HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- Sunday, January 20, 2002 12:22 PM
How bin Laden network spread its
tentacles
They are being dubbed the 'Binmen', a burgeoning number of Islamist terror
suspects being detained as the UK wakes up to its enemy within. The Observer
uncovers al-Qaeda links from Brighton to Bolton to reveal that Muslim extremism
is not limited to a few fiery mullahs Jason Burke, Martin Bright,
Anthony Barnett, Nick Paton Walsh and Burhan Wazir One o'clock on an overcast Friday
afternoon, and the faithful are heading for an unmarked door on a non-descript,
rainy, redbrick street in north Leicester. On the first floor of the Mosque of
Piety, 50 men kneel in two rooms. The sermon focuses on a Muslim's duty to be of
good character and to contribute to his community and society as a whole.
An hour later the worshippers stream out along the grey pavements of the
grubby suburb of Highfields. Ahead of them the net curtains twitch and the doors
are quickly closed. The men walk swiftly on, their heads bowed against the
gusting wind.
'Terrorists are not Muslims,' one worshipper told The Observer. 'They have
nothing to do with our religion.' But less than a year ago there were men in
their congregation who disagreed.
There have now been 17 arrests in Leicester in the past three days. The doors
started going in at 6.30am on Thursday when residents of Hamilton Street,
Skipworth Street, and Holkham Street were woken by scores of policemen swarming
all over a dozen houses.
When officers smashed the flimsy door of the house next to Peter Whitehead's
on the St Matthews estate, he was unsurprised. He had been suspicious of his
neighbour for months. 'After 11 September a lot of newspapers printed pictures
of suspects and he immediately went and shaved his beard off,' Whitehead, 73,
said. 'Everyone round here is happier now he has gone.'
In the city yesterday the mood was still tense. Patrol cars prowled the
narrow streets of the north-eastern suburbs. On Friday, heavily armed police
ringed the magistrates court - more used to dealing with drunken pub fights than
international terrorist conspiracies - where, as if to ram the week's message
home, the first two men charged in Britain with playing active roles in al-Qaeda
went into the dock.
One was charged with being director of operations for the terror group, the
other a key financial agent.
The Midlands was not the only part of Britain jolted last week by the
exposure of alleged terrorists. As the police led their suspects to waiting cars
in Leicester, a man allegedly linked to al-Qaeda was arrested in north London.
Elsewhere, Special Branch officers and MI5 are hunting for Abu Qatada, a
fiery Islamic cleric who disappeared from his north-west London home three weeks
ago. As first reported by The Observer, Qatada has been linked to bin Laden by
investigators in Jordan - although he has denied any involvment in terrorism. He
has no passport and is believed to be in Britain. No one knows where.
In Newcastle on Friday, a Palestinian appeared in court accused of being a
member of Hamas, the Middle Eastern terror group, and in Birmingham two other
alleged Islamic militants were in court denying charges of plotting a bombing
campaign. Somewhere in the UK, Omar al Bayoumi is hiding, the 44-year-old Aston
University student suspected by the FBI of bankrolling the terrorist cell
responsible for flying an American Airlines jet into the Pentagon.
Although Bayoumi denies any wrongdoing, he was arrested by armed police in
Birmingham in the immediate aftermath of the attack before being freed for lack
of evidence. The FBI now claims it has more evidence that points to his guilt.
The British police say they are 'interested in speaking to him'.
Since 11 September there have been dozens of arrests throughout the country.
A handful have been under the Government's new emergency internment legislation.
Many have been for alleged immigration offences. The rest are being held under
suspicion of breaking existing anti-terrorist laws.
So many suspected al-Qaeda terrorists have now been arrested in the UK that
Belmarsh, the high-security prison in south-east London, has got a special wing
for the 'Binmen' - as they have been dubbed by guards. Their cells are next to
those occupied by the Real IRA.
The lesson now appears clear. There are al-Qaeda links from Brighton to
Bolton, from Scotland to Slough. The idea that Islamic extremism was limited to
a few loud-mouthed polemicists in north and west London has been shown to be
nothing more than a comforting fallacy.
'For years the intelligence community has tried to play down the levels of
activity and the threat from Islamic extremism in Britain,' one London-based
security expert said yesterday. 'But they can't do that any longer.'
