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The secret war
A matrix of terrorist cells - allied to bin Laden but often more
extreme than him - planned mayhem across the continent from bases in
Britain, Spain, Germany and France. Only now are the links between
these shadowy groups coming to light as intelligence services realise
that, unknown to them, the battle had started long before 11
September
The secret war. Part 2
War on Terrorism - Observer special
Martin Bright, Antony Barnett, Burhan Wazir, Tony Thompson and Peter
Beaumont in London; Stuart Jeffries in Paris; Ed Vulliamy in
Washington; Kate Connolly in Berlin; Giles Tremlett in Madrid; Rory
Carroll in Rome
Sunday September 30, 2001
The Observer
When Djamel Beghal was approached by intelligence officers in the
departure lounge of Dubai airport two months ago, he looked like any
other smart business traveller from the Middle East. Beghal was a
devout 36-year-old Algerian who dressed in Western clothes and
travelled clean-shaven in order to attract as little attention as
possible during his travels between the Muslim world and the West.
As a member of Takfir-wal-Hijra, an extreme and puritanical Islamist organisation
financed by Osama bin Laden, he knew he had to keep a low profile, but Beghal was
being cautious for a second reason. Returning to Europe f
rom Kabul after a year of training with Abu Zoubeida, named on the FBI's list of most
wanted bin Laden lieutenants, he was preparing to participate in a series of
pan-European 'spectaculars' on American targets. Beghal -
a constant presence at Finsbury Park mosque in London where he recruited for his cause
in the late 1990s - was on his way to open the European front of bin Laden's war on
the West.
It is a disclosure that has sent a shudder of fear and horror through Europe's
intelligence and police: the knowledge that the murderous attacks on New York and
Washington which took the lives of almost 7,000, were to be
repeated throughout Europe as well.
French investigators now believe Beghal was returning to France to give the go-ahead
for a suicide attack on the US embassy in the Place de la Concorde in central Paris,
using a lorry or even a helicopter. By last week Be
ghal - who spent two years in London recruiting for his violent and bizarre
organisation of fanatics - was emerging as one of the key British links at the centre
of a worldwide conspiracy; the point of contact between bin
Laden's group and a wider network of allied Islamist terror groups.
Last Friday another possibly crucial link, Lotfi Raissi - an Algerian pilot resident
in Britain - was standing before a British court, fighting his extradition to the US.
He had been named by the FBI as the man who traine
d key figures in the suicide attacks in America on 11 September. Britain, along with
Germany and France, had emerged as a key jumping off place for the world's biggest
terrorist conspiracy.
Raissi's home in Colnbrook, Berkshire, sits under the Heathrow flight path. It is an
unassuming modern suburban house, divided into flats. His neighbours knew him as a
quiet, dumpy, slightly strange character who spoke li
ttle and gave nothing away when he did. Many assumed he didn't speak English because
he often failed to acknowledge them when they greeted him. 'I would see him and his
wife out in the back garden but they just kept thems
elves to themselves,' says neighbour Gary Hanley. 'When you looked at them to say
hello, they would just look the other way. They made it clear they didn't really want
to get involved with anyone socially.'
The first neighbours knew of Raissi's background was when armed police raided his
house last weekend. He now stands accused by US investigators of training four of the
suicide hijackers, giving increasing credibility to c
laims that Britain has become a haven for Islamic terrorists. It is a claim borne out
by the evidence presented to Bow Street magistrates on Friday, outlining in detail for
the first time the allegations against Raissi at
a hearing to determine whether he should be extradited to the US.
Prosecutor Arvinda Sambir gave a list of devastating charges which put him at the
heart of the terror plot. She claimed he was the lead instructor for four of the
hijackers, including the man who seized the controls of Am
erican Airlines Flight 77 from Washington to Los Angeles and skillfully steered it
into the Pentagon.
On 23 June Raissi visited Las Vegas with his wife and then flew to Arizona with the
Pentagon pilot. The FBI claim he was there to ensure the hijackers were capable of
taking control of the aircraft and smashing it into th
e Pentagon. 'He attended a number of flying schools attended by four of the
hijackers,' said Sambir. Raissi has denied all the accusations, and his family say
they are confident he will be found innocent.
US officials have identified a 29-year-old man who used the name Hani Hanjour as the
hijacker who crashed the plane into the Pentagon. He attended CRM Airline Training
Centre in Scottsdale, Arizona and was videotaped trav
elling with Raissi.
Raissi, who previously worked for Algeria's national airline, had registered for an
advanced flying course at the Four Forces Aviation flying school in nearby Poyle. The
company promises to give pilots all the training th
ey need to fly jets in just three months, and has a number of state-of-the-art
simulators. He was determined to get a licence to fly commercial planes in Europe and
was described as a good student by his instructor. The c
ompany went into voluntary liquidation earlier this month for reasons unconnected to
the attack on the World Trade Centre.
Prosecutors say that the warrant from the US was for obtaining a pilot's licence
dishonestly - because he did not declare a previous conviction for theft or that he
had had surgery on his knee. Both would have barred him
from applying for a licence. Further charges are expected. One source said: 'It is no
secret that conspiracy to murder is being looked at.'
Sambir said that when Raissi was arrested by British police, logbooks were found in
his house with crucial dates missing. Further details about Raissi were also emerging
in the US yesterday, including the disclosure tha
t he received a US commercial pilot licence in January 1999, with a rating to fly a
Boeing 737. Two days later he was certified a ground instructor, and in March 1999
received a license to be a flight instructor.
Raissi, who lived at this time in a Phoenix apartment complex, listed himself as both
a student and employee at Westwind Aviation Academy, a flight school at the Phoenix
Deer Valley Airport. He has said he trained at West
wind in 1997 and 1998, according to documents the FBI showed to another local flight
school director. In an odd twist, a database search of public records shows Raissi had
used the social security number of a Jersey City
woman who died in 1991. The woman, Dorothy Hansen, was a retired factory worker.
There was further evidence to show his relationship with the hijackers went further
than mere association. Relatives of Raissi have said he flew jets in the US for
several years and was undergoing further training at Heat
hrow. Police spent two days searching his ground floor flat and took items away for
further examination, including flying manuals. But Raissi's uncle, Kamal, has insisted
he had no links with terror groups. 'Of course Lot
fi has flying manuals at home - he is learning to be a pilot.'
The truth about Raissi's possible involvement in the American carnage may not be
established for many years as long-winded extradition proceedings in Britain must
precede any American trial. But one thing is becoming incr
easingly clear to investigators on both sides of the Atlantic. Europe has played host
to a sprawling network of terror groups whose activists were crucial to the 11
September terror, and who are currently planning to repe
at their murderous actions. And key to many of the plans was Djamel Beghal - until he
was seized at Dubai airport.
For Beghal, Dubai airport, the busiest in the Middle East, was perfect for his
purposes. It allowed him to travel unremarked between Afghanistan and Europe, where he
had established cells in several countries including Br
itain. This was a key transit point from the Far East and South Asia, and Beghal knew
it was better to arrive from an Arab country than draw unwanted attention by coming
straight from Kabul or Islamabad. As he waited for
his flight to be called, he knew his terrorist cells were primed for action as soon as
he touched down on European soil.
But Beghal had not counted on the vigilance of staff at passport control, who spotted
he was travelling on false French documents. At first, the local intelligence officers
who seized him had no idea of the coup they had
pulled off. Calls to CIA officers and officers of the French foreign intelligence
service - the DGSE, based in Dubai - set alarm bells ringing.
Excited French intelligence officials told them they had been tracking Beghal for
almost a decade. He was, they explained, a known activist with Takfir-wal Hijra, which
they defined as 'a radical hardline Islamist movemen
t founded in Egypt as a splinter group from the Muslim Brotherhood'.
The story of Beghal and his friends, as it has emerged in the last few days, is the
inside story of the secret war of Osama bin Laden and his allies in Europe against
America and the West. It is the story of a coalition o
f nebulous anti-American Islamic fundamentalists. It is also the story of the fanatic
who lived to tell his shocked interrogators of the full scope of their plans.
It is all the more compelling for the fact that while others implicated in the attacks
and planned attacks - Lotfi Raissi included - have furiously denied their involvement
in bin Laden's terrorist campaign, Beghal has de
scribed it in its most frightening details.
Beghal's story also tells of a failure of imagination and cooperation among US and
European anti-terrorist specialists on a massive scale. If police and intelligence
services had all the pieces of the jigsaw - as it has n
ow emerged - they were unable, or unwilling, to make sense of them.
That 'vast picture' was described in graphic detail on Friday by FBI chief Robert
Mueller: a terrorist network spanning the globe, a 'picture' that he added 'is nowhere
near painted'. Alongside Mueller, Attorney General J
ohn Ashcroft significantly widened the frame of that picture beyond bin Laden and his
network, saying the investigation 'has not ruled out the involvement of other
individuals and other organisations in this attack'. He s
aid the FBI and intelligence services were 'not just looking at the al-Qaeda network'
but 'a series of networks all over the world'. Among them - it is now becoming clear -
is the network commanded by Beghal.
