CIA Nominee Turned Blind Eye As Arms Flowed To Al Qaeda In 1994, 1995

Michael V. Hayden's European Command Failed To Interdict Military Supplies To Bin Laden Terror Network in Bosnia

By J.M. Berger
INTELWIRE.com

From 1993 to 1995, money, arms and expertise flooded from the United States to al Qaeda military networks in Bosnia-Herzegovina -- all under the watchful eye of Gen. Michael V. Hayden -- then chief of U.S. military intelligence in the region and named Monday as President Bush's nominee to take over the CIA. (related story)

Hayden served as director of the U.S. European Command Intelligence Directorate, based in Stuttgart, Germany, from May 1993 to October 1995. He subsequently went on to lead the secretive National Security Agency from 1999 to 2005.

Hayden's role at the NSA has commanded the lion's share of media coverage so far, in part due to his involvement in the controversial wiretapping program and a telephone database program disclosed Thursday in USA Today (link). But equally serious questions exist about his involvement with U.S. initiatives that directly aided al Qaeda and may have even helped fund the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Hayden's role in Bosnia is far from clear, but his name has been linked repeatedly to allegations that the American government provided arms and other support to al Qaeda-linked militants inside Bosnia – support that continued even after investigations stemming from the World Trade Center bombing revealed a direct link between the Bosnia initiative and terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.

• Hayden accompanied U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke on a trip to Croatia in November 1994, during which Holbrooke told the Bosnian government that the U.S. would encourage third-party countries to make covert shipments of arms and supplies for the use of al Qaeda's Bosnian network, in violation of a U.N. embargo.
  
  
• Three months after the meeting, mysterious nighttime airlifts of arms and supplies to Bosnian Muslims began to pass through Hayden's intelligence apparatus unhindered, prompting U.N. observers to accuse the U.S. of deliberately allowing the so-called "black flights" to pass.
  
  
• The official representing Bosnia at the November 1994 meeting (in which Holbrooke gave explicit approval to violations of the embargo) also sat on the board of a Vienna charity funded by Osama bin Laden. That charity – the Third World Relief Agency – directly shipped arms from the Sudan to Bosnian militants and also sent more than $40,000 in cash to the New York terrorist cell responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Hayden "had access to virtually all intelligence" generated by the U.S., U.N. and NATO regarding military activity in the Balkans, according to a 450-page report commissioned by the Dutch government to document a wide range of intelligence activity in Bosnia.[1]

Yet Al Qaeda operatives openly exploited U.S. political support for Bosnian Muslims to spearhead a global expansion of Osama bin Laden's anti-American jihad thoughout Hayden's entire tenure as senior military intelligence commander in the region.

On Hayden's watch, illegal arms ran through the U.N. embargo like water through a sieve, with the implicit or explicit blessing of the U.S. government, and arms and other supplies frequently ended up in the hands of known al Qaeda members. U.S. support for the arms shipments – and Hayden's failure to enforce the embargo – continued even after a high-profile member of the Bosnian network was convicted of plotting to blow up U.N. headquarters in New York City.

Hayden's sophisticated intelligence apparatus somehow failed to interdict the "black flights" – in which 132-foot wide, 155-ton cargo planes (accompanied by fighter jet escorts) transported arms and supplies from Sudan and Iran to mujahideen forces fighting on behalf of the Bosnian government.

Sources pointing to Hayden's role and the overall context of al Qaeda's Bosnian network include a 1996 Senate Select Committee probe of the arms shipments, al Qaeda documents and videotapes describing the activities of the Bosnian mujahideen, court transcripts related to the New York City terror cell, and additional court documents related to al Qaeda's misuse of charity funding.

Hayden has never been compelled to publicly testify about the events that took place in Bosnia during his time on station, yet many significant and disturbing questions remain – questions which are exponentially magnified by the prospect he could take the reins of the CIA.  

'BLACK FLIGHTS' DROP ARMS IN TUZLA IN EARLY 1995

In early 1995, U.N. peacekeepers reported sighting nighttime flights into the Tuzla airbase in Croatia. The flights were not logged according to normal procedure for friendly aircraft. Under cover of darkness, Hercules C-130 aircraft were escorted by fighter jets to Tuzla, where they deposited crates of arms and supplies in violation of a U.N. weapons embargo on the region. Sightings of the "black flights" were reported by British and Norwegian military officers, among others.[2]

After being dropped in Tuzla, the arms were shipped by land or air into Bosnia, destined for the Bosnian Muslim army, which included both official and irregular mujahideen regiments with extensive links to al Qaeda. The shipments included "weapons, ammunition, uniforms, helmets, new anti-tank weapons and Stingers," according to the Dutch intelligence survey.[3]

"Either the mission was carried out by powers capable of neutralizing the radar surveillance or it was made with the consent and support of the authorities commanding the assets in the area at the time," wrote Lt. Col. Christopher Le Hardy in a British Intelligence report dated Feb. 15, 1995. The "black flights" took place during period when only American planes were monitoring the Tuzla region. Le Hardy was pressured to change his report after U.S. officials protested.[4]  

Several European U.N. observers believed the operation was either conducted or condoned by the U.S. military intelligence apparatus, then commanded by Hayden. "They were American arms deliveries," said a British general with access to that country's Tuzla intelligence. "No doubt about that."[5]

No official investigation has ever reached a public finding regarding the origins of the flights themselves. However, the contents of the arms shipments were another matter. Both directly and indirectly, a significant portion of the supplies shipped to Bosnian Muslim fighters would be traced back to U.S. soil.

U.S. PLEDGES SUPPORT FOR EMBARGO VIOLATIONS

Many of the arms shipments are believed to have originated in Iran. The LA Times reported in April 1996 that "President Clinton secretly gave a green light to covert Iranian arms shipments into Bosnia in 1994." The most infamous "green light" incident eventually became the subject of a 1996 Senate probe.

According to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence:

"In April 1994, Croatian President Tudjman asked the U.S. Government what its view would be if Croatia resumed transshipment of arms to Bosnia (which U.S. officials knew would come primarily from Iran). National Security Advisor Tony Lake told the Committee that the U.S. decision to have Ambassador Galbraith reply that he had 'no instructions' was taken in the belief that this would likely result in Croatia going ahead with the resumed arms flow, and with that specific intent."[6]

The "no instructions" instruction trickled down the line, its effect magnifying into overt assurances during the next several months.

In November 1994, Richard Holbrooke – the Clinton Administration's diplomatic envoy to Bosnia – traveled to Zagreb, Croatia, accompanied by Gen. Hayden.[7] During the trip, Holbrooke met with Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic. (The record does not reflect whether Hayden attended the meeting.)

Holbrooke reportedly proposed to Silajdzic that the Bosnians accept the arms embargo for the next six months, in exchange for which the U.S. would encourage third-party countries to violate the arms embargo and ship additional military supplies to the Bosnians.

