Armed Islamist militants that operate in Europe are also helping support the armed insurgency in Iraq, one of Europe's foremost experts on such groups told Reuters. Spanish High Court Judge Baltasar Garzon, who has been investigating Islamist militants in Spain since 1991, warned that groups such as the Algerian Salafist movement and the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group were particularly dangerous for Europe. "They are groups that have membership inside and outside Europe and in any case we have to keep close watch on the relationship these groups have with others like Ansar al-Islam," Garzon told Reuters in an interview late on Friday. "It's obvious that this type of terror groups are perfectly operative 
The threat from this type of terrorism is real, it's constant, it's current and it will continue to be."Ansar al-Islam is one of the most active and best known groups attacking the U.S.-led occupation forces in Iraq. Garzon said the Iraq war had inspired the recruitment of new holy warriors "in general," but declined to characterize that recruitment in Europe. Garzon, who on Monday begins nine months' leave to teach at New York University, has conducted several investigations into suspect Islamist activity including one probe that led him to charge Osama bin Laden with mass murder. He had been following a suspected al Qaeda cell in Spain at the time of Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, and then ordered the arrest of the suspects for fear they might also attack. The trial of some two dozen of them is due to begin within months.
Garzon said it was impossible to measure how serious the Islamist militant threat was. But ever since the early 1990s they have "set up bases in key points" of Europe, where they have fabricated false identity papers and raised money for jihad in Bosnia, Chechnya, Algeria and now Iraq, Garzon said. A year ago, one group became the first to launch a serious attack in Western Europe with the Madrid train bombings, for which more than 70 people have been arrested, around half of whom are still in jail or under court supervision. In his just published book "A World Without Fear" Garzon notes that in January 2004 bin Laden ordered followers to attack occupation forces in Iraq, where Spain had 1,300 troops sent by the former conservative government, but said the Madrid train bomber did "not necessarily" take it as an order target Spain. "The idea of committing a major attack could have come from within the (Madrid train bombing) group itself or it could have come from abroad 
It's not important who the bosses are. There may not have been any, or there may have been an emir who acted as a catalyst and indoctrinated the others, but it doesn't even have to been an emir. The groups could have acted on their own or in coordination with others," Garzon said.