Terrorists are not usually talkers. But the man who calls himself the mastermind of the March 11 train bombings in Madrid is an exception. For nearly three months, the Italian police have eavesdropped on Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, or "Muhammad the Weasel Egyptian" as the 32-year-old Egyptian is known. The contents of his conversations, in custody and before his arrest in Italy last month, have provided the police with a lode of information about the secret world of a man who claims to have recruited suicide bombers and organized terrorist operations in the name of Islam. Spanish investigators believe that Ahmed played an important role in the Madrid bombings, which killed 190 people, and could indeed be the architect of the operation, although they are also searching for other leading suspects.
Dozens of pages of transcripts obtained by The New York Times and interviews with officials in Spain, Italy, Germany and France have shed light on Ahmed and his ability over the years to take on new identities, cross borders and avoid the police as he pressed his cause against the West. They also offer a case study of the challenges and frustrations Europe faces in monitoring radicals, routing out sleeper cells and prosecuting and convicting those they arrest. |