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| Terror Networks |
| More on Dumont in Japan and the Zarqawi Euromob |
| 2004-05-22 |
| National police were investigating a news report that a veteran Al Qaeda operative under arrest in Europe had been based in Japan for more than a year, possibly to establish a terrorist cell, a police spokesman said Wednesday. Investigators had no information on the man — identified by Kyodo News service as Frenchman Lionel Dumont — and could not confirm his links to Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, a National Police Agency spokesman said on condition of anonymity. The report cited unidentified investigative sources. It previously was reported in France that Dumont had been hiding in Indonesia. Kyodo said Dumont provided money and equipment to the network. Dumont, 33, was in contact with about 10 other foreign residents of Japan, and investigators suspect he may have been trying to set up a terrorist cell. National newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reported in Wednesday's afternoon edition that Dumont worked as a used-car dealer in the northern city of Niigata. The report, which cited unidentified police sources, said his bank account records showed that he received remittances ranging from $900 to $8,850 on 10 occasions. Dumont arrived in Tokyo from Singapore, and made several visits to Germany and Malaysia before leaving Japan, public broadcaster NHK said. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Japan was stepping up checks at airports and shipping ports to foil would-be visitors using fake passports. "I am ordering authorities to boost security and be on the lookout in many areas, including immigration," Koizumi told reporters Wednesday. In 1997, Dumont was sentenced to 20 years in prison in Bosnia for involvement in terrorist acts there, including the murder of a police officer. But he escaped from Bosnian custody in 1999. Dumont was arrested Dec. 13 at a Munich hotel and extradited to France on Tuesday. Prosecutor Joachim Ettenhofer, who handled the case, said the French extradition request cited the robbery accusations but no political crimes. Nonetheless, police in Europe are investigating his suspected ties to Andrew Rowe, an accused British Al Qaeda operative who is believed to have provided explosives training to terrorists involved in last year's suicide bombings in Casablanca. British police arrested Rowe in October. In other action related to the investigations of terrorism, a Spanish judge Wednesday accused three Algerians of belonging to Al Qaeda and forming part of a network that recruited Islamists across Europe to go to Iraq to fight the U.S.-led occupation. Magistrate Baltasar Garzon said the mobilizing of insurgents was directed by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian whose group has claimed responsibility for the beheading of a U.S. hostage in Iraq and the assassination of the president of the Iraqi Governing Council. Zarqawi allegedly deployed operatives of Ansar al Islam, a Kurdish radical group, in Europe before the Iraq war to recruit fighters to be trained at Ansar camps in northern Iraq. The recruitment has continued since the fall of Saddam Hussein, mainly in Italy and Germany, European investigators say The operation described by Garzon was linked to an Iraq recruiting network broken up by Italy in November, and two of the men involved were brothers. The three Algerians, along with a Spaniard accused of collaborating with them, were arrested Friday in Spain and jailed pending further investigation. The judge also drew links between the Algerians and the Hamburg cell that plotted the Sept. 11 attacks. Several leading figures in the recruiting network that was disrupted in Italy were peripheral members of the Hamburg cell, including an Algerian, Abderrazak Mahdjoub, now facing trial in Milan. Garzon accused one of Mahdjoub's brothers, Samir, of helping others "distribute money to finance the sending of mujahedin to Iraq," using the infrastructure of Ansar al Islam in other countries including Italy and Syria. The investigation did not detect any recruitment of fighters in Spain, however. The judge accused Samir Mahdjoub and the other two Algerians, Redouane Zenimi and Mohamed Ayat, of forming part of a Spanish Al Qaeda cell. Their main task was "lending economic financing to the rest of the European network," Garzon said. Their cell also included a Zarqawi operative jailed in Britain on charges of plotting an attack with ricin poison in late 2002, according to the indictment. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 Margaret and Grauchos love child went bad... who'd a thunk it. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-05-22 10:24:30 AM |