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| Europe |
| Europe's growing terror threat (Abu Qatada sprung!) |
| 2005-07-31 |
| While U.S. officials tout their success in disrupting suspected Al Qaeda plots inside the United States, a growing cadre of Islamic militants across Europe is overwhelming the resources of security agencies and raising concerns about the threat of more major attacks on the Continent, European officials tell NEWSWEEK. More than a year after the Madrid railway bombings that killed 191 people, European security agents and counterterrorism experts estimate there may now be more than 1,000 suspected militants with known connections to Islamic fundamentalist groups operating in their territoryâand many are not being monitored because of a lack of manpower and legal constraints. The militants are operating through little-known networks that are only loosely affiliated with Al Qaeda but no less dangerous. For example, authorities say one groupâthe Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (known as GICM, from its French abbreviation)âhas been linked to the Madrid attack, bombings of Jewish targets in Casablanca in 2003 and a recent rash of violent attacks in the Netherlands. Key leaders of the GICM are still on the loose, and even their general whereabouts are unknown despite intense manhunts. What is clear, officials say, is that the numbers of suspected members of the GICM and other militant groups are far larger than previously thought. Sir John Stevens,the former head of Scotland Yard, recently estimated there may be up to 200 graduates of Afghanistanâs training camps at large today in Britain. The intelligence service in the Netherlandsâwhere militant Islamists were allegedly behind last yearâs killing of filmmaker Theo van Goghâhas identified nearly as many people with known terrorist connections in that country, a senior official tells NEWSWEEK. The New York Times recently quoted Spanish officials who estimated there are âhundreds of people scattered in cells around the country committed to attacking centers of power in Spain.â âThe situation in Europe is very tense right now,â says Jean-Charles Brisard, a French counterterrorism researcher who tracks militant groups in Europe. âWe are seeing more and more of these groups because the war in Iraq and the Madrid bombings gave them a signal.â Brisard puts the numbers of violent extremist groups in Europe at between 1,000 and 1,500. The situation in Holland is emblematic, officials say. The countryâs traditional calm was shattered last year with the murder of Van Gogh, the director of a documentary critical of Islamic attitudes toward women. An Islamic fundamentalist has been charged with the murder. Today, political leaders critical of Islamic militancy have to have 24-hour police guards and are sleeping in prison cells for their own protection. An official of the AIVD, the principal Dutch intelligence service, tells NEWSWEEK that his agency is aware of around 150 people âwho can be related to terrorist networksâ and âwho might be able to launch an attack.â But his agency simply does not have the manpower to monitor all known suspects closely, the official said. To monitor even one such suspect around the clock requires a team of 20 watchers. So intelligence officers have to set priorities and rank suspects on the basis of risk. Sometimes they miscalculateâas they may have done in the case of Van Gogh murder suspect Mohammed Bouyeri. Dutch authorities say they knew that the Moroccan-born Bouyeri sympathized with fundamentalist groups but had no reason to suspect he might be capable of violence. Indeed, he once wrote an article in a community publication extolling interfaith brotherhood. Since being charged with Van Goghâs death, however, authorities say they have linked Bouyeri to a network of GICM militants in Hollandâtwo of whom hurled a hand grenade, wounding three police offices, during a standoff with police in The Hague a few weeks after the Van Gogh murder. British intelligence officials are more reticent about their limitations in tracking Islamic militants. But shortly after Parliament last weekend voted to update a post-9/11 antiterror law, which the courts had invalidated on human rights grounds, Stevens, the recently retired head of Scotland Yard, issued an alarming warning. "As you read this, there are at least 100 Osama bin Laden-trained terrorists walking Britain's streets," Stevens wrote in a column published by the News of the World. âThe number is probably nearer 200 ... the cunning of al-Qaida means we can't be exact. But they would all commit devastating terror attacks against us if they could, even those born and brought up here." The difficulty British authorities may have keeping tabs on such suspects, whether they number 100 or 200, has been illustrated by the problems British authorities face in putting their updated antiterrorism laws into place. Under legislation rammed through Parliament in solidarity with Washington after the 9/11 attacks, the Blair government gave authorities the power to detain foreign terrorist suspects indefinitely based on secret intelligence. The law was a response to complaints by the Bush administration and other governments that Britain was offering sanctuary to Islamic militants with known connections to Al Qaeda and other violent groups. But Britain's highest court, the House of Lords appeals committee, struck down the detention law late last year on the grounds that it was a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, an international treaty incorporated in British law because it discriminated against foreigners. Under a revised antiterror law approved by the British Parliament last weekend, the government agreed to release 10 militants detained under the old law but would subject them to "control orders," which are supposed to severely restrict their ability to travel, hold meetings and communicate with the outside world. The government has indicated it will have to hire private security firms to carry out the monitoring because the government itself does not have the manpower. The release of two of Britain's post-9/11 detainees is of particular concern to U.S. authorities. The most notorious suspect released last weekend is the radical cleric known as Abu Qatada, whom U.S. authorities once described as Al Qaeda's ambassador in Europe. A second released British detainee was only identified by British authorities in public court papers by the letter S. The court papers describe S as a former Montreal roommate of Ahmed Ressam, the Algerian-born militant caught by U.S. Customs officials in December 1999 when he drove in from Canada in a car loaded with bombmaking materials. According to the British court document, S trained at an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan and was for a while was Ressamâs accomplice in an apparent plot to blow up Los Angeles International Airport. The British say S had to drop out of the plan when U.K. authorities arrested him for holding a fake passport. Now, S is back on the streets, and British agencies are trying to ensure that he stays away from his former associates. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 No offense intended, but I dropped Newsweak from my credibility list with the flushed Karen. |
| Posted by: Captain America 2005-07-31 23:02 |