[German major weekly, slighty leftist; Follow the link to see a related
photo gallery; dm+] http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,345785,00.html MADRID, ONE YEAR ON Europe Continues to Stumble in its Fight against Terror By Dominik Cziesche, Marion Kraske, Holger Stark and Helene Zuber The terrorist attacks in Madrid struck at the heart of Europe. Almost 200 people died, over 2,000 were injured and thousands more traumatized. Europeans quickly swore they would fight terrorism together. But one year later, only a few parts of the plan have been implemented. And experts believe the next major attack will also be in Europe. It is impossible to say, today, whether such a law could have hindered the March 11, 2004 attacks in Madrid -- whether the 191 people killed would still be alive, and whether the attackers could have been captured before they managed to blow up commuter trains in the middle of rush hour in Spain's capital one year ago. But one thing is clear. A legal framework, allowing and encouraging European investigators to work together across international borders as efficiently as terrorist groups do, would have placed a challenging hurdle in the path of the Madrid terrorists. Take the case of alleged Madrid co-conspirator Rabei Osman Ahmed. Known as "Mohammed the Egyptian," Ahmed wasn't unknown to the police prior to the attacks, but he had proven to be elusive. As early as 2000, Ahmed had attracted attention as a vocal lay preacher of Islam in Germany. He was investigated and judged not to be dangerous but his case file was saved. Following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States, his file was looked into once again and it was discovered that he had left Germany for Spain. It was decided that further investigation into his case was needed. But in the following months, the flow of information between Germany and Spain was scant at best. It was only in February 2003 that the Spanish instigated a more intensive exchange of information, but it was too late. In the same month, Ahmed traveled onwards to Paris, and there, amid confusion as to whether the Germans, the Spanish or the French were responsible for the case, the authorities lost his trail. One year later, the bombs went off in Madrid. Hoped for anti-terror reform never happened Ahmed's case is symptomatic of the weaknesses hindering the European fight against terror. The borders within the European Union are open, but a joint strategy guiding the cooperation of Europe's different law enforcement authorities remains, at best, in the form of a preliminary sketch. For police and secret service agencies, this state of affairs is a huge obstacle. Indeed the violent attacks in Madrid were seen by many as the needed catalyst that would force Europe to finally knit together its myriad law-enforcement agencies. Europeans felt that the reform process would be injected with a sense of urgency -- rather than allowing the fight against terror in Europe to continue along the same bureaucratic path as the guidelines for determining the amount of fat allowable in milk. One year later, it is clear that the desired urgency never materialized. The implementation of European-wide resolutions adopted at the European Union level is often delayed at the national level, secret service data is still not being shared freely with the joint law-enforcement body Europol, and the exchange of information among EU members has proven slow at best. At the same time, the situation in Europe has never been more dangerous -- the entire continent has become an anti-terror battlefield. "I think that it is only a question of time before an attack happens in Italy or England," says one highly placed German security officer. American experts also predict that the next large attack will take place in Europe. EU anti-terror coordinator Gijs de Vries also has no illusions about the dangers facing Europe. "No country in Europe can consider itself safe. A number of planned attacks have already been averted." Even more worrisome, the attacks that are being planned are homemade -- the terror cells in Europe have become indigenous and they are planting bombs directly in front of their own front doors. The terror cells from Madrid are a prime example -- far from being remote controlled from the mountains of Afghanistan, they were immigrants who had been living in Europe for years. Terrorists in Europe are, to be sure, supported by an international logistics network, according to the French domestic secret service agency DST. But to a large degree, al-Qaida and its allies have decentralized the holy war and today, bin Laden's fiefdom of terror is made up largely of numerous, mostly autonomous groups scattered across the globe. They choose their targets themselves and operate primarily in the countries where their members live. Many of them are in Europe. "Terrorism is coming home," is how Guido Steinberg, who works in the German chancellor's office, explains the situation. "Battleground Europe," is Islam expert and Paris political scientist Gilles Kepel's preferred description. And the American terrorism expert Steven Emerson darkly predicts, "I don't doubt that Germany should fear an attack." International terror at home in Europe The Madrid attack -- and the Dec. 2004 murder of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who made the controversial, anti-Islam film "Submission" -- also disproved an old axiom: Immigrants will not attack their adopted homeland. The axiom had held for a long time and jihadists seemed only to be interested in the conflicts taking place in their home countries. Funded by Saudi money, they fought against the regimes in Morocco, Algeria or Egypt. But the fight spread and the mujahedeen became increasingly likely to take up the global jihad in places like Chechnya, Afghanistan and Bosnia. Indeed Bosnia, where an estimated 5,000 foreign jihadists fought during the civil war, is still considered to be a potential training ground of international terror. Money is being pumped into the former war zone by wealthy Saudi Arabians and the money is being used to build stately mosques in isolated villages. But in brand new school complexes built along with the mosques, the next generation is being versed in texts of Wahhabism -- an extreme school of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia. The EU is keeping an eye on the potential future crisis, but other than offering reconstruction aid in the form of troops and police overseers, there is little it can do. There will likely be dire future consequences. The next generation of young radicals is already clustering around and learning from the mujahedeen who fought in Bosnia or Afghanistan. And they aren't just content to stay in the Balkans. In Spain alone, investigators say there are 300 people who are connected to terrorist organizations -- in Germany, the numbers are comparable. Quite a number of those from this young generation are well educated and speak several languages fluently, which makes it easier for them to blend in to European society. Serhane Ben Abdelmajid Farkhet, one of the Madrid co-conspirators, provides a telling example. For a long time, he lived an uneventful middle-class life in Spain. The 36-year-old Tunisian studied economics in Madrid, was married to a Moroccan and seemed destined for success in the West. He was a regular top seller in the real estate company where he worked. But Farkhet was a friend of Ahmed, the fearless March 11 conspirator who police lost track of when he moved to France. Under his influence, Farkhet, who was known as "the Tunisian," became more radical. Soon, he was no longer selling houses, but terror. He went to Istanbul where he met with al-Qaida operatives and in Spain he helped the bombers organize the attack. On April 3, 2004, Madrid police stormed an apartment where Farkhet and six accomplices were hiding. Before police could nab them, the men blew themselves up, killing an officer along with themselves. The television images once again brought images into European living rooms that most had thought only occurred in the Middle East. Would Europe have to start getting used to such violent scenes? And those are just the scenes that came to fruition. Eliza Manningham-Buller, who heads Britain's Secret Service MI5, talks about the many foiled terrorist plots in Britain. The former head of Scotland Yard, Sir John Stevens, is more precise, saying he knows of six specific cases. One of the plots police prevented would have been on the same scale as the Madrid train bombing. Plots in all major EU states Indeed all major EU nations have their failed terrorist attacks. In the German city of Duesseldorf, for instance, a group of suspects known as the Tawhid group are currently on trial for planning attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets. In France in 2002, a man identified as coming from a Chechen group plotted to attack Russian institutions. And in summer 2001, French police halted the plans of French-Algerian Jamal Beghal who was planning an attack on the US embassy in Paris. But there's more. Just in the past few months: * A trial in Rotterdam began against extremists who, among other targets, planned to attack a nuclear power reactor and the headquarters of the Dutch secret service. * German investigators arrested numerous suspects who planned to attack Iraq's president during a recent visit to Berlin. * Spanish officials arrested 17 Islamists accused of wanting to blow up the nation's main court using 500 kilos of dynamite. In the face of the heightened threat, the failure of the EU to adequately apply anti-terror laws approaches scandalous proportions. On June 13, 2002, European Union leaders issued a "Framework for Terror" in which EU states promised to toughen and synchronize anti-terrorism laws. The framework also introduced new rules designed to streamline the often drawn-out extradition process. The nations had until December of that year to inform the European Commission how the resolution had been integrated into national law. Germany, though, was one of only five nations that applied the decision. And only two of these five delivered all of the information required of them. Many countries still have not fully adapted the resolution. Attempts to cut off funding to terrorists have run up against similar roadblocks. Myriad proposals, such as laws against money laundering, have still not become part of national law. Europol remains headless Even more negligent is the fact that the joint European police agency Europol remained without a director for seven months from July of last year until just two weeks ago. The EU police force is supposed to function as the leading force in anti-terror efforts -- a middleman between security organizations and the main repository of data and analysis. But EU nations became mired in a squabble about who would get the job. At the end of February, they finally announced their choice, Max-Peter Ratzel from Germany's Federal Office of Criminal Investigation. Europol is also in trouble for other reasons. For years, the agency has been saying that its computer system would be revamped "in great haste" so that information about terror groups could be better collected, sorted and analyzed. But even today, the complete system has yet to go online. The interior minister from the German state of Lower Saxony, Uwe Schuenemann, visited Europol just after the Madrid bombings. In recent years, agencies have delivered much more data, but the minister is convinced that the efforts to date are not enough. "There has to be a legal framework governing the exchange of important information." The reasons are clear. Cases such as that of the 32-year-old Andrew Rowe demonstrate that Jihad fighters have understood the advantages brought to them by the disappearance of intra-European borders. A convert to Islam, Rowe -- known in the scene as "Yusuf the Jamaican" -- is outfitted with a British passport and is suspected to be a midlevel al-Qaida operative. Investigators have been able to trace his movements back and forth across Europe. They have also tracked him to England, Japan, Turkey and Malaysia and it is believed that he was an important currier between militant cells. Indeed, he can also be traced to the Casablanca attacks of 2003. In October 2003, Rowe stayed for a number of days in a hotel in Frankfurt, Germany. He had intended to travel from Frankfurt through the Eurotunnel to England, but before he even got to the border, he was arrested by the British secret service. A search of Rowe's clothing set off alarm bells across Europe: traces of the explosive nitro-glycerine were found on his socks. In addition, he was carrying documents about grenade launchers. British investigators believe that the group Rowe belonged to was planning an operation against Heathrow airport and secret service agents believe that the militants had intended to launch mortars against the airport, Europe's largest. "Yusuf the Jamaican," who denies the allegations, is currently being prosecuted. Major raids every month The dangers presented by people like Rowe have, meanwhile, become clear to all -- and liberal and conservative governments alike have toughened their stances against Islamists. In the past year, Spanish investigators have arrested 130 of them, and Britain has detained more than 500 suspected terrorists since Sept. 11. In Germany, hardly a month goes by without a major police raid on suspected Islamists. But in legal terms, the Europeans are still having a difficult time combating terrorism. As suspicious as Islamists may behave -- and as shady as their contacts may be -- terrorist intentions are often difficult to verify. A recent court ruling in Milan is symptomatic of the problem: At the end of January, a judge acquitted five suspects, thought to have recruited suicide attackers for Iraq, of terrorism charges. Prosecutors were unable to prove the suspects intended to attack civilians, and guerrilla fighting in a war is permissible. Among those tried was Mohammed D., a former Hamburg resident with connections to the terrorist cell responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He was released from custody at the beginning of February. In order to prevent similar verdicts, the British have partially disempowered their legal system: In order to do so, they've even suspended parts of the European Human Rights Convention. With the changes, foreign Islamists can be locked away in the high-security Belmarsh prison -- sometimes called the British Guantanamo -- without any court decision. The country's highest court rebuked the action as a serious constitutional violation. Initially, Tony Blair's government wanted to preserve the procedure, but, under pressure from the justices, it is being forced to bend on the issue and watered-down laws are currently awaiting a vote in parliament. On Monday night, Blair's anti-terror law failed to pass in the House of the Lords; British newspapers described the vote as a major defeat for the prime minister. De Vries says Europe remains vulnerable. He says his hope lies in better cooperation at the EU level. But the skirmish over Ahmed, the suspected Madrid accomplice, doesn't portend a change for the better. Three months after the attacks in Madrid, he was wiretapped and arrested in Milan. Because he also lived for a time in Germany, investigators here are also interested in him -- especially because he continued to maintain his contacts in Germany by phone and mobile text messages after he left the country. German officials requested copies of his interrogations, but they waited in vain. Before they could receive the package from Italy, portions of the talks had already been leaked to journalists. "I first read details from the telephone conversations in Corriere della Sera," laments one official, with an air of resignation. And as long as security dealings among EU nations continue in this vein, Europeans remain at risk. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! 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