The "black flight" arms shipments to Tuzla began just three months later.[8] Gen. Hayden's intelligence apparatus failed to interdict and purportedly failed even to detect the covert shipments.

Later in 1995, U.S. government officials (including Holbrooke) abandoned all pretense of enforcing the embargo and signed off on specific shipments of rockets to Bosnia, after inspecting the weapons at the request of Croatian officials.[9]

Contemporaneous newspaper accounts charged that Hayden's colleague, deputy of the European Command Gen. Charles Boyd, also agreed to help facilitate covert assistance to Bosnian Muslims. The assurance was allegedly made during a secret meeting with the Bosnian Army's 6th Corps some time prior to November 1994. Holbrooke, who also attended the Boyd meeting, asserted to the Senate Select Committee under oath that no secret deal had been arranged, and the panel recorded that assertion as the whole of its investigation into the allegation.[10]

AL QAEDA AND BOSNIA

The November "green light" meeting in Zagreb took place more than 18 months after the U.S. government arrested members of the Bosnian mujahideen network for taking part in terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.  

Almost immediately after the outbreak of hositilities in the region, al Qaeda group sent operatives into Bosnia with explicit orders to create a European base.[11] From the beginning, al Qaeda's intention was to launch military operations inside Bosnia, in support of the Bosnian Muslim government, and terrorist operations outside Bosnia.[12]

In the fall of 1992, al Qaeda sent an operative named Jamal al-Fadhl (who later turned government informant) to Zagreb, Croatia, in order to collect intelligence and investigate business opportunities on behalf of Osama bin Laden.

During meetings with al Qaeda members[13], al-Fadhl was told that the Chicago-based Benevolence International Foundation had funded weapons purchases for the mujahideen, with the assistance of Mohamed Loay Bayazid, aka Abu Rida al-Suri, an Syrian-American and one of al Qaeda's founding members.

Extensive inventories of covert supplies, including weapons, received by the Bosnian Muslims[14] throughout the conflict closely correlate with receipts for non-weaponry military supplies paid for by the Benevolence International Foundation.[15] The non-weapons supplies documented by BIF included new uniforms and boots for the mujahideen.

But some of the most devastating evidence of the Bosnian terror connection would surface far closer to home.

AL QAEDA AND THE WORLD TRADE CENTER BOMBING

New York City native Clement Hampton-El fought with the mujahideen in Afghanistan in 1988. During his time in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Hampton-El met several members of the nascent al Qaeda organization. Hampton-El returned to New York later that year, where he involved himself in various jihadist causes.

In August 1992, Hampton-El agreed to help recruit operatives to fight in Bosnia and to train other mujahideen for the effort. Over the course of 1993, members of Hampton-El's training group were arrested and indicted for complicity in the February bombing of the World Trade Center and a subsequent plot to bomb the U.N. and other New York City landmarks.[16]

Investigators discovered that, in January and February of 1993, Hampton-El made at least three trips to a Bosnia-related charity in Vienna, where he received large cash payments that he took back to New York.

Hampton-El received more than $40,000 in cash from Third World Relief Agency,[17] a Vienna-based charity with deep ties to Osama bin Laden, which was also directly implicated in the covert arms shipments to Bosnia. He smuggled the money back to New York over the course of three trips, where it was used by the New York terrorist cell led by Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman.

TWRA was founded by al-Fatih Ali Hassanein, a Sudanese diplomat directly tied to bin Laden and Rahman. In addition to the $40,000 payment couriered by Hampton-El, TWRA distributed videotapes of Rahman's sermons widely across Europe. [18] Rahman made several phone calls to the TWRA offices during the period before his arrest.  TWRA had been funded directly by Osama bin Laden as well as other wealthy Saudi patrons of jihad, to the tune of $300 million.[19]

Despite the fact that TWRA had been linked to the World Trade Center bombing as early as 1993, the State Department made overt efforts throughout the 1990s to protect TWRA from the scrutiny of investigators.

"We were told [by Washington] to watch them but not interfere," an unnamed Western diplomat told the Washington Post. "Bosnia was trying to get weapons from anybody, and we weren't helping much. The least we could do is back off. So we backed off."[20]

TWRA's team of supporters and board of directors boasted several Bosnia dignitaries – including Haris Silajdzic, the Bosnian official who received assurances that the U.S. would encourgage violations of the arms embargo during Holbrooke and Hayden's November 1994 trip to Zagreb.

In 1992, Silajdzic had traveled to Vienna to issue a bank guarantee for Hassanein.[21] That same year, TWRA helped smuggle arms into Bosnia – not just from Iran, but from Khartoum, Sudan, where Osama bin Laden was in the process of relocating al Qaeda. The arms were eventually shipped to the Bosnians via Tuzla. [22]

Europol Reveals Trends in Jihadi Terrorism in Europe

By Thomas Renard

Terrorist activities in Europe increased dramatically in 2007, according to the annual report published by Europol, the European Union’s criminal intelligence agency [1]. Terrorists carried out—or attempted to carry out—583 attacks last year, a 24 percent increase from the previous year. Accompanying this increase in terrorist activities was an increase in counter-terrorist operations: 1,044 individuals were arrested for terrorism-related offenses, a 48 percent increase compared to 2006.

Most terrorist attacks were claimed or attributed to separatist groups in the Basque country, Spain (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, or ETA), or in Corsica, France (Fronte di Liberazione Naziunale di a Corsica, or FLNC). ETA and FLNC were responsible for 517 attacks, constituting 88 percent of all terrorist actions. Arrests among separatist groups were also responsible for the large increase in arrests in the European Union (EU) in 2007. Spain saw a seven-fold increase in arrested suspects compared to 2006, while France registered a 68 percent increase. In total, arrests among separatist groups represented more than half of the total arrests.

Islamist terrorism was statistically much less significant. Only four attacks were recorded: Two failed bombings in the United Kingdom (the Glasgow attacks), and two foiled plots in Germany (the Sauerland cell) and Denmark (the Glasvej case). The number of arrests could indicate a general decrease in jihadi activities. Indeed, EU police forces arrested 201 jihadi suspects, 56 fewer than in 2006. However, it should be mentioned that these numbers do not include arrests in Great Britain, which refuses to communicate precise statistics, although Britain did indicate a 30 percent increase in jihadi arrests. Including the British data could result in an increase of the arrests between 2006 and 2007.

Despite the comparatively low number of attacks, Islamist terrorism is still perceived as the main threat to European security. The reason for this assessment cannot be measured in number of attacks or arrests; it is an estimate of potential damages. “Most investigations into failed and foiled Islamist terrorist attacks in the EU in 2007 showed that Islamist terrorists continue to aim at causing indiscriminate mass casualties,” claims the report. “This is not only observed in the choice of targets but also in the methods and explosives used.”

