Many of those Arabs who have shaped the Chechen conflict over the past few years have come from Europe. Al Qaeda masterminds such as Abu Doha and Abu Qatada in London or other imams and recruiters throughout Europe continually made Chechnya into a battle cry for jihad, as one of the lands where the infidels were carrying out their crusade against Islam and butchering Muslims. By the late 1990s, no other major conflict involved Muslims, adding to Chechnya's attractiveness to hundreds of jihadis seeking the battlefield.
Aiding radical preachers and recruiters in their attempts at persuasion was the cunning of Khattab, a media genius who fully understood the importance of propaganda and released dozens of videotapes describing the plight of the Chechens and the endeavors of the mujahideen. These tapes, notable for both their image quality and their brutality, were distributed through a network of radical mosques and constituted an unparalleled recruiting tool. In addition, radical Islamists sympathizing with the Chechen cause ran several Web sites that showed images of the fighting and provided practical information on how to support the mujahideen. Two of the best-known (www.azzam.com and www.qoqaz.net) were operated out of London by a British man named Babar Ahmad; he was arrested in England in August 2004 on a criminal complaint issued in Connecticut that charged him with providing material support to a terrorist organization.'8 While qoqaz.net published detailed accounts of the deeds of the mujahideen, azzam.com provided guides in English on how to obtain military training, which the Web site described as "an obligation in Islam upon every sane, male mature Muslim ... whether living in a Muslim or non-Muslim country."19
Azzam.com, though it took care to post a disclaimer declaring that the Web site was "only a news outlet" that did not "help or `sponsor' people to go to for Jihad," was a de facto travel guide for jihadis living in the West who wanted to reach the battlefields of Chechnya. The Web site advised potential volunteers not to travel until the snow had melted in the spring months and to talk to "members of their own communities and countries who are known to have been for jihad." Azzam.com also indicated which charities should be used to making donations to the Chechen fighters. The investigation of its Web master revealed that Ahmad, operating out of London, was in close e-mail contact with a Chechen mujahideen leader who took part in the planning of the siege of the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow in October 2002.20
The Islamist Web sites and videos, with their detailed descriptions of fighting and of Muslim suffering, moved hundreds of young Muslims from throughout the world to join the jihad in Chechnya. Like Bosnia in the first half of the 1990s, Chechnya became one of the key battlegrounds for the jihadi movement. Several high-ranking al Qaeda operatives paid close attention to it. For example, in 1997 Ayman al Zawahiri attempted to enter Chechnya but was arrested by Russian police in Dagestan carrying false documents .21 Not realizing who Zawahiri really was, the Russians sentenced him to six months and then let him go. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of 9/11, similarly failed to join Khattab in Chechnya in 1997; he could not cross the border from Azerbaijan.22
Mohammed was not the only terrorist involved in 9/11 that took an interest in Chechnya; several members of the Hamburg cell seriously considered traveling to the Caucasus to fight alongside Khattab. In 1999 four young Muslims who were studying in the German city decided to fight against the Russians after watching hundreds of hours of tapes of the fighting and listening to the tales of the jihad in Chechnya told by veterans of the conflict living in Hamburg. According to Ramzi Binalshibh, one of the four and a key 9/11 planner, a "chance meeting" on a train in Germany with an important al Qaeda operative persuaded them to travel to Afghanistan instead." The man discouraged the group from traveling to Chechnya, stressing the difficulty of crossing the Russian border, and helped them organize their trip to the al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Binalshibh's companions were three of the four pilots of 9/11: Mohammed Atta, the Egyptian ringleader; Ziad Jarrah; and Marwan al Shehhi. Had the men gone to Chechnya, the history of 9/11 might well have been different. Zacarias Moussaoui, a French national and the "twentieth hijacker," reportedly fought in Chechnya, where his best friend and traveling companion, Xavier Djaffo (another Frenchman), died. After his experience in Chechnya, Moussaoui settled in London, where he became a recruiter for Khattab's group.
As noted above, London was one of the main recruiting centers for the Chechen jihad. Dozens of Algerians left for the Caucasus from London's Finsbury Park mosque, and some have been involved at the highest levels of the Chechen jihad. In September 2004, a few days after the gruesome massacre at the Beslan school, Russian authorities boasted of arresting a forty-six-year-old Algerian man linked to the gang that carried out the attack. Kamal Rabat Bourahla was apprehended by Russian forces while attempting to cross into Azerbaijan from Chechnya to have his wounds treated. The Russian Interior Ministry described Bourahla as ,.an extremely dangerous member of [Chechen commander Shamil] Basayev's gang[,] ... a mercenary and demolition specialist nicknamed Abu Muskhab" who entered Chechnya in late 2000 or early 2001 after being recruited in Finsbury Park, where he was "persuaded by international terrorist Islamist organization agents to go to Russia to fight."24
But while Bourahla became a successful mujahid in Chechnya, other worshipers at the Finsbury Park mosque had a different experience. In March 2004, Russian forces killed three foreign fighters in a battle near the Chechen village of Kurchaloy.25 The documents found on their bodies showed that one was a twenty-four-year-old British citizen of Algerian descent, Yasin Binatia. Another was Osman Larousi, an Algerian living in London who had entered Chechnya using a French passport. He was carrying a letter addressed to his sister in London; it not only revealed that the two Algerians had close ties to the Finsbury Park mosque but also provided insight into the life of foