Al Qaeda in Europe

by Lorenzo Vidino

  Proving the thoroughness of French magistrates, the French investigation on the "Chechen cells" continued long after the Paris arrests. After months of work, Bruguiere and Ricard concluded that the network dismantled in December 2002 had more targets in sight than had previously been thought. New information on what could have been the actual target of the group came in January 2005, when French authorities arrested three Algerians in the suburbs of Paris. One of the men, Maamar Ouazane, confessed that fellow Algerian militants had told him that the group was aiming to strike not just the Russian Embassy but also some Paris landmarks-specifically, the Eiffel Tower, a large department store in the city's center, and a police station.39 According to Bruguiere, the intervention of the DST (Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire, France's internal intelligence agency) had thwarted a "major terrorist act that was probably going to target the Paris metro and other targets with a chemical weapon."40

  THE ALGERIAN NETWORK'S LAST STAND

  As had happened in the past, an investigation into Algerian extremists was leading French authorities to London, for it became apparent that leaders of the network there were responsible for the decision to establish a presence in the Pankisi Gorge. But the network did more than send volunteers from France to the Caucasus: some of the London-based militants had taken the trip themselves. Particularly telling is the story of "K," an Algerian asylum seeker and an important member of the Abu Doha network who is currently being detained by British authorities.41 K, whose real name is withheld by British authorities, who describe him only as "a key UK-based contact and provider of financial and logistical support to extreme Islamists in the UK and overseas," was arrested by Georgian authorities while trying to enter the Pankisi Gorge using a false French passport in July 2001. He was carrying the telephone numbers of Kadre and another senior GSPC leader involved in fund-raising for the Chechen mujahideen. K later told British authorities that he was trying to reach Chechnya but denied that he wanted to join the foreign mujahideen led by Khattab; his intention, he said, was only to work as a medic there. Though he himself never managed to reach Chechnya, K over the years had facilitated the passage of several other members of Abu Doha's network to the war-torn country.42

  K's immigration history illustrates how the United Kingdom's lax and irrational immigration policies threaten its national security. After Georgian authorities deported K to the United Kingdom, where he had applied for asylum in 1998, British authorities denied his claim. His links to terrorism and his extensive travels to the United Arab Emirates under a false French passport were cited as the reasons. K applied again for asylum; after interviewing him, British authorities temporarily admitted him into the country. But when his second asylum application was also denied in August 2001, K could not be notified-he had already disappeared, thereby violating the terms of his temporary admission. K was arrested again in October of the same year, as he showed police another false French document (this time a driver's license). But once again British authorities did not deport him; he was instead held at the Yarl's Wood Detention Centre, an expensive facility built by the British government in 2001 to temporarily house asylum seekers. In February 2002, just four months after it opened, the Detention Centre was burned down by the asylum seekers during a riot. At least twenty detainees managed to overpower the few guards and escape, K among them.

  During that same month, the inefficiency of the British immigration system benefited another key member of the Algerian network, as Rabah Kadre was set free. According to British authorities, after escaping from Yarl's Wood, K "re-involved himself in extremist activity, providing support to the network of North African extreme Islamists."43 And so did Kadre, who was now leading the network, after Abu Doha's arrest. Both men were soon back in custody: K was arrested in September, Kadre in November. Nevertheless, in their few months of freedom, K and Kadre conceived a plan that sent shockwaves throughout Europe.

  French investigators interrogating the suspects arrested in La Corneuve and Romainville learned that the two cells dismantled in Paris were only a part of a larger group of Chechnya-trained militants that was planning attacks in Europe. Benhamed, one of the key figures captured, allegedly provided particularly detailed information on militants who had moved to Britain and were ready to become operational. Paris quickly passed the information to London, where authorities were already aware that the Algerian network was plotting a strike on British soil. Not only had they arrested Kadre and two other men in November for planning an attack, but in the same month they began closely monitoring other suspected members of the network, after finding suspicious documents in an East London flat. Moreover, in the preceding weeks, British authorities had received a dossier from their Algerian counterparts, who had been gleaning information from Mohammed Meguerba, a former London resident who was incarcerated in Algeria. Meguerba detailed the activities of the Algerian network in London, providing names and addresses of key operatives.44

  Scotland Yard and the M15 at first simply watched the suspects in an attempt to uncover the whole network, but when they realized that the operatives might be ready to attack, they acted. In the early hours of Sunday, January 5, 2003, British police raided five apartments in North and East London, arresting six men and one woman (she was later released). One of the apartments was located in Wood Green, a racially diverse neighborhood of London whose high concentration of Algerian immigrants has earned it the nickname "Little Algiers." It was probably no coincidence that this one-bedroom apartment on the top floor of a rundown Victorian house was located just a few yards from the flat of Mustafa Labsi, one of the key planners of the Strasbourg attack.45 Before the raid, the MI5 warned Scotland Yard that agents might find in the apartment a "kitchen sink" laboratory and, possibly, toxic substances. And in fact, agents recovered residues of a mysterious substance that was promptly sent to military laboratories for analysis.46

  The initial results shocked Britain: The mysterious substance was declared to be ricin, a natural poison that can be made from the castor bean plant. Ricin is fairly easy to produce, is six thousand times as potent as cyanide, and has no antidote. Ingesting one milligram of ricin can kill an adult, and the lethal substance can be dispersed via ventilation systems, drinking water, or food supplies. Ricin became famous in 1978, when Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian defector living in London, was allegedly killed by a ricin-filled pellet fired into his leg from an umbrella. Authorities believed that the men living in the Wood Green apartment, keeping in contact with the masterminds in the Pankisi Gorge via fax, had produced ricin in the small kitchen-turned-laboratory.

  The discovery understandably caused considerable fear. Investigators speculated that the group intended to spread the substance on the handrails of the subway's escalators and on the door handles of cars belonging to prominent members of London's Jewish community. Security for high-profile public buildings and key transportation systems such as the London Tube and railways was significantly heightened. Doctors were also urged by authorities to be on the alert for potential signs of poisoning in those seeking care. The British tabloids, known for their screaming headlines, added to the public's anxiety.

  Information uncovered on the men arrested in the raids confirmed their links to the French cells. Two of them had been questioned in 2002 by French authorities for suspected links to terrorism, and tickets found in the apartments showed that they had arrived to the United Kingdom from France just a few days before their arrest. They were also believed to have visited the apartment in La Corneuve that French authorities had raided in December.47 Investigators think that after the December raids the two men had fled to London, where the network was already in place. The other men arrested were all Algerian asylum seekers who had lived in the United Kingdom for a few years. The Wood Green apartment, which was paid by the local council, was home to two teenagers (one from Algeria and one from Ethiopia) who were receiving benefits from the government.

  Four of the men arrested during the raids were subsequentl
y charged with "developing or producing chemical weapons" and "possessing articles of value to a terrorist."48 Less than two months later, British authorities charged Rabah Kadre and the two other men arrested with him in November 2002 with the same crimes. Even though Kadre was in jail when the ricin was discovered, the evidence pointed to his key logistical role in the conspiracy to produce the substance. Kadre is the thread that ties together all the plots that the Algerian network concocted after the failed millennium bombing: he was directly involved in the Strasbourg attack, the alleged cyanide plot in London, and the ricin plot in France and Britain. K, the detainee at Belmarsh, is also believed to have provided crucial support to the "network of North African extremists directly involved in terrorist planning in the UK, including the use of toxic chemicals."49

  The discovery of residues of ricin was far from reassuring. Where was the rest of the substance? Were there other cells spread across the country ready to use it? And what might be their intended targets? Some security officials revealed that a man believed to be the leader of the Wood Green cell had been monitored by the M15 but had managed to avoid arrest. He was thought to be the chemist of the group, so he could well have been hiding the toxic substance.50 Other reports indicated that at least three key players had escaped the raids and that up to twenty men, mostly Algerians, could have been involved in the plot. Following the leads obtained from the sweeps in Wood Green, authorities detained several individuals in other suburbs of London and in various British cities who were believed to be connected to the network. No further trace of ricin or of any other chemical substance was ever found. But what was about to happen would be almost as shocking to the public as a terrorist attack.

  On the afternoon of January 14, twenty-four police officers, four from the Special Branch and twenty uniformed, descended on a red-brick Edwardian house in Crumpsall Lane, on the outskirts of the northern English city of Manchester. The M15 had managed to track to this address a twenty-three-year-old Algerian man who was connected to the militants based in the Wood Green apartment, and the officers entered the house to execute a warrant for his arrest. Though the charges were connected to immigration violations, authorities were primarily interested in questioning him about the ricin plot. This Algerian's history is a familiar one: He had applied for asylum in 1998, had been turned down in 2001, and had disappeared from his declared address after filing an appeal.

  When they broke down the door of the house after days of surveillance, the agents were surprised to see that the man had two roommates; they had expected to find him alone. The officers, armed only with batons, began interviewing the Algerian man, while the other two youths, both of whom looked North African, remained calm and silent. The process went on for more than an hour, and the three men were never handcuffed. When one of the Special Branch officers believed he had recognized one of the two unknown men, he sent details about the twenty-seven-year-old Algerian to Scotland Yard. Preliminary information came back revealing that the man, who was identified as Kamel Bourgass, might have been connected to the ricin cell too. At that point, police began sealing off the apartment, and Bourgass was asked to put on a forensic suit, which would have revealed if he had touched toxic substances. Suddenly all hell broke loose: Bourgass, who had been described by the agents as "quiet as a lamb" until a few seconds earlier, broke free from the agent holding him, grabbed a kitchen knife, and began attacking.51 In the following violent struggle, four officers suffered stab injuries. Detective Constable Stephen Oake was fatally wounded as he rushed to save a colleague who was trying to restrain Bourgass. Stephen Oake was the first British policeman killed by Islamic terrorists on British soil.

  A European police officer was quoted in the Los Angeles Times: "Bourgass is part of the Algerian movement of Rabah Kadre.... There was intelligence information on him in Europe. The stabbing happened after the officers ... realized that he was a relevant person in the network." The man had kept quiet as long as he believed that the raid was concerned purely with immigration violations, confident that he was facing no worse than possible inconvenience. But as soon as he realized that authorities had found out who he really was, he panicked. Bourgass was the man the M15 had been frantically searching for, the chemist who was believed to be behind the production of ricin in the Wood Green kitchen.52 Authorities charged Bourgass for his role in the conspiracy to produce ricin and for the murder of Stephen Oake.

  While seeking a man loosely connected to the plot, British authorities had found its most important player. But the price had been high, and the country was saddened and outraged by Oake's death. The public questioned the methods used by the police, who carried out the raid unarmed and did not handcuff men whom they suspected were connected to terrorism. British tabloids published the angry off-the-record revelations of security officers who claimed that authorities usually send unarmed agents to carry out raids in order not to "infringe the human rights of the suspects."53 After it was reported that several of the men involved in the plot that led to Constable Oake's death were failed asylum seekers whom authorities had not deported, politicians and the media launched harsh attacks against the nation's ultragenerous asylum laws.

  Bourgass's immigration history resembles that of many other Algerian radicals operating in the United Kingdom and shows the dangerous consequences of failing to strictly enforce immigration rules. He had entered England illegally in 2000, destroying his Algerian documents before reaching the country. He immediately filed for asylum, and his application was denied three times. Nevertheless, Bourgass ignored the rejections and stayed illegally in England, where he committed petty crimes and used four false identities. Ironically, Bourgass used a large brown envelope that originally contained a denial from the Immigration and Nationality Directorate to store the instructions for producing ricin and explosives.54

  As fury over Oake's death grew, the British government decided to take advantage of the shift in public opinion to launch an action that earlier might have been widely condemned. Information obtained by the M15 and Scotland Yard indicated that additional evidence on the activities of the ricin cells (and possibly the substance itself) was hidden inside the Finsbury Park mosque. With the threat of a chemical attack pending and with the public up in arms over Oake's death, the British government decided to carry out a night raid, "Operation Mermant." On January 21, one hundred fifty armed policemen wearing riot gear (having learned their lesson from Manchester) broke into the mosque at 2 AM with ladders and rams, while a helicopter's floodlight illuminated the scene. Inside they found a stun gun, an imitator revolver, several false documents (mostly French), credit cards, and a canister of tear gas. No chemicals were located, but agents recovered chemical warfare protection suitS55_ hardly items required for religious worship, and strong evidence that the mosque had been used as a shelter by individuals linked to the plot to produce chemical weapons. Seven men found inside the mosque were arrested and charged; one of them, once again an Algerian asylum seeker, was described as a "major player" in the network and as the financier of the poison plot.56 Investigators believe that he recruited young Muslims at the mosque and financed militants by helping them file for benefits and by providing them with stolen or counterfeit credit cards.

  With the arrests of Bourgass and the men hiding inside the Finsbury Park mosque, British authorities managed to detain the key operatives in the ricin plot. No other traces of the substance were found, and no other significant arrests were made. In the months following Bourgass's arrest, additional testing carried out on the substance found in Wood Green could not confirm that it was indeed ricin. An expert witness testified at Bourgass's April 2005 trial that "subsequent confirmatory tests on the material from the pestle and the mortar did not detect the presence of ricin." The scientist added that in his opinion, "toxins are not detectable in the pestle and mortar."57 Doubts still remain. While authorities had to drop charges regarding mass murder, Bourgass was nevertheless found guilty of "conspiring to commit a public nuisance
by the use of poisons and/or explosives to cause disruption, fear or injury." 58 Officials maintained that Bourgass and his accomplices planned on carrying out an attack with the poison and declared that the real target was the express train that runs from London to Heathrow airport. "It would have caused chaos and panic in London's public transport system," said a British official commenting on the thwarted attack. "Even if it did not kill anyonewhich it could well have done-it would have achieved its purpose."59 Bourgass was sentenced to seventeen years for the ricin plot, while he had been already sentenced in June 2004 to life in prison for the murder of Stephen Oake.60 But the other four men tried with him were acquitted. The day after their acquittal they applied for asylum in Britain.61

  Abu Doha, K, Kadre, and Bourgass were behind bars; was the Algerian network finished? It has planned no attacks since the winter of 2003, and its activities are reported to be at extremely low levels. The sweep of the Finsbury Park mosque, aside from netting seven militants, sent a strong message to the network, signaling that the British government's patience had ended. And it is a kind of poetic justice that the Algerian network's last stand took place in Finsbury Park, which for almost a decade had been its unofficial headquarters. Inside and around that mosque, a small group of charismatic preachers and leaders recruited, indoctrinated, and radicalized hundreds of young Muslims who then spread havoc through Europe and beyond.

  The idea of building a mosque in the poor, largely Muslim neighborhood in North London was conceived in the early 1980s by Prince Charles, who asked for the support of wealthy businessmen and heads of state from Muslim countries. King Fahd of Saudi Arabia donated most of the funds needed for constructing the mosque, which was completed in 1990. Initially, the worshipers were mostly immigrants from Bangladesh who tried to establish a center for religious studies inside the mosque and who followed a moderate interpretation of Islam. But within a few years after its opening, groups of militants began to worship at the mosque and sought to make it their headquarters. Reportedly, the extremists, most of whom were from North Africa or the Middle East, threatened and in some cases physically attacked those who tried to resist them, eventually forcing the moderates out of the mosque. By the mid-1990s groups of radicals were sleeping in the basement of the mosque and preventing all but sympathizers from coming in.62 Many of these militants were Algerians who had fled to London to escape Paris's crackdown on GIA members.