In Washington, Paris and capitals across the Middle East and Asia, officials
charged with winding up al-Qaeda are pointing to the UK. They say that Britain
is more than just a haven for Islamic dissidents and a centre for the
dissemination of extremist propaganda. The French and the Americans maintain
that the UK has played a key role as a logistics base for al-Qaeda itself and
was critical to the 11 September attacks.
After last week's raids - and with a wave of further arrests imminent - the
UK does appear to be far more significant than previously thought. Letters found
in al-Qaeda camps by The Observer show bin Laden's men had links with British
Islamic organisations dating back to 1998. There were even plans by some
terrorists, apparently British, to bomb the City.
So how did so many significant al-Qaeda figures live and work in Britain for
years, sometimes after being granted political asylum, and never get picked up?
Was it the British policy of 'watchful toleration' that was flawed? Or was it
the sheer difficulty of finding the militants? And how many more terrorists are
there planning mayhem from nondescript flats on wet, terraced streets?
Tonight, in a half-bombed-out compound 20 miles north of Kabul, a tall,
olive-skinned Libyan will sleep on a hard concrete floor. He will be watched
carefully by American Special Forces soldiers and British Marines. They are
there to make sure that, this time, Anas al-Liby does not escape.
When al-Liby was captured during the assault on al-Qaeda's fortified cave
systems in eastern Afghanistan, the CIA was jubilant. The 38-year-old was one of
bin Laden's closest aides, with a $25 million (£17m) reward on his head. The
British intelligence services were happy too - and relieved. They had let
al-Liby slip through their fingers three years ago. The veteran militant was
traced during the investigation into the British cells connected to al-Qaeda's
attack on the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998 but,
although he had been operating in Britain for some time and had even been
granted asylum here, the Libyan was a step ahead of the authorities. By the time
police raided his Manchester flat, he had disappeared. All detectives found was
a computer containing a comprehensive bombmaking manual authored by al-Qaeda.
That manual formed crucial evidence at the trial of the bombers of the East
African embassies in New York last year - but to have had its owner, or author,
in the dock would have been a lot better.
The failure to capture al-Liby was embarrassing. It showed up the problems
MI5 and the police were having in rolling up the terrorist network in the UK.
Their defenders blamed restrictive legislation, a pedestrian legal system and a
lack of funds; their detractors said the security services were incompetent and
unprepared for a post-Cold War, post-IRA world. Either way, 1999 and 2000 were
not good years for the men at Thames House and Scotland Yard. Even hard
information, let alone convictions, was very difficult to obtain. But by the
beginning of last year MI5 and its European counterparts knew they were on to
something very big and very frightening. The problem was, nobody knew exactly
what it was.
The French were getting closest. After years of fighting the Algerian
terrorist threat to the French mainland, the DST (the domestic security service)
had more expertise in tackling extremist Islamic groups than any other agency
outside the Middle East. For a decade they had been warning the British and
American security communities that a failure to take the Islamic threat
seriously would have appalling consequences. By the end of the 1990s their
warnings were being heeded in Washington and Whitehall. Co-operation between the
Americans, MI5, the DST and the French foreign intelligence service, the DGSE,
was boosted. Soon it was showing results.
The lucky break came last July, when an unassuming Arab businessman was
picked up at Dubai international airport for travelling on false French papers.
Djamal Beghal, a 36-year-old Algerian, was flying back to Europe from Pakistan
when he was arrested. When French intelligence officers were invited to
interview him, they swiftly realised that they had stumbled upon one of their
prime suspects. The French had been looking for Beghal since he left the suburbs
of Paris in the mid-1990s for London's Islamist underworld, where he soon
established himself as an energetic recruiter for al-Qaeda, travelling the
country spreading the message of jihad. During this period he shuttled between
addresses in Leicester and London. He is thought to have recruited both a
French-Moroccan student called Zacarias Moussaoui - who is currently in custody
in the US suspected of being the so-called '20th hijacker' - and Richard Reid,
the 28-year-old Briton arrested in December after trying to detonate explosives
hidden in his shoes on a Paris to Miami flight.
Under intensive questioning (and possibly torture) by Dubai's secret police,
and a series of sessions on theology with Islamic clerics opposed to al-Qaeda,
Beghal cracked. He confessed that he had been training in Afghanistan for a year
at an al-Qaeda camp run by Abu Zubeidah, one of bin Laden's most capable and
trusted lieutenants and the man some tipped to succeed him. Beghal revealed he
was returning with final instructions from the al-Qaeda leadership to unleash
attacks on targets across Europe, including the US embassy in Paris.
