Islamist and Middle Eastern Terrorism: a Threat to Europe?

Maria do Céu Pinto (University of Minho Portugal)

Rubbettino

Abstract: 7 Introduction 9 I Islamist and Middle Eastern Terrorism in Europe: The Background 11 I.1. Palestinian Terrorism 11 I.2. Iranian Terrorism 17 II New Patterns of Islamist Terrorism in the 1990s 21 II.1. A New Age of Terrorism 21 II.2. Religious Terrorism 22 III The Web of Terror in Europe 31 III.1. Interlocking Terror Plots 31 III.2. Al-Qaeda: an Umbrella Network 32 III.3. Mosques: Recruitment and Indoctrination 36 IV Groups and Activities of Islamic Terrorists in Europe 41 IV.1. England 41 IV.2. France And Belgium 49 IV.3. Italy 53 IV.4. Germany 62 IV.5. Spain 65 IV.6. The Netherlands 71 V Evaluating the Terrorist Threat to Europe’s Security 75 V.1. Al-Qaeda’s European Infrastructure after 11th September 75 V.2. Islamic Communities in Europe: A Breeding Ground of Terrorists? 76 Conclusion 77 Bibliography 79

During three decades Middle Eastern terrorism in Europe was largely a spillover from problems in the Middle East. Europe was a preferential operational area for Arab, Palestinian and Iranian terrorists fighting each other. In the 1990s, a new Islamic threat emerged as a result of the activities of “ad hoc” terrorist groups, which lack a well-established organisational identity and tend to decentralise and compartmentalise their activities. These new groups, belonging to the al-Qaeda transnational network, seek to punish the West by inflicting heavy civilian casualties. The 11th September hijackers are prime examples of this new breed of radical, transnational, Islamic terrorists. These groups are well funded, and some have developed sophisticated international support networks that provide them great freedom of movement and increase their opportunities to attack on a global basis. Since the September 11th terrorist attacks, police and prosecutors in Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, Ger- many, Spain and the Netherlands have made scores of arrests and uncovered what they suspect is a large and interconnected network of Muslim terrorists. America may be the primary target of Islamist terrorism, but Europe has proved to be the breeding ground of the networks. Europe has played host to a sprawling network of terror groups whose activists were crucial to the 11th September terror or were part of al-Qaeda plots. European police believe they now hold some of the key players in what may have been a planned second wave of terror attacks in Europe. There are large Muslim expatriate communities in most EU countries. This also includes the large student populations and businessmen who frequently travel to Europe. Geographically, Europe sits in a strategic part of the world, with good communication links to the Middle East, Asia and the United States. It itself offers attractive targets for terrorists. They can take advantage of the lack of intrusiveness of the authorities into ordinary peoples’ lives. This makes it easy for Islamic terrorists to send in operational elements. The tolerant and liberal European societies offer an ideal environment for al-Qaeda operatives seeking to blend into their

© Rubbettino 7 surroundings and, thus, evade detection by the authorities. They can pass unnoticed in the Muslim communities but they can also receive cover, shelter, logistical aid from sympathisers and in-country support elements, who in turn, are a potential pool of recruits.

8 © Rubbettino Introduction

The Middle East has been, since 1984, the major stage and/or source of international terrorism on the world scene.1 Middle Eastern and Islamist terrorism remains a complex phenomenon spawned by a combination of factors and motivations. Both traditional state-sponsored international Middle East- ern terrorism and that carried out by loosely organised groups of radical Is- lamists operate in a troubled national and regional environment: a context of regional and factional rivalries, economic crisis, lack of political legitimacy, de- teriorating climate due to the failure of the Arab-Israeli peace process. All these factors fuel frustration and desperation and the belief that the political stalemate can only be overcome through the use of violence: those perceptions increasingly find expression in acts of terrorism.

In the aftermath of the Soviet bloc’s demise, the secure bipolar view of the world collapsed, leaving, in its place, many uncertainties and unstable reali- ties. Furthermore, the growing invasion of globalisation, with its unifying drive, has impacted negatively on many cultures and has generated local resistance. The “terrorist spectaculars” that have characterised the last decade of the XXth century and the first years of the XXIth century are the graphic illustration of a deeply transformed world. Religious terrorism has emerged as the foremost expression of political violence against the prevailing political order. It could represent a symptomatic reaction to the global shifts in the struc- turing of the international political order after the end of the Cold War. In its violent outburst, it is the synthesis of real experiences of political oppression, economic destitution and inability to assimilate to the modern world.

The new fact about Middle Eastern terrorism is that ready access to information and information technologies, coupled with the ability to communicate globally via the Internet, fax, and other media, provides terrorists with new tools for targeting, fund-raising, propaganda dissemination, and operational communication. Members of al-Qaeda, the worldwide umbrella organ-

* Europe is employed here in the strict sense of European Union (EU) members. 1 Cecilia Albino, “The Politics of Terrorism: A Contemporary Survey”, in Barry Rubin, The Politics of Terrorism: Terror as a State and Revolutionary Strategy, Washington, D.C., The Johns Hopkins Foreign Policy Institute, 1989, p. 222.

© Rubbettino 9 isation for Islamic terrorism, actively use the Internet in some manner: to communicate with each other, organise actions (often through the use of pass- words and encryption to limit access to members and friends), rally supporters and sympathisers, enlist new members, advertise successful actions, hon- our fallen comrades, and to convey grievances, threats and demands to their targets at home and abroad.

10 © Rubbettino I. Islamist and Middle Eastern Terrorism in Europe: The Background

I.1. Palestinian Terrorism

In the past four decades, sponsor states (Iraq, Syria, Libya and Iran) have played a major role in terrorist activities in the region and abroad, namely in Western Europe. In the late 1960s, a large number of Palestinian guerrilla groups had come into being. Libya, Syria, Iraq, the U.S.S.R. and China sponsored specific groups1. Some groups, including major ones with several thou- sand members, received simultaneous Libyan, Iraqi, Syrian, Iranian and other support. Those states supported international terrorism either by engaging in terrorist activity themselves, or by providing arms, training, safe havens, diplomatic facilities, financial backing and logistic support to terrorists. In the case of Palestinian and PLO terrorism, state sponsoring was crucial to its durability and success2. For Arab states, international terrorism has been “merely an extension of their domestic policies”3. For states, such as Libya and Syria, “small and weak states”, “terrorist strategies” help “gain international attention and further overly ambitious foreign policy goals”. Those countries contributed to numerous terrorist actions in Europe: in the case of Libya, mainly through the Abu Nidal group, and, in the case of Syria, using Palestinian terrorists4. The golden era of Palestinian terror was initiated on 23rd July, 1968. On that day, three armed Palestinian terrorists from a Popular Front for the Lib-

1 The PLO joined a global network of guerrilla and terrorist groups and built valuable links to the Soviet Union and its East European satellites. Palestinian operatives were sent to train in the Soviet bloc, China and North Korea for training in guerrilla warfare that was often directly transferable to terrorist skills. 2 “Terrorism after the Cold War: Trends and Challenges”, Orbis, vol. 46, nº 2, Spring 2002, p. 158. 3 B. Rubin, “The Political Uses of Terrorism in the Middle East”, in Rubin, The Politics of Terrorism, p. 30. 4 Albin, op. cit., pp. 225-30.

© Rubbettino 11 eration of Palestine (PFLP)5 cell hijacked a plane en route from Rome to Lod airport in Tel Aviv and diverted it to Algeria6. That event ushered in modern terrorism in its form of “internationalization of terrorism” as a territorial and media phenomenon. Technological advances in the field of transportation allowed terrorists to travel with ease and to move around, inflinging human and material damages on countries other than their own7. Furthermore, television gave terrorists a worldwide audience, which had a tremendous impact on the resonance and psychological effect of terrorist acts, sometimes bestowing political legitimacy or respectability on terrorists8.

The PFLP was among the first of the Palestinian organisations to use terrorism as a means to attract international attention to its cause. The movement carried out a long list of terrorist attacks, particularly spectacular hijackings against aviation targets. Its members worked closely with German, Italian and Japanese groups. German terrorists of the Revolutionary Cells and from the Red Army Faction were allowed in Palestinian training camps and participated in major PFLP operations9. There were other Palestinian factions that targeted the West: the Fatah (namely its terrorist arm, the Black September Organisation), the Abu Nidal Organisation, also known as the Fatah-Revolutionary Council, the PFLP–General Command, led by Ahmed Jibril and the Wadi’ Haddad Fac- tion10.

5 The PFLP, a Marxist-Leninist group, was founded in 1967 by George Habash as a member of the PLO. Habash viewed the “liberation” of Palestine as an integral part of the world Communist revolution. Throughout most of its existence, the organisation combined Marxist ideology with Palestinian nationalism, and saw the elimination of Israel as a means towards the ultimate goal, Ely Karmon, “Fatah and the Popular for the Liberation of Palestine”, ICT, 25 November 2000 (http://www.ict.org.il/), pp. 6-7.. 6 Karmon, op. cit., p. 7. 7 Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, 2nd ed., London, Indigo, 1999, p. 67-8. 8 Brigitte L. Nacos, “Accomplice or Witness? The Media’s Role in Terrorism”, Current Hi- story, vol 99, nº 636, April 2000, p. 177 9 Those also included operations masterminded by the famous “Carlos” (Ilich Ramirez Sanchez) on behalf of PFLP: the seizure of the OPEC headquarters in Vienna in 1975, the attempted bombing of an El-Al plane in Paris and the attempted hijacking of an El-Al plane in Nairobi in January 1975, as, well as the hijacking of an Air France plane to Entebbe, Uganda, in June 1976; see Ely Karmon, “German and Palestinian Terrorist Organisations: Strange Bed- fellows”, ICT, 10 May 2000 (http://www.ict.org.il/). 10 It carried out the hijacking of a Lufthansa plane to Mogadishu, foiled by the interven- tion of a West German counter-terror unit.

12 © Rubbettino The decision to attack Israeli and Western targets outside Israel and in Western Europe was largely a consequence of internal developments in the Arab world, in particular, the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and its impact on an em- battled Palestinian movement. The motive for the choice of the terrorist path by the diverse radical fringes of the PLO was the wish to gain international attention and to enhance their status within the Palestinian movement11.

The PFLP and other radical groups within the PLO targeted Western countries because of what they considered as “Western imperialists who supported Is- rael or Arab reactionaries who interfered with the Palestinian or regional revolution”12. But Middle Eastern terrorism in Europe was largely a spillover from problems in the Middle East. Europe was a preferential operational area for Arab and Palestinian terrorists, like the Abu Nidal group and that of Ahmed Jibril, Libyan and Iranian agents eliminating political dissidents13.

Reflecting on this phenomenon, Pluchinsky said in 1987: “Middle Eastern terrorist activity in Western Europe is a product of the numerous antagonistic re- lationships which exist in the Middle East between states, ethnic and religious groups and Palestinian and Arab personalities. More and more of these conflicts, feuds and disagreements are evolving into ‘mini-terrorist wars’ which are being fought not in the Middle East, but in Western Europe–a substitute battlefield”14. That author indicated the following reasons for Europe’s role as a battle- ground between rival Arab groups:

1. the presence of large Palestinian and Arab communities, constituting a “potential manpower pool, which facilitates the building and maintenance of a logistical infrastructure”.

2. Western Europe’s central geographical position and proximity to the Arab world, its “excellent transportation facilities and relatively easy cross- border movement”.

11. There was the pressure by extremist elements within the organisation who insisted on the escalation of the struggle, to compete for power with the PLO and to win the sponsorship of Arab states. Rubin, “The Origins”, p. 157. 12. Rubin, op. cit., p. 155. 13. D. A. Pluchinsky, “Middle Eastern Terrorist Activity in Western Europe in 1985: A Diagnosis and Prognosis”, in Paul Wilkinson and Alasdair Stewart (eds.), Contemporary Re- search on Terrorism, Aberdeen, Aberdeen University Press, 1987, p. 165. 14. Id., p. 166.

4. The level of publicity and impact on public opinion of terrorist acts carried out in Europe and against European targets is much higher than if those acts were committed in the Middle East.

5. European countries provide a “less risky and operationally easier” ter- rain than Arab countries (due to the authoritarian nature of those regimes) and Israel (due to its tight security measures)15.

Another reason for the hijacking operations was the wish to free Pales- tinian members who had been imprisoned or arrested during previous operations in Western countries. Since most of the Western governments submit- ted to the terrorists’ demands for fear of antagonising terrorist organisations or Arab governments, a vicious cycle was soon established: “Concessions, made to free one captive, invite the capture of others while diminishing the entire policy and all its citizens…”16. Several European countries, notably France, Greece and Italy, have repeatedly been charged with ‘deal-making’ with terrorists, quietly making concessions to regimes and groups involved with international terrorism so as to shelter their countries17.

Terrorist incidents of Palestinian/Arab matrix in Western Europe showed an increase until 1985 and a decrease thereafter. Palestinian terrorists, spe- cially those opposed to Arafat, were the major contributors to the spillover violence: in the peak period, 1980-85, they conducted 40 per cent of all Middle- Eastern-origin attacks in Western Europe. The Mediterranean countries, Greece, Italy and Cyprus accounted for the highest number of incidents, along with France, Spain and the United Kingdom18.

The most outstanding act from this period was the concurrent hijacking of four Western passenger airliners to Jordan. On 6th September, 1970, the

15 Id., p. 165-6. See also A. Jongman, “Trends in International and Domestic Terrorism in We- stern Europe, 1968-1988”, in Terrorism and Political Violence, vol. 4, nº 4, Winter 1992, pp. 49-50. 16 Christopher C. Harmon, Terrorism Today, London, Frank Cass, 2000, p. 239. 17 Ibid. and also p. 253; the leading British terrorism authority, Paul Wilkinson, argues against the”dangerously counter-productive aspects of the hostage deals pursued by successive French governments and the Reagan administration”, “British Policy on Terrorism: An Assessment”, in Juliet Lodge (ed.), The Threat of Terrorism, Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1888, p. 53. 18 See Jongman, op. cit., p. 49.

14 © Rubbettino PFLP, simultaneously hijacked four jetliners. They demanded the release of fedayeen imprisoned in Germany, Switzerland and Israel. A TWA and a Swis- sair airliner were diverted to Dawson airport in Jordan and a Pan American Boeing 747 was flown to Cairo. Terrorists blew up all of the planes on the ground after the passengers were evacuated in front of TV cameras, amidst behind-the-scenes negotiations for the release of the passengers.

The PLO/Fatah19 (Fatah being the military arm of the PLO) was not averse to using the same bloody methods of its rivals within the Palestinian movement. The expulsion of Fatah from Jordan (following a relentless clampdown on Palestinian terrorist organisations in Jordan) and Egypt severely limited the group’s ability to launch cross-border operations into Israel. Thus, Fatah created its terrorist branch, Black September (BSO), and resorted to increased terrorist activities as a means to attack Israel20. Starting in November 1971, the group tried to assassinate Jordan’s ambassador to London. The following year, BSO members hijacked a Belgian airliner flying from Vienna to Tel Aviv, blew up a West German electrical installation, a Dutch gas plant and an oil refinery in Trieste. Western European countries took hurried steps to protect its airports and industrial complexes and began to draw up protective measures. The worst was yet to come. On 5th September, 1972, during the Olympic Games, the Munich Massacre and Palestinian terrorism became household expressions. Two Israeli athletes were killed when hooded Palestinians raided the Olympic grounds and took another eleven as hostages. The terrorists demanded the release of 234 Arab and German prisoners held in Israel and in West Germany21. Later, in a 23-hour drama, a German attempt to lure the kid- nappers failed and, in the ensuing shoot-out, nine more Israeli athletes were killed, together with the eight gunmen and a German policeman. Pictures of the hooded gunmen were flashed all over the world: they became the face of Palestinian resistance – for the West, the very face of terror. In the mid-1970s, the PLO started exploring diplomatic options22, but terrorist activities were continued until the mid-80s. The turning point was the

19 Fatah is an acronym spelled backwards representing “Harakat al-Tahrir al-Filistini”, which translates as Palestine Liberation Movement. 20 Karmon, “Fatah”, pp. 12-3. 21 It included the release of Ulrike Meinhof and Andreas Gang, who had been arrested earlier in June, 1972. 22 The first sign of this shift was in June, 1974, at the 12th meeting of the Palestinian Na- tional Council (PNC) in Rabat, when a decision was made to abandon international terrorism and to accept the establishment of a national authority in any liberated part of Palestine; see Karmon, op. cit., p. 14.

© Rubbettino 15 Achilles Lauro affair, in October, 1985, which taught the PLO leadership a lesson. The attack against the Italian cruise ship, anchored in Alexandria, Egypt, was meant to be an anti-Israel operation, but it resulted in the assassination of an American Jewish passenger and in the deterioration of the PLO’s image23. Interested in taking advantage of changes in Europe’s political out- look, the Fatah was reluctant to jeopardize the situation by attacking Western targets or carrying out overt terrorist activities in Western Europe.

Of all Palestinian factions, Fatah–Revolutionary Council was considered the most dangerous, active and murderous Palestinian terror organisations in the 1980s24. The Abu Nidal organisation carried out terrorist attacks in 20 countries (including the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Is- rael), killing and injuring almost 900 persons. The group traditionally carried out operations against various Arab countries and also against Palestinian militants considered too moderate.

Major attacks included the Rome and Vienna airports in December, 1985 (killing 18 and wounding scores); Jewish interests, such as synagogues in Vi- enna, Rome and Brussels, a Jewish school in Antwerp, a Jewish restaurant in Paris, and the City of Poros excursion ship attack in Greece in July, 1988. The organisation ceased its attacks on Western targets in the late 1980s.

The PFLP-General Command, led by Ahmed Jibril25, carried out dozens of attacks in Europe and the Middle East during the 1970s-1980s, although the hey- day of its international activity was in the early 1970s. Over time, PFLP-GC has maintained links of varying degrees of intensity with three Middle Eastern sponsors – Syria, Libya and Iran – that share its adherence to the rejectionist line26.

23 The attack was carried out by Abu Abbas’ Palestine Liberation Front, one of the PLO’s constituent groups. 24 Headed by Sabri al-Bana (Abu Nidal) and founded in 1974 as a consequence of Abu Nidal’s split from the Fatah organisation. The breakup and the foundation of the new organisation was the result of the Iraqi regime’s influence, which prompted Abu Nidal to launch independent terrorist operations to serve Iraqi interests; Karmon, op. cit., p. 16. 25 Jibril, a former captain of the Syrian Army, split from the PFLP in 1968, claiming it wanted to focus more on pure armed struggle and less on politics. It opposed Arafat’s political shift, in particular, the 1974 PNC’s decision to halt international terrorism. 26 David Tal, “The International Dimension of PFLP-GC Activity” (http:-//www.ict.- org.il/Articles/pflp-gc1.htm), p. 3.

16 © Rubbettino The first international terrorist incident organised by the group was the midair bombing in February, 1970, of a Swissair airliner destined for Israel, killing all 47 passengers and crew. When the organisation resumed international operations in the mid-1980s, it was serving interests alien to the Pales- tinian cause. From 1985-89 the PFLP-GC members were involved in terrorist activities perpetrated in Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands, which were facilitated by its infrastructure in Western Europe and its dormant cells27. It is believed the organisation played a role in the attack of Pan Am flight 103 which exploded in midair over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December, 1988, (allegedly paid by Libya at the behest of Iran) and in the bombing of the French UTA airliner in September, 1989 over Niger (commissioned by Iran)28.

In 1986, the United States responded to a spate of anti-American attacks in Western Europe with the bombing of Tripoli and Benghaze. The air raids helped bring about a significant lull in Middle East state sponsorship of international terrorism, particularly in the attacks carried out in Europe29. Eu- rope, too, tightened its counter-terrorism policy after the capture of Syrian- sponsored terrorists sent to carry out acts of sabotage against Britain and West Germany. Following this incident, diplomatic ties between Britain and Syria were severed and the European Community imposed economic sanctions on Syria30.These measures significantly curbed terrorist activities by Syria and Libya-sponsored organisations, particularly the Abu Nidal Organisation, re- sulting in a sharp drop in attacks by the more extreme Palestinian organisations in the late 1980s31.

I.2. Iranian Terrorism

One of the major irritants in European-Iranian relations was the Khome- inist regime’s determination to pursue its opponents on European territory. Iranian security and intelligence officials were active in Europe, working frequently out of the Iranian embassies and monitoring, at first, the activities of

27 Id., pp. 7-8. 28 Id., p. 5. 29 Specifically, the expulsion of more than 100 Libyan ‘diplomats’ from European capitals made it much more difficult for Qadhafi to use Libyan People’s Bureaus (the Libyan equiva- lent of embassies) there for terrorist missions. 30 Karmon, op. cit., p. 25. 31 Harmon, op. cit., p. 265.

© Rubbettino 17 the Pahlavi regime’s officials. The most striking of these attacks was Iran’s assassination of former Prime Minister, 70 year-old Shahpour Bakhtiar, and three bodyguards on 8th August, 1991. French prosecutors concluded, in 1994, that the Iranian government was directly linked to the assassination. Se- nior French, German, Israeli and American experts believe Iranian assassinations were not the result of radical fringes of the Iranian apparatus: there are clear links between those acts and the Iranian Supreme Council for National Security, which includes Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ex-President Rafsanjani and Hojatoislam Ali Fallahiyan, the head of Iran’s secret services. It is also clear that senior members of the Iranian Foreign Service and Ministry of Informa- tion are either actually intelligence agents or under their direct control32.

The elimination of Tehran’s opponents had a harmful effect on diplomatic relations with several Western European countries. Iranian intelligence agents and hardliners have attacked or intimidated Iranian dissidents in Austria, France, Italy, Switzerland and Germany33. No concerted European approach was put in place to tackle the problem of Iranian terrorist activities in Europe. Although the European countries concerned sought the cooperation of enforcement agencies of its neighbours, they ultimately chose to deal with the problem on a unilateral basis. Some of those countries chose to expel several would-be Iranian assassins from their soil.

In the late 1980s, Iran stepped up terrorist attacks against members of the opposition and Iranian exiles. In 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini condemned the British author, Salman Rushdie, to death on the charge of apostasy due to the content of his book, the Satanic Verses. Starting in 1995, Iranian officials began airing a new position: that the fatwa against Salman Rushdie had only the- oretical religious validity and would not be implemented. In September 1998, Iranian Foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, announced that his government had no intention of threatening the life of the British author. He also said that his government was dissociating itself from the $2m bounty which had been put on Rushdie’s life by the Khordad Foundation, a semi-official organisation

32 Anthony Cordesman and Ahmed S. Hashim, Iran: Dilemmas of Dual Containment, Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1997, p. 148 33 Iranian agents seem to be responsible for assassinating Fereydun Farokhzad, a radio personality in Germany in August, 1992; Abd al-Rahman Boroumand, a Bakhtiar supporter in Paris in April, 1991, and Ali Mohamed Assadi, a monarchist opposition figure in November, 1994; see Cordesman and Hashim, op. cit., p. 158.

18 © Rubbettino with connections to radical elements in the regime34. But officials stressed that the fatwa could not be reversed as it can only be rescinded by the religious leader who pronounces it35. In the 1990s, Iran’s eradicationist campaign in Europe also targeted members of the Kurdish parties and the Mujahedin-e Khalq (the People’s Mu- jahideen)36, opposition movements which have often used terrorism and assassinations in attacking the Iranian regime. Prominent on the list of Iranian- ordered murders was the September, 1992 murders of four Kurdish opposition leaders in the “Mykonos” restaurant in Berlin, including the Kurdish De- mocratic Party of Iran’s chief, Sadegh Sharafkandi. Already in March, 1996, Germany’s Federal Court of Justice had ordered the arrest of Iran’s Intelli- gence Minister, Ali Fallahiyan, suspected of ordering the killing of the four ex- iled Iranian Kurdish leaders37. The Berlin murder highlighted the high degree of coordination among diverse Iranian government agencies and entities in the planning and execution of assassinations. It exposed, according to a French official, that “the whole Iranian state apparatus is at the service of these operations”38. The German court, which judged and condemned one Iranian and four Lebanese for the murders, stated that the Iranian government followed a deliberate policy of liquidating the regime’s opponents who lived outside Iran. The key groups involved in the Berlin assassination were the Revolutionary Guards and the Intelligence Ministry. The extra-legal committee also included the minister of Intelligence and Security, the Foreign minister and the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei39.

34 CNN.com, “Iran Dissociates Itself from Rushdie Death Sentence”, 24 September 1998. 35 Yet, Western experts believe that Iranian agents killed the Japanese translator of the Sa- tanic Verses on 12th June, 1991, and attempted to kill the Italian translator nine days earlier; Cordesman and Hashim, op. cit., p. 157. 36 Agents of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security caused the death of Kazem Rajavi, the head of the party in Geneva on 24th August, 1992, and Mohamed Hussein Naghdi, a leading member of the National Council of Resistance in Rome on 16th March, 1993. In 1994, the Swiss government requested the extradition from France of two Iranians indicted in the 1991 murder in Geneva of Karem Rajavi, brother of the leader of the People’s Party. Instead, the French government expelled the suspects to Iran in December, 1993. The two were among 13 Iranians indicted by the Swiss for the murder (the other 11 were at large at the time of the indictments); id., p. 155. 37 In 1989, Iranians killed Sharafkandi’s predecessor, Abdul Rahman Qassemlou, and two associates in Vienna after arranging a fake meeting allegedly to “negotiate” with the Iranian government; id., p. 156. 38 Thomas Sancton, “The Tehran Connection”, Time, vol. 143, nº 12, 21 March 1994, p. 52. 39 T. Sancton, “Iran’s State of Terror”, Time, vol. 148, nº 20, 11 November 1996, p. 82.

© Rubbettino 19 The “Mykonos” trial created considerable ill will between Bonn and Tehran. Within hours of the ruling, the European Union (EU) presidency condemned Iran in the “Mykonos case” and declared its behaviour totally un- acceptable. It agreed to suspend official ministerial visits to Iran and invited the 15 member states to recall their ambassadors for coordinated consulta- tions on future relations with Iran40. But the possibility that all 15 governments would endorse dramatic new measures was not welcome and the EU opted instead, in April, 1997, for a mainly symbolic package of measures to protest against the Tehran regime41. Since the mid-1990s, Iranian policy evolved away from high profile terrorist actions in the heart of Europe in favour of less conspicuous acts in less politically sensitive locations, like Pakistan, Iraq and Turkey42.

40 Saeed Barzin, “Bitter Fruits of Mykonos”, MEI, nº 548, 18 April 1997, p. 11. 41 “European Union Declaration on Iran”, n° 26/97, 29 April 1997 (at http://www.euru- nion.org/news/press/1997-2/pr26-97.htm). 42 Michael Eisenstadt, Iranian Military Power: Capabilities and Intentions, Washington, D. C., The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1996, p. 66.

20 © Rubbettino II. New Patterns of Islamist Terrorism in the 1990s

II.1. A New Age of Terrorism

In the 1990s, the phenomenon of terror has changed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Terrorist groups not only have increased in number, but they have become more active and more violent. Five of the seven states that have been branded by the U.S. government as sponsors of international terrorism –Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria – are located in the region1. Moreover, of the 33 major international terrorist groups described in the State Department 2001 report on global terrorism, more than half are based in the Middle East and North Africa2. In the last decade – and starting in 1993 with the attack on the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York – Islamist groups have attracted world attention as they have launched a systematic terror campaign against American and other Western allies.

When the first attack on the World Trade Center took place, many analysts highlighted the existence of an “Islamist Internationale”, sworn to fight the “Great Satan America” for the global supremacy of Islam. They pointed out these groups are centrally coordinated and act in concert to wage war against American targets. Terrorist acts were interpreted as part of a greater whole – an all-out attack on America itself, aimed not merely at American en- gagement in the world at large, but at American ideals. In the WTC bombing, federal investigators gathered evidence, showing that leaders or representa- tives of five different groups – the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, HAMAS, the Su- danese National Islamic Front (NIF), the Pakistan-based al-Fuqrah, and groups funded by Persian Gulf donors – were involved in the plot and that

1 The others are Cuba and North Korea. See U.S. Department of State, Patterns of Glo- bal Terrorism 2001, May 2002. 2 See previous note.

© Rubbettino 21 they planned other attacks in the New York area. In fact, bin Laden came under the scrutiny of Washington immediately following the World Trade Cen- ter bombing. His name came up as one of the associates of Sheikh Omar Ab- dul Rahman – spiritual mentor of the WTC bombers – and as the financial backer of the Martyr Azzam Hostel in Peshawar where Ramzi Ahmed Yousef – the leader of the WTC plot – had stayed3. In the 1990s, terrorism by extremist individuals or groups claiming to act for religious motives increased. Experts in the US security and intelligence community have stressed that the greatest terrorist threat to the United States comes from fundamentalist Islamic extremists4. Some of these groups, such as the Party of God–Hizbollah, the Palestinian group Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement), and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad fit the traditional terrorist mould. These groups have hierarchical structures and receive support from state sponsors, such as Iran and Syria.

II.2. Religious Terrorism

Experts have said that religiously-inspired terrorism will likely increase over the following decades due to economic difficulties, political tensions, especially the persistence of unresolved conflicts in the Middle East and the sweeping changes in the regional and world environment5. The 1995 RAND–St. Andrews Chronology of International Terrorist Incidents indi- cates that religious terrorist groups, in 1994, were 16 out of a total of 49. The following year they had increased to 26 of a total of 56 groups6.

In reality, violent religious terrorist activity has increased sharply since the late 1980s and it has become one of the dominant forms of terror, surpassing in number the traditional political/nationalist/separatist/Marxist-Leninist groups.

3 The Interagency OPSEC Support Staff, Intelligence Threat Handbook, April 1996, Sec- tion 4, “Terrorist Intelligence Operations” (http://www.fas.org-/irp/nsa/ioss-/threat96/- part04.htm). 4 “International Terrorism”, remarks by Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Amb. Philip C. Wilcox, Jr., before the Denver Council on Foreign Relations, Denver, CO, 12 September, 1996, p. 3. 5 Lt. Gen. Patrick M. Hughes, Director, Defense Intelligence Agency, “Global Threats and Challenges: The Decades Ahead”, statement for the Senate Select Committee on Intelli- gence, 28 January, 1998 (http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1998_hr/s980128h.htm). 6 Mark Juergensmeyer, “Understanding the New Terrorism”, Current History, vol. 99, nº 636, April, 2000, p. 158.

22 © Rubbettino Religious terrorists differ from traditional ideological terrorists in that the former are willing to sacrifice to obtain their objective. Religious terrorists are more prone to use indiscriminate violence. Bruce Hoffman says that religious terrorism tends to be more lethal than secular terrorism because of the radi- cally different value systems, mechanisms of legitimisation and justification, concepts of morality and Manichean world views that directly affect the “holy terrorists’” motivation7.

For the religious terrorist, violence “assumes a transcendental dimension”8. Executed in the fulfilment of some divinely-ordained command, it is devoid of the moral constraints that bind other terrorists’ actions. Hoffman says: “whereas secular terrorists generally consider indiscriminate violence im- moral and counterproductive, religious terrorists regard such violence not only as morally justified, but as a necessary expedient for the attainment of their goals. Thus religion serves as a legitimizing force – conveyed by sacred text or imparted via clerical authorities claiming to speak for the divine”9. Or, as Stevenson, has put it: “Old terrorists are looking to bargain; new terrorists want only to express their wrath and cripple their enemy”10.

Islamist extremists see themselves as involved in a total war against the enemies of the faith. Islamist radicals think that the present societies are un- Islamic and illegitimate since God’s injunctions have been forgotten and vio- lated. In this context, they believe it is the duty of every Muslim to wage jihad in order to bring about an Islamic revolution by transforming society11. Is- lamic terrorists see themselves as alien to a world that has lost its sense. They see themselves as actors of an eschatological drama, a Manichean confronta- tion, pitting the forces of good versus evil on a political battlefield12. Osama bin Laden, the terrorism mastermind who funds and coordinates a host of terrorist groups, has as his main goal the overthrow of “heretic governments” and the establishment of Islamic governments based on the rule of

7 Bruce Hoffman, “The Confluence of International and Domestic Trends in Terrorism”, Terrorism and Political Violence, vol. 9, nº 2, Summer, 1997, p. 4. 8 B. Hoffman, ““Holy Terror”: The Implications of Terrorism Motivated by a Religious Imperative”, RAND Paper P-7834, 1993, p. 2. 9 Ibid. 10 Jonathan Stevenson, “Pragmatic Counter-Terrorism”, Survival, vol. 43, nº 4, Winter 2001-02, p. 35. 11 See, for instance, Charles Tripp, “Sayyid Qutb: The Political Vision”, in Ali Rahnema (ed.), Pioneers of Islamic Revival, London, Zed Books, 1994. 12 Juergensmeyer, op. cit., p. 161.

© Rubbettino 23 the “Sharia”13. Radical Islamists of the bin Laden kind call on their brethren to renew the attacks upon the enemies of Islam, that is, the United States and Israel. They proclaim that these two countries represent the “crusader-Jewish pact” at the root of an anti-Islamic campaign aimed at humiliating and conquering Mus- lim lands. Bin Laden’s aims avowedly are to expel all Americans and Jews from Muslim Holy Lands and to overthrow the Saudi royal family. A new Islamic threat is on the rise as a result of the activities of “ad hoc” terrorist groups. Walter Laqueur identifies this terrorism trend as follows: “In the future, terrorists will be individuals or like-minded people working in very small groups on the pattern of the technology-hating Unabomber…”14. These groups are even more dangerous in many ways than the traditional groups because they lack well-established organisational identity and they tend to decentralise and compartmentalise their activities: “There is no recognizable cell/group before the attack, and there is no recognizable cell or group after the attack…they only exist as a very compartmentalized organization during the planning and conduct of the operation”14. After carrying out a terrorist attack, they can easily travel abroad to melt back into the civilian population of any sympathetic nation15.

The new generation terrorist groups are capable of producing sophisticated conventional weapons, as well as chemical and biological agents. Many of the technologies associated with the development of NBC weapons, especially chemical and biological agents, have legitimate civil applications and are classified as dual-use. The effectiveness of chemical and biological weapons, applied as terror tools, is especially high against a civilian population16. The mere threat of employment would have a tremendous psychological impact and could cause the paralysis or disruption of civilian life and economic activity. Even very small quantities of cheaply produced and easily concealed biological weapons can be lethal over very large areas, eventually larger than the area covered by fallout from a nuclear explosion and much larger than the area contaminated by chemical weapons17. Chemical weapons can also cause a con-

13 Islamic jurisprudence based on the Quran and the “Sunna”. 14 W. Laqueur, “Postmodern Terrorism”, Foreign Affairs, vol. 75, September /October, 1996, p. 6 (reprinted in Global Issues, USIA Electronic Journal 1/2, February 1997). 15 Amy Grant, “Saudi Dissident and Fundamentalist Supporter Threatens U.S.…”, ENN Daily Intelligence Report, vol. 52, nº 3, 21 February, 1997, p. 1. 16 Ibid. 17 John D. Steinbruner, “Hearings on United States Security Interests in the Post-Cold War World”, Statement to the House Committee on National Security, 6 June, 1996, p. 3; Na- dine Gurr and Benjamin Cole, The New Face of Terrorism, London: I. B. Tauris, 2000.

24 © Rubbettino siderable number of casualties: Aum Shinrikyo – the Japanese sect – demon- strated the ease with which a terrorist could develop chemical weapons and use them in a mass attack. In 1995 the group left plastic bags containing the nerve agent Sarin on the Tokyo subway. Twelve people were killed and 5,000 injured. The casualties were still limited because of the low potency of the tox- in. The group was also experimenting with VX, a nerve agent that can be 10 to 1,000 times stronger than Sarin.

Most of the materials required to make weapons of mass destruction are increasingly accessible to small states and non-state organisations. Revealing, in this regard, are clues indicating that, in the early 1990s, Osama bin Laden tried to buy nuclear weapons. Bin Laden’s agents unsuccessfully scoured former Soviet republics for enriched uranium and weapons components that could be used to set off the fuel18. Later he decided to settle for chemical weapons, which are easier to produce. During his five-year stay in Sudan, he allegedly tested, with the help of Sudanese officials, nerve agents that would be dispensed from bombs or artillery shells. A news story says bin Laden tried to develop chemical weapons to use against U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf19.

In an interview with Time magazine, bin Laden proclaimed his intention of intensifying efforts to obtain non-conventional weapons. He justified these efforts with the argument that “acquiring weapons for the defense of Muslims is a religious duty“. He added: “It would be a sin for Muslims not to try to possess the weapons that would prevent the infidels from inflicting harm on Muslims”20. Increasingly, defence reports and analyses have stressed that chemical or biological weapons may become more attractive to terrorist groups intent on causing panic or inflicting large numbers of casualties21. In fact, a 1999 U.S. Congress report states that at least a dozen terrorist groups (most of them located in the Mediterranean area) “have expressed an interest in or have actively sought nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons capabilities”22.

18 National Defense University (NDU), INSS, 1997 Strategic Assessment: Flashpoints and Force Structure, chap. 11, “Proliferation” (http://www.ndu.edu/inss/sa97/sa97ch11.html). 19 Hugh Davies, “Bin Laden Aide “Tried to Buy Atomic Arms””, Electronic Telegraph 1221, 28 September, 1998. 20 CNNInteractive, “CIA: Bin Laden Planned Chemical Attack on U.S. Troops in the Gulf”, 19 November, 1998. 21 “Wrath of God”, Time, vol. 153, no.1, 11 January, 1999. 22 (OPSEC, Section 4); Canadian Security Intelligence Service, “Chemical, Biological, Ra- diological and Nuclear (CBRN) Terrorism, Report nº 2000/02, (http://www.csis- scrs.gc.ca/eng/miscdocs/200002_e.html).

© Rubbettino 25 While it is unlikely that al-Qaeda may have had access to nuclear weapons, it could have developed radiological devices – so-called “dirty bombs” – which use conventional explosive to scatter radioactive material over a wide area23. In May, 2002, U.S. authorities arrested José Padilla, aka Abdullah al Muhajir, 31, for his alleged role in an al-Qaeda plot to detonate a conventional bomb combined with radioactive material in the United States.

The new terrorists are also less dependent and constrained by state sponsors or other benefactors than more traditional terrorist organisations. Often, the so-called “rogue states” will use these groups to carry out their insurgent policies through loose teams of deniable political and religious fanatics. Ter- rorist groups offer the sponsoring state a deniable method to attack primary Western interests without fearing military retaliation or international sanctions. In turn, sponsoring states provide terrorist groups with funding, access to weapons and advanced technologies, intelligence, target planning support, logistics support and secure communications23. In the past, many Middle Eastern groups were funded by Iran or Libya or supported by Sudan, while the emerging Islamist groups are not controlled or directed by any state. If anything, they are dependent on the phenomenon of weak or “failed states”, which terrorist groups exploit, as in the cases of Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen24. They tend to be autonomous in their planning and decision-making functions. Terrorism and security analysts think that the main problem now is the increasing number of fragmented and freelancing Islamic extremist groups supported by private sources25. The 11th September suicide hijackers are prime examples of this new breed of radical, transnational, loosely-linked Islamic zealots.

The groups tend to be religious organisations that have major grievances with the West. They seek, in particular, to punish the United States for what they see as the United States’ hegemonic policies in the Middle East. Along with Washington, Islamist organisations also target other European and West- ern allies of Washington for siding with Washington in its campaign against terrorism launched in the aftermath of 11th September. In carrying out those

23 U.S. Congress, Commission to Assess the Organization of the Federal Government to Combat the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Combating Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, 104th Congress, 14 July, 1999. 24 Nigel Tandy, “Germany Says bin Laden Alive, al Quaeda Active”, UPI, 6 November, 2002 (htpp://www.rense.com/general31/alive.htm). 25 See OPSEC.

26 © Rubbettino punitive policies, Islamist radicals have revealed a willingness to inflict heavy civilian casualties among Western populations.

Both the traditional groups and the newer “ad hoc” groups have increased their capability to attack Western interests. These groups are well funded, some by private entities, and have developed sophisticated international support networks that provide them with great freedom of movement and increase their opportunities to attack Western interests on a global basis. Militant Muslim extremists have organised extensive infrastructures, particularly in Europe, taking advantage of Western democracy and exploiting its freedoms. In the last several years, using the latest technology, the militants have managed to build up an impressive international infrastructure, which is geared towards fund-raising, the recruitment of volunteers, and para-military training26. News stories and intelligence reports have indicated that radical Islamic movements have found sanctuary in the West among large Muslim immigrant communities. Many of them take advantage of the Western political systems to travel freely, organise politically, raise funds, recruit new members, support underground opposition movements in their home countries and, sometimes, to direct terrorist activities. It is believed that Europe has become, for several years now, a safe haven for Algerian, Tunisian, Egyptian and Palestinian fundamentalists as well as former mujahideen who passed through Afghanistan training camps and have been integrated in al-Qaeda. Some groups set up front organisations under non-profit “religious charities”, self-defined religious umbrellas and the politically correct buzzword of human rights27.

The loosely-linked informal webs of Islamic militants, often organised in small groups around a charismatic cleric, are harder to track and infiltrate. These terrorist groups are often a collection of factions with common interests. Thus, they form, change and regroup in response to specific agendas or planned actions. They no longer depend, that much more, on states for access to financing or technological means28. Al-Qaeda operatives are a case in point: what binds them together is common training, shared wartime experience and adherence to bin Laden’s peculiar view of Islam.

26 Carl Conetta, “Dislocating Alcyoneus: How to Combat al-Qaeda and the New Terro- rism”, June, 2002, (at http://www.ciaonet.org/teach/cp/cp03d.html), p. 2. 27 D. B. Ottaway, “U.S. Considers Slugging It Out with International Terrorism”, The Wa- shington Post (henceforth referred to as WP), 17 October, 1996.

© Rubbettino 27 An expert on terrorism explains the modus operandi of these militants: “Now you don’t have a group, you have an old boys’ network where people keep in touch. This is not something that can be penetrated, because they may just come together for one operation and disperse again. They don’t have to have an office and a car pool and stationery. All they need are their modems – one in the Philippines, one in New York and one in Peshawar – and you’ve got your group”29. The expansion of international media and communication technologies give terrorists a much broader stage upon which to perform and dramatically increases the danger of terrorism. Globalisation has given terrorists the ability to become increasingly linked using the technologies-driving globalisation.

Financially independent, able to organise and deploy a significant military force, and truly international in its reach and membership, al-Qaeda is a unique terrorist organisation with:

- a global goal and strategy: the recovery of Islamic purity and territorial control from Spain to Indonesia;

- a global structure of associated military cells (Bosnia, Chechnya, Kash- mir, the Philippines, Indonesia) and terrorist cells (Yemen, Kenya, Tanzania, Europe and the United States),

- an organisational structure combining elements of an intelligence service, “a military, criminal, political and commercial enterprise”30.

Al-Qaeda’s affiliates are a multi-layered series of cells in a distributed and network structure, each contributing in a small way to sophisticated terror operations whose scope and magnitude is known only to a select few. They are mostly cut off from one another to contain the damage of detection or infil- tration, and are guided by a limited number of people who move around as- sembling the fruits of each cell’s particular specialisation: false documents, funds or weapons. Initiative is highly decentralised and “most of the propos- als for terrorist operations appear to come from the operatives in the field,

28 Steven Emerson, “The Worldwide Jihad Movement: Militant Islam Targets the West”, Policy Forum 8, April, 1995. 29 S. Emerson, “Terrorist Ties OK at the White House”, Tribune–Review (http://users.- aol.com/beachbt/whterror.txt). 30 Ottaway, op. cit.

28 © Rubbettino rather than from the center”31. The organisers who link these discreet cells could then synchronise complex multiple attacks.

31 Quoted in Stanley Kober, “Why Spy? The Uses and Misuses of Intelligence”, CATO Policy Analysis, 265, 12 December, 1996.

III.1. Interlocking Terror Plots

Europe has played host to a sprawling network of terror groups whose activists were crucial to the 11th September terror or were part of al-Qaeda plots. European police believe they now hold some of the key players in what may have been a planned second wave of terror attacks in Europe1. A major plot was disrupted in December 2000 when members of the Frankfurt ring were arrested while preparing poison gas attacks in France, possibly with Sarin nerve gas. They aimed to attack the synagogue or the Christmas market in Strasbourg, France. Police found weapons, but also a handwritten instruction booklet on making explosives and lethal toxic substances. The Frankfurt arrests led to arrests in Britain and confirmed the suspicions Italian police harboured against a cell in Milan.

The Frankfurt, Milan and British cells were planning poison gas attacks in Europe. The most spectacular plan was aimed to target the European Par- liament, also in Strasbourg. While the Parliament was in session in February 2002, terrorists would slip in and kill all those present with sarin nerve gas. The six arrested Algerians belonging to the London cell, police found out, were linked to Bin Laden.

When Djamal Beghal, a member of an extreme and puritanical Islamist organisation affiliated to al-Qaeda – “Takfir wal-Hijra” (“Anathema and Ex- ile”) – was arrested at Dubai airport, in July, 2001, as he prepared to board a plane, police found out he was preparing to participate in a series of pan-Eu- ropean attacks against American targets. The murderous attacks on NY and Washington were to be repeated throughout Europe as well. French investi-

1. Diana Muriel, “Thwarting Terror Cells in Europe”, CNN.com, 23 January 2002.

© Rubbettino 31 gators concluded Beghal was returning to France to give the go-ahead for a suicide attack on the U.S. embassy in Paris using a lorry or a helicopter. Beghal – who spent two years in London recruiting for his violent and bizarre organisation of fanatics – has emerged as one of the key British links at the centre of a worldwide conspiracy – the point of contact between bin Laden’s group and a wider network of allied Islamist terror groups. The uncovering in April 2001 of the so-called “Milan cell” produced evidence that a network of terrorist recruits trained at Osama bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan has fanned out to a half-dozen European countries. In December 2000, U.S. intelligence warned Italian authorities that a man using the alias “Umar al Muhajer”, was “joining a group of three Islamic extremists who were linked to the Osama Bin Laden organization and, from Afghanistan, were planning vague actions against American targets in Italy”2. U.S. intelligence provided Italian authorities with a cellular phone number which, along with the alias, was later traced to the ringleader of the Milan cell: Essid Sami ben Khemais.3

Italian officials intercepted conversations, by phone or in person among men of mainly North African background living in several Western European cities by tapping phones and bugging ben Khemais’ apartment near Malpen- sa airport north of Milan. The records also offer an example of the scope and reach of the presence of an interlocking set of terrorist cells that is believed to span Italy, Germany, Spain, Britain, France and Belgium, with supporters in numerous other countries, including Switzerland.

Italian court documents, including police reports and transcripts of the bugged conversations and tapped phone calls, paint a picture of conspirators discussing bombings and other attacks in Europe. They also made cryptic remarks about a mysterious, dangerous chemical that suffocates people. It could be put in a tomato can, they said, and released when the can is opened.

III.2. Al-Qaeda: An Umbrella Network

When ben Khemais moved to Milan in 1998, Italian investigators believe, the structure of terrorist networks in Europe was changing. A group of vio-

2 Leo Sisti, “Arrested Italian Cell Sheds Light on Bin Laden’s European Network”, 3 Oc- tober 2001 (http://www.public-i.org/story_01_100401.htm), p. 2. 3 Ibid.

32 © Rubbettino lent, radical militants had left behind conflicts in Egypt and Algeria, and wars in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya, all of which were over or in abeyance. According to a DIGOS4 report, “The Algerian situation, for years the epi- center, has in the past few years lost its centrality in favor of a new binding capability represented by the project of bin Laden”5. “The real problem in Eu- rope before 1998 was Algerian nationals, who were involved in mostly single episodes that weren’t coordinated”, says Stefano Dambruoso, the Milan prosecutor handling the case against the Milan cell.6 The “brothers”, as the militants called themselves, soon found a new organizing principle in bin Laden’s campaign against targets in the West, according to Italian investigators: “After that, bin Laden began to connect and coordinate all these cells that already existed, rendering the phenomenon much more radicalized and potent”7. According to European court, police and intelligence sources, the cells were organized under two large umbrellas. One was an Algerian group called the “Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat” (in French, “Groupe Salafiste per la Prédication et le Combat”, thus GSPC). The second group was an Egyptian movement called “Anathema and Exile” (“Takfir wal-hijra”).

The “Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat” (GSPC), is a militant offshoot of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group, GIA (in French “Groupe Is- lamique Armée”), formed in 1996. The Salafist movement had its origins in XIX century Egypt. It was born as a reaction and a refusal to accept European superiority at a time when Arab countries were becoming colonies of England and France and were subjugated by the European dominance in the cultural and scientific domain. Salafism advocates a return to the values and principles of the earliest Muslims (Salafis): “The doctrine of salafiya argued that the problems of the Muslim world were not a function of the Muslim religion itself but rather its corruption through dilution and blending with other ideas and values which had led to backwardness and superstition”8. The movement later spread to Saudi Arabia and the Maghreb countries, especially to Algeria, and it played an important role in the Afghan jihad and

4 Divisione Investigazioni Generali e Operazioni Speciali. 5 Peter Finn and Sarah Delaney, “Al Qaeda’s Tracks Deepen in Europe: Surveillance Re- veals More Plots, Links”, The WP (online), 22 October 2001, p. 2. 6 Ibid. 7 Bruce Crumley et al., “Hate Club”, Time (online), v. 158, nº 18, 5 November 2001, p. 3. 8 Michael Willis, The Islamist Challenge in Algeria. A Political History, Berkshire, Reading, Ithaca Press, 1996, pp. 8-9.

© Rubbettino 33 Afghan training camps. The main Salafist ideological principle is Takfir, the perception that Muslim society is heretical. The new Salafists have brought Saudi Wahhabi principles together with the idea of holy struggles against the internal and external enemies of Islam. According to the 2001 State Department annual terrorism report, the GSPC “has eclipsed the GIA since approximately 1998, and currently is assessed to be the most effective remaining armed group inside Algeria”9. In Europe, GSPC members “maintain contacts with other North African extremists sympathetic to al-Qaida”10. Both the GIA and GSPC developed early ties with al-Qaeda11.

“Takfir wal-hijra”, a radical hardline Islamist movement, also originated in Egypt, in the late 1960s, as a splinter group of the Muslim Brotherhood, where it suffered from heavy repression12. The Takfirist relate to the histori- cal event of Islam: the flight (Hijra) of Prophet Muhamad from the corruption of Mecca to the outlying city of Medina in the year 622. Believers emerge from modern exile to kill non-believers and those condemned as takfir, or apos- tates. The group believes that everyone who does not adhere to their views, including less devout Muslims, should be counted as “infidels” and are legitimate targets in any “holy war”.

“Takfir” then created a strong base in Algeria and many of its members joined the Afghan jihad. It became an al-Qaeda-allied group13. These movements have their own networks in France and other European countries. Op- erating in highly secret cells, the terrorists are very independent and disci- plined. Its members make a point of concealing their strict fundamentalism behind a Western façade. They are entitled to do so under the principle of taqiya, which allows believers to hide their inner reality for protection’s sake: “The goal of Takfir is to blend in to corrupt enemy societies in order to plot attacks against them better”, says a French official. “Members live together, form businesses together, will drink alcohol, eat during Ramadan, become

9 U.S. Department of State, op. cit., p. 109. 10 Ibid. 11 Rohan Gunaratna, “Blowback”, Jane’s Intelligence Review, vol. 13, nº 8, AugU.S.t 2001, p. 44. 12 The group fled to the Egyptian desert and set up a society in exile. Takfir’s founder, Shukri Mustafa, was executed following the group’s kidnapping and murder of a rival cleric in 1977. 13 Martin Bright et al., “The Secret War”, part II, p. 4 (http://www.observer.co.U.K./focus/story/0,6903,560658,00.html).

34 © Rubbettino smart dressers and ladies’ men in order to show just how integrated they are”, says an investigator14. These umbrella networks, multinational in membership, coalesced through the efforts in Europe of three key individuals appointed by al Qaeda. According to European law enforcement officials, the three men were tasked by al-Qaeda with forming strong links among groups across the continent and organizing terror attacks in Europe.

The first is Haydar Abu Doha, 36, an Algerian who moved to London in 1999. His arrest in early 2001 followed the appearance of his London telephone number during investigations in the United States carried out after the arrest of an Algerian, Ahmed Ressam, the lone executor of the plot to bomb the Los Angeles airport on New Year’s Eve 1999.

The second is Mohamed Bensakhria, 34, an Algerian who was arrested in Spain in June, after fleeing a police raid in Frankfurt, Germany, where he was based. He was “Ben Khemais’ boss in the European cell”15.

The third is Tarek Maaroufi, a Tunisian with Belgian citizenship. Maaroufi is wanted on an Italian warrant issued by anti-terrorism prosecutor Stefano Dambruoso because of his involvement in a planned attack on the U.S. embassy in Rome in early 2001. In December, Belgian authorities arrested him and charged him with providing stolen passports and fraudulent visas for those involved in the assassination of Ahmed Shah Massood, the Afghan commander of the Northern Alliance.

Maaroufi was the leader of the Tunisian Combatant Group, TCG (also referred to as the Tunisian Islamic Fighting Group). It was founded, probably in 2000, by Maaroufi, and the Tunisian Seifallah Ben Hassine. The TCG’s goals reportedly include establishing an Islamic government in Tunisia and targeting Tunisian and Western interests. The group has come to be associated with al-Qaeda and other North African Islamic extremists in Europe who have been implicated in mainly anti-U.S. terrorist plots there. Tunisians, associated with the TCG, are part of the support network of the international Salafist movement. According to Italian authorities, TCG members, there, engage in false document trafficking and recruitment for Afghan training camps.

14 Crumley, op. cit., p. 7. 15 Sisti, op. cit., p. 3.

III.3. Mosques: Recruitment and Indoctrination

The North London Central mosque in Finsbury Park is a magnet for the extremist Islamic culture. Richard Reid, the Briton accused of trying to blow up a transatlantic flight with explosives hidden in his shoe; Zacarias Mous- saoui, a Frenchman who was detained in Minnesota, in August 2001, and dubbed the “20th hijacker”; the Courtailler brothers (Jerôme and David) and Djamal Beghal, all attended prayers there. The mosque is well-known for the sermons of fiery cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, the mosque’s one-eyed, steel- clawed imam, who continually stressed the importance of jihad.17 The mosque is dominated by adherents of “Takfir”. Until the 11th September, the police and intelligence services were happy to write off their activities as that of a noisy but harmless group of hotheads playing at jihad. The police have traditionally adopted a policy of “watchful tolerance” of extremists, aimed at keep- ing them above the ground and under observation. The problem is that police laxity tends to allow extremists out of the public eye.

Egyptian-born sheikh Abu Hamza, living in Britain since 1978, is the founder of the “Supporters of Shariah”, which promotes jihad against the West and “tyrants in the Muslim world”.18 He is a mujahideen veteran who has claws for hands and only one eye, the other being lost during a raid in Afghanistan. In 1999, the Yemeni police caught eight men with plans and equipment to bomb British targets in that country. Six of those young Mus- lims, all of Pakistani origin, held British passports. The Yemeni courts tried and convicted them of conspiracy to commit terrorism. Journalists traced the roots of their mission back to a London mosque and to Abu Hamza. His general contention was that, as Muslims, they must fight for the conversion of the world to Islam. He was proud that his own stepson was one of the six convicted in Yemen19.

16 U.S. State Department, op. cit., p. 128. 17 Early in 2001, the Charity Commissioners banned him from preaching at the mosque; “Hamza’s Horrid – But We Must Tolerate Him”, The Guardian (online), 28 August 2002, p.1. 18 Assif Shameen, “Secrets of the Mosque”, Time Europe, 6 May 2002, vol. 159, nº 18, p. 8. 19 Id., p. 6.

36 © Rubbettino Radical Islamic preachers say openly that they support the jihad, that the laws of men do not matter and that only the Quran, as interpreted by them, can govern the behaviour of Muslims. Omar Bakri Mohamed is the leader of the London-based “al-Muhajiroun” (“The Emigrants”), an organisation ded- icated to establishing a world Islamic state, starting in the U.K. Bakri’s followers first appeared in the early nineties. They shun multiculturalism and have imported the hardline extremism creeping across the religious schools, or madrasas, in Egypt and Pakistan20. Bakri has admitted to sending hundreds of followers to be trained in Afghanistan and Kashmir21.

Al-Muhajiroun is part of a larger movement, “Hizb ut-Tahrir” (“Islamic Liberation Party”), which champions the return of a Caliphate for the 1.2 bil- lion-strong worldwide Ummah (the “Community of the Believers”). Since 11th September, “al-Muhajiroun” has been the noisiest and most mutinous section of the Muslim community in Britain, recruiting young, disenfran- chised British nationals into its ranks. British members of the movement have also been confirmed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Kandahar, Afghanistan.22 The organisation has had several propaganda coups, namely the declarations of an activist in Lahore warning that British volunteers in Afghanistan would return “to strike at the heart of the enemy”23.

Another prominent member of the Islamist fringe is Abu Qatada, a Pales- tinian-born cleric, whose real name is Omar Mahmoud Othman Abu Omar. He is alleged to be a member of al Qaeda’s fatwa committee, which provides Islamic authority for the group’s war on the West. He fled his home around Christmas, 2001, just before he could be detained under new antiterrorist leg- islation, but was arrested in a raid in a London apartment in October, 2002. Abu Qatada is close to the Takfirist and Salafist networks. A number of his followers, including Jerôme Courtailler and Nizar Trabelsi, joined “Taqfir wal-Hijra”. Abu Qatada, a Palestinian citizen of Jordan came to London in 1993, claiming political asylum and was granted refugee status. He was sen-

20 Burhan Wazir, “The Talibanising of Britain Proceeds”, New Statesman, 11 February 2002, p. 32. 21 Sebastien Berger and Jon Hibbs, “British Muslims Sent to Islamic Training Camps”, Electronic Telegraph, nº 1327, 12 January 1999; Peter Foster and Danielle Demetriou, “Lon- don’s ‘Safe Haven’ is Shattered by Dawn Raids”, Electronic Telegraph, 19 February 2001. 22 “Looking for Trouble: Al-Qaeda Recruiters Scour Britain’s Mosques for Operatives like Suspected Shoe-Bomber Richard Reid”, Time International, 21 January 2002, p. 15. 23 Ibid.

© Rubbettino 37 tenced, by Jordan, to life imprisonment for a series of alleged terrorist of- fences, including a plot to kill American tourists around the time of the Mil- lennium24. Qatada is one of several radical Islamic preachers who have been given shelter in Britain, which prides itself on a tradition of generous political asylum. Qatada is considered “one of the foremost European proponents of the bin Laden doctrine of jihad”25.

Qatada has emerged as a link to some of the networks that have been picked up in Europe during the mid-1990s in the context of the French investigation concerning the GIA terrorist attacks in 1994-95. The investigation, carried out by French counterterrorism judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, led back to London and to Abu Qatada’s community centre in the heart of London. Qatada was, until 1996, the chief editor of “Al-Ansar”, described as “the voice of jihad in Algeria and in the world”26. The publication was undoubtedly the mouthpiece of the Algerian GIA. According to an infiltrated agent in Qata- da’s mosque, in one of his fatwas, he “said it was legitimate for fighters wag- ing the holy war in Algeria and other Arab countries to kill the women and children of members of the security forces”27.

Qatada has not been directly linked to specific terrorism acts – apart from providing support and finance to several jihad causes. However, investigators in the United States, Spain, France and Algeria, consider him a key envoy of Osama bin Laden in Europe28. Baltasar Garzón, a National High Court judge charged with leading Spain’s al-Qaeda crackdown, says he is “the spiritual

24 Terrorists intended to use a powerful truck bomb to destroy the Radisson SAS hotel in Amman, which would be thronged with New Year’s visitors. Other plans included using machine guns to mow down American sightseers at such tourists sites as the Temple of Hercules in Amman. 25 Michael Dobbs, “Probe Targets Cleric in London”, Washingtonpost.Com, 28 October 2001. According to an Algerian journalist who went undercover to Qatada’s «prayer meetings», he is a “criminal”: “He was saying that if there is no Jihad, you cannot go to paradise, because paradise is held by two swords. You need a sword to get to paradise, so everyone has to do this kind of job, otherwise there’s no paradise for all”; see Newsnight broadcast transcript (http://www.bbc.co.U.K./1/hi/events/newsnight/1712707.stm). 26 Alain Chouffan, Maureen Cofflard, Diddier Pavy and Elsa Vigoureux, “”Le «Londo- nistan»”, Le Nouvel Observateur (online ed.), nº 1928, 18th October, 2001, p. 1. 27 David Leppard, “Terror Link in Europe”, The Sunday Times (online), 25 November 2001, p. 2. 28 Audrey Gillan et al., “Allies Point the Finger at Britain as al-Qaida’s ‘Revolving Door’”, The Guardian (online), 14 February 2002, p. 2.

38 © Rubbettino leader of Mujahideen across Europe”29. The Spanish judge has spoken of the alleged regular contacts between the cleric and a Spanish-based counterpart accused of being directly linked to the 11th September attacks30. Qatada also helped channel money from the Spanish terrorists to a group in Jordan who planned a series of attacks at the turn of the Millennium31.

Qatada played a pivotal role in shaping the ideology and worldview of young Muslims who gravitated to al Qaeda. In Hamburg, numerous videos of Qatada’s preachings were found in the flat used by Mohamed Atta, who led the 11th September attacks on America. Illustrative of the influence enjoyed by Qatada is the case of Djamal Beghal, an Algerian-born Frenchman, detained in France on suspicion of plotting to attack U.S. targets, including the U.S. embassy in Paris. In 1997, Beghal moved to Britain from France to study under Abu Qatada. In his religious training sessions, the imam talked about the need for Muslims to flee the “infidel countries” of the West and prepare for jihad in Afghanistan32. Ben Khemais, the Tunisian, accused in Italy of heading a terrorist cell, was heard, in an intercepted phone conversation, re- porting Abu Qatada’s exhortation for Muslims to donate all their money to Is- lamic guerrilla fighters33.

29 Paul Harris et al., “Britain’s Most Wanted”, Electronic Telegraph (online), 5 May 2002, p. 1. 30 “Britain’s al-Qaeda Connections”, BBC News (online), 29 January 2002. 31 Gillan, op. cit., p. 2. 32 Dobbs, id. 33 Dobbs, id.; Leppard, op. cit., p. 2.

IV.1. England

Britain, with a two-million Muslim population and with its strong civil- rights groups and traditions of free speech, has become a harbour for Islamic extremists. The British Muslim community is not more radicalised than other European communities, but extremists have greater liberty to operate. They have recruited many local Muslims, especially in London, Leicester and Birm- ingham. British officials say between 500 and 600 British-based Muslims spent time in al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan before 11th Sep- tember1. Of those, about 200 could have fought for Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan2.

Investigators have highlighted the role played by London as a key centre of operations for Islamic extremists. That is what the French media ironically dub “Londonistan” to accuse the British of harbouring Islamic terrorists coming from the so-called “Stans” (states like Afghanistan and Pakistan and, in general, the Muslim world)3. For the past decade, as the governments of many Middle East countries cracked down on Islamic fundamentalists, radicals have taken advantage of the relatively tolerant atmosphere in Western Euro- pean countries to spread their doctrines of jihad. Britain, in particular, has been a haven for fundamentalists who enjoy traditional British liberties and a generous social welfare system even as they rail against the culture that has given them refuge.

1 Richard Norton-Taylor and Nick Hopkins, “Dozens of al-Qaida Linked Extremists in U.K.”, The Guardian (online), 5 September 2002. 2 “Two More Britons Named as Al Qaeda Suspects”, APS Diplomat Recorder, 2 February 2002. 3 Dominique Thomas, “Explosif Londonistan”, Le Monde.fr, 29 October 2001; Chouffan, op. cit., p. 1.

© Rubbettino 41 According to the French expert on Islamic movements, Gilles Kepel, those militants “gathered in London where they found, for many of them, political asylum, and they were able to organize their networks. Probably the condition for the deal, but this was never made explicit… was that they would not have any activity against British interests on British soil”4.

The British capital has become one of the primary locations for the indoctrination of jihadists and an important way station en route to bin Laden’s training camps in Afghanistan. Notorious terrorists, such as Zacarias Mous- saoui and Beghal used London as a point of transit to and from Afghan camps. British mosques, such as the Brixton mosque, the Finsbury Park mosque and Abu Qatada’s prayer room in Baker Street have been identified as centres of fundamentalist culture and a favourable recruiting ground for al-Qaeda operatives. Extreme Islamic organisations have risen dramatically among immigrant communities in Britain. “Al-Muhajiroun” and “Supporters of the Shari- ah” have also used the Internet to enlist support for the jihad in Kashmir, Chechnya and Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda talent spotters, trusted men of battle- hardened experience, scour these mosques to tap into new recruits and dis- patch them to training camps around the world.

In the aftermath of the attacks in America, Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist branch were surprised by the extent of the “roots of al-Qaida in this country.”5 They have depicted the top end of the network as “more sophisticated than any of U.S. thought”. Investigating magistrates, police and intelligence officers in those countries believe at least seven top bin Laden lieutenants operated out of Britain in recent years. But investigators in the U.K. are not sure of the exact role Britain played in the conspiracy which led to the 11th Sep-

4 “The Recruiters”, transcript of a CBCNews programme conducted by Terence Mcken- na (at http://www.cbc.ca/national/news/recruiters/qatada.html). For years the French were unable to get London to extradite suspected members of the Algeria-based GIA, responsible for a wave of bombings in Paris in 1994-95. That is particularly the case of Rachid Ramda, accused of bankrolling the Paris attacks from England, where the GIA’s European headquarters was situated. Ramda was arrested in Great Britain but the British have repeatedly refused to extradite him to Paris on grounds he would not receive a fair trial in France. British court documents suggest the judges may have partly based their decision on the possible police mi- streatment of two of his accomplices held in France.4 The United States has also been trying to get the extradition of Khalid al-Fawwaz, a London-based Saudi alleged to have set up an office for bin Laden in 1994 and involved in the African embassy bombings. 5 Gillan, op. cit., p. 1.

42 © Rubbettino tember attacks. They are convinced that “the U.K. has never played host to a formal al-Qaeda network”6.

However investigators in France, Spain, Italy and Germany are adamant that most of the attacks planned or executed by al-Qaeda in the past four years had links to Britain and that the latter is a centre of coordination and direc- tion: “Britain acted – and, to some extent, may still act – as a kind of filter for parts of al-Qaida. The main European centres for spiritual indoctrination were London and Leicester; any weak links were weeded out there. The new recruit would then be sent to suffer in the camps in Afghanistan. After passing both tests, the mojahid could take his place in the sleeper networks in Eu- rope”7. European law enforcement officials claim that Islamist clerics based in the U.K. played a key role in the indoctrination and possibly the legitimisation of terrorist operations. Allowed to spread subversive ideas against Western culture and to preach jihad, they may have played a role as important, or, in the very least, complementary to al-Qaeda’s operational command given the dis- persed and multi-layered nature of bin Laden’s movement. Clerics as Abu Qatada or Omar Bakri were “spinning a ‘revolving door’ to radical Islam and on to terrorism”8.

This situation has its root in the 1980s when a new Muslim leadership of imams and muftis, financed by various Islamic powers around the world, began setting up mosques and schools in Britain, thanks to an immigration law loophole that allows clergyman open-ended permission to stay. Muslim youngsters attracted to the radical preaching came under the domination of the new imams, who offered a simplistic vision of the world and promised membership in an organisation that would rule over the globe. The multicul- tural divide came dramatically to light in 1980 with the Rushdie affair. The British Muslim community and its leaders uncritically echoed Ayatollah Komeini’s call to kill the author. Significantly, very few were those who dared to oppose the dominant trend. The assimilation policy revealed itself a failure.

Second-generation Muslims whose parents arrived from South Asia more than 30 years ago, often unemployed, uneducated and dissatisfied, have not

6 Crumley, “Hate Club”, p. 5. 7 Gillan, op. cit., p. 1. 8 Ibid.

© Rubbettino 43 integrated well into British society. They claim that they have been caught between two cultures and they see Islam as the only alternative to the despair and racism they face on a daily basis. Many embrace the culture of fundamentalist Islam. In the words of Ataullah Siddiqi, a research fellow at the Is- lamic Foundation in Leicester: “young second-generation Muslims who were born here are increasingly turning toward religion because they need an identity, and the faith gives them that”9. These new zealots were brought up in a traditional way by parents whose religious views were generally orthodox but not fundamentalist.

Members of the Milan-Gallarate cell, disrupted in April, 2001, were in regular contact with al-Qaeda supporters in London, including an Algerian man called Abu Doha, who was indicted for the Los Angeles airport bomb plot. Abu Doha is the pseudonym of a 36-year-old Algerian (who also goes by the names of Amar Makhlulif, Rachid Boukhalfa and Rachid Kefflous). He moved to London in 1999 after a stint as a senior official at a terrorist camp in Afghanistan. He is wanted by U.S. officials in connection with the plot to blow up the Los Angeles airport during Millennium celebrations, using a Canadian cell. He is in detention in London, fighting extradition to the Unit- ed States. Italy’s special operations police identified him as the leader of an al- Qaeda-affiliated network made up principally of Algerians10.

Yacine Akhnouche, a 27-year-old Franco-Algerian, arrested in February, 2002 around Paris, and suspected of close links with the Frankfurt cell, which planned an attack on Strasbourg (currently detained in France), implicated Abu Doha in the Strasbourg plot. Akhnouche told police he met Doha in al- Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and characterised him as the “recruiting sergeant” of bin Laden’s European operation11. Ressam named Abu Do- ha as a gatekeeper to Islamic militant training camps in Afghanistan, where Ressam underwent months of firearms and explosives training in 1998.

Upon his arrest, Ressam had a business card with Abu Doha’s phone number in London and calling cards that showed he had placed calls to Do- ha as recently as 11 days before his 14th December, 1999 arrest. Abu Doha’s London apartment contained papers with notations for the same explosive

9 See Shameen, op. cit., p. 1. 10 Piero Colaprico, “La mappa del tesoro della ‘Jihad’ in Italia”, La Reppublica.it, 27 April 2001, pp. 2-3. 11 Gillan, op. cit., p. 3.

44 © Rubbettino chemical mixtures found in Ressam’s car. Police also found fake passports, passports with recent stamps and a visa to Pakistan12. Ressam identified Do- ha as a leader of the Algerian group in the training camps who facilitated the travel of recruits like Ressam to the camps and then to countries where their operations were to occur. Doha would facilitate such travel by obtaining, for the terrorists, various forms of false identification and travel documents. Do- ha was also responsible for establishing means of communication among the various cells, including Ressam’s Algerian cell, that were associated with the various jihad training camps in Afghanistan13. Members of Ressam’s Algerian cell agreed that they would travel to Cana- da, from where they would launch plans to carry out a bombing in the Unit- ed Sates in the period of the Millennium celebrations. According to the criminal complaint filed against Doha in a New York court, “Doha participated in the discussions and agreed to help facilitate the travel of many cell members to Canada so that they could participate in the proposed U.S. operation, and [get] out of the United States and Canada upon the completion of the operation so that they could hide in Europe or Algeria”14.

A British-based terrorist network, composed of five men, was arrested in Britain in February, 2001 (including Abu Doha) for plotting to set off a bomb in the Christmas market of the French city of Strasbourg. The tip-off came from Italy. German counter-terrorism experts were, then, warned from Britain, on Christmas Eve, 2000, that an attack was imminent. British investigators had intercepted “a telephone conversation between Abu Doha in the United Kingdom… during which a certain Kamal… told his English [sic] interlocutor of a planned terrorist attack at around the end of the year, in which he himself was to take part”15. Two days later, police and intelligence officers raided several addresses in the Frankfurt area and arrested four men. The fifth was arrested in April, 200116.

Leicester, a manufacturing town in the English Midlands with a large Muslim community and exemplary race relations, is emerging as a hub of sus-

12 Affidavit filed in the U.S. Southern District of New York before the Honorable Andrew J. Peck, Violation of 18 U.S.C § 2332a, 2 July 2001, p. 4. 13 Id., p. 5. 14 Id., p. 4. 15 John Hooper, “Al-Qaida Bomb Plot Led from U.K., Trial Papers Say”, The Guar- dian.Unlimited (online), 15 April 2002, p. 1. 16 Ibid.

© Rubbettino 45 pected Algerians in the English Midlands. Two Algerian asylum-seekers were arrested in Leicester in September, 2001, the first operatives to be charged in Britain with direct links to al-Qaeda: Baghdad Meziane, 37, was charged with being a director of operations for bin Laden’s terrorist outfit; Brahim Ben- merzouga, 30, was accused of helping to finance operations and of owning equipment that could have been used in bomb attacks. They were arrested with Franco-Algerian terrorist suspect Daoudi. A five-month Europe-wide investigation identified Leicester as a centre, since 1998, for bin Laden’s plan to bomb the U.S. embassy in Paris and targets in other European cities. Securi- ty chiefs believe that bin Laden’s chief recruiting officer, Beghal, used Leices- ter as a base before his arrest in July, 2001. French brothers, David and Jerome Courtailler, fanatical converts to Islam, (the latter arrested in the Netherlands for directing the Rotterdam cell), Beghal’s associate – Kamel Daoudi – also apparently stayed in Leicester17. Al-Qaeda operatives can easily blend in amid this tolerant and multicul- tural town, as one third of its population consists of visible minorities. In Jan- uary, 2002, police rounded up a secretive network of 17 Algerian extremists.

A prominent terrorist, who spent long periods in the U.K., was Algerian born Frenchman, Djamal Beghal. He married a French woman in 1990 and became a French national in 1993. He first came to the attention of the French police in 1994 in a wave of GIA attacks in France. He was jailed for three months and released due to lack of incriminating evidence18. One year later, he came under the influence of “Takfir wal-Hijra”19. In 1997, he moved with his family to Leicester and London, but kept his apartment in Corbeil-Es- sonnes, south of Paris.

During his absence, his Algerian friend Kamel Daoudi would live in his apartment and visit him in England whenever he wanted. Beghal became an ardent follower of sheikh Abu Qatada, who channelled money into the Chechen jihad. Beghal alternated between London and Leicester, frequenting extremist mosques. He became active in raising funds for support of the Chechen rebels and in recruiting young Muslims for the jihad. He travelled extensively to Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain, transporting propaganda about Islamic militancy. He is alleged to have recruited Richard

17 Helen Gibson, “The Algerian Connection”, Time, 11 February 2002, vol. 159, nº 5, p. 19. 18 Marie-France Etchegoin, Club.Obs, nº 1928, 18 October 2001 (http://www.nouve- lobs.com/dossier/dossier2.htm). 19 Patricia Tourancheau, “Une filière tombe en France”, Libération, 26 September 2001, p. 1.

46 © Rubbettino Reid, the London-born “shoe bomber”, and Zacharias Moussaoui, who lived in Brixton and was meant to be a pilot in the 11th September plot. In 2000, he left for a training camp in Afghanistan. In July 2001, he was arrested in Dubai on his way to Morocco. He told police of his plan to drive a minivan packed full of explosives into the gates of the U.S. embassy in Paris.

A British convert to Islam, turned an al-Qaeda terrorist, Richard Reid, on 22 December, 2001 tried to blow up an America Airlines plane flying from Paris to Miami. The 28-year-old Anglo-Jamaican tried to ignite explosives in his sneakers. He converted to Islam in 1995 while serving time for petty theft. Like other prisoners undergoing the gruesome gaol experience, he was ripe for recruitment. Unlike Moussaoui, he was not a committed hard-liner when he arrived at the Brixton mosque the following year, after leaving gaol. Over time, the amiable eager-to-learn Reid became more extremist. Moussaoui and Reid, who probably met at the Brixton mosque after spending a while there, moved to the Finsbury Park mosque, where jihad was openly advocated. Eventually, both drifted away in 1998, Reid to travel to Pakistan, Europe and the Middle East.

In 1999 and 2000, Reid went to Pakistan from where he crossed into Afghanistan to the Khaldun terrorist camp. According to Akhnouche and Ressam, that camp, as well as Darunta, seem to have specialised in training recruits from France, Italy, Germany, Sweden and Jamaica with a British pass- port20. In December, 2001, Reid returned to London and, from there, under- took a journey which took him to the Netherlands, Israel, Egypt, Turkey, Pak- istan and Afghanistan and back to London. For a man without a job, Reid was well endowed with the financial means to travel far and wide21. In the files of a recovered al-Qaeda computer, two reporters from the Wall Street Journal made a startling discovery: Reid’s travel routes and experiences matched those of an al-Qaeda scout code-named Abdul Ra’uff. It is believed that Reid and Ra’uff are the same person22. In the summer of 2001, Reid went to Amsterdam where he obtained a new British passport, claiming that he had “accidently” put his passport into the washing machine of his Amsterdam Hotel. That was a deliberate attempt

20 Piero Colaprico, “Rapporto segreto dell’Fbi ‘In Italia attivi 60 terroristi’”, La Repub- blica.it, 4 December 2001, p. 2. 21 Michael Elliot, “The Shoe Bomber’s World”, Time.com, 25 February 2002, vol. 159, nº 8, p. 5. 22 See Andrew Cullison and Andrew Higgens, “Al-Qaeda Scout’s Route Matches that of Briton,” Wall Street Journal Europe, 16 January 2002, p. 1, 4.

© Rubbettino 47 to remove a compromising Pakistani visa sticker, which would have linked him to the Afghani training camps. Jerome Courtailler, arrested as a suspected associate in the Paris embassy plot, helped Reid find temporary employment in Rotterdam. It was here that he purchased his black trainers, which an al-Qaeda specialist would pack with plastic explosives before the flight. Police found evidence of links between Reid and Nizar Trabelsi, the alleged would-be bomber of the U.S. embassy in Paris23. The 11th September attacks, the Paris and Strasbourg plots and the attempt to destroy American Airlines Flight 63 to Miami all share a common cast of characters. Reid seems to have known Moussaoui, Beghal and Trabelsi.

In December, Reid again applied for a new passport at the British embassy in Brussels, claiming his previous one was worn. He was readily supplied without further enquiries.

Lofti Raissi, an Algerian pilot resident in Britain, named by the FBI as the man who trained key figures in the suicide attacks in America, is regarded as a classic “sleeper”. He spoke English without an accent and had a Western lifestyle. He is accused of being the lead instructor for four of the hijackers, including the man who seized control of American Airlines flight 77 from Washington to L.A. and skilfully steered it into the Pentagon: Hani Hanjour. In June 2001, Raissi visited Los Angeles and, then, flew to Arizona with the Pentagon pilot. The FBI claim he was there to ensure the hijackers were capable of taking control of the aircraft and smashing into the targets. He attended a number of flying schools in the United States attended by four of the hijackers. Hanjour, the Saudi suicide pilot who crashed the plane into the Pen- tagon, attended CRM Airline Training Centre in Scottsdale, Arizona and was videotaped travelling with Raissi24.

In November, 2002, three men of North African origin were arrested in connection with a reported plan for a rush-hour attack on commuters in Lon- don’s subway system. The plot allegedly involved releasing cyanide gas on crowded trains25.

23 Susan Candiotti, “Investigators: Phone Cards Link Reid to al Qaeda”, CNN.com, 9 Fe- bruary 2002, p. 1. 24 Bright et al., op. cit., pp. 1-2. 25 Warren Hodge, “Three are Accused of Plan to Attack London Subways”, NYT (online), 18 November 2002, p. 1.

48 © Rubbettino IV.2. France and Belgium

The French are acutely aware of the potency of Islamist terrorism. In 1994, in what was a grim precursor of attacks to come, guerrillas of Algeria’s GIA hijacked an Air France Plane in Algiers, wired it with dynamite, intend- ing to crash it in Paris. They were killed by French commandos while the plane was landed for refuelling in Marseilles. GIA’s brutal campaign continued in the Summer of 1995, when they killed sheikh Abd al-Baqi Sahraoui, a prominent member of the Islamic Salvation Front, considered a moderate figure. The terror campaign reached a climax between 25 July and 17 October, 1995, when the GIA performed a series of bombing operations, killing 10 people and injuring more than 2000. The most frequent targets were subways, but there were also strikes against outdoor markets, a Jewish school, a high-speed train and the Arc de Triomphe. The attacks were meant to punish France for its support for the Algiers government.

It is estimated that from 300 to 500 French Islamists have received religious instruction in Pakistan madrasas26. More than 100 native French and French of North African origin have trained in Afghanistan. They have followed the same itinerary: from France they leave to the U.K. in order to journey to Pakistan or the West27. There they are sent to the training camps in Afghanistan from where they leave again to local jihads around the world. Prior to 11th September attacks, French authorities had detected a collection of Muslim militants (most of them white French converts) who had been radicalised during visits to Bosnia. Robbery was used to finance arms purchases, and to create false identity documents to facilitate the movement of Islamist terrorists transiting France. The group had recruited men for the “holy war” in Bosnia, and had staged attacks when instructed to do so.

Fateh Kamel, a 40-year-old Algerian with Canadian citizenship was arrested on a charge of “association with wrong-doers in relation to a terrorist enterprise,” for his involvement in the “Gang of Roubaix”. Kamel was both an expert document forger, head of the network of which the Roubaix gang was a part and had also spent time in Afghanistan, where he had been in contact with bin Laden. Kamel had been given the responsibility of creating and

26 “Ces Occidentaux engagés dans les réseaux d’Al-Qaïda”, La Voix du Nord, 18 Decem- ber 2001, p.1. 27 “Dans les rangs des «fous de Dieu»”, La Voix du Nord, 20 December 2001, p. 1.

© Rubbettino 49 transporting false identification documents used by militants, assembled in Turkey, Bulgaria, Belgium, France, Bosnia and North America. French police tracked his movements around the world28. French anti-terrorism judge Bruguière kept trace of Kamel’s frequent visits to Montreal. French authorities established clear links between Kamel and attempted Millenium bomber Ahmed Ressam, who had plotted to attack the Los Angeles Airport in De- cember, 1999. He found out that Ahmed Ressam was part of Kamel’s group and he alerted Canadian authorities to that fact.

In April, 2001, a Paris court sentenced Fateh Kamel to eight years in prison for running an underground terrorist logistics network linked to al-Qaeda. On 10th September, 2001, a French magistrate opened a formal investigation into an alleged plot by an al-Qaeda-linked group to target U.S. interests in France and placed its alleged ringleader, Djamal Beghal, who was extradited from the Unit- ed Arab Emirates on 1st October, in investigative detention.

Beghal was caught by airport authorities in the United Arab Emirates, trying to travel to Europe on a fake French passport. Under interrogation, he spoke of being recruited in Afghanistan by bin Laden’s deputy, Abu Zubay- dah, for a suicide mission against the U.S. embassy in Paris. In his confession, he is reported to have said he had met Zubaydah after being summoned to bin Laden’s house during a visit to Kandahar. There, Zubaydah asked him if he was ready for action and told him the plan consisted of blowing up the embassy. His role was to observe, collect information and assess the extent of the surveillance in place around the embassy29. French authorities think Beghal was a key member of the multi-celled network. Under interrogation in the United Arab Emirates he provided investigators with details of terrorist cells operating in Paris, Spain, Belgium and Rot- terdam. The leads put Dutch police on the track of a four-person cell in Rot- terdam. Then, police learned of a connection between the cell in Rotterdam and another based in an apartment in Brussels – a cell allegedly headed by a Tunisian ex-soccer player, Nizar Trabelsi. Trabelsi and Beghal knew each other for a long time. Both men had lived in London in the late 1990s and at-

28 “Les réseaux impliqués dans les attentats de 1995”, (http://www.sosattentats.org/jur_ch- ron_judiciare/ reseaux/reseau2/reseau2-3_khabou.htm). 29 “Paris Suspect Denies Bin Laden Link”, BBCNEWS, 2 October 2001, p. 2; “Bin Laden ‘Named’ in Paris Plot,” BBC News, 2 October 2001; Marlise Simons, “Ninth Man Held in Su- spected Plot against Paris Embassy”, The New York Times (henceforth referred to as NYT) online, 4 October 2001.

50 © Rubbettino tended several London mosques, notably the one where Abu Qatada preached. Trabelsi had had a disappointing career as a professional soccer player in Germany, mainly out of lack of commitment. He stopped playing soccer in 1995, drank heavily, used cocaine and was a small-time drug dealer. He served prison time in 1994 in Düsseldorf for trafficking in cocaine. Out of work and divorced, he fell in with Islamic militants. Through Qatada, intelligence sources say, both Beghal and Trabelsi went to two terrorist training camps in Afghanistan30.

Trabelsi, meanwhile, moved to Brussels and stayed out of sight. There, he put in practice the recruiting and surveillance skills he had learned in Afghanistan. Intelligence sources believe Trabelsi was using the Rotterdam cell as a logistics base for the planned attack on the U.S. embassy in Paris and, possibly, another attack on NATO headquarters in Brussels. In the raid on Trabel- si’s apartment, police recovered an automatic pistol and ammunition, detailed plans of the U.S. embassy in Paris and chemical formulas for bomb making. Po- lice also found 220 pounds of sulphur and 16 gallons of acetone in the basement of a small coffee shop in Brussels. Intelligence sources believe Trabelsi was planning to attack the U.S. embassy by strapping explosives to himself or by blowing himself up in a rigged minibus31 Trabelsi was also in regular contact with the Spanish Salafist cell, dismantled in late September, 200132.

Another associate of Beghal, Kamel Daoudi, a 27 year-old French-Alger- ian, was arrested in Great Britain in September, 2001 and extradited to France in connection with the planned suicide attack on the American Embassy in Paris33. Beghal’s deputy managed to escape to Leicester until the British returned him to France at the end of September. As a young man, Daoudi was an integrated and bright science student until he encountered difficulties with university-level studies. The personal crisis that ensued put him on a spiritual self-examination path and led to the re-discovery of Islam. Daoudi attended a radical mosque in Leicester and was a disciple of Abu Qatada. From May-Au- gust, 2001 he went to train at the Jalalabad training camp34.

30 Chris Hedges, “A Glimpse Behind the Plot against the American Embassy in Paris”, NYT (online), 28 October 2001, pp. 2-3. 31 Hedges, op. cit., p. 3. 32 Bright et al., op. cit., part I, p. 3. 33 “Bin Laden ‘Named’“. 34 Bruce Crumley, “The Boy Next Door”, Time Europe, 12 November 2001, vol. 158, nº 20, pp. 1-2.

© Rubbettino 51 While Beghal was the ideological mentor, Daoudi was the logistics man and an expert in computer sciences. French police found him in possession of an electronic notebook filled with coded Arabic text for Internet use. During his travels in Europe and Asia, he would spend long hours in Internet cafés directing message traffic for the group and he also wired and received significant sums of money35. French officials admit that the 11th September terrorists may have received their final instructions for the plot hidden in e-mail messages or even pictures placed on the Internet. The hijackers and their co- horts may have used several techniques to communicate covertly. Seemingly innocent messages could actually contain “trigger” phrases that helped coordinate the attacks36.

The 36-year-old Tarek Maaroufi is wanted by Italian authorities as a central figure in planning the attack on Strasbourg, which was disrupted after a rare example of coordination between French, German, and Italian police. Maaroufi was also involved in planning an armed attack on the U.S. embassy in Rome, in January, 2001, with a number of Milan-based Tunisians, led by Ben Khemais. In 1998, a Belgian court had found Maaroufi guilty of association, connected to an earlier GIA terrorist action, but the sentence was suspended and he never served time. The arrest of Maaroufi in late 2001 was part of an investigation into theft of Belgian passports from the country’s embassy in The Hague and its consulate in Strasbourg in 1999. The stolen passports were used by two suicide bombers who killed Afghan opposition leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, just two days before the 11th September attacks in the U.S. Three other men of North African origin were detained in Belgium on charges related to Massoud’s killing. British and French police also arrested men accused of helping the killing37.

Tarek Maaroufi was charged with criminal association, forgery and recruiting for a foreign military organisation and sentenced to three years in prison.

35 “France Terror Code ‘Breakthrough’“, BBC News (online), 5 October 2001. 36 Id., p. 2. 37 “Belgium Arrests al-Qaeda Suspect”, BBC News, 19 December, 2001, pp. 1-2.

52 © Rubbettino IV.3. Italy

Italy has a long history of combating domestic and international terrorism. Italy has dismantled numerous terrorist cells, identified and frozen assets belonging to terrorist groups, and thwarted several planned and potential attacks against Italian targets and other Western entities within its borders. The FBI and Italian police worked closely together almost a year before the 11th September attacks to monitor Islamic militants deemed a danger to Ameri- cans. U.S. embassy staff in Rome met police in October, 2000, to coordinate efforts against the militants who Italian investigators believed, were providing logistical support to members of al-Qaeda. The meeting grew out of an earlier one between the then FBI director, Louis Freeh, and the Italian police chief, Gianni de Gennaro, who requested investigative technical support. At the time, de Gennaro expressed his concerns about the existence of a back-up group in Italy38. The scenario of radical Islam in Italy began to unfold in the early 1990s39. At that time, the prayer leader of the Islamic Cultural Institute in Milan, in viale Jenner, was a fiery orator, Anwar Shaaban. Shaaban, an Egyptian was a fierce opponent of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and an active supporter of Jamma al-Islamiya, a militant Egyptian Islamic organisation. Ac- cording to investigators, Islamic radicals converged in the Islamic Cultural In- stitute – a location that was under surveillance months before 11th September by Italian authorities seeking evidence of arms, chemicals, and explosives. The Institute is considered by U.S. authorities the “main ‘station house’ for bin Laden’s network in Europe”40. Shabaan, the former director of the Institute, was investigated by Milan prosecutors before he joined the Bosnian jihad, in 1995, where he was killed. Others who frequented the Islamic Cultural Insti- tute included terrorists associated with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center41 and the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, all of which were perpetrated by al-Qaeda42.

38 Colaprico, op. cit., p. 1. 39 Interview with Prosecutor Stefano Dambruoso, Milan, 2 December 2002. 40 Id., p. 3. The U.S. Treasury Department linked the mosque to bin Laden, alleging that “it is used to facilitate the movement of weapons, men and money across the world”; Tom Hundley, “Mosque Denies Link as Terror Incubator”, The Chicago Tribune (online), 22 October 2001, p. 1 41 Including Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 WTC plot who used Italian aliases, used the Milan mosque as a logistical base, ibid. 42 Melinda Henneberger, “Anger Erupts at Mosque, Site of Raid and Arrests”, NYT (online), 2 December 2001, p. 1.

© Rubbettino 53 The Milan cell was one of al-Qaeda’s busiest logistics operations in Eu- rope before 11th September. A Tunisian-dominated network used Milan as a hub for recruits travelling, via Iran, to training camps in Afghanistan. With connections to cells in Britain, Germany, Belgium, Spain and France, the Mi- lan cell provided services to terrorists passing through43. Information developed by Italian authorities helped to identify suspects in several countries, as well as two organizations already under investigation, the “Tunisian Combat- ant Group” and the “Salafist Group for Call and Combat”. In the winter of 2001, investigators began tapping the phones of Islamic radicals in northern Italy, harvesting information that led them to an apartment in Gallarate, in the periphery of Milan, where the conversations were bugged. Police believe the dweller, Essid ben Khemais (known as “the Sabre”), headed al-Qaeda’s Eu- ropean logistics operations from Milan44.

Ben Khemais was number two to the Egyptian Abdel Kader Mahmoud Es Sayed. The latter was convicted in absentia in Egypt in connection with the 1997 massacre of 58 foreign tourists at Luxor. He had close ties with Ayman al-Za- wahiri, the Egyptian considered bin Laden’s second in command. Before coming to Italy, in 1997, Es Sayed had been to Syria, where he was arrested for belonging to a Palestinian terrorist group. He was released, after having a conversation with a Syrian minister, he told an accomplice, during a conversation group taped by the Italian police45. Police traced his phone calls in Italy to the Hamas Group, the Fatah branch in Lebanon, as well as extremists in Sudan and Syria.

Despite a conviction on terrorism charges in Egypt, the Italian government granted Es Sayed political refugee status. Sayed obtained that status by tolsely stating that he was persecuted in Egypt and that “three of my brothers are in jail”46. He also said, in a bugged conversation held in his car, that he had lied to Italian authorities about a road accident in which his daughter had lost her life, saying that the accident was the handiwork of the Egyptian secret services. Despite the host country’s generosity, Sayed told his interlocutor: “Italy is a terrorist country, a criminal country… The aim of the government

43 Carlo Bonini, “In una lettera l’itinerario segreto: ‘Così arriverai dai fratelli afgani’”, La Repubblica.it, 30 November 2001. 44 Jeff Israely, “The Second Time Around”, Time, vol. 159, nº 9, 4 March 2002, p. 2. 45 “Egiziano sfuggito alla cattura: ‘L’Italia è un paese terrorista’”, La Repubblica.it, 29 No- vember 2001, p. 1. 46 Id., p. 2.

54 © Rubbettino is to make use of Muslims in this country”47. Sayed fled to Afghanistan in Ju- ly, 2001, after Italian police rounded up his accomplices. He is thought to have been killed in early November, 2001, near Kabul, during the American bombing campaign48.

A report by the anti-terrorism prosecutor, Stefano Dambruoso, containing transcripts of conversations of al-Qaeda operatives (published in the Ital- ian and American press in May, 2002), suggests that the Italian cell may have known of the 11th September attacks as early as August, 2000, more than a year in advance of the terror attacks. In one conversation, a suspected Yemeni terrorist, Abdulsalam Ali Abdulrahman, told Sayed, who had just picked him up at Bologna airport, about a massive strike against the enemies of Islam. The planned attack would “be written about in all the newspapers of the world,” he told Sayed as they drove from the airport in a Citröen car on 12th August, 2000: “This is a terrifying thing. This is a thing that will spread from south to north, from east to west. The person who came up with this programme is a madman from a madhouse, a madman but a genius. He is fixat- ed on this programme; it will leave everyone turned to ice,” Abdulrahman said49. “In the future, listen to the news and remember these words: Above the head - remember well, remember well - the danger in the airports. There are clouds in the sky there in international territory, in that country. The fire has been lit and is awaiting only the wind”50.

U.S. officials said they would study the transcripts to decide if they referred to 11th September or to other plots, such as an alleged plan to attack the July, 2001, summit in Genoa with an aircraft51. On 24th January, 2001, police taped a conversation in the Citroen between Es Sayed and Ben Soltane Adel, a Tunisian, later convicted of belonging to a terrorist cell based in Milan. “Will these work for the brothers who are going to the United States?” Adel asked, apparently referring to fake documents. Es Sayed responded angrily, according to the transcript: “Don’t ever say those words again, not even joking!” he said. “If it’s necessary... whatever place we may be, come up and talk in my ear,

47 Ibid. 48 Pino Buongiorno, “La rete di Bin Laden da Torino a Napoli”, Panorama.it, 27 June 2002, p. 2. 49 “Bugs Recorded Chilling 9/11 Talk”, CBSNEWS.com, 29 May 2002, p. 1. 50 Sebastian Rotella and Josh Meyer, “Wiretaps May Have Foretold Terror Attacks”, Los Angeles Times (online), 29 May 2002, p. 1; “Il colpo arriverà dal cielo non lo scorderanno mai più”, La Repubblica.it, 28 May 2002.. 51 “Extremista ‘Planned Genoa Attack on Bush’ “, BBC. News, 27 September 2001.

At the time of the conversation, some of the hijackers had already entered the United States and begun flight training, but others had not. All of them, however, used their real identities, so they would not have necessarily needed fraudulent documents provided by associates in Milan. Another very important conversation, according to the Italian report, took place 12th February 2001. It was a telephone call from Sayed to the telephone of Abdulrahman, the Yemeni, and was answered by a man named Adelwahab: “I heard you had entered America,” Sayed said. “I am sorry, but we were not able to get in,” Abdelwahab responded. “It is our greatest desire and our objective”53. That dialogue could be significant because a suspected accomplice of the hijackers failed to enrol in American flight schools after being rejected for a visa. That suspect, Ramzi Binalshibh, is a Yemeni who remained in Hamburg and allegedly helped finance the plotters from there. But the report does not tie the Milan conversation to Binalshibh. Later in the conversation, the two men also discuss a German-based group, apparently of Islamic extremists, described as “ten men with whom no one can make contact”54.

In January, 2001, Italian authorities worked with U.S. officials to thwart an attack on the U.S. embassy in Rome. Italy’s intelligence services launched an investigation that resulted in the U.S. embassies in Rome and the Vatican City, as well as the American consulates in Naples and Milan being closed to the public: the first such security closure of the Embassy in Rome since the Gulf war in 1991. Italy’s prompt action, combined with heightened defences put into place by police authorities, allowed the embassy to reopen while the Italians pursued the investigation. Authorities learned that ben Khemais also directed the plot aimed at the U.S. embassy in early January, 2001. The Tunisian moved to Milan in March, 1998, after completing two years of training at camps run by bin Laden’s al Qae- da network. He operated from the mosque and from his apartment in Gallarate (Varese Province), half hour’s drive from Milan. Ben Khemais created a small office cleaning business as a cover for his man- ifold activities. The office cleaning business revenues amounted to virtually

52 Marco Mensurati, “Milano, presi i ‘basisti’ islamici”, La Repubblica.it, 12 July 2002, p. 2; Piero Colaprico, “A Milano l’imam-guerrigliero sapeva dell’attacco a New York”, La Re- pubblica.it, 28 May 2002. 53 Marcella Andreoli, “Linea diretta con Osama”, Panorama.it, 6 December 2001, p. 1. 54 Ibid.

56 © Rubbettino nothing, the only real business presumably was money-laundering. The group, uncovered during a raid in April, carried out logistic support activities, and, in Lombardy, offered cover and hospitality for major figures in the world of international Islamic terrorism. Ben Khemais also sent a substantial number of recruits to Afghanistan. Stefano Dambruoso, an investigative magistrate, said: “for the first time, we believe we can determine a direct link between Islamic terrorist cells and training camps in Afghanistan”55. Using false identity papers, they travelled via Switzerland to Pakistan and, from there, to a camp in Khost just across the Afghan border56. “To finance all this, evidence suggests that it is Khemais who takes care of it by means of drug-trafficking, counterfeiting money and documents, recycling dirty money,” the DIGOS report said57. During surveillance of his apartment, police discovered he maintained connections to militant terrorist cells throughout Europe. The Milan cell was itself a part of a larger network, comprising al-Qaeda cells in Germany, Bel- gium, the U.K. and Spain. An associate of ben Kemais, the Libyan Lased ben Heni, known as “the chemist”, said in a bugged conversation: “God loves us because Europe is in our hands.” He added, “Now we are mujaheddin muha- jirun [fighting immigrants]. This is our duty that we have to carry on with hon- or.... We have to be like snakes. We have to strike and then hide” Khemais reportedly affirmed: “Al Qaeda exists from Algeria to the Philippines. They’re everywhere”58.

Ben Khemais was in regular contact with the leader of the Frankfurt cell, Mohammed Bensakhria. According to the Italian court documents, ben Khe- mais and his lieutenant in the Milan cell, Mehdi Khammoun, called Ben- sakhria in Germany, shortly before the Frankfurt raid. Bensakhria (also known as “Meliani) escaped to Spain after the German antiterrorist police raided his hiding place on the night of 25 to 26th December, 2001. Four men were arrested: two Iraqis, one Algerian and a French Muslim59. Bensakhria escaped to the southern city of Alicante where he lived among the poor Muslim community until the Spanish police arrested him in June, 2002. He was subsequently extradited to France. The dismantling of the Frankfurt cell was done just in time. Two plots were foiled after German police smashed the Frankfurt operation in a series of raids.

55 Bright at al., op. cit., p. 6. 56 Sisti, op. cit., p. 3. 57 Finn and Delaney, op. cit., p. 3. 58 Finn and Delaney, op. cit., p. 2. 59 Crumley, “Hate Club”, p. 4.

© Rubbettino 57 In cooperation with members of the al-Qaeda network in Italy, Britain and France, the “Meliani commando” was just about to launch terrorist attacks in Strasbourg, presumably against the synagogue using a chemical product60. Bugs in ben Khemais’s apartment picked up a conversation between the Tunisian and ben Heni, veteran of the Afghan camps: ben Khemais, apparently referring to the Frankfurt raid, said: “They arrested them while they were preparing the gas”61. The Frankfurt arrests led to arrests in Britain and confirmed the suspicions Italian police harboured against the Milan cell. The Frankfurt, Milan and British cells were planning poison gas attacks in Europe. An appalling plan was uncovered in October, 2001: it was to be carried out by Algerians based in London working with counterparts in Milan and Frankfurt and funded directly by bin Laden. The target was the European Parliament, also in Strasbourg. The attack was scheduled to take place during the parliamentary sessions of February and was to be the first in a series of assaults against prominent buildings across Europe62.

There are links among all of the groups, officials said. Members of the Mi- lan-Gallarate cell were in regular contact with al-Qaeda supporters in Lon- don, including Abu Doha, the mastermind behind the foiled Millennium bomb attack on Los Angeles airport. Italian court papers point to his involvement in a prospective attack on the U.S. embassy in Rome in July, 200163. Italian investigators also knew of his involvement in the Strasbourg plot. The investigation began with a tip-off from France pointing to Abu Doha’s connections with the Canadian cell, composed mainly of Algerians.

In another example of the links among the various groups, ben Khemais visited Tarek Maaroufi in Brussels in February, 2000. He called Maaroufi in Bel- gium on a cell phone, after the Frankfurt raid, to warn him that “they have arrested our brothers... half the group.” He told Maaroufi, “You need to cover yourself”64. Khemais had “constant and intense links with Maaroufi,” according to the Italian documents. Italian court papers refer to Maaroufi as one of

60 John Hooper, “German Police Arrest Islamists with UK Links”, The Guardian.Unli- mited, 24 April 2002, p. 1. 61 Finn and Delaney, op. cit., p. 3. 62 David Bamber, Chris Hastings and Rajeev Syal, “Bin Laden British Cell Planned Gas Attack on European Parliament”, Electronic Telegraph, 16 October 2001, p. 1. 63 Liana Milella, “Allarme ambasciata U.S. a caccia al commando algerino”, La Reppubli- ca.it, 8 January 2001. 64 Finn and Delayney, op. cit., p. 3.

58 © Rubbettino the “spiritual heads of the Salafist Group with a basic function of indoctri- nating recruits”65. Ben Khemais was in frequent touch with ben Heni, a 32-year-old Tunisian carrying a Libyan passport. Ben Heni was arrested in Germany in October, 2001, and extradited to Italy in November. He was accused by Italian prosecutors of being the liaison officer between two terrorist cells owing allegiance to al-Qaeda in Frankfurt and Milan. He was charged with trafficking in arms, explosives and chemical weapons, receiving stolen goods, using false documents and assisting illegal immigration into Italy. Like other al-Qaeda operatives, ben Heni received his training in Afghanistan. He lived in southern Ger- many and supplied the Italian cell with forged documents and was their contact in Germany.

Prosecutors say they have recorded conversations in which he discussed the possibility of using a chemical device for an attack on France. The liquid could be stored in tomato tins and would suffocate its victims when opened, he allegedly told Khemais in a conversation intercepted by Italian police.

It is alleged that the intercepts of ben Heni’s conversation appear to indicate that he was anticipating a major event before the 11th September attacks on America66. It was only after 11th September that investigators realised that ben Heni might have had advance knowledge of a major terrorist attack against the United States. In some of their conversations, ben Khemais and ben Heni openly referred to al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, who is known among al-Qaeda brothers as the “Sheikh”: “Believe me, the sheikh is not just watching. He is planning something because in his wishes he has a goal and he wants to achieve it…”67. While living inconspicuously on social welfare in Munich, ben Heni was extremely well informed about what was going on in al-Qaeda’s inner circle. He was arrested on 10th October, 2001, months after the Frankfurt and Milan cells had been exposed. One and a half months later, he was extradited to Italy. Ben Khemais also visited and phoned suspected terrorists in Spain. The police in Spain suspect that he may have met there, in April, 2001, with two men believed to have met Mohamed Atta, a mastermind of the 11th Septem- ber hijackings, when he travelled to Spain in July of the same year68.

65 Crumley, op. cit., p. 4. 66 Philip Wilan, “Al-Qaida Suspect on Trial in Italy”, GuardianUnlimited, 4 July 2002. 67 John Tagliabue, “Italian Tapes Portray Young Arabs Operating on the Edges of Islamic Terror”, NYT (online), 29 October 2001. 68 Ibid.

© Rubbettino 59 In the weeks following the 11th September attacks, Italian law-enforcement officials intensified their efforts to track and arrest individuals they suspected having ties to al-Qaeda and other extremist groups. In February, 2000, ben Khemais was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison. Three other Tunisians, who were on trial with him, received sentences of up to five years from the Italian court69. On 10th October they arrested several extremists connected to Ben Khemais and who are members of the “Salafist Group for Predication and Combat”, a “lethal” terrorist group with a strong presence in Italy70.

In mid-and late November, Italian officials raided the Islamic Cultural In- stitute in Milan and the mosque in Via Quaranta. They conducted a number of searches in other northern Italian cities, like Venice, Bergamo, Aosta, Ver- celli and Pavia. Police arrested Islamic extremists having possible ties to al- Qaeda. Italian police said they were part of a logistical cell that trafficked in arms, explosives and chemical weapons and provided false documents to al- Qaeda terrorists. They were engaged in clandestine immigration and recruiting fighters for Afghanistan.

Abdel Halim Hased Remadna, an Algerian who had been arrested earlier, as he was trying to leave the city by train, is considered by U.S. authorities a senior al-Qaeda member. He spoke directly by mobile phone to Abu Jaafar Mohamed Atef, the nº 3 leader in the bin Laden’s organisation, about sending new recruits to training camps. Remadna worked as a volunteer, assisting the imam of the viale Jenner mosque, Abdel Hamid Shaari. Wiretapes of the conversations between Remadna and bin Laden operatives in Afghanistan revealed codes the latter used to indicate they needed new fighters for the jihad: “We need arms and instructors. We have opened new gymnasiums”71. Yassine Chekkouri, a Moroccan, also worked at Milan’s Islamic Cultural Center as a librarian. A Treasury Department statement issued 29th August, 2002, named him as “one of the highest” men within al-Qaeda72. Nabil Be-

69 They were: Belgacem Mohamed Ben Aouadi, Bouchoucha Mokhta and Charabi Tarek. 70 See Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, “The United States and Italy Designate Twenty- Five New Financiers of Terror”, 29 August 2002. 71 “Milano, caccia ai terroristi perquisiti gli istituti islamici”, La Repubblica.it, 29 Novem- ber 2001, p. 2 72 O’Neill, op. cit., p. 2. He is defined by La Stampa as “the real European chief of alQae- da”, see “Ecco la rete dell’Al Qaeda d’Italia”, 3 December 2001, p. 1.

60 © Rubbettino nattia, a Tunisian citizen was accused of producing and providing false passports for the Milan cell73.

In February 2002, police in Rome arrested four Moroccans who reportedly had maps showing the city water supply, the U.S. Embassy and a sub- stance apparently containing a small quantity of cyanide74. One of the men is believed to be have been in touch with the ben Khemais cell in Milan before it was dismantled.

According to an Italian press report, authorities also obtained evidence to suggest that the terrorist cell was contemplating using poison gas. In wire- tapped telephone conversations, revealed in the Milan inquiry, ben Khemais talked of using chemical substances in terrorist attacks in conversations with ben Heni. Subsequently, experts came to the conclusion that the cyanide com- pound found in the flat of the Moroccans may have been meant as an ingre- dient in a bomb designed to go off in a closed, busy place, such as an underground station75.

According to a DIGOS report of March, 2001, the Salafist cell in Italy was organising a plan to bomb the U.S. embassy in Rome, a church in Venice and St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome. Details of the plan included intelligence provided by Britain. They reveal that the cell was led by Khalifa Mohammad Moussa, known as “Mohammed the Libyan”, and that it included a Tunisian and a Pakistani with a valid employment permit. Members of the cell carried out reconnaissance visits of the possible targets, including an unnamed Venet- ian church frequented by Americans. The Libyan was seen taking pictures of the church in May, 2001. During a meeting with fellow terrorists, which the Italian police bugged, he made it plain that he favoured an attack on St. Pe- ter’s Square, where a big massacre would be feasible. The plan was frozen two months before the 11th September attacks on orders from superiors, among whom ranked a certain “Omar of London”76.

73 “False fatturazioni per finaziare la Jihad”, La Repubblica.it, 3 December 2001, p. 2. 74 “Four Tunisians Sentenced in Milan”, 22 February ASAP. 75 Bruce Johnston, “Rome Fears of ‘Chemical Bomb’”, 22 February 2002, Telegrah, p. 1. 76 Bruce Johnston, “Al-Qaeda ‘Aimed to Massacre Vatican Pilgrims’”, 11 July 2002, Tele- graph, p. 1.

Muslim extremist groups have taken advantage of Germany’s favourable immigration rules, large Muslim population and fierce-information protection laws. The Germans’ ability to detect terrorist activity on their soil was largely hampered by laws that restrict security service surveillance and coordination between the different Länder77. Hamburg, a city on the North Sea, served as a central base of operations for the 11th September attacks. Following the attacks, Germany rushed to craft some of the continent’s strongest counterter- ror laws.

On 12 December, Germany banned a network of radical Islamic groups centred on the Cologne-based Kaplan or Caliphate organization. The Caliphate was the first organisation to be affected by a change in German law on religious associations, brought in as part of a package of anti-terrorist security measures, abolishing privileges enjoyed by religious organisations. The Caliphate had been under surveillance by the domestic German intelligence service since its foundation in 1984 because of its antidemocratic and anti-Se- mitic agitation. The organisation’s goals are to unite the Muslims living in Eu- rope under one roof and to struggle against all the democratic systems and the Western culture. Its main ambition is to establish a federal Islamic state in Anatolia, Turkey78.

The leader of the group, Metin Kaplan, is serving a jail term for calling for the murder of a rival religious leader. He is widely known in Germany as the “Caliph of Cologne.” Kaplan had issued a fatwa calling for the murder of a rival in Berlin. During his trial, he emerged as the leader of a sect of about 1, 500 Turks in Germany who followed Islamic sharia law, sent money to help Muslim fighters in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya and conducted regular military exercises79. It was the Hamburg terrorist cell that plotted the terrorist attacks against the United States and it included three of the 11th September hijackers.

77 Rohan Gunaratna, Inside al Qaeda, London, Hurst & Company, 2002, p. 129. 78 The ban also covers the Kaplan associated foundation, “Servants of Islam” and 19 other subsidiary groups with a total of approximately 1,100 members; “Germany Bans Extreme Islamic Caliphate”, The Times of India, 13 December 2001, pp. 1-2 (http://www.hvk.org/articles/1201/93.html). 79 Douglas Frantz, Terror Plan Born in Germany and Aimed at Turkey Gets New Scruti- ny”, NYT (online), 5 February 20002, p. 2.

62 © Rubbettino Muhammed Atta, the ringleader of the group, arrived first from Egypt in 1992 and enrolled in an urban planning programme at the Technical University of Hamburg. Ziad Samir Jarrah arrived in Germany from Lebanon in 1997. A Sunni Muslim from a well-known Lebanese family, Jarrah studied aircraft en- gineering at Hamburg’s college of Applied Sciences. Marwan al-Shehhi moved to Germany from the United Arab Emirates that same year.

Investigators think that most of the plotters came to Germany with no plans to become terrorists. They have identified two men who played a pivotal role in hardening the Islamic fundamentalism of the Hamburg students. One of them is Mohamed Haydar Zammar, a veteran of al-Qaeda’s training camps in Afghanistan and of the war in Bosnia80. The other extremist influence, at the Hamburg al-Quds mosque, was a radical imam called al-Fazazi. German investigators learned he was teaching hatred of Jews and Christians when they confiscated videos of his preachings.

By November 1998, Atta had moved out of university housing and into an apartment he and his two roommates called the “House of Followers”, the same name as an apartment in Peshawar, where bin Laden once lived. Room- ing with Atta was Said Bahaji, a German of Moroccan origin, who fled to Pak- istan one week before the 11th September attacks. The third roommate was Yemeni, Ramzi Binalshibh, whom investigators call the “honeybee” of the cell. They have traced his travels to England, Spain, Yemen, Afghanistan and Malaysia to prepare for the attacks81. In December 1999, the three pilots travelled with Binalshibh to Afghanistan to train at al-Qaeda camps. When they returned, they started arranging flying lessons in the United States. They reported their passports lost to erase any suspicious visas and received U.S. visas.

Between May and August 2000, Binalshibh applied four times for a U.S. visa and each time his request was denied. A warrant was issued for his arrest in September, 2001. In a documentary aired by the Arabic television network al-Jazeera, Binalshibh describes himself as the “coordinator of the 11th Sep-

80 He left Hamburg to Morocco in late October 2001. There, he was arrested, interrogated and then expelled to Syria, his birthplace, where he is being held in jail; Steven Erlanger, “Germans Say Figure Linked to Sept. 11 is in Syrian Jail”, NYT (online), 18 June 2002, pp. 1-2. 81 Daniel Rubin and Michael Dorgan, “Terrorists’Plots Years in the Making”, 10 Sep- tember 2002 (http://www.pressdemocrat.com/services/agreement/html), p. 4.

© Rubbettino 63 tember operation”82. Binalshibh was arrested in Karachi, Pakistan on 11th Sep- tember, 2002, and taken out of the country by U.S. authorities. His capture came just days after a journalist with al-Jazeera said he interviewed the Yemeni in or around Karachi.

While in U.S. custody, Binalshibh has linked Moussaoui to the 11th Sep- tember plot. After Binalshibh’s third failed attempt to gain a visa, in Septem- ber 2000, Moussaoui began making enquiries about attending flight school in the United States. In December, Binalshibh flew to London, while Moussaoui was there. Moussaoui departed London for Pakistan on 7 February and met Khalid Sheikh Mohamed in Afghanistan. Mohamed, al-Qaeda’s “director of operations”, was the mastermind of the 11th September plot and allegedly spent two years planning the terror attacks. He provided Moussaoui with contacts in the United States. In Karachi, Binalshibh gave him an e-mail address and wired him money to advance the plot83.

In February 2001, Moussaoui flew from London to the United States and enrolled in a flight school in Norman, Oklahoma. Binalshibh wired money to Moussaoui and also to Marwan al-Shehhi and to an unspecified flight school in Florida. Binalshibh told American investigators that he met with Moussaoui in Karachi again in June 200184. Binalshibh also told investigators of an aborted plot planned for the same period at London’s Heathrow Airport, also allegedly coordinated by Mo- hamed85.

On 28 November, German police arrested Mounir El Motassadeq, a 27- year old Moroccan, at his Hamburg apartment on charges he controlled an account used to bankroll several of the 11th September hijackers and had “in- tensive contacts” with the terrorist cell. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office stated that El Motassadeq had close contact over a period of years with several members of the Hamburg cell, including Atta and was a logistician of the cell. He had power of attorney over hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi’s bank account, according to the statement86.

82 “Al-Jazeera Offers Accounts of 9/11 Planning”, CNN.com, 12 September 2002, p. 1. 83 Tom Jackman, “U.S. Says Card Links Moussaoui, Hijackers”, WP (online), 25 Sep- tember 2002, p. 1. 84 Susan Schmidt, “Moussaoui Linked to Plot”, WP (online), 20 November 2002, p. 2. 85 Id., pp. 1-2. 86 “Germany Says Al-Qaida Planned Attack in 2000”, AP, 29 August 2002.

64 © Rubbettino In August 2002, Germany banned the Palestinian charity “Al-Aqsa”, which was accused of having close ties to Islamic group, Hamas, and of sup- porting the family of suicide bombers in Israel87. In September, police work disrupted a militant Islamic group that was plotting attacks on Jewish and Is- raeli targets throughout the country. The Palestinian-Jordanian group was drafting first plans for such strikes to coincide with the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks in the United States88.

IV.5. Spain

Spain has been a major focal point of the international investigation launched after the 11th September terrorist attacks on the U.S. Spain currently holds 21 suspected Islamic terrorists. Since 11th September several other suspects have been arrested but later released and not charged89. From the investigation, it has emerged that Spain was a natural meeting point for Islamic militants from all over the world, as well as a recruiting ground and a strategic zone for laundering money and recycling identities. Spanish police broke up two al-Qaeda-affiliated cells, arresting six members in late September and eight in November. The six men, allegedly members of the bin Laden-backed GSPC, constituted, in the words of Spain’s national police chief, Juan Cotino, a “sleeper unit”90. He described the group as a support unit for other cells linked to bin Laden across Europe, providing forged documents, passports and credit cards. The group, believed to have been formed between 1994-95, was also used as a base camp for Islamic fighters operating in Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan91. Among those arrested in Cascante, a small town in northern Navarre, was 26-year-old, Mohamed Be- laziz, who shared his flat with other Algerian migrant workers. Among his pos- sessions, seized by police, was a diary with a list of contacts in Britain, Ireland, Rome and Frankfurt. The jottings in his diary showed him to be depressed and ready to engage in an act of martyrdom in the name of Islam.

87 “Germany Bans Palestinian Charity for Alleged Hamas Link”, The Muslim News (online), 5 August 2002, p. 1. 88 Marl Landler, “Germany Says April Arrests Thwarted Attacks on Jews”, NYT (online), 5 September 2002, p. 1. 89 Al Goodman, “Al Qaeda Suspect Videotaped WTC”, CNN.com, 20 July 2002, p. 1. 90 Bright at al., op. cit., part I, p. 3. 91 “Al-Qaida Cell in Spain Charged with Aiding September 11 Attacks”, 19 November 2001 (http://www.ict.org/spotlight/det.cfm?id=708).

© Rubbettino 65 Belaziz is believed to have been the right-hand man of Madjid Sahouane, owner of an Islamic “halal” butchery in nearby Pamplona. Sahouane, an inconspicuous citizen, however, was often away, supposedly to buy produce in Spain and in France. Police suspect he was often away on other business, following the instructions of the Salafist cell’s leader, Mohamed Boualem Khnouni, alias “Abdallah”.

Khnouni’s operations were based in the eastern Spanish town of l’Alcud- ia de Crespins. Like most of those arrested, he lived the life of an immigrant labourer, changing jobs and never appearing to be wealthy. Spanish police had been watching him for nearly two years. He had moved into an apartment that had previously belonged to suspected members of the GIA, which, in turn, is close to the Salafists. Police arrested him at the insistence of the Belgian investigating magistrate dealing with Nizar Trabelsi. Trabelsi, the judge said, had travelled to Spain in July for meetings with the Salafists. The Spanish cell had also been in contact with another potentially lethal bin Laden cell based in Frankfurt: the so-called “Meliani” cell. The leader, Bensakhria, was arrested in Alicante. He was arrested on a French warrant that had been issued after he escaped German police who had been poised to arrest him, along with other members of his commando cell, in December, 2000, in Frankfurt. Bensakhria was described at the time as “one of the most wanted men pursued by Western security services”92. While in Alicante he masqueraded as a poor immigrant and used two aliases, “Mohamed Ben Ais- sa” and the name of the terrorist cell, “Meliani”93.

In November, Spanish police launched “Operation Dátil”, arresting eight alleged members of an al-Qaeda cell during a raid in Madrid and Granada. They were among 11 men with Tunisian, Algerian and Syrian backgrounds. Three of them were subsequently released. Investigative judge, Baltasar Garzón, said the men “were directly related to the preparation and development of the attacks perpetrated by the suicide pilots on September 11”94. It was the most direct connection yet between the attacks and a terrorist cell. Prime Minister José Maria Aznar said that Madrid’s eight-man cell was “working under the orders of bin Laden’s No. 2.” He was referring to the Palestin-

92Al Goodman, Peter Humi and Kelli Arena, “Bin Laden Associate Arrested in Spain”, CNN.com, 22 June 2001, p. 1. 93 Ibid. 94 Peter Finn and Pamela Rolfe, “Spain Holds 8 Linked to Sept. 11 Plot,” WP (online), 19 November 2001, p. 1.

66 © Rubbettino ian-born Anwar Adnan Mohamed Saleh, also known as “Chej Salah” or “Abu Saleh”, who started the cell in Madrid in 1994.

Within the Abu Baker mosque in Madrid, he and his deputy, Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, tried to impose a hardline version of Islam and to oust the moderate Syrian imam of the mosque95. They founded an organization, the “Islamic Alliance”, whose radical core later formed “The Soldiers of Allah”. Salah left Madrid in 1995 and went to Peshawar in Pakistan, where he played a prominent role in the terrorist training network. He worked closely with Abu Zubaydah, a Saudi-born Palestinian who was one of bin Laden’s most trusted aides and the supposed Al-Qaeda’s “director of operations”96. The charges against the eight men were based on documents and intercepted telephone conversations of one of the arrested men, Yarkas, a Spanish citizen of Syrian origin, and the leader of the al-Qaeda cell. Yarkas lived with his Spanish wife, a Muslim convert, and their four children in a leafy middle- class neighbourhood on the southern fringe of Madrid. A discrete man, Yarkas, known to his comrades as “Abu Dahdah”, was reportedly well liked by his neighbours.

Along with the other seven, Yarkas was accused of belonging to a terrorist organization, of recruiting people to al-Qaeda terrorist training camps and sending them to fight in Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan. They were also charged with providing false identification for the recruits, along with document falsification, robbery and weapons possession97. In the raids, police seized computer material, videos of Islamic guerrilla activities, hunting rifles, swords, false identity documents and a substantial quantity of money98.

Interestingly, six of the eight men under indictment hail from Aleppo, the ancient Syrian city about which Mohamed Atta wrote his urban planning dis- sertation, while in the University of Hamburg, and which he visited at least once, in 1994-95. One of the suspects detained by the authorities was Yusuf

95 José Maria Irujo, “Las piezas españolas de la trama Al Qaeda”, S.P.P.U., from El País, 9 September 2002 (http://www.sppu.com/hemeroteca/200209/noticias/pagina4_090902.htm), p. 1. 96 See Juzgado Central de Instrucción, Número 5, Audiencia Nacional, Madrid, Sumario 35/01, Integracion en organizacion, Auto de procesamiento, 18 November 2001 (at http://www.elpais.es/temas/textos/qaeda/qaeda.html). 97 “Spanish Police Hold Bin Laden Suspects,” BBC News (online),13 November, 2001. 98 “Spanish ‘Evidence’ of Terror Guilt”, BBC News (online), 19 November 2001, p. 2.

© Rubbettino 67 Galán, a Spanish citizen from a wealthy family, who converted to Islam, becoming a radical. In July 2001, Gálan had gone to Indonesia to train with Lashkar Jihad, an al-Qaeda affiliated group99. Under his former name of Luis José Galán Gonzalez, he had been active in Herri Batasuna, the political wing of the Basque terrorist group, ETA100. This could possibly constitute a tie between al-Qaeda and non-Islamic terrorist organizations. The seventh detainee was a Moroccan citizen. Yarkas and his co-conspirators were constantly on the move to send recruits and, when possible, money to support al-Qaeda. He started his recruiting activities in the Madrid Tetuán neighbourhood, sending the candidates to Peshawar from where they were directed to camps in Afghanistan101. Some of the cell members allegedly made fraudulent use of credit cards, stolen in Britain102.

In court papers, judge Garzón presents a detailed picture of Yarkas’ contacts with militant Islamists in other parts of Europe, including Britain (to which he made more than 20 visits), Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, but also Turkey, In- donesia, Malaysia, Jordan and Yemen. His calls were traced to Germany, In- donesia, Australia, and Afghanistan. His list of travels and contacts was too extensive for a modest used car dealer. According to Yarkas’s wife, the couple and their four children were frequent visitors of Abu Qatada’s house in London103.

There is evidence linking Yarkas to the 11th September attacks. Yarka’s name and phone number was found by German investigators searching the Hamburg apartment once occupied by Atta. They found Yarkas’ former Madrid telephone number in a notebook belonging to Atta’s roommate, the fugitive Said Bahaji104.

The Spanish indictment also reports that Yarkas held a series of phone conversations in code with a bin Laden operative known as “Shakur”, a man whose full name is not known but who is believed to have been in London and probably was one of the suicide hijackers105. Their cryptic conversations cir- cumstantially reveal discussion of the 11th September attacks, both before

99 James Graff, “Bust in Madrid”, Time International, vol. 158, nº 22, 3 December 2001, p. 4. 100 “Spanish Police”. 101 Irujo, op. cit., p. 2. 102 Ibid.; Graff, op. cit., p. 3. 103 Irujo, op. cit., p. 3. 104 Graff, op. cit., p. 3. 105 Michael Martinez, “Pile of Evidence Slows Probe in Spain”, 1 December 2001.

68 © Rubbettino and after they occurred. The code language used in their calls was described, in an arrest warrant, as “authentic premonition of the ensuing events” of 11th September. “Shakur” indicated that bin Laden operatives were studying U.S. flight schedules in preparation for the attacks when he said on 27th August, 2001: “in class, we have gone into the field of aviation.” He added that “we have even slit the bird’s throat,” in a reference investigators interpret as mean- ing the eagle, a U.S. symbol. The Madrid cell had links to Mamoun Darkazanli, a Syrian-born busi- nessman in Hamburg, described by Spanish police as “belonging to the most intimate circle of Mohamed Atta”106. The alleged link between al-Qaeda operatives in Spain and Germany could provide a major break in understanding how the September attacks were planned and carried out. The suspected leader of the hijackers, Mohamed Atta, visited Spain in January and July, 2001, after he had moved from Hamburg to the United States. It is now believed that on those trips he met with some of the Spanish cell. Investigators say “he might have been in Spain to pass instructions to al-Qa’eda members after the arrest in Alicante a few weeks before of Mohammed Bensakhria…”107.

In April, Spanish Interior Minister, Mariano Rajoy, laid out a detailed case against a “network of businesses that devoted part of their profits to al-Qai- da.” The suspect, Ghasoub Al-Abrash Ghalyoun, and Syrian-born Spaniard, Muhamed Galeb Kalaje Zouaydi (also known as “Abu Talha”) sent some 700, 000 to Islamic radicals linked to bin Laden in the United States, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, China, Turkey, Jordan, Syria, and the Palestinian territories. Zouaydi was an associate of Ghalyoun in the construction business. Spanish police described Abu Talha as a “major al-Qaida financial figure.” U.S. authorities think he is linked to al-Qaeda members throughout Western Europe, including some members of the Hamburg cell. He used construction and real es- tate companies in Spain to generate funds for al-Qaeda, including Mohamed At- ta. They believe both men operated with Bassam Dalati Satut, who had been arrested in Spain in November, 2001108. Ghalyoun was let go due to insufficient evidence to support the charges.

106 Jerome Socolovsky, “Spanish Police Detain Second Muslim”, CNews (online), 24 April 2002, p. 1. 107 Isambard Wilkinson and Toby Helm, “Hunt for Five Linked to Spanish Network”, Electronic Telegraph (online), 20 November 2001, p. 1. 108 “La Policía detiene en Madrid al responsable de la estructura empresarial que finan- ciaba la red de Ben Laden en varios países del mundo”, Ministerio del Interior, Madrid, 24 April 2002 (http://www.mir.es/oris/notapres/year02/np042403.htm); Ramón Tijeras and Carlos Mi- ralles, “El albañil de Alá”, Cronica El Mundo, nº 341, 28 April 2002.

© Rubbettino 69 In July, 2002, Spanish police took into custody three Syrians, suspected of al- Qaeda connections, including one who had five tapes recording images of buildings, installations and monuments, some of which became al-Qaeda targets on 11th September. The interior minister named the three men as Ghalyoun, Ab- dalrahman Alarnaot Abu-Aljer (alias “Abu Obed”), and Mohamed Khair al-Saqq (alias “Abu Alarda”). The first two, both naturalised Spaniards, were arrested in Madrid. Ghalyoun had been arrested in April on charges of channelling profits to al-Qaeda organisations. Abu-Aljer was recruited by Yarkas and sent to an al- Qaeda training camp in Bosnia that provided radical Islamic fighters in the 1992- 95 Bosnian war. He was linked to Mohamed Setmarian Nasar, a key al-Qaeda operative, who ran another training camp in Afghanistan. Nasar lived in Spain until 1995 when he moved to London. Al-Saqq, arrested in the eastern city of Castellón, was said to be involved in fund-raising for the Spanish cell. He had a close relationship with Imad Yarkas, the leader of the “Soldiers of Allah”109. Police described both Ghalyoun and al-Saqq as members of Syria’s extremist Muslim Brothers group. The Syrian branch of this transnational group was brutally crushed by that country’s late president, Hafez al-Assad, in a 1982 armed assault that killed tens of thousands of civilians. The arrests followed the detention in April of a 57-year-old Algerian man, Ahmed Brahim, suspected of being an accountant for al-Qaeda in Spain. He is alleged to have been a leading planner of the bomb attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August, 1998. The Spanish Interior minister said Brahim had a “close relationship” with Mamdouh Mahmud Salim (alias “Abu Hajer”), whom he described as the “financial brain” of al-Qaeda110. Salim was arrested in Germany in 1998. He was extradited to the United States where he is in prison awaiting trial for his role in the African embassies bombings111.

The arrest was the fruit of some months of investigation and the collabora- tion of police from several countries, including the United States, France and Germany. Salim’s business included trading in the stock market and buying and selling sports boats and computer equipment. Spanish officials said he had recently sent money to some European countries and computer equipment to a

109 Tim Golden, “Spain Arrests 3 Suspects; Tapes of U.S. Sites Seized”, 17 July 2002 (from www.nyt.com; available at http://www.marcosbillions.com/marcos/Y2002/July/17%20spain_ar- rests_3_suspects.ht.ht). 110 “Spain Holds al-Qaeda Finance Suspect”, BBC News (online), 14 April 2002, p. 1. 111 Ibid.

70 © Rubbettino number of Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia. Spanish police had detected of late his transfer of large sums of money out of Spain and suspected that he was liquidating assets in order to flee112.

Judge Baltasar Garzón said one of the men had shot video tapes of U.S. land- marks, recording images of buildings, installations and monuments “that could have been preliminary information for attacks on the World Trade Center Tow- ers.” Authorities said they were convinced the footage, taken during a 1997 visit to the United States by Ghalyoun was too elaborate to have been done out of “touristic curiosity.” The police statement noted: “… two of the tapes are like a documentary study, with innumerable takes from all distances and angles of the Twin Towers in New York. The five tapes also contained plenty of images of the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, and also the Golden Gate Bridge, “whose suspension pillar is given substantial attention.” Shots show interior and exterior areas of a New York airport, as well as Chicago’s Sears Tow- er, and the Disneyland and Universal Studios theme parks in southern California.

Police believe Ghalyoun passed the videos on to al-Qaeda’s leadership in Afghanistan through a series of Abu Dahdah’s acquaintances. While shooting the images, al-Ghalyoun said he intended to show the images to his “brothers” in Castellón and, in particular, to al- Saqq. Four months later, Mohammed Bahaiah, who has been described as bin Laden’s courier between Afghanistan and Europe, arrived in Madrid. Bahaiah, known as “Abu Khaled”, had previously lived in the Canary Islands. He told Abu Dahdah that he would go to Castellón to meet al Saqq because he had “something to pick up there”113. Police believe Bahaiah passed the tapes along to al-Qaeda leaders preparing for the 11th September at- tacks114.

IV.6. The Netherlands

The Netherlands has become an important centre of Al-Qaeda activity. There is growing evidence of militant Islamic activities in the Netherlands,

112 VOA News Report at http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2002/04/mil- 020414-3c9982eb.htm; Carmen del Riego and Jordi Barbeta, “Cae el financiero de Al Qaeda en Europa”, La Vanguardia (online), 15 April 2002, p. 1. 113 Irujo, op. cit., p. 4. 114 Ghalyoun and al-Saqq were freed on bail in late September 2002. Abu-Aljer, remained in custody: “Al Qaeda Suspects Freed on Bail in Spain”, Associated Press, 25 September 2002, p. 1.

© Rubbettino 71 which may be used as a base for terrorist activity. In December, 2001, two young men from Eindhoven were killed by the Indian police in Kashmir. In- dian police said they were preparing suicide attacks.

In the aftermath of the 11th September attacks, police arrested two Al- gerians and a Frenchman, whom prosecutors are linking to a plot to attack an American embassy in Paris and a munitions depot in the American airbase of Kleine Brogel in Belgium, near the Dutch border. Algerian Mohamed Berk- ous and Frenchman Jerome Courtailler were detained with Saaid Ibrahim, a Dutchman of Ethiopian origin115 two days after the 11th September attacks in a Europe-wide sweep of groups suspected of links to al-Qaeda.

Jerôme, born of solid French stock, is the son of a butcher in the quiet town of Bonneville, in the Alps region. As youngsters, Jerôme and his brother, David, slid into alcohol and drug abuse. Drifting to England, looking for a job and for a new life, they converted to Islam and were recruited to go to Afghanistan. French police say that the brothers stayed at Moussaoui’s Brix- ton flat before they went to the training camps in Afghanistan. David returned home and was arrested by the French security service for involvement with terrorist activity in connection with the Kenya bombing116. Jerôme became an active al-Qaeda agent in the Netherlands.

In July, 2002, Canada extradited, to the Netherlands, Algerian Abdel To- bbicchi, 34, aka Amine Mezbar, who allegedly altered passports and other documents, to allow members of the embassy-conspiracy cell to travel throughout Europe. Tobbichi’s fingerprints were found at four sites where passports were stolen in the Netherlands in 1997 and 1999, according to the arrest warrant given to the Canadians. Tobbichi lived in Rotterdam with Cour- tailler, and Algerian, Adbelghani Rabia. Wiretaps cited in Tobbichi’s warrant linked Courtailler and Berkous to Trabelsi’s plan to attack the U.S. embassy in Paris. A search of their residence in Rotterdam produced false passports and bin Laden videos. The Rotterdam cell reportedly provided the stolen Belgian passports used in the assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the commander of the Afghan

115 He was released afterwards due to insufficient evidence. 116 Antony Barnett, Martin Bright and Nick Paton Walsh, “UK Students ‘Key Terror Ro- le’“, The Observer (online), 28 October 2001, pp. 1-2; Sebastian Rotella and David Zucchino, “In Paris, a Frightening Look at Terror’s Inconspicuous Face”, LA Times, 21 October, 2001, pp. 5-6.

72 © Rubbettino resistance in northern Afghanistan. Passing as journalists, the pair detonated a bomb packed inside a video camera, killing themselves and Massoud. The two assassins – Karim Touzani, 34, and Kacem Bakkali, 26 – seem to have received crucial help from a militant Islamic network in London.

At the centre of the London connection is Yasser al-Sirri, 39, an Egyptian militant, who was sentenced to death in absentia for his alleged involvement in a 1993 attempt by the Islamic Jihad to assassinate the Egyptian prime minister. Al-Sirri fled to London and now runs the Islamic Observation Center, which he says is a human rights group that disseminates information about Is- lamic causes worldwide. Al-Sirri provided Massoud’s killers with an introduction letter on his organisation’s stationery, which helped them to obtain press accreditation in Pakistan and Afghanistan117.

A second case involves four Algerians, believed to be members of the SG- PC. They were arrested in April and May and have also been charged with recruitment and offering material support to foment terrorism118.

On 3rd September, 2002, Dutch prosecutors charged eight men with helping to recruit, house and finance fighters for al-Qaeda. Investigators believe the group provided financial and logistical services to al-Qaeda and recruited young male persons for the jihad119.

117 Mohamad Bazzi, “The London Connection in the Plot that Killed Ahmed Shah Masood”, The Indian Express, 10 October, 2001 (at http://www.hvk.org/hvk/articles/1001/75.html). 118 Marlise Simons, “Dutch Charge 8 Men with Aiding Al Qaeda”, NYT (online), 3 Sep- tember, 2002. 119 Anthony Deutsch, “Dutch Round Up 8 Suspects”, The San Francisco Examiner, 3 Sep- tember, 2002, p. 1.

V.1. Al-Qaeda’s European Infrastructure after 11th September

Since the September 11th terrorist attacks, police and prosecutors in Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, Germany and Spain have made scores of arrests and uncovered what they suspect is a large and interconnected network of Muslim terrorists. America may be the primary target of Islamist terrorism, but Europe has proved to be the breeding ground of the networks.

Senior European officials dealing with terrorism fear that al-Qaeda’s support network remains largely intact. They say that recent investigations have uncovered surprisingly well-established networks of Muslim militants with potential to commit terrorist acts and affiliations that stretch across Europe to operatives in North America, the Middle East and Central Asia. Officials are concerned that Europe is increasingly vulnerable. An October, 2002, audio broadcast by al-Zawahiri on al Jazeera, the Qatar-based TV channel, specifically linked al-Qaeda to the April, 2002, attack that killed German tourists visiting a synagogue in the Tunisian island of Djerba and the May suicide bomb in Karachi that killed 11 French engineers. Al-Zawahiri’s statement was read as a threat to specific European countries: “the young holy warriors that have already sent messages to Germany and France”, he said. “However, if these doses are not enough, we are prepared with the help of God to increase the dosage”1.

Intelligence experts believe Europe is a key destination for many of the 11,000 men, according to FBI estimates, who have passed through al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan2. They say that teams of trained Islamic ex-

1 Elaine Sciolino and Desmond Butler, “Europeans Fear that the Threat from Radical Is- lamists is Increasing”, NYT (online), 8 December, 2002, p. 2. 2 Crumley, op. cit., p. 2.

© Rubbettino 75 tremists who escaped the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, are hiding in Europe and could hit at the moment of their Choice. Members are highly mobile, travelling throughout Europe with false papers and contacting other cells’ members. These extremists were trained to be financially independent and to use false papers to travel inside Europe. They subsist, thanks to delinquency, theft, credit card fraud, or even by selling fake designer clothing. These extremists, living seemingly normal lives in Western countries, could strike at any moment. According to Gunaratna, a leading expert on al-Qaeda, “as of early 2002, international security and intelligence agencies estimate there to be at least 300 active Islamist members in Europe”. His conclusion is that “al Qaeda has more than enough operatives ready for activation in Europe”3.

V.2. Islamic Communities in Europe: A Breeding Ground of Terrorists?

Islam today is the fastest growing religion in Europe and nearly 20 million inhabitants of the EU are self-avowedly Muslims. Most Muslim immigrants initially expected to spend only a brief period of their lives in Europe, but the reluctance to stay in a foreign land was overcome by the lure of economic opportunity. In 30 years, the Muslim population of Great Britain rose from 82, 000 to two million. In Germany, there are four million Muslims, mostly Turks, and over five million in France, mostly North Africans. There are a million Muslims each in Italy and the Netherlands and half-a-million in Spain.

The large Muslim expatriate communities in most EU countries also include the large student populations and businessmen who frequently travel to Europe. Geographically, Europe sits in a strategic part of the world, with good communication links to the Middle East, Asia and the United States. It itself offers attractive targets for terrorists. They can take advantage of the lack of intrusiveness of the authorities into ordinary peoples’ lives.

This makes it easy for Islamic terrorists to send in operational elements. The tolerant and liberal European societies offer an ideal environment for al- Qaeda operatives seeking to blend into their surroundings and, thus, evade detection by the authorities. They can pass unnoticed in the Muslim commu-

3 Gunaratna, op. cit., p. 115.

76 © Rubbettino nities but they can also receive cover, shelter, logistical aid from sympathisers and in-country support elements, who in turn, are a potential pool of recruits. Radical Islamist clerics have been able to preach jihad openly in mosques in many European countries. In the first instance, they promote the most out- wardly visible form of Islamic piety, the one that focuses on Islamic ritual and practice in the immigrants’ daily lives. For the younger members of the second and third generation of Muslim immigrants to the West, Islamic appearance and lifestyle provides the much needed means of enhancing group identity, loyalty, and self-respect. But as has been borne out by the study of Euro- pean cells, mosques are the chosen place for recruitment, using the pool of pi- ous Muslims and misfit immigrants to recruit the foot soldiers of jihadist Is- lam. In radical Islam, all disgruntled Muslims find a common ground in their opposition to Western value systems on the one hand, and, on the other, to many regimes throughout the Muslim world, which they regard as collabora- tionist and treasonous to the traditional Islamic teaching.

Furthermore, those elements can easily travel and move around, coordi- nating the cells’ activities because there are few travel restrictions. In the EU, which has done away with most border controls, radical Islamists can slip from one country to another without risking passport checks and identity controls. And the lack of full integration has helped them, since police and judi- cial agencies remain under national supervision. Terrorists have traded on coordination weaknesses in intelligence in different countries.

Two factors could spur more direct al-Qaeda attacks on European soil:

- more effective transnational law enforcement and intelligence in Eu- rope, making European countries less suitable for recruitment and planning and crippling al-Qaeda’s operational capabilities4;

- European active participation in the “war on terrorism”, like the role played by European forces in Afghanistan.

Conclusion

Since 11th September, European investigators have uncovered a picture of their continent that they had barely glimpsed before: as a key refuge, logis-

4 Stevenson, op. cit., p. 38.

© Rubbettino 77 tical base and organisational headquarters for al-Qaeda. It is a focal point for key support networks on which al-Qaeda depends, such as fundraising, recruiting and propaganda. Europe provided a staging post for al-Qaeda before 11th September. The evidence produced by police work provided an inside look at groups operating at the edges of Islamic terrorism in Europe inspired by Osama bin Laden. Their very distance from the core al-Qaeda underscores what terrorism experts have described as one of al-Qaeda’s central organisational principles: its very decentralisation. The 11th September attacks as well as the plots uncovered on European soil, were confirmation that some groups of Arab radicals in Europe were gradually moving from their purely service role to active terror.

Up until the 11th September, Europe was accused of being soft on terrorism. Indeed, European countries, like Spain and England, had their hands full with home-grown terrorism of the ethno-nationalist and left-wing kind. When analysts in the U.S. academic, security and intelligence communities started pointing out the danger of a new type of terrorism, Europeans did not give it a high priority, having, as they had, their minds set on traditional terrorists.

In many ways, Europe is the front line in the battle against holy-warrior terrorism. Islamic radical networks, in various states of organisation and shapes, have crisscrossed Western Europe for years. If only a minuscule frac- tion of the growing Muslim fundamentalist population of Europe were to join the bin Laden’s jihad and aim their terrorism against their neighbours, internal security officers would be confronting nightmare scenarios.

In the mid-1990s a somewhat unsophisticated group of militants, inspired primarily by the troubles in war-torn Algeria, the frustrations of being Mus- lim in France and a violent anti-Western brand of Islamic preaching, robbed banks, bombed a score of Paris metro stations and tried to derail a high-speed TGV passenger train. More elaborate and suicidal, al-Qaeda can inflict much more damage. Aware of this, European security services have, on the whole, responded with alacrity to 11th September attacks, questioning, detaining, and incarcerating hundreds of fundamentalists. With the possible exceptions of the Belgians and the Dutch, the West Europeans have reacted as energetical- ly as their American counterparts. It is likely that the spectre of Islamic terrorism will draw Western intelligence and national security agencies closer together than the Cold War did.

1. Books, Reports, Papers and Documents

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© Rubbettino 79 Laqueur, Walter, The New Terrorism: Fanaticism and the Arms of Mass De- struction, London, Phoenix Press, 1999. LIA, Brynjar and KØK, ?shild, Islamist Insurgencies, Diasporic Support Net- works, and Their Host Sates: The Case of the GIA in Europe 1993-2000, FFI/Rapport-2001/03789, 2001. Mickolus, Edward F., Transnational Terrorism: A Chronology of Events, 1968- 1979, Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1980. Obote-Odora, Alex, Defining International Terrorism (http://www.mur- doch.edu.au/elaw/issues/ven1/obote-odora61_notes. html). Phillips, James, “The Challenge of Revolutionary Iran”, The Heritage Foun- dation Backgrounder 24, 29 March 1996. Pillar, Paul R., Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy, Washington, D.C., Brook- ings Institution Press, 2001. Reeve, Simon, The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the Fu- ture of Terrorism, Boston, Northeastern University Press, 1999. Schimd, Alex P. and JONGMAN, Albert J., Political, A New Guide to Actors, Authors, Concepts, Data Theories and Literature, New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction Books,1988. Slater, Robert O. and STOHL, Michael, Current Perspectives on Internation- al Terrorism, London, Macmillan, 1988. Tal, David, “The International Dimension of PFLP-GC Activity”, ICT, 1 Jan- uary 1990 (http://www.ict.org.il/articles/articledet.cfm?articleid=25). The Interagency OPSEC Support Staff, Intelligence Threat Handbook, April 1996, Section 4, “Terrorist Intelligence Operations” (http://www.faz.org- /irp/nsa/ioss/threat96/part04.htm). U.S. Congress, Commission to Assess the Organization of the Federal Gov- ernment to Combat the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Combating Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, 104th Congress, 14 July, 1999. Vermaat, Emerson, Bin Laden’s Terror Networks in Europe, A Mackenzie Insti- tute Occasional Paper, 2002 (http://www.mackenzieinstitute.com/com- mentary.html). Whittaker, David J. (ed.), The Terrorism Reader, London, Routledge, 2001. Wieviorka, Michel, The Making of Terrorism, 2nd ed., Chicago, the University of Chicago Press, 1993. Wilcox, Jr., Amb. Philip C., “International Terrorism”, remarks by Coordina- tor for Counterterrorism before the Denver Council on Foreign Rela- tions, Denver, CO, 12th September, 1996.

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INTERVIEWS

Dr. Stefano Dambruoso, Sostituto Procuratore, Milan, 2nd December 2002. Dr. Adolfo Ronconi, Direttore del Servizio di Cooperazione Internazionale di Polizia, Rome, 6th December 2002. Mag. Gabriele Failla, Capo Ufficio Analisi, Comando Generale, Guardia di Finanza, Rome, 3rd December 2002. Cap. Alessandro Angelini, Ufficio Analisi, Comando Generale, Guardia di Fi- nanza, Rome, 3rd December 2002.

11 Il reclutamento in Italia (1989) (Autori Vari)(*) 12 Storia del Servizio Militare in Italia dal 1506 al 1870, Vol. I (1989) V. Ilari (*) 13 Storia del Servizio Militare in Italia dal 1871 al 1918, Vol. II (1990) V. Ilari (*) 14 Storia del Servizio Militare in Italia dal 1919 al 1943, Vol. III (1990) V. Ilari (*) 15 Storia del Servizio Militare in Italia dal 1943 al 1945, Vol. IV (1991) V. Ilari (*) 15/bis Storia del Servizio Militare in Italia – La difesa della Patria (1945-1991) Vol. V – “Pianificazione operativa e sistema di reclutamento” (1992) V. Ilari (*) 15/ter Storia del Servizio Militare in Italia – La difesa della Patria (1945-1991) Vol. V - “Servizio militare e servizio civile – Legislazione statistiche” (1992) V. Ilari (*) 16 Soppressione della leva e costituzione di Forze Armate volontarie (1990) P. Bellucci, A. Gori (*) 16/a Servizio di leva e volontariato: riflessioni sociologiche (1990) M. Marotta, L. Labonia (*) 17 L’importanza Militare dello spazio (1990) C. Buongiorno, S. Abbà, G. Maoli, A. Mei, M. Nones, S. Orlandi, F. Pacione, F. Stefani (*) 18 Le idee di “difesa alternativa” ed il ruolo dell’Italia (1990) F. Calogero, M. De Andreis, G. Devoto, P. Farinella (*) 19 La “policy science” nel controllo degli armamenti (1990) P. Isernia, P. Belluc- ci, L. Bozzo, M. Carnovale, M. Coccia, P. Crescenzi, C. Pelanda (*) 10 Il futuro della dissuasione nucleare in Europa (1990) S. Silvestri (*) 11 I movimenti pacifisti ed anti-nucleari in Italia 1980-88 (1990) F. Battistelli, P. Isernia, P. Crescenzi, A. Graziani, A. Montebovi, G. Ombuen, S. Scaparra, C. Presciuttini (*) 12 L’organizzazione della ricerca e sviluppo nell’ambito Difesa, Vol. I (1990) P. Bi- sogno, C. Pelanda, M. Nones, S. Rossi, V. Oderda (*) 12/bis L’organizzazione della ricerca e sviluppo nell’ambito Difesa, Vol. II (1990) P. Bisogno, C. Pelanda, M. Nones, S. Rossi, V. Oderda (*) 13 Sistema di programmazione generale finanziaria ed ottimizzazione delle risorse in ambito Difesa (1990) G. Mayer, C. Bellinzona, N. Gallippi, P. Mearini, P. Menna (*) 14 L’industria italiana degli armamenti (1990) F. Gobbo, P. Bianchi, N. Bellini, G. Utili (*) 15 La strategia sovietica nella regione meridionale (1990) L. Caligaris, K.S. Brower, G. Cornacchia, C.N. Donnelly, J. Sherr, A. Tani, P. Pozzi (*) 16 Profili di carriera e remunerazioni del personale militare e civile dell’Ammini- strazione dello Stato delle qualifiche direttive e dirigenziali (1990) D. Tria, T. Longhi, A. Cerilli, A. Gagnoni, P. Menna (*) 17 La riconversione dell’industria per la Difesa (1990) S. Rossi, S. Rolfo, N. Bel- lini (*) 18 Il trasferimento di tecnologie strategicamente critiche (1990) S. Rossi, F. Bru- ni Roccia, A. Politi, S. Gallucci (*)

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© Rubbettino 87 41/bis Sottufficiali delle Forze Armate. Idee propositive per migliorarne il reclutamento, lo statuto e la carriera. Tomo II (I volontari a ferma prolungata e i Sot- tufficiali) (1993) M. Marotta (*) 42 Strategia della ricerca internazionalistica (1993) L. Bonanate (*) 43 Rapporto di ricerca sui movimenti migratori e sicurezza nazionale (1993) G. Sacco (*) 44 Rapporto di ricerca su nuove strutture di sicurezza in Europa (1993) S. Silve- stri (*) 45 I sistemi di comando e controllo ed il loro influsso sulla sicurezza italiana (1993) P. Policastro (*) 46 Le minacce da fuori area contro il fianco Sud della Nato (1993) R. Aliboni (*) 47 Approvvigionamento delle materie prime, crisi e conflitti nel Mediterraneo (1993) G. Mureddu (*) 48 Lo sviluppo dell’aeromobilità (1993) A. Politi (*) 49 L’impatto economico delle spese militari in Emilia Romagna (1993) A. Bolo- gnini, M. Spinedi, NOMISMA S.p.A. (*) 50 I paesi della sponda Sud del Mediterraneo e la politica europea (1994) R. Ali- boni, B. Scarcia Amoretti, G. Pennisi, G. Lancioni (*) 51 I problemi della sicurezza nell’Est Europeo e nell’ex-Unione Sovietica (1994) C. Pelanda, E. Letta, D. Gallino, A. Corti (*) 52 Il pensiero militare nel mondo musulmano - Ragion militare e ragion di Stato, Vol. III (1994) V. Fiorani Piacentini (*) 53 Presupposti concettuali e dottrinali per la configurazione di una futura forza d’intervento (1994) G. Caccamo (*) 54 Lo status delle navi da guerra italiane in tempo di pace ed in situazioni di crisi (1994) A. de Guttry (*) 55 La “Condizione Militare” in Italia, “Ufficiali e Sottufficiali”, Vol. II (1994) M. Marotta (*) 56 Crisi del bipolarismo: vuoti di potere e possibili conseguenze (1994) S. Roma- no, J.L. Harper, E. Mezzetti, C.M. Santoro, V. Dan Segre (*) 57 Il problema della quantificazione di dati attendibili sull’interscambio militare- industriale fra i vari Paesi (1994) S. Sandri, A. Politi (*) 58 Ottimizzazione della selezione del personale - Metodi e modelli di selezione e organizzazione nelle Forze Armate italiane (1994) A. De Carlo (*) 59 Gestione della crisi: metodologie e strumenti (1994) P. Isernia (*) 60 Politica militare e sistema politico: i partiti ed il nuovo Modello di Difesa (1994) P. Bellocci (*) 61 Sicurezza ed insicurezza nell’Europa post-comunista (1994) A. Rossi, P. Visa- ni (*) 62 Indagine sulla propensione delle donne italiane a svolgere il servizio militare (1994) R. Savarese (*) 63 L’impatto della presenza militare in Emilia Romagna: case study su Bologna (1994) NOMISMA S.p.A. (*)

88 © Rubbettino 64 L’impatto della presenza militare in Emilia Romagna “il caso Budrio”, il caso del “triangolo aeronautico”: Forlì, Cervia, Rimini, (1994) NOMISMA S.p.A. (*) 65 Sistema di sicurezza dei Paesi del Golfo. Riflessi per l’Occidente (1995) S. Sil- vestri, R. Aliboni, L. Guazzone (*) 66 Sistema di controllo dell’esportazione degli armamenti e della tecnologia avan- zata. Ammaestramenti delle crisi del Golfo (1995) A. Politi, A. de Guttry, S. Gallucci, M. Bilbesi, M. Lastella (*) 67 Emergenza marittima e Forze Armate – Piani di emergenza e coinvolgimento della Marina Militare in caso di gravi incidenti navali con versamenti di petro- lio (1995) U. Bilardo, G. Mureddu (*) 68 Il ruolo del pilastro europeo della NATO nella definizione di un sistema di sicurezza integrato: rapporti istituzionali e industriali (1995) L. Caligaris, W. Wessels, G. Treverton, J. Chipman, Laporta, G. Dottori, D. Ruiz-Palmer (*) 69 L’organizzazione e l’architettura C3I per il vertice decisionale nazionale (1995) M. Nones, R. Romano, S. Silvestri, A. de Guttry (*) 70 La disintegrazione dell’impero sovietico. Problemi di sicurezza nazionale e col- lettiva in Asia Centrale (1995) V. Fiorani Piacentini, B. Nicolini, G. Pasini, G. Pastori, R. Redaelli (*) 71 Evoluzione del rischio da Sud in connessione con il prevedibile progresso tec- nologico e misure di difesa (1995) C.M. Santoro (*) 72 Presente e futuro della professione militare in Europa. L’Ufficiale italiano (1995) G. Caforio, M. Nuciari (*) 73 Possibili effetti della legge sull’obiezione di coscienza sull’assolvimento dei compiti istituzionali delle FF.AA. (1996) U. Pescatori, G. Muzzarelli 74 Lo Status delle Forze Armate italiane impegnate in operazione “fuori area” condotte sotto l’egida di organizzazioni internazionali (1996) N. Ronzitti 75 Il potere aereo post-CFE (1996) A. Politi 76 La gestione disciplinare e normativa del personale volontario (1996) G. Ga- sperini, M. Negri (*) 77 Il soldato della complessità: tra specializzazione e flessibilità (1996) M. Negri, G.B. Colucci 78 Il futuro della CFE. Il passaggio alla seconda fase di riduzione dopo la con- clusione della prima (1996) M. Cremasco 79 La componente sicurezza/rischio negli scacchieri geopolitici Sud ed Est. Le opzioni del Modello di Difesa italiano (1996) A. Colombo 80 La geopolitica del Mediterraneo: problemi e prospettive dell’Italia negli scenari futuri (1996) C. Giglio, P. Soave 81 La conoscenza come risorsa produttiva: le Forze Armate di fronte alla società postmoderna (1996) F. Battistelli, T. Ammendola, M. Negri 82 Geoeconomia dei principali stati occidentali. Riflessi sull’Italia (1996) R. De Santis, G. Vulpes 83 Le operazioni militari all’estero gestite al di fuori del sistema delle organizza-

© Rubbettino 89 zioni internazionali o nel suo ambito: problemi giuridici o organizzativi per le Forze Armate italiane (1996) A. de Guttry 84 La difficile scommessa. L’allargamento della NATO ad Est (1997) M. Crema- sco 85 L’embargo e le altre misure economiche come mezzo di gestione e soluzione delle crisi (1998) G. Pastori 86 La questione sindacale nell’evoluzione delle politiche strategiche della sicurezza in Italia - Osservazioni storico metodologiche (1998) A. Ciampani 87 Cooperazione dell’Italia con l’Austria, La Repubblica Ceka, la Slovenia, la Croazia e l’Ungheria (1998) S. Mazzaroli 88 Elementi di diritto umanitario dei conflitti armati (Diritto italiano di bandiera) (1998) A. Marcheggiano (*) 89 Italia e nucleare francese: attualità e prospettiva (1998) C. Paoletti (*) 90 Analisi delle spese per l’investimento dell’Esercito. Esame delle note aggiunti- ve: previsioni e scostamenti. Valutazioni sulle principali cause degli scostamenti (1998) M.T. Fiocca 91 Applicazioni spaziali civili di possibile interesse della Difesa (1998) M. Nones, A. Traballesi 92 Lo Stratega mediatico (1998) P. Visani 93 Le prospettive di integrazione tra Unione Europea e Unione Europea Occi- dentale (1999) E. Letta 94 Prospettive di applicazione del D.D.L. di iniziativa governativa riguardante l’i- stituzione del servizio civile nazionale e della nuova legge sull’obiezione di coscienza (1999) C. Politi 95 Aspetti politici ed economici della European Security and Defence Identity nel quadro di una integrazione degli eserciti europei (1999) A. Ferranti 96 Le zone di pesca nel Mediterraneo e la tutela degli interessi italiani, (1999) N. Ronzitti 97 Il processo di approvvigionamento degli idrocarburi in situazione di crisi internazionale (1999) N. Pedde e V. Porfiri 98 Albania – (Manuali-Paese) (1999) a cura del Centro per l’Europa Centro- Orientale e Balcanica (*) 99 Bosnia-Erzegovina – (Manuali-Paese) (1999) a cura del Centro per l’Europa Centro-Orientale e Balcanica (*) 100 Proliferazione missilistica: stato ed evoluzione della minaccia e prospettive per un sistema di difesa antimissile (1999) A. Nativi 101 Il controllo degli armamenti nella ex-Jugoslavia con particolare riferimento alla Bosnia-Erzegovina (1999) M. Cremasco 102 Peace Dividend. Aspetti teorici ed applicazioni al caso italiano (1999) G. Strep- pi 103 Evoluzione dei rapporti transatlantici nel settore della produzione industriale della difesa, a fronte della costituzione dell’Europa degli armamenti (2000) A. Traballesi

90 © Rubbettino 104 La geoeconomia delle imprese italiane: riflessi sulla gravitazione degli interessi geostrategici nazionali (2000) A. Cattaneo 105 Strategic sealift: sviluppo e caratteristiche nazionali di un importante strumento di proiezione e di forza nel mediterraneo allargato (2000) G. Mured- du 106 Repubblica di Jugoslavia (Manuali-Paese) (2001) a cura del Centro per l’Eu- ropa Centro-Orientale e Balcanica 107 Fyrom: La Repubblica di Macedonia (Manuali-Paese) (2001) a cura del Cen- tro per l’Europa Centro-Orientale e Balcanica 108 La corte penale internazionale, i crimini di guerra e le truppe italiane all’estero in missione di pace (2001) N. Ronzitti 109 Gli effetti delle sanzioni economiche: il caso della Serbia (2001) M. Zucconi 110 Il coordinamento interministeriale per la politica industriale della difesa: valutazione comparata tra la soluzione italiana e quella dei principali paesi europei (2002) M. Nones 111 La difesa europea in ambito alleanza: una sfida per l’industria degli armamenti (2002) A. Traballesi 112 I diritti delle donne: le presenti strutture normative nel diritto internazionale ed i loro effetti nei casi di conflitti etnici (2002) P. Brusadin 113 Il legame nazione-esercito: l’abolizione della leva basterà a rendere le forze armate meno impopolari tra i giovani? (2002) T. M. Blasi 114 La logistica degli anni 2000: ricorso a risorse esterne (outsourcing), contratti di servizi, logistica integrata, contratti chiavi in mano. Evoluzione o rivoluzione? (2003) F. Franceschini, M. Galletto, M. Borgarello 115 Cambiamenti organizzativi dell’industria statale della difesa: confronto con le altre realtà europee, con particolare riferimento agli stabilimenti di manuten- zione navale (2003) R. Stanglini 116 La bonifica umanitaria nel quadro della cooperazione civile e militare (2003) F. Termentini 117 La questione di Cipro (2003) G. Sardellone 118 The international role of the European Union (2003) R. Balfour, E. Greco (edizione in lingua inglese)

Collana Ce.Mi.S.S. – Serie Blu – Atti di convegni

• South-Eastern Europe, bridge or border between civilizations (Atti del convegno tenutosi a Sofia nei giorni 17 e 18 ottobre 1997) • The Future of NATO’s Mediterranean Iniziative (1997) (Atti della conferenza CeMiSS – RAND Corporation – Roma, 10 e 11 novembre 1997) (edizione di- sponibile anche in lingua araba) • NATO enlargement: situation and perspectives (Atti del convegno tenutosi a Budapest dal 11 al 15 luglio 1998)

© Rubbettino 91 • I reparti multinazionali come strumento della sicurezza regionale (Atti del 1° seminario italo/polacco – Roma, 24 marzo 1999) • Centralità dell’Italia nello sviluppo delle relazioni Nord-Sud nel bacino del Mediterraneo. Quale ruolo per la Sicilia? - Atti del Seminario di studio fra stu- denti dell’Ateneo palermitano ed Istituti di Formazione della Difesa (Palermo, 23-25 novembre 1999)

Altre pubblicazioni

• Diritto Internazionale per Ufficiali della Marina Militare (1996) N. Ronzitti (Ristampa della ricerca n. 40 sul supplemento della “Rivista Marittima” del luglio 1996)(*) • Un’intelligence per il XXI secolo (1999) G. Dottori • Il Neo-Terrorismo: suoi connotati e conseguenti strategie di prevenzione e con- tenimento (2001) V. Pisano

Collana Ce.Mi.S.S. – edizioni Franco Angeli

1520.269 Giovani e Forze Armate (1996) F. Battistelli 365.59 L’industria della Difesa. L’Italia nel quadro internazionale (1996) F. Oni- da, G. Viesti 1136.11 Scenari di sicurezza per l’Europa e l’Italia (1996) M. Cremasco 1136.13 Società civile e processo di pace in Medio Oriente (1996) D.V. Segre 1136.14 Interesse nazionale e interesse globale (1996) P. Portinaro (*) 1136.15 La crisi del bipolarismo (1996) S. Romano (*) 1136.16 Il pensiero militare nel mondo musulmano (1996) V.F. Piacentini 1136.17 Rischio da Sud (1996) C.M. Santoro (*) 1136.18 Evoluzione della Guerra (1996) C. Pelanda 1136.19 L’invasione scalza (1996) G. Sacco 1136.21 Pax Pacifica (1996) M. Dassù (*) 365.66 Il Sistema Italia (1996) CeMiSS; (Atti del convegno “Gli interessi nazionali italiani nel nuovo scenario internazionale” Roma, 25-26 giugno 1996) 365.66 Integrazione e sicurezza nel Mediterraneo – le opzioni dell’Occidente (1997) P.C. Padoan 1136.23 Russia e sistema di sicurezza Occidentale (1997) M. Cremasco 1550.6 Difesa della Patria e interesse nazionale nella scuola (1997) R. Cartocci, A. M. L. Parisi 1136.24 La logica del disordine (1997) E. Zanoni 1136.25 Alla ricerca dell’interesse nazionale (1997) A. L. Pirocchi, M. Brunelli 1136.26 La politica di sicurezza tedesca verso il duemila (1997) G. Dottori, S. Marino 1136.27 Medio Oriente e Forze di Pace (1997) G. Tappero Merlo

92 © Rubbettino 1136.28 Armi e Disarmo (1997) F. Calogero, P. Miggiano, G. Tenaglia 1136.29 Le missioni delle Forze Armate italiane fuori area (1997) A. de Guttry 1136.30 La guerra civile in Rwanda (1997) Umwantisi 1136.31 La “questione illirica” (1997) L. Bozzo, C. Simon Belli 1550.9 Difesa, Politica e Società (1997) P. Bellucci 1136.32 Partenariato nel Mediterraneo (1997) R. Aliboni 1136.34 Combattere con le informazioni (1997) F. Pierantoni 1136.35 Il conflitto Etnico (1997) R. Arbitrio 1136.36 Geopolitica della salute (1997) B. Arrabito 1136.37 Interessi nazionali e identità italiana (1997) F. Corsico 1550.10 Missione in Bosnia (1999) T. Ammendola 1136.42 Le armi inabilitanti non letali (1999) J. Alhadeff 1136.43 L’Italia e l’Islam non Arabo (1999) G. Pastori, R. Redaelli (*) 1136.44 Geopolitica della Turchia (1999) R. Aliboni 1136.45 Antropologia e Peacekeeping (1999) A. Antoniotto (*) 1136.49 Regionalismi economici e sicurezza (1999) L. Troiani (*) 1136.50 Asia Centrale: verso un sistema cooperativo di sicurezza (1999) V.F. Pia- centini 1136.51 Macedonia: la nazione che non c’è (1999) L. Bozzo, C. Simon Belli (*) 1136.52 Scenari strategici per il futuro (1999) M. Coccia 1136.53 The Kosovo Quagmire. Conflict scenarios and method for resolution (1999) L. Bozzo, C. Simon Belli (*) 1136.1.1 Transizioni democratiche (2000) L. Bonanate 1136.1.2 La Difesa Civile e il progetto Caschi Bianchi (2000) F. Tullio 1136.1.3 La difficile sfida (2001) M. Cremasco (*) 1136.1.4 L’Egitto tra Maghreb e Machrek (2001) C. Simon Belli 1136.1.5 Le organizzazioni criminali internazionali (2001) M. Giaconi 1136.1.6 La questione Kurda (2001) S. Mazzocchi, R. Ragionieri, C. Simon Belli 1136.1.7 L’Europa centro-orientale e la NATO dopo il 1999 (2001) F. Argentieri 1136.1.8 Europa – Stati Uniti: un Atlantico più largo? (2001) M. de Leonardis 1136.1.9 The Effects of Economic Sanctions: the Case of Serbia (2001) M. Zucconi

Collana Ce.Mi.S.S. – edizioni A & P

1.09 Security Threat perception in South – Eastern Europe (2001) CeSPI and EWI 1.10 La guerra incruenta (2001) F. Pierantoni 1.11 La politica di sicurezza e difesa dell’Unione Europea (2001) F. Attinà, F. Lon- go, C. Monteleone, S. Panebianco, P. Rosa 1.12 The flexible officer (2001) G. Caforio 1.13 Il documento di Washington: problemi politici e giuridici (2001) N. Ronzitti 1.14 UMA: Les difficultés d’une reconstruction régionale (1989-1999) (2001) K. Chater

© Rubbettino 93 1.15 Peacekeeping: Polizia internazionale e nuovi ruoli militari tra conflitti etnici, terrorismo, criminalità organizzata (2001) R. Bettini 1.16 Il XXI Secolo: Ipotesi e tendenze dei modelli di difesa negli scenari mondiali (2001) C. M. Santoro 1.17 Sociological aspects concerning the relations within contingents of multinational units: The case of the Italian-Slovenian Hungarian Brigade (2001) G. Ga- sperini, B. Arnejcˇicˇ e A.Ujj 1.18 Il ruolo della forza europea di reazione rapida: un quadro strategico degli anni duemila (2001) M. Cremasco 1.19 Il ruolo delle istituzioni finanziarie internazionali nei processi di peace building (2002) M. Fiocca 1.20 La sicurezza in Europa dopo il Kosovo (2001) R. Menotti e R. Balfour 1.21 Il processo di integrazione del procurement militare in Europa (2001) L. Bertini 2.22 Towards a European security and defence policy (2002) Ce.Mi.S.S. – C.D.S. 2.23 Il ruolo internazionale dell’Unione Europea (2002) R. Balfour – E. Greco 2.24 Rapporto dal futuro. 2004: lo Stato dell’Europa e l’Europa come Stato (2002) L. Bonanate 2.25 Changing U.S. defense policy and the war on terrorism: implications for Italy and for U.S.-Italian relation (2002) Ce.Mi.S.S. – RAND 2.26 Il diritto dei trattati nelle attività di interesse delle FF.AA. (2003) N. Ronzitti 2.27 Le dinamiche palestinesi nella politica giordana, prospettive per la stabilità di un pivotal state (2003) R. Storaci 2.28 Le cooperazioni rafforzate per la ristrutturazione dell’industria europea degli armamenti (2003) G. Bonvicini – G. Gasparini

Collana Ce.Mi.S.S. - edizioni Rubbettino

04/1 The Errf and the Nrf – The European Rapid Reaction Force and the NATO- Reaction Force: Compatibilities and Choises (2004) – Ce.Mi.S.S. – C.D.S. 04/2 Transforming Italy’s Military for a New Era: Options and Challenges – (2004) – Ce.Mi.S.S. – RAND 04/3 Globalization, Armed Conflicts and Security (2004) – A. Gobicchi 04/4 Verso un concetto di Politica Estera Europea. Le sfide esterne e di sicurezza per la UE (2004) – R. Balfour e R. Menotti 04/5 Comunicazione e politica internazionale. Mutamenti strutturali e nuove strategie (2004) – E. Diodato 04/6 La Nato dopo l’11 settembre. Stati Uniti ed Europa nell’epoca del terrorismo globale (2004) – G. Dottori e M. Amorosi 04/7 La dimensione finanziaria del terrorismo e del contro-terrorismo transnazio- nale (2004) – M. Fiocca e S. Cosci

• L’evoluzione della politica di controllo delle esportazioni di materiali d’arma- mento e di alta tecnologia dual use alla luce della nuova intesa “The Wassenar Arrangement” (1998) A. Politi, S. Ruggeri • L’Ucraina nuovo architrave della sicurezza europea (1999) F. Argentieri • L’impatto dell’evoluzione sul futuro campo di battaglia (1999) ISTRID • Disordine, Sicurezza, Stabilità. Il sistema internazionale ed il ruolo per l’Italia (1999) P. Soave • Research-Papers on Balcans and Caucasus. A Russian Point of View (1999) N. Arbatova – V. Naumkin • Resources and economic cooperation in the Caspian and Black sea region and security in south-eastern Europe (1999) N. Behar • Western European Union: operational capabilities and future perspectives from the national point of view (1999) S. Giusti (*) • Conflict management in Europe on the return of the century (1999) I. Gyarmati • Risks for Russia’s security in the next decade: repercussion on the country’s domestic, foreign and defence policies (2000) I.B. Lada • Central-Eastern Europe and the process of approaching western institutions (2000) B. Klich, B. Bednarczyk, A. Nowosad, M. Chorosnicki. Institute for Strategic Studies “Studies and Analyses” – Krakòw (*) • Institutions and civil society: crucial aspects of a peace process (2000) A. Co- razza Bildt • Projects of exploitation of the Caspian Sea Central Asia energy resources: impact on relations between the states involved and the stability in the region (2000) V. Naumkin • The CIS Security cooperation: problems and prospects (2000) – A.G. Arbatov, A.A. Pikayev; S. K. Oznobischev; V.E. Yarynich - ISS Mosca; • Is the establishment of a national security policy for a Bosnia – Herzegovina possible? (2000) S. Turkovic (*) • The regional co-operation initiatives in the black sea area and their influence on security in the Romania-Moldova-Ukraine region (2000) A. Pop • The regional and circum-regional co-operation initiatives in South-East Euro- pe and their influence on security (2000) Center for National Security Studies – Sofia • Possible developments in the Balkans in the medium term (2000) E. Kojokine • Catalogo ragionato delle pubblicazioni CeMiSS (1987-1999) (2000) V. Ghiotto • Il controllo della qualità degli approvigionamenti della Amministrazione della Difesa, con particolare riferimento ai servizi. (2000) Politecnico di Torino • Il futuro delle forze armate nell’era dell’information technology (2000) A. Fer- ranti • L’evoluzione della minaccia e l’alea di rischio delle nazioni moderne (2000) V. Porfiri – N. Pedde

© Rubbettino 95 • The post – Yeltsin Russia: the main trends in domestic and foreign policy evo- lution (2001) N. Arbatova • European transport corridors and security in south eastern Europe (2001) In- stitute for Social and Political Studies – Sofia • Società e Forze Armate in Albania (2001) R. Devole • La politica estera e di sicurezza italiana nell’Europa Sud – Orientale e l’iniziativa quadrilaterale (2001) R. Umana • Tendenze dello sviluppo della dottrina militare della Russia (2001) M. Gareev • Maghreb Alaqsa. L’estremo Occidente (2001) M. Giaconi • Le politiche della ricerca militare e duale nei principali paesi industrializzati (2001) M. Nones, G. Perani, S. Rolfo • La cultura del peacekeeping (2002) T. Bergantini • Ottimizzazione della contrattualistica di Forza Armata (2003) R. Pardolesi • Possibili forme di coinvolgimento degli Stati facenti parte del dialogo mediterraneo della NATO in PSOs (2003) L.P. Zema - M.E. Gattamorta

(*) pubblicazione esaurita