Several European countries are currently—or were until very recently—at a very high level of terrorism alert. This was the case, for instance, in France, the UK, Spain and Belgium. On April 22, Gerard Bouman, head of the Algemene Inlichtingen-en Veilgheidsdienst (AIVD—Dutch domestic intelligence), confirmed that the threat of jihadi terrorism is growing in the Netherlands [2], especially since the release of the Islamophobic movie “Fitna” by Dutch extreme-right politician Geert Wilders (AP, April 22).

The Europol report underscores several interesting trends in Islamist terrorism in Europe:

• First, “although the majority of all arrested suspects for Islamist terrorism continue to be North African citizens, the member states reported a high number of arrested suspects with the nationality of the country of arrest.” This seems to confirm a growing threat of homegrown terrorism that has been observed for several years.

• Second, this increase in homegrown terrorists is partly the result of an increase in quantity and a “new quality” in jihadi propaganda in Europe (see Terrorism Focus, February 20). It is now widely recognized that propaganda on the internet has a central importance in recruitment. Hence, some recent developments appear particularly worrisome. For instance, al-Qaeda’s media arm, al-Sahab, now offers English subtitles or translations. In order to target some specific audiences, certain jihadi websites have recently decided to translate jihadi material into other languages, such as German, despite some apparent difficulties in using the language correctly (Die Welt, February 8). Similarly, the website al-Ikhlas recently launched two new forums in French and Italian [3].

Recruitment constitutes an important part of jihadi activities in Europe and arrests related to this activity have increased. The observed developments in propaganda and recruitment suggest that al-Qaeda is taking roots in Europe and could potentially become stronger in the near future. On April 18, European ministers of justice reached agreement on a law that would condemn, among other things, online propaganda and recruitment (AFP, April 18). This new law—which must still be approved by the European Parliament—should facilitate EU cooperation with internet providers and, eventually, allow the identification of cyber-terrorists. According to Gilles de Kerchove d’Ousselghem, the EU counter-terrorism coordinator, there are approximately 5,000 jihadi websites that contribute to the radicalization of European youth.

• Third, propaganda and recruitment serve multiple purposes. Some would-be jihadis are recruited by local cells to carry out operations in their own countries. Some are “self-recruited” through the media, and constitute a “new generation” of terrorists [4]. Some limit their support to financing terrorism. Others, finally, decide to join the jihad abroad, in Iraq—which remains the main destination for European fighters—in Afghanistan, or, increasingly (according to French intelligence), in Somalia.

• Fourth, the remaining core leadership of al-Qaeda in Pakistan still largely commands, controls and inspires jihadi terrorists in Europe. Europol, however, recognizes the rising importance of groups isolated—or more autonomous—from al-Qaeda’s core leadership, and their potential threat to European security. “This expansion of the ‘al-Qaeda franchise’ has the potential to constitute a threat to the EU’s security,” claims the report. “It could provide al-Qaeda with access to new centers of support which it can motivate and exploit.”

• Fifth, the report emphasizes the strategic importance of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan for European security. Should the situation in Iraq improve or the war terminate, Iraqi fighters—European or not—could relocate to other places and continue to wage jihad. Former Iraqi fighters could, for instance, carry out operations in Europe, establish new cells, or teach their know-how to young, would-be terrorists. In other words, there is a risk that the Iraqi generation will follow a similar path to the 1980s Afghan generation.

The problem with Afghanistan and Pakistan is more imminent. European citizens receive training in Pakistani tribal areas camps, either to go fight in Afghanistan, or to bring jihad back to Europe. “Al-Qaeda and affiliated pro-Taliban groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan are increasingly recognized as one of the main drivers of Islamist extremism and terrorism in the EU,” says the report. This statement underscores the European dilemma in facing terrorism. On one hand, EU members recognize that their domestic security is related to the evolution of the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan. On the other hand, however, they refuse a greater commitment in those regions for various other reasons, including electoral concerns.

Finally, a last interesting trend relative to Islamist terrorism in Europe concerns judicial sentences. In 2007, one-third of jihadi terrorist suspects were acquitted, while only one-fifth of separatist terrorists were discharged. This seems to indicate two things. First, the strong emphasis on Islamist terrorism by security services has led to a certain “paranoia” and abusive arrests that could ultimately hurt European efforts in countering radicalization. However, it should also be emphasized that some individuals were acquitted due to a lack of evidence, but could still be related to terrorism. Second, the better records in jailing separatist terrorists prove that European intelligence agencies have a greater knowledge of separatist groups and more effective strategies to counter them than is the case with Islamist terrorism.

Although a large part of the Europol report is dedicated to Islamist terrorism, it also includes other chapters on separatist terrorism, left-wing terrorism, extreme-right terrorism, and single-issue terrorism. Four points concerning those other forms of terrorism are worth a quick highlight:

• Attacks by separatist groups continue to overwhelmingly outnumber any other form of terrorism.
• ETA activities remain largely based in Spain, with logistical support in France. However, Portugal noticed an increase of Basque activities within its borders.
• ETA is starting to use propaganda videos in order to recruit among youth. This confirms that terrorist groups copy successful strategies developed by other groups, in this case al-Qaeda’s model.
• Extreme-left terrorism is regionally in decline. However, these activities increased in Italy. Moreover, French Interior Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie declared recently that left-wing groups constitute a resurgent threat to domestic security (AFP, February 10).

Looking at the number of attacks, separatist groups are more active than jihadi terrorists. However, jihadi groups are still perceived as the main threat to European security due to their potential for damage. Moreover, it appears that the Islamist threat is growing. Al-Qaeda is taking roots in Europe, seducing an increasing number of EU citizens, although the influence of the core leadership remains important. In terms of counter-terrorist strategies, the EU as a whole—as well as EU members individually—are taking some steps to increase their efficiency. Nevertheless, they are still better at fighting separatist movements than at countering jihad.

Notes

1. “TE-SAT 2008 – EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report,” Europol, April 2008.
2. “Jaarverslag AIVD 2007,” Algemene Inlichtingen-en Veiligheidsdienst, April 2008.
3. “Islamist Website Al-Ikhlas Launches French, Italian Forums,” MEMRI Islamist Websites Monitor Project, April 4, 2008.
4. Marc Sageman, “The Next Generation of Terror,” Foreign Policy, March/April 2008. 

German Islamist Appears in New Video

Source: Der Spiegel ( Germany ), 30 April


Two short films have appeared on the Internet featuring the German Islamist Eric B. in which he calls his "brothers" to join the jihad. The authorities have been hunting him for weeks, fearful that he could be preparing a terrorist attack in Kabul . The video messages are fanning those fears.   Eric B. calls on his brothers in Germany to join the jihad.

The news spread like wildfire through the offices of Germany 's intelligence agencies. Two new terrorist videos had turned up on the Turkish-language Web site "Time for Martyrdom," which has become an important mouthpiece for Islamist propaganda. And once again there were was a clear connection to Germany .

 

German terrorist investigators are alarmed at the new videos. After an initial assessment, it was clear that the two short films feature the German Islamist Eric B. from Neuenkirchen in Saarland . For the past few weeks, a publicity campaign in Kabul has focused on finding him and his presumed accomplice Houssain al-M.

 

The new images are militaristic. The 20-year-old German convert is seen in the first film standing in front of a mountain, with a machine gun thrown over his shoulder and wearing an ammunition belt. Abdul al-Gaffar, B.'s nom de guerre, addresses his audience in barely audible and unusually halting German. First of all he praises the suicide attack carried out by Cüneyt Ciftci, the 28-year-old German-born Turk who blew himself up in the Afghan province of Khost at the beginning of March. B. describes this as a "good deed" which sent many infidels "to hell."  A masked man next to him asks him to send a message to his "brothers in Germany ." B., who only converted to Islam in 2007, tells the camera: "When you love God and his messengers, then join the jihad, because that is the way to paradise." Those who aren't able to come and fight are asked to help with money or to support the jihadists at the front with prayers. No Muslim should stand by and watch while the "infidels shame our women in our countries and jail and torment our brothers," he says.

 

The Internet messages are a sign for the German investigators that their worst nightmare could come true. Since the beginning of April, fears have grown that B. and his 23-year-old travelling companion Houssain al-M. have been preparing an attack in Afghanistan or Pakistan . The two men have close ties with the so-called Sauerland Cell who are thought to have been planning a terror attack in Germany .   The two men were spotted in the Pakistani city of Peshawar , near the border with Afghanistan , at the beginning of April. A few days later, the German foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), received information that B., at least, was in Kabul .   The investigators called the alarm. The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) has now launched a search for the two men. Officials in Kabul have issued large wanted posters -- they were even included in the US army newspaper Stars and Stripes two weeks ago. The concerns about a possible attack were raised by an e-mail B. sent to his family from Peshawar . In it, he said he would not be coming back to Germany but instead would carry out his last mission in combat. The BKA had not received any more information about the two men before the video turned up.

 

Both men have kept the authorities on their toes for months now. According to information obtained by the BKA, the men travelled to Pakistan via Egypt and Iran in September 2007 and apparently completed training in a terror camp of the Islamic Jihad Union. According to the investigators' internal analysis, al-M. is considered the "leader" and "dominates" the young German. Agents suspect that a third, undisclosed man may be involved in addition to B. and al-M., but have yet to reach a definitive conclusion in that regard.  Both short videos were released on Monday evening on the Turkish-language Islamist Web site "Time of Martyrdom." The Islamic Jihad Union has used the online platform several times in the past to publish messages and terror videos. The video also includes the logo of IJU's media department. The organization, now believed to be based in Pakistan , originated with a group of militant Uzbeki Islamists and has close contacts to al-Qaida, the Taliban and Pakistani jihad groups.

 

German officials were first alerted about IJU at the end of 2006, when US intelligence agencies warned German security officials that German Islamists in Pakistan had established contact with members of the group. The tip-off led to spectacular arrests in summer 2007 of a terror cell in the Sauerland region of western Germany , where suspects Fritz Gelowicz, Adem Y. and Daniel S. had begun to build explosives for one or more bombs in a holiday apartment.  The IJU showed one more time that it has access to recruits in Germany . In mid-March the group released a statement saying that Cüneyt Cifcti, who was also raised in Germany , had carried out a suicide bombing in the name of the IJU in Afghanistan . Since then the organization has released almost a half-dozen videos showing the attack and Ciftci's final hours. Yesterday the group also released new material about the man, as a sort of testament. Experts are studying the clip now.  Two American soldiers and two Afghans were killed by the Bavarian Islamist on March 3. His guilt is now beyond doubt.

 

Security officials think of Ciftci as a potential role model for Eric B. and his accomplice from the Saarland . The German has recently appeared without a mask in an IJU propaganda video, something many analysts read as a bad sign. They believe it means either that he's been selected as the next bomber in Afghanistan (or even Germany ), or that he's already waiting on a definite mission. Like Ciftci, who was evidently filmed over and over while he trained, Eric B. may be seen as a potential new role model for German converts.

 

Unlike Ciftci, in any case, Eric B. has not yet announced an attack in any video.   The video has spread worries that it's now just a matter of time before the two German Islamists mount an attack. Their pictures now hang at every European Union entry point, and in all German airports. Officials are also taking steps to try to confiscate al-M.'s German passport. But no one believes these measures will keep any of them from trying to carry out their plan.

MI5 Accused of Colluding in Torture of Terrorist Suspects

Source: The Guardian ( UK ), 29 April
Officers of the Security Service, MI5, are being accused of "outsourcing" the torture of British citizens to a notorious Pakistani intelligence agency in an attempt to obtain information about terrorist plots and to secure convictions against al-Qaida suspects.

A number of British terrorism suspects who have been arrested in Pakistan at the request of UK authorities say their interrogation by Security Service officers, shortly after brutal torture at the hands of agents of Pakistan 's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), has convinced them that MI5 colluded in the mistreatment.  Those men have given detailed accounts of their alleged ordeals at the hands of the ISI over the last four years. Some of them appear to have been taken to the same secret interrogation centre in Rawalpindi , where they say they were repeatedly tortured before being questioned by MI5.  Tayab Ali, a London-based lawyer for two of the men, said: "I am left with no doubt that, at the very worst, the British Security Service instigates the illegal detention and torture of British citizens, and at the very best turns a blind eye to torture."

One man from Manchester says that in 2006 he was beaten, whipped, deprived of sleep and had three fingernails slowly extracted by ISI agents at the Rawalpindi centre before being interrogated by two MI5 officers. A number of his alleged associates were questioned in Manchester at the same time and two were subsequently charged. This man's lawyers say his fingernails were missing when they were eventually allowed to see him, more than a year after he was first detained. They say they have pathology reports that prove the nails were forcibly removed.  A second man, from Luton , Bedfordshire, alleges that two years earlier he was whipped, suspended by his wrists and beaten, and threatened with an electric drill, possibly at the same torture centre. His interrogation was coordinated with the questioning of several associates at Paddington Green police station, west London , and the questioning of a further suspect in Canada .

 

MI5 does not dispute questioning him several times during his 10 months' detention in Pakistan . At his trial, the judge accepted he had been mistreated but said he believed the claims were exaggerated.  No attempt was made to extradite either man to be questioned by police officers in the UK , and they received no assistance from British consular officials. They were eventually arrested on arrival in Britain after being placed aboard aircraft and flown in without extradition hearings.  The accusation that MI5 is at the very least turning a blind eye to the torture of British citizens - and may have actually colluded in their torture - is to surface in a number of forthcoming court cases, including the trial of the man who lost his fingernails, an appeal lodged by the man from Luton after he was convicted of terrorism offences, and a separate civil action being pursued on his behalf.

 

MI5 is thought to be considering a defence based on its officers' insistence that they had no reason to know that the ISI might have been torturing the men - a position that Pakistani lawyers and human rights activists in Pakistan and the UK say beggars belief. Even a high-ranking Scotland Yard counter-terrorism detective has conceded privately that there is little doubt that the Luton man was tortured.  The Guardian is aware of claims by a number of other British citizens that they were tortured after being detained as terrorism suspects in Pakistan . The allegations being made by these men and their lawyers, which are detailed in today's Guardian, are expected to be raised by human rights groups. Andrew Tyrie, Conservative MP for Chichester and a campaigner against the abuse of the human rights of terrorism suspects, is considering asking a series of questions about the matter in the Commons.

 

Under the Criminal Justice Act 1988 it is an offence for British officials to instigate or consent to the inflicting of "severe pain or suffering" on any person, anywhere in the world, or even to acquiesce in such treatment. Any such offence could be punished by life imprisonment.  Last week it was disclosed that eight men freed from US custody at Guantánamo Bay had issued writs against MI5 and the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, alleging they were complicit in their illegal detention and subsequent abuse.  The Security Service declined to comment on the allegations, but pointed to recent reports by the all-party Intelligence and Security Committee, which said all MI5 officers receive training about possible mistreatment of detainees held by foreign intelligence agencies.

 

The Foreign Office said it was aware of five British citizens being detained in Pakistan over the last four years for questioning about alleged terrorism offences, but would not say how many were detained before 2004. It admitted it had attempted to seek consular access to only two of these people, but declined to say how many had been seen by other British officials.   The FO also declined to say how many had complained of mistreatment, saying: "We have a duty to respect the privacy of the individuals concerned."

Sweden Keeps Somali Terror Suspects in Custody

Source: Reuters, 28 April
The Stockholm District Court extended the detention of two Swedish citizens suspected of financing terrorism in Somalia , a public prosecutor said on Monday.  Public prosecutor Ronnie Jacobsson said the court ordered the extention until May 8 of two men of Somali origin held on suspicion of collecting money and sending it to al Shabaab, a militant group that Sweden considers a terrorist organisation.  The two, aged 42 and 38, were taken into custody on February 28 after joint raids in Sweden and Norway led to the detention of six people.

 

"They both have told us they are politically active in Somalia ," Jacobsson told Reuters. "They are accused of collecting money from the Swedish Somali network and sending money to them (Al-Shabaab)."  Washington has also branded al Shabaab as terrorists. The Islamist group has led an insurgency against the Somali government and its Ethiopian allies since early 2007.  The prosecutor said he was certain the case would not be ready by May 8 and that he would need to apply for a further extension. "We had hoped it could be finished at the end of May, but I'm beginning to doubt that," he said.

In France , Prisons Filled with Muslims

Source: Washington Post, 29 April
Samia El Alaoui Talibi walks her beat in a cream-colored head scarf and an ink-black robe with sunset-orange piping, an outfit she picked up at a yard sale.  After passing a bulletproof window, El Alaoui Talibi trudges through half a dozen heavy, locked doors to reach the Muslim faithful to whom she ministers in the women's cellblock of the Lille-Sequedin Detention Center in far northern France .  It took her years to earn this access, said El Alaoui Talibi, one of only four Muslim holy women allowed to work in French prisons. "Everyone has the same prejudices and negative image of Muslims and Islam," said Moroccan-born El Alaoui Talibi, 47, the mother of seven children. "When some guards see you, they see an Arab; they see you the same as if you were a prisoner."

This prison is majority Muslim -- as is virtually every house of incarceration in France . About 60 to 70 percent of all inmates in the country's prison system are Muslim, according to Muslim leaders, sociologists and researchers, though Muslims make up only about 12 percent of the country's population.  On a continent where immigrants and the children of immigrants are disproportionately represented in almost every prison system, the French figures are the most marked, according to researchers, criminologists and Muslim leaders.  "The high percentage of Muslims in prisons is a direct consequence of the failure of the integration of minorities in France ," said Moussa Khedimellah, a sociologist who has spent several years conducting research on Muslims in the French penal system.

In Britain , 11 percent of prisoners are Muslim in contrast to about 3 percent of all inhabitants, according to the Justice Ministry. Research by the Open Society Institute, an advocacy organization, shows that in the Netherlands 20 percent of adult prisoners and 26 percent of all juvenile offenders are Muslim; the country is about 5.5 percent Muslim. In Belgium , Muslims from Morocco and Turkey make up at least 16 percent of the prison population, compared with 2 percent of the general populace, the research found. Sociologists and Muslim leaders say the French prison system reflects the deep social and ethnic divides roiling France and its European neighbors as immigrants and a new generation of their children alter the demographic and cultural landscape of the continent.

French prison officials blame the high numbers on the poverty of people who have moved here from North African and other Islamic countries in recent decades. "Many immigrants arrive in France in difficult financial situations, which make delinquency more frequent," said Jeanne Sautière, director of integration and religious groups for the French prison system. "The most important thing is to say there is no correlation between Islam and delinquency."  But Muslim leaders, sociologists and human rights activists argue that more than in most other European countries, government social policies in France have served to isolate Muslims in impoverished suburbs that have high unemployment, inferior schools and substandard housing. This has helped create a generation of French-born children with little hope of social advancement and even less respect for French authority.  "The question of discrimination and justice is one of the key political questions of our society, and still, it is not given much importance," said Sebastian Roche, who has studied judicial discrimination as research director for the French National Center for Scientific Research. "We can't blame a state if its companies discriminate; however, we can blame the state if its justice system and its police discriminate."

As a matter of policy, the French government does not collect data on race, religion or ethnicity on its citizens in any capacity, making it difficult to obtain precise figures on the makeup of prison populations. But demographers, sociologists and Muslim leaders have compiled generally accepted estimates showing Muslim inmate populations nationwide averaging between 60 and 70 percent.  The figures fluctuate from region to region: They are higher in areas with large concentrations of Muslims, including suburban Paris, Marseille in the south and Lille in the north.

Inside the prisons, El Alaoui Talibi and her husband, Hassan -- a rare husband-wife Islamic clerical team -- are struggling to win for Muslim prisoners the same religious rights accorded to their minority-Christian counterparts. Hassan is an imam. Samia has received religious training and can counsel the faithful, but under Islamic practices she cannot become an imam. The prison system has only 100 Muslim clerics for the country's 200 prisons, compared with about 480 Catholic, 250 Protestant and 50 Jewish chaplains, even though Muslim inmates vastly outnumber prisoners of all other religions. "It is true that we haven't attained full equality among religions in prisons yet," said Sautière, the national prison official. "It is a matter of time."