His confession put investigators on the trail of a vast terrorist network
with cells in Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy and Britain, all linked to
the ultra-extremist group Takfir-wal-Hijra (Anathema and Exile) - whose
followers believe that even Muslims who disagree with their ultra-puritanical
brand of Islam are 'infidels'.
Immediately after 11 September, an international police operation picked up
dozens of Europe-based sleepers linked to the Takfiris and al-Qaeda. The trail
swiftly led to Britain and the now notorious Finsbury Park mosque, which had
become a magnet for Islamic extremists throughout the 1990s.
No one expected that the trail would also lead to Leicester. But when French
police turned up at Beghal's appartment just outside Paris looking for the man
suspected of being the network's computer expert, Kamel Daoudi, they found that
he had slipped the net. With MI5, they tracked the 27-year-old down - first to
Britain, and then to Leicester's Highfields area,where Beghal and his associates
had established a cell.
On 26 September, Leicestershire police made their first arrests. Daoudi was
picked up and deported to France within days. It is now clear that Baghdad
Mezziane and Brahim Benmerzouga - the two Algerian asylum-seekers who appeared
last week in Leicester magistrates' court charged with membership of al-Qaeda -
were arrested in the same raids.
But as winter set in and the bombing began in Afghanistan, the focus of the
investigation switched back to the more familiar Islamist territory of north and
west London. Yasser al-Sirri, a well known Egyptian dissident who ran the
Islamic Observation Centre, a press and information service for the Muslim
world, was picked up for his alleged role in the assassination of Ahmed Shah
Massoud, leader of Afghanistan's opposition Northern Alliance.
Meanwhile, Abu Qatada, the London-based cleric, was identified as the prime
target of new anti-terrorist legislation, which allowed the police to detain
foreign suspects indefinitely without charge in the public interest. Under
interrogation in Dubai, Beghal had named Qatada as his inspiration. It also
emerged that Leicester's little-known Mosque of Piety was a key centre for his
group and other bin Laden sympathisers.
Days after the new anti-terrorist legislation came into force, the police
picked up eight further suspects in dawn raids. Qatada slipped the net - another
embarrassment for MI5 and the police.
But the round-up was accelerating. Each new arrest generated leads. In the
last three weeks there have been breakthroughs. Prisoners taken in Afghanistan -
including al-Liby - have started talking. And suspects picked up elsewhere -
such as the Algerian-born Said Laidouni, who was arrested on Christmas Eve in
Paris after the CIA intercepted a telephone call - have helped to fill the gaps
in the security forces' knowledge.
Electronic eavesdropping of the sort that located Laidouni is increasingly
being used to trace al-Qaeda operatives and it is thought that surveillance data
combined with information from al-Liby, Laidouni and other newly interrogated
suspects, prompted last week's Leicester raid.
But the question marks remain. Al-Qaeda's diffuse structure makes it very
hard to be sure that entire cells have been rounded up.
'You are always going to leave a lot of people behind and evidential
requirements - even with new legislation - means that you can't get half the
people you want,' said one British former anti-terrorist officer. Scotland Yard
chiefs have said that there are hundreds more al-Qaeda men active in the UK.
Others put the number of Islamic extremists at more than 1,000.
Defence lawyers are concerned that innocent people are being arrested as
police forces use the new climate to round up 'the usual suspects'.
Lawyer Gareth Peirce, who is representing several suspects, said: 'Aid
workers, dissidents and those struggling against oppressive regimes all now
qualify as terrorists. They are being rounded up by police and intelligence
services who have no comprehension of the culture, religion and way of life of
these refugee communities.'
The case of Lotfi Raissi could cause the British authorities some discomfort.
The Algerian pilot, who was arrested and imprisoned last year, is alleged to
have trained some of the 11 September hijackers. He denies everything and MI5
now admits that it is unlikely that the Americans will be able to produce
sufficient evidence to justify his detention.
Such concerns are unlikely to stop further arrests. Security sources have
told The Observer that a wave of further arrests across the UK is being planned
- although this risks alienating the Islamic community and jeopardising the flow
of essential intelligence on which many operations are based.
Politicians and policemen alike are aware of the risks - but say the stakes
are too high to hold back.
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