Beghal's Takfir group has emerged as central to the wider terrorist plan to hit
Americans throughout the world. Crucial to that plan were groups and individuals
across Britain.
When Beghal left his flat at 112 Boulevard John Kennedy in Corbeil just outside Paris
in October 1997, he was heading for London, where he was to emerge as a key figure in
recruiting young Muslims for the Jihad - Holy War
. He would travel around Britain's mosques and sometimes venture as far as Germany
before returning to his London base.
Crucial to the case against Beghal and his associates is the extremity of his beliefs.
Translated, Takfir-wal-Hijra means 'Anathema and Exile', adhering to an extreme
fundamentalist view of Islam. Unusually for a religi
on that has historically tolerated Christianity and Judaism, this form of Islam
regards even other Muslims who don't share its extreme ideals as 'infidels' who should
be punished brutally, sharing an outlook with the Tali
ban's hardline clerics.
In London, Beghal naturally gravitated to the mosque at Finsbury Park, fast emerging
as a magnet for Islamic extremists in Britain - despite the well-established moderate
credentials of the mosque's leadership. And even a
mong the extremists, Beghal stood out as one of the most dangerous.
Members of the Algerian community in north London have told The Observer that Beghal
was a feared figure around the mosque. 'It is always the ones without beards who are
the most dangerous,' said one moderate Algerian wh
o met him. 'Members of this group would kill their own fathers if they caught them
smoking or drinking.'
Indeed, one video doing the rounds at London mosques is a Takfir-wal-Hijra 'snuff
movie', showing the execution of a member of the organisation judged to have committed
a sin.
The group, once thought beyond the pale - even by bin Laden's al-Queda organisation -
believes that everyone who does not adhere to their views, including less devout
Muslims, should be counted as infidels and were legiti
mate targets in any Holy War.
One man who knew Beghal during his time in London said: 'This is the most terrifying
group of extremists you are ever likely to meet. If you don't agree with them you are
an enemy to Islam, and they believe it is legitima
te to kill you.'
Beghal's voice, while extreme, was not a lone one among young Muslim extremists on the
fringes of Britain's mosques during this key period. Many - including the police and
intelligence services - were happy to write off t
heir activities as that of a noisy but harmless group of hotheads playing at being
Holy Warriors.
What they did not realise is that Beghal and others like him had long gone beyond
talking and joined in an alliance with Islamic fundamentalists' terrorist-in-chief,
Osama bin Laden, and his al-Qaeda group.
Evidence of those close links emerged in a Paris court case last week in evidence
gathered by the DST, the French counter-terrorist service. One member of the network,
Nacer Eddine Mettai, said: 'Bin Laden approved the ti
es between Takfir and the Algerian GIA (the Armed Islamic Group, responsible for the
slaughter of thousands of Algerians). He agreed to finance Takfir as long as it helped
him put his own programme into practice.'
Mettai's evidence has proved crucial to the understanding of bin Laden's methodology,
revealing how terrorists from different countries and organisations - but all extreme
Islamist and hostile to the West - have gathered
under a flag of convenience. These are links, both financial and material, that the
West's intelligence agencies have simply missed, allowing men like Beghal to operate
almost with impunity.
By August of last year, Beghal had dropped off the radar of MI5 and other agencies
which had been watching him in Britain, curious to learn more about his activities but
lacking sufficient evidence to intervene and arrest
him. What they now know is that he left for Pakistan to study with religious scholars
before moving on to the training camps in Afghanistan to prepare for his eventual
mission.
Though Beghal had disappeared, French intelligence officers keeping watch on his
apartment outside Paris, still rented in his name, became curious about a regular
visitor to Corbeil. Kamel Daoudi, a 23-year-old French-bor
n computer specialist, shared Beghal's extremist sympathies. When the young man left
his own home earlier this month and moved in permanently to Beghal's apartment, French
investigators believed they had identified the ne
w leader of a French extremist cell, dubbing him 'Commander of Corbeil'.
What is now clear is that Daoudi was a key player in Beghal's terrorist group. As well
as being a computer expert, French intelligence believed he was also Takfir's master
bomb-maker, and that he had been given the job of
building the explosive device they believe would have demolished the US embassy in
Paris and killed hundreds in another spectacular terrorist attack.
Alarmed that a huge atrocity was being planned, the French authorities finally decided
to move against Takfir-wal-Hijra on Monday 10 September. They applied to
anti-terrorist judges to begin proceedings, little knowing th
ey had barely scratched the surface of a huge conspiracy that, within a day, would see
four hijacked US jets attack America.
Within hours of the devastating attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon
alarm bells were ringing, not just at the headquarters of the French intelligence
service but among police and intelligence services acr
oss Europe, all of which had been tracking similar groups and individuals, and
catching hints of similar plots so appalling that they almost beggared belief.
Slowly, an appalling realisation began to dawn: the men they had been following,
watching and waiting to make their move, were miles ahead of them. War had been
declared by the terrorist months - perhaps years - before. A
nd they hadn't noticed.
Twenty-four hours after the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, police
in Belgium and Holland told the French they could not wait for their byzantine legal
system to crank into action before acting against
Takfir. They raided addresses linked to Beghal, unravelling a vast network of cells
planning a series of attacks on prominent targets later in the year. All of these
arrests were made possible because of information supp
lied by Beghal to French anti-terrorist officials who flew to Dubai last weekend.
Thanks to his evidence, the full scale and scope of what was intended finally began to
become clear to police and intelligence agencies across Europe and the US. It
consisted of a loose network of groups in Germany, Fra
nce, Spain and UK, all with the same aim in mind: attacks on US interests across the
globe.
Among the planned attacks, police now know, was one on the US consulate in Marseille,
and a plot to kill President Bush and other G8 leaders by crashing an airliner into
the Genoa summit of industrialised nations. Egyptia
n President Hosni Mubarak said last week his government provided information to the
United States about possible attacks on the Genoa summit by terrorists linked to Osama
bin Laden. 'There was a question of an airplane st
uffed with explosives,' said Mubarak. 'As a result, precautions were taken. But no one
imagined that Boeings full of passengers were going to crash into buildings.'
Last Friday French police finally smashed down the door of Beghal's flat in Paris. But
Daoudi, the 'Commander of Corbeil', was not at home. Having been alerted to Beghal's
arrest by an article in the French press he had e
scaped the raid on the flat. When police burst in at 1.30am they found mobile phones
and bomb-manufacturing equipment but no Daoudi. The presumed number two of Takfir
Wal-Hijra's French operation had fled, along with the
simcards and chips for the cell phones used by the organisation.
Daoudi's father, Tahar Daoudi, said last week that his son had lived a peaceful life
in Paris's chic fifth arrondissement until, in straitened circumstances, the family of
Algerian origin was forced to move out to the sub
urbs of Paris.
'He was a brilliant boy,' said Tahar Daoudi of his son. 'We arrived in France when he
was five years old and in the following year he was brilliant in school. Later he
started specialising in computer studies, but finally
he decided he didn't want to work any more.
'When we moved he changed all his friends. He was very generous and they got a lot of
money out of him - all the money that was supposed to pay for his studies.
'We were furious with him and threw him out of the house. I was furious with him for
hanging around with kids who filled his head full of nonsense. I saw him for his civil
marriage in 1999, but that was pretty much it.'
Yet this once generous computer whizz-kid was now on the run from international
security services, with police closing in on his seven associates. Where would he go?
Who could he turn to to offer him a safe haven? It appe
ars there was only one choice - Britain, where a sophisticated Islamist support
network operated in every major city.
A mile from the centre of Leicester on the Prospect Hill estate, Muslims in the
predominantly Asian community were going about their everyday lives. Some were going
to the local mosque in Asfordby Street, others were doin
g some early morning shopping at the nearby Hill View Stores or getting their children
ready for school.
Four days after the Paris raids there was no reason for this quiet Leicester community
to expect the events across the Channel were about to have any impact on them.
Just before 8am on Tuesday the sirens of dozens of police cars shattered the morning
peace. Armed anti-terrorist officers surrounded the house where Daoudi was sheltering
and, as the doors were smashed in with a battering
ram, the area was sealed off. Three men were arrested, two from Prospect Hill and one
from an upstairs flat in Rolleston Street around the corner.
Scotland Yard would not give any information other than that the arrests have been
made in connection with the 'arrest of seven Arab suspects in Paris'.
One of the those arrested was described as an intense, serious man,
tall and well-built and very protective of his wife, who always wore
a veil.
The next day French television named the individual who had escaped
the police raids in France and been caught in Britain. It was Daoudi.
In four days, a man alleged to have been an explosives and computer
expert for one of the most dangerous terrorist groups in the world
had slipped quietly into the UK.
Despite these arrests in Leicester, British police were keen to
dampen down fears that the country was a key base for Islamic
terrorists. By yesterday Daoudi's run was over. France's most wanted
terrorist was back in France, quickly extradited by the UK, and in
the custody of the anti-terrorist police the DST.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001
End<{{{
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