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From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-23 19:32:17


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By Peter Finn and Sarah Delaney, Washington Post Foreign Service 

MILAN, Oct.  21 - Telephone wiretaps and listening devices planted in
the apartment of a 33-year-old Tunisian here have produced evidence that
a network of terrorist recruits trained at Osama bin Laden's camps in
Afghanistan has fanned out to a half-dozen European countries, according
to Italian investigators.  The Tunisian, Essid Sami Ben Khemais, moved
to this city in March 1998 after completing two years of training at the
camps of suspected terrorist bin Laden's al Qaeda network, the
investigators said.  Khemais was put under surveillance by the Italian
authorities, who found a trove of fresh information about terrorist
cells sent to Europe.  Many members of the network may still be at
large, law enforcement officials said.  "In the past we had seen some
links to Afghanistan, but we saw them as more or less acting here
without close connections to al Qaeda," said a senior German
intelligence official.  "Now we are seeing more and more links between
cells and to al Qaeda.  We are rethinking everything." "Before Sept. 
11, we had no idea of the depth of the problem," added a senior Italian
official.  Details of the Milan cell, which was run by Khemais, are
spelled out in 300 pages of Italian court documents, including police
reports, arrest warrants and transcripts of the bugged conversations and
tapped phone calls.  The documents, obtained by The Washington Post,
paint a picture of conspirators discussing bombings and other attacks in
Europe.  They also made cryptic remarks about a mysterious, dangerous
chemical that suffocates people.  It could be put in a tomato can, they
said, and released when the can is opened.  The records also offer an
example of how the terrorist attacks on the United States have jolted
Europe to the presence of an interlocking set of terrorist cells that is
believed to span Italy, Germany, Spain, Britain, France and Belgium,
with supporters in numerous other countries, including Switzerland. 
Indoctrinated with combat videos from Chechnya, absorbed into al Qaeda
by bin Laden agents in Europe, and trained in Afghanistan for operations
against the West, these cells of determined young men are a major
challenge for law enforcement in Europe and the United States, according
to investigators.  According to European court, police and intelligence
sources, the cells were organized under two large umbrellas.  One was an
Egyptian movement called Anathema and Exile.  The other was an Algerian
group called the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat. 

These umbrella networks, multinational in membership, coalesced through
the efforts in Europe of three key individuals anointed by al Qaeda, the
sources said.  The first is Abu Doha, 36, an Algerian who moved to
London in 1999 after a stint as a senior official at a terrorist camp in
Afghanistan.  He was charged with organizing attacks on the United
States and is in detention in London, fighting extradition to the United
States.  The second is Mohamed Bensakhria, 34, an Algerian who was
arrested in Spain in June, after fleeing a police raid in Frankfurt,
Germany, where he was based.  The third is Tarek Maaroufi, a Tunisian
with Belgian citizenship.  Maaroufi is wanted on an Italian warrant
issued by anti-terrorism prosecutor Stefano Dambruoso, but remains free
because of his Belgian citizenship, which prevents his extradition to
Italy.  According to European law enforcement officials, the three men
were tasked by al Qaeda with forming strong links among groups across
the continent and organizing terror attacks in Europe.  "These are the
critical figures," said the German intelligence source.  The Milan cell
was one part of the larger network.  When Khemais moved to Milan, the
sources said, the structure of terrorist networks in Europe was
changing.  A group of violent, radical militants had left behind
conflicts in Egypt and Algeria, and wars in Afghanistan, Bosnia and
Chechnya, all of which were over or in abeyance.  The "brothers," as the
militants called themselves, soon found a new organizing principle in
bin Laden's campaign against targets in the West, according to Italian
investigators.  "The Algerian situation, for years the epicenter, has in
the past few years lost its centrality in favor of a new binding
capability represented by the project of bin Laden," according to an
April report by the Digos, the Italian anti-terrorism police.  The taped
conversations in the Milan cell bolster the conclusion that the young
men had Europe in their sights.  For example, in March, bugs in
Khemais's apartment picked up a conversation between the Tunisian and
Lased Ben Heni, a 31-year-old Libyan veteran of the Afghan camps.  "God
loves us because Europe is in our hands," said Heni, who was arrested
this month in Germany on an Italian warrant.  He added, "Now we are
mujaheddin muhajirun [fighting immigrants].  This is our duty that we
have to carry on with honor.  .  .  .  We have to be like snakes.  We
have to strike and then hide." Khemais said in the bugged conversation,
"Al Qaeda exists from Algeria to the Philippines.  They're everywhere."
It is not clear whether these European networks of al Qaeda were
connected with the cell in Hamburg led by Mohamed Atta, who is suspected
of being the ringleader of the Sept.  11 hijackers.  A senior German
intelligence official said in an interview that the connections are
still tentative.  British, Italian and German sources said, however,
that it is likely that Atta and his associates operated autonomously,
without relying on other cells, even if, as the authorities now believe,
the leaders of all these groups were trained in Afghanistan and
sponsored upon their return to Europe by bin Laden.  The records from
Milan suggest that the smashing of a terrorist cell in Frankfurt in
December 2000 averted some kind of chemical attack that was being
planned, as well as a bombing at a marketplace in Strasbourg, France. 
In a conversation bugged on March 13, Khemais and three others spoke of
"an extremely efficient liquid that suffocates people." And they
suggested it could be secretly placed in tomato cans and would be
dispersed when the cans were opened.  The investigators said they do not
know what kind of chemical was being discussed.  "You want to try it,"
asked Heni.  "Where? In France?" "Yes," replied Khemais.  Heni then
asked if it was "better" than another product held by someone called
Mohamed.  The leader of the Frankfurt cell was Mohamed Bensakhria, and
he and the Milan group were in regular contact, according to officials
here and court documents.  "It's better than that product and more
efficient because as soon as you open this liquid, it suffocates
people," Khemais said.  Accompanying notes by the Italian police state
that when the German police broke up the Frankfurt cell three months
earlier, they "found detailed handwritten instructions on how to make
and use the handmade products which were of high, explosive worth and
how to use toxic substances in lethal doses." And Khemais, apparently
referring to the Frankfurt raid, said, "They arrested them while they
were preparing the gas." There are links among all of the groups,
officials said.  Khemais, the head of the Milan cell, for instance,
visited and phoned suspected terrorists in Spain.  And he and his
lieutenant in the Milan cell, Mehdi Khammoun, called two of the alleged
point men in the terrorist umbrella network, Doha in Britain and
Bensakhria in Germany, shortly before the Frankfurt raid, according to
the Italian court documents.  In another example of the links among the
various groups, Khemais called Maaroufi in Belgium on a cell phone after
the Frankfurt raid to warn him that "they have arrested our brothers . 
.  .  half the group." He told Maaroufi, "You need to cover yourself."
Khemais had "constant and intense links with Maaroufi," according to the
Italian documents.  Khemais visited Maaroufi in Brussels on Feb.  10,
2000, where they also met another Tunisian extremist, Essoussi
Laaroussi, who had served jail time in Belgium.  Maaroufi has repeatedly
denied any involvement with terrorism, including in an interview with a
journalist from the Italian newspaper La Repubblica in February.  After
the interview, Maaroufi and Khemais spoke in a conversation recorded by
authorities.  "I said to him I only know poor people," Maaroufi said of
the journalist.  The two then broke into laughter. 

The Milan cell documents reveal constant paranoia about the possibility
that its members were being recorded.  "The fault is all in the
telephones," said Khemais, not suspecting his apartment was also bugged. 
"You have to be like wolves - clever.  In different cases, those who
discovered those people, even if they didn't find major things, were the
American secret services." At another moment, Khemais warned others in
the Milan cell to be careful to not write to contacts in Europe because
they could be detected.  Most of those in the Frankfurt and Milan cells,
including Khemais and Bensakhria, are now in custody, but the Italian
documents make clear that the European terrorist ranks are easily
replenished with recruits.  According to the Digos report, the European
cells send their members to Afghanistan.  The recruits assemble in
Geneva, and using false Italian documents, fly to Pakistan, where they
are escorted into Afghanistan.  "To finance all this, evidence suggests
that it is Khemais who takes care of it by means of drug-trafficking,
counterfeiting money and documents, recycling dirty money," the Digos
report said.  "Groups who are versed in the use of explosives are sent
to Europe to fill in the losses from various police roundups." "The
moment to strike has arrived because they're arresting everyone," Heni
said in a recorded conversation with Khemais after the Frankfurt
arrests.  "We have to show them we are here.  We have to show them who
the mujaheddin really are.  But he continued, "We have to await the
orders" of bin Laden.  While waiting, they sat around in seedy
apartments, such as the one outside Milan where the conversations were
recorded, speaking of their heroics in Chechnya and watching gory video
footage from various holy wars.  In March, for instance, Khemais's
lieutenant, Khammoun, in a bugged conversation, boasted of his
experience in Chechnya.  "When the order came from the emir .  .  .  it
was very nice," he said, "because first we studied the structure and
after with the plastic [explosive] boom! "The building collapsed and
then there was dust," Khammoun said.  "And then a fire broke out and
that way the enemies of God were buried and burned." Everyone in the
room laughed, according to the Italian transcript.  Later that evening,
commenting on a videocassette apparently of action in Chechnya, another
man, Moktar Farid-Bouchoucha, said: "This cassette is really scary.  If
the commandos see it they'll know what it means to have your throat slit
by real soldiers - the best commandos in the world.  If they see this
video, they'll tremble.  It's really nasty stuff.  They end up like
sheep." The terrorists also have a wide range of targets.  "Our enemy is
not just the Americans or the Israelis or all the enemies of God," said
Heni.  "We have the enemy in our own home because these are negotiating
with them." He mentioned Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and the
Tunisian president.  And throughout the Italian transcripts there is
constant reverence for bin Laden's power and reach.  Bin Laden "is also
a state," Heni said, "because he has those who take care of movements
for him, of projects, of finance, of studies.  For them and for the
sheik [bin Laden], every attack must be studied well and it must succeed
well."

George Gann CIHO (504) 678-6959 DSN 678-6959

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