In recent years, the French government's primary concern with its Muslim inmate population has been political. French national security officials warned prison authorities in 2005 that they should work to prevent radical Muslims from inciting fellow prisoners. A year later, the French Senate approved a bill giving the country's national intelligence agency broad authority to monitor Muslim inmates as part of counterterrorism efforts.  Prison authorities began allowing carefully vetted moderate imams into prisons in hopes of "balancing the radical elements," said Aurélie Leclerq, 33, director of the Lille-Sequedin Detention Center .  Hassan El Alaoui Talibi, 52, who moved to France from Morocco as a student, is the national head of France 's prison imams and typical of the kind of moderate Muslim figure the French government seeks for its prison system.

El Alaoui Talibi delivers his Friday sermons with carefully chosen words, he says. He avoids politics and other subjects that might seem remotely inflammatory. He sticks to counseling convicted drug dealers, murderers and illegal immigrants in matters of faith and respect.  But not all the Muslims at Lille-Sequedin share those moderate views. Last year a disgruntled inmate blared a taped religious sermon into the prison courtyard. Prison officials deemed its message inflammatory and sent the prisoner to solitary confinement.

El Alaoui Talibi described years of struggle to win even modest concessions from prison directors. He recalled the first prison visit he made, a decade ago: He was forced to wait an hour and a half to meet with inmates. "If I hadn't been patient, I would have left," said the soft-spoken former high school teacher who became a prison imam after seeing so many of his students get in trouble with the law for petty offenses and end up hard-core criminals after prison stints.

Today, working in France 's newest prison -- the sprawling, three-year-old Lille-Sequedin center -- the El Alaoui Talibis say they are more accepted than some Muslim colleagues at other prisons. Prison officials rejected requests by The Washington Post to visit some of the system's older, more troubled prisons.  On a recent Friday, Hassan El Alaoui Talibi, a man with soulful eyes and a beard with the first hints of gray, made his way with a reporter through the men's wings, collecting prisoners' notes from mailboxes shared with Catholic and Protestant chaplains. At one point, several new inmates returning from sports practice surrounded him, requesting personal visits. He scribbled their names and cell numbers on a scrap of paper.  Many of the Muslim inmates in this prison just west of Lille are the children and grandchildren of immigrants who were brought to the northern region decades ago to work in its coal mines.

El Alaoui Talibi moved on to a small room overlooking a tiny garden courtyard and tugged at prayer mats stacked in a closet beside a rough-hewn wooden cross. Every other Friday, he transforms the room into a mosque for some of the male Muslim faithful of the prison. One of his most frequent sermon topics is food.  "He tells us not to throw away prison food just because it isn't halal," or compliant with Islamic dietary law, said a 33-year-old former civil servant, a man of Algerian descent who attends the twice-monthly prayer meetings. French prison rules prohibit journalists from identifying inmates by name or disclosing their crimes.  The refusal of prison officials to provide halal food, particularly meat products, is one of the biggest complaints of Muslim inmates across France and has occasionally led to cellblock protests.  For many years, prisons have allowed Muslim prisoners to forgo pork products -- and statistics tracking prisoners who refuse pork is an accurate barometer of the Muslim population in a prison, according to researchers. But cutting out pork is a long way from the full halal regimen. Only recently, did the prisons stop using pork grease to cook vegetables and other dishes.

"If you want to comply with your religion, you don't have a choice -- you have to become vegetarian," said the convicted civil servant, a compact man who works in the prison library. "We have access to a prison store with two halal products: halal sausage and a can of ravioli."  Prison officials say it is too expensive to provide halal meals. "We'd like to buy fresh meat, but we can't," said Leclerq, whose prison office is decorated with plush bears.  Muslim inmates said they sense other religious snubs. Christians are allowed packages containing gifts and special treats from their families at Christmas, but Muslims do not receive the same privilege for the Ramadan holy days. "We're careful not to call them Christmas packages because Muslims would ask for Ramadan packages," Leclerq said. "We call them end-of-the-year packages. We can't use a religious term or some people get tense."

Hassan El Alaoui Talibi said the French prison system has made progress since he began his ministry a decade ago. Last year the government set guidelines for all prisons to follow on religious practices, rather than allowing directors to arbitrarily set their own rules.  Prison imams met with Justice Minister Rachida Dati last month with a list of continuing requests, including more imams and training for prison guards to help them better understand religious differences.  A 31-year-old woman of Algerian descent with a youthful face and black, wavy hair tied carelessly in a ponytail welcomed Samia El Alaoui Talibi on a recent morning with double kisses on the cheeks. "Arriving here was a nightmare," said the woman, one of about 150 female inmates. "I was crying, I couldn't believe I was here.  Then I saw this woman wearing a head scarf," she said, smiling toward Samia. "I could tell she was here to help me. I call her my angel."

At the European Security conference in Munich, last February, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates told European nations that they were under direct threat from Islamist extremists and that this phenomenon would not go away. His warning followed Western intelligence services which already established operational links between al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) whose goals include striking at the heart of Europe. (see our analysis: Defeated in Iraq Al Qaeda Migrates to Maghreb - Next Stop: Europe). "I am concerned that many people on this continent may not comprehend the magnitude of the direct threat to European security" the secretary lamented. Gates warned: "The threat posed by violent Islamic extremism is real - and it is not going away. Europeans knew "all too well" about the Madrid bombings that killed 191 people in March 2004 and the attacks in London that left 56 dead in July 2005, but further from the spotlight there had been "multiple smaller attacks" in cities from Glasgow to Istanbul", Secretary Gates said.

Al-Qaeda has not made any secrets of its eagerness to target Europe. Indeed, Osama bin Laden's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has repeatedly threatened Europe. In September 2006 he appeared in a video website on the fifth anniversary of the 11 September attacks, urging to punish France as prime target for Islamist militants. Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, then head of the DST (domestic security service), said the threat of terrorist attack in France remained "very high and very international".

In fact, the Islamic terrorist group continues to be the most serious terrorism threat to Europe, said Gilles de Kerchove, newly appointed coordinator of counter-terrorism efforts among EU member states, speaking to the European Parliament, last November. He mentioned European converts to radical Islam having had a hand in several recent terrorism plots on European soil, including a foiled attack in Germany in 2007. German counter terrorist authorities claimed of up to 50 Islamic militants linked to the three men were suspected planning to assassinate the head of Germany's federal police, Joerg Ziercke. Two German citizens and one Turkish national were arrested in connection with the plot. They allegedly trained in terrorism camps in Pakistan before founding the domestic cell of an al Qaeda affiliate inside Germany.

Also, last September, based on information provided by US intelligence, German counter terror agents arrested three members of an al-Qaeda cell that planned to bomb Frankfurt airport and the nearby US military air base at Ramstein. This network allegedly had ties to other European countries, since the explosives seized were similar to those used in the London plots. The investigation also showed that the alleged terrorists had connections to both Pakistan and Syria. Another important fact revealed that two of the three were Muslim converts. However, thanks to the outstanding job of counter-terrorism services, fortunately, al-Qaeda's only major success in Europe in 2007 was the June 30 attack on Glasgow airport that killed one and injured five. That attack had followed two foiled car bombs in the center of London that could have killed hundreds, had it been successful. The scheme was nicknamed the "doctors' plot," because it was planned by foreign doctors who resided in Britain.

In Spain, which is also a major target for Islamic terrorism, security services dismantled an al-Qaeda affiliated terror cell almost exclusively manned by Pakistani, except for a single Indian member. It was planning a terror attack in Barcelona. The local newspaper El Pais reported, that interrogations revealed a wave of planned attacks in Germany, France, Britain and Portugal.

Britain's intelligence Chief Jonathan Evans has also spoken out against domestic radicalism, saying that the number of individuals in Britain with suspected terrorist links has risen to at least 2,000 in 2007, compared with less than 1,600 in 2006. "As I speak, terrorists are methodically and intentionally targeting young people and children in this country," he said in a speech to the Society of Editors Conference in Manchester. "They are radicalizing, indoctrinating and grooming young, vulnerable people to carry out acts of terrorism."

Tom Fingar - a former State Department intelligence officer and currently, chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), an office, under the director of national intelligence, that leads the joint National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) drafting process - expressed concern about the possibility of Europe-based terrorists attacking the United States, citing the ease of travel from European countries. His concern is very real: For example, a convicted terrorist known as Dhiren Barot, a Hindu Indian by birth, converted to Islam, worked as an airline ticket and reservations agent in Central London, when he was arrested by British agents in 1994. Now serving a thirty-year sentence in a British prison, Barot had "reconnaissance plans" of buildings in New York and Washington, including Citigroup, the New York Stock Exchange, and International Monetary Fund headquarters.

Another terrorist, Younis Tsouli, a Moroccan born UK resident, who recently pleaded guilty to terrorism charges in Britain, was an administrator of an online jihadist forum. On his laptop, authorities discovered a folder labeled "Washington" containing video clips of the U.S. Capitol grounds and the World Bank's D.C. headquarters. US counter terrorist agents claim that terrorists from European countries face far fewer obstacles to infiltrating the United States. A majority of them can make the trip legally under the visa waiver program. In addition, many of them speak English and have experience living in Western countries, making it far easier for them to adapt to life in America.

An extremely interesting study on the cultural threat, posed by Islamic terror on Europe was published in "The Washington Quarterly" Summer 2004 edition, by Timothy M. Savage, a former U.S. foreign service officer, titled "Europe and Islam: Crescent Waxing, Cultures Clashing". According to Savage, the world of Islam may do more to define and shape Europe in the twenty-first century than the United States, Russia, or even the European Union. The Islamic challenge that Europe faces today is twofold: Internally, Europe must integrate a ghettoized, but rapidly growing Muslim minority, that many Europeans view as encroaching upon the collective identity and public values of European society. Externally, Europe needs to devise a viable approach to the primarily Muslim-populated volatile states, stretching from Casablanca to the Caucasus, that are a currently focus of the EU’s recently adopted security strategy. Mr. Savage warns that the European-Islamic nexus is spinning off a variety of new phenomena, including the rise of terrorism; for instance, the emergence of a new kind of anti-Semitism; the shift of established European political parties to the right and the recalibration of European national political calculations.

According to Timothy Savage's study, Europe’s track record of engagement with Islam over the last 1,350 years is not very encouraging. Although trying to explore some new initiatives, Europeans seem still inclined to pursue a status quo approach, at home and abroad, preferring caution, predictability, control, and established structures over the required boldness, adaptability, engagement, and redefined relationships that the new demographic challenges require. A similar mind-set is evident among Europe’s Muslim population. With more than 23 million Muslims residing currently in Europe, already comprising nearly 5 percent of the population, the danger exists that, if suitable accommodation is not reached in time, current dynamics will likely yield a Europe, that not only faces increased social strife, national retrenchment, and even civil conflict domestically, but also could well succumb to a "Fortress Europe" posture, signaling even its political decline on the international stage.

Target Europe

Three suspected bomb plotters were arrested in Germany last week. After London and Madrid, is al-Qaeda now concentrating on Europe, exploiting its large homegrown population of Muslims and converts? Jason Burke reports from Frankfurt on the changing face of terrorism

Al Qaeda's second front: Europe

Europe's terrorists I

WASHINGTON: The London bombings captured with photographic precision exactly where we are in the so-called war on terrorism. It is not more 9/11s we must worry about, but more Madrids and Londons. Harassed as it is, Al Qaeda has opened up a second front in Europe that will keep Europeans pinned down while the big war grinds on in Iraq.

The London attacks showed that local European jihadist groups are coalescing into a united front prepared to follow Osama bin Laden's global strategy, aiming selective and ever more carefully planned attacks on America's European allies in Iraq.

We can distinguish two types of candidate Muslim terrorists. There are the "outsiders": alien dissidents, typically asylum-seekers or students, who gained refuge in liberal Europe from anti-Islamist crackdowns in the Middle East.

More recently, security services have widened their attention to encompass "insiders": European-born descendants of guest workers recruited to shore up Europe's post-war "economic miracle."

Like Theo van Gogh's assassin in the Netherlands, the London bombers were born in Europe. At least three of the bombers were British nationals of Pakistani descent, as were the two terrorist gangs broken up by British police in April and August of 2004.

A leaked British government document notes that "most young [British] extremists fall into one of two groups: well-educated undergraduates or with degrees and technical professional qualifications in engineering or IT; or underachievers with few or no qualifications, and often a criminal background."

Add to this volatile mix 40 or so Britons who have struck out for Iraq's Sunni Triangle, reportedly with the assistance of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. After their front-line training in explosives and urban warfare, these Iraqi returnees would possess the requisite skill sets to advise and mentor a sleeper cell.

One thing is clear: We now have a second jihad front, located not in the Middle East or North Africa but in Western Europe.

Our Nixon Center database tracked 373 mujahedeen operating in the West from 1993 through 2004. We found more Britons than Yemenis, Sudanese, Emiratis, Lebanese or Libyans. There were twice as many Frenchmen as Saudis. Fully a quarter of our sample are Western European nationals, many of those second- or third-generation children of immigrants or native converts to Islam.

These European recruits offer a ready-made strike force in countries previously singled out by Al Qaeda's strategic planners. The London attack fits eerily well within a plan issued by Al Qaeda in December 2003.Entitled "Jihadi Iraq: Hopes and Dangers," the document outlined a strategy for the war in Iraq that involved splitting the United States off from the rest of the coalition.

The Spanish government was to be first on the Qaeda hit list in light of elections and the unpopularity of the war. It even foresaw the ruling party's electoral calamity and the resulting Spanish pullout.

The document concluded that Britain, too, could be forced to withdraw from Iraq under certain conditions. The first was an escalation of military casualties among the British in Iraq, the second was the departure of either Spain or Italy. With Spain picked off, the terrorists have moved on London.

The strategy does not stop there. On the Web postings claiming the London attacks, Denmark and Italy are identified as the next targets.

Europe offers inviting targets. Qaeda networks have proliferated in Western Europe and are springing up or recharging in Eastern Europe and the Balkans.

Then there is the burgeoning second generation of Muslim immigrants. London's bombers appeared to be part of this generation. These new jihadists have undergone a process of radicalization and form the seed bed and the host for terrorist networks.

The willingness of the latter to provide foot soldiers for Al Qaeda's Iraq strategy should provide Washington with the impetus to reach out to Europe with the message, Whatever you think of our Iraq policy (tragic blunder, visionary gamble, precipitous indiscretion), we are now in this together.

Europeans and Americans might thereby find a measure of bittersweet relief and intelligent resolve in concentrating their minds on this shared danger.

Al Qaeda's European Front: 3/11 and Its Implications
Fernando Reinares, Spain’s Leading Expert on Terrorism and Political Violence

September 27, 2004 : 9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.

Event Summary

This meeting, jointly sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Division of International Studies, the RAND Corporation and the U.S. Army’s Eisenhower National Security Series, was the second in a series on terrorism and homeland security.

On March 11, 2004, an Islamic extremist terrorist cell, inspired by Al Qaeda and operating in Spain, detonated ten bombs on four commuter trains destined for Madrid’s train station within a space of two minutes. Each of the bombs contained 10 kilograms of explosive and was packed with nails to maximize its lethality. The attack, the second deadliest in European history (after the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbee, Scotland), created 191 fatalities and over 1000 casualties. The 3/11 bombing was not a suicide attack as the perpetrators had plans to strike other targets. On April 2nd, a bomb was discovered on the Madrid-Seville rail line. A day later, police discovered and surrounded an apartment in Madrid; rather than surrender, the terrorists detonated a large explosion. This bombing marked the first incidence of suicide terrorism in Europe. The terrorist group issued three communiqués claiming responsibility for the bombings in the name of Al Qaeda.

After the 3/11 attacks, the investigation conducted by Spanish intelligence and law enforcement produced considerable detail about the composition and activities of this terrorist network. The cell that carried out the bombing was supported by a larger group of approximately thirty individuals, who provided logistical and other practical support. Moroccans dominated the group because of the country’s proximity to Spain, with other members coming from Syria, Algeria, and Lebanon. Al Qaeda views North Africans as prime candidates to carry out missions in Europe. All were males (ranging from 20-40 years in age) who lived in the same neighborhood in Madrid and were first-generation immigrants. (This last characteristic is in contrast to Britain and France where recruits to Islamic extremist groups have included second-generation family members.) Some in the group were radicalized in Morocco under the influence of Wahabbi clerics from Saudi Arabia; others were recruited in prison, a worrisome increasing trend.

Why was Spain the victim of the 3/11 attacks? According to public opinion polls, 60% of Spaniards believe they were directly linked to the country’s involvement in the Iraq war as part of the United States’ “coalition of the willing.” More detailed questions reveal a deeper social perception: 60% believe the current era of terrorism arises from Islamic fanaticism; 20% attribute it to U.S. foreign policy (including support for Israel), while the final 20% view terrorism as an outgrowth of poverty.

Professor Reinares argued that the assertion of a direct causal link between Iraq and 3/11 is “a great simplification.” Spain may be the first European country where Islamic extremists were successful in conducting a mass-casualty attack, but it is not the first where Al Qaeda planned a massacre (e.g., Al Qaeda’s mega-terrorism plan in France in 2000). Nor has its plans been confined to countries that participated in the Iraq war. The actual decision to target Spain’s trains was made in late 2003, but the 3/11 group formed in late 2001 after the Spanish authorities had dismantled the previous Al Qaeda network in the aftermath of 9/11. The Egyptian ringleader of the 3/11 network was arrested in Italy and confessed that the train bombings had taken two-and-a-half years to organize. Spain’s participation in the Iraq war created a propitious political environment for carrying out bombings that had been long in the works. In short, the war was the occasion not the cause of the bombing.

Terrorists require three conditions to undertake operations against a target: accessibility, opportunity, and vulnerability. The Spanish authorities had become complacent because the country’s longstanding terrorist threat from the Basque separatist group ETA was well under control. As a consequence, the Al Qaeda cell’s preparatory actions and planning went unnoticed. As in America, no one in Spain connected the dots between the group’s illicit activities in money laundering, drug smuggling, and procurement of high explosives. A Spanish parliamentary committee similar to the 9/11 Commission investigated the 3/11 attacks and made remedial recommendations. Prior to 3/11 Spain had only 80 officers devoted to external threats affecting internal security.

Professor Reinares argued that just as there was no causal link between the Iraq war and 3/11, so too is it a simplification to interpret the results of Spain’s 3/14 elections as a sign of softness in the face of terrorism and that they forced the Spanish withdrawal from Iraq. He noted that statements in the international media and by officials in the United States and elsewhere reflected this view. Reinares noted that even though 90% of Spaniards opposed the war, but the swing from the ruling Popular Party to the Socialists after 3/11 was only some 5-7%. He attributed that shift to the government’s disingenuous effort to blame ETA for the bombing prior to the election, even though evidence quickly pointed to Al Qaeda as the likely perpetrator. In addition, the Socialists’ pledge to withdraw the country’s forces from Iraq before 3/11 was motivated, in part, by the heavy-handed conduct of the Aznar government, which had committed Spanish forces to the U.S.-led intervention without putting it to a parliamentary vote. No one in Spain viewed Iraq as a major front in the war on terrorism. On the other hand, even as the Spanish government has withdrawn from Iraq, it has increased its military contingent in Afghanistan from 800 to 1800.

The long-term challenge is to achieve a trans-Atlantic consensus both on the character of the terrorist threat and on the appropriate strategy and means to address it. A major impediment to the creation of such a consensus is the profound gap in perception on the two sides of the Atlantic. In America, 9/11 has been viewed as an attack in the United States and part of a larger “global war on terrorism,” whereas in Europe, 9/11 was perceived as an attack against America.