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| Europe | |||
| Swiss Detail Suspected al-Qaida Arrests | |||
| 2004-01-12 | |||
| I love details, EFL: Swiss authorities who arrested eight suspected supporters of al-Qaida based their investigation in part on telephone numbers stored in terrorists’ cell phones found in Saudi Arabia, according to a court document and Swiss newspapers. Some of the suspects aided the travel from Afghanistan to Saudi Arabia of those involved with the May 12 suicide attacks in Riyadh that killed 35, the Geneva daily Le Temps reported Monday. The eight suspects - described only as non-Swiss - were picked up Thursday in simultaneous raids in five Swiss cantons, or states, police said.
Guess they’re picky about that. A Swiss supreme court ruling in October said the Swiss investigation was launched in part because of cell phone calls of one of the alleged terrorists in Saudi Arabia. "A number was found in the memory of the mobile telephones of one of the alleged terrorists of an al-Qaida cell that could be assigned to ’X,’" according to court documents. The person referred to only as "X" in the court document was an unidentified woman living in Switzerland who was cleared of any wrongdoing in a subsequent investigation.
"Nope, not me." Le Temps said the investigation was "started because of the telephone numbers found on the mobile phones of the alleged terrorists in Saudi Arabia." It said the Thursday’s raids followed "several months of phone taps and thousands of hours of surveillance." If nothing else, the Swiss are thorough. Those arrested in Switzerland are being held on suspicion of providing logistical support to a criminal organization, police said. The weekly SonntagsZeitung said the suspects had provided al-Qaida with documents and money but that they possibly were also prepared to carry out suicide attacks themselves. Swiss authorities refused to disclose the identities or the nationalities of the suspects, but Swiss newspapers said they were from Egypt, Somalia, Yemen, Morocco, Algeria, and Bosnia. Tap, tap, nope. Le Temps said the suspects were primarily veterans of fighting in Afghanistan and that they had helped some of the May 12 attackers travel through Switzerland to Saudi Arabia. "The terrorists cannot travel directly to Saudi Arabia from Afghanistan, because they would be spotted by the Saudi security services," the paper said. However, Saudis flying to Swiss banks are too common to even be noticed. Clever move. The most recent Swiss internal security report, published by the Federal Police Office in July 2002, said there was no evidence the hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks used Switzerland as a logistics or training base, but noted that some had transited through the country. Swiss authorities have also said senior leaders of al-Qaida have used Swiss cell phones to communicate in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I’ve heard about these, pre-paid and untraceable, well, so they thought. Swiss officials have blocked 82 bank accounts containing $28 million in connection with investigations into al-Qaida and the Taliban militia, which formerly ruled Afghanistan. That’s got to hurt. They also continue to investigate the defunct Al-Taqwa Management Organization, a financial firm operating on Islamic principles that was based in Switzerland until it was liquidated in December 2001. The U.S. government says Al-Taqwa, which was renamed the Nada Management Organization, helped fund bin Laden’s terrorist network. Soon to reopen under a new name.
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| Posted by:Steve |
| #1 Clever. very clever. |
| Posted by: Lucky 2004-1-12 11:09:03 PM |