,000 for weapons, he
said.
At both places, Covassi alleged, "the Syrian secret services recruit for
Iraq."
If true, his findings reinforce accusations that Syria aids the Iraq
insurgency, a charge Damascus denies. European investigators said Syrian
spies probably permit militant activity in Damascus, but proving direct
involvement was another matter.
***
A Change of Heart
Upon his return, Covassi clashed with his handlers. He accuses them of
pushing him to plant names of suspected Iraq-bound militants on
computers at the Islamic Center to implicate Ramadan in the recruitment
network.
Covassi said that by then he had come to admire the cleric "for his
human qualities and the help he gave me in my knowledge of Islam."
As a result, Covassi distanced himself from the SAP, but not from
spying. He promptly went to work for the Swiss foreign intelligence
service, known by the French initials SRS, infiltrating terrorist
networks across Europe and the Middle East.
The new job embroiled him in the harsh rivalry between SAP and his new
agency, he said. Covassi provided The Times with excerpts of
confidential e-mail exchanges with his handler at the foreign spy
service. Using code names, they discuss surveillance photos, a
clandestine rendezvous at a train station and a suspected plot to attack
an Israeli passenger plane with a rocket-propelled grenade at the Geneva
airport late last year.
Covassi and the handler disparage agents at the SAP, whom they codename
"the Bears."
In an e-mail dated Dec. 3, an agitated Covassi complains that his former
bosses had renewed pressure on him to spy on Ramadan, whom he calls "the
Guru." He refers to an apartment used for surveillance operations on the
Islamic Center. And he threatens to go public.
"[The agent] talks to me every day about the apartment in front of the
[Islamic Center] and has confirmed to me that the Bears want to use it
to go after the Guru again," Covassi writes. "I want to emphasize some
points: 1) It's out of the question for me to participate in this plan,
and therefore to put names on photos that [the agent] shows me. 2) As I
told you during our meeting in the mountains, if the situation
degenerates for the Guru, I wouldn't flinch from blowing the lid off my
collaboration with the Bears and the information in my possession."
Covassi soon went on a rampage. He had two angry meetings with his old
handlers. He gave an interview to the Tribune de Geneve newspaper
denouncing what he called the persecution of Ramadan.
In the following days, he alleges, he received threats, his studio
apartment was burgled and he was mugged on a street by two Arabs who
beat him bloody.
He decided to run.
Despite his public tirade, Covassi says, his handlers at the foreign spy
service assisted him in his getaway Feb. 19. An agent drove him to the
airport, paid for a ticket to Spain and gave him about $8,000 in cash,
he said. The SRS had already paid about $33,000 for his services, he
said.
Asked about the apparent conflict among spy agencies, Swiss officials
said they were working to improve cooperation.
"There is always a certain competition among services," Vez, the police
chief, said. "It's endemic. I think the role of a leader is to ensure
that the competition is not counterproductive."
Covassi said he made his way from the Canary Islands to Mauritania,
narrowly avoiding arrest, and then to Egypt, where he had friends. He
says he has been there since March.
>From his refuge, he fires off e-mails to journalists and politicians.
He threatens to disclose well-documented secrets if the congressional
commission does not bring him back to Switzerland to testify. Despite
Ramadan's family and ideological links to Egypt, Covassi insists that
the Muslim Brotherhood has not given him shelter.
The runaway spy sounds plaintive, lost in his labyrinth.
"I don't have money," Covassi said. "I have made an effort to avoid
being helped by any Islamist group so no one can claim that I am being
manipulated or what have you. I am absolutely alone."
source:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-
mole22may22,0,6727636,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines
===
-muslim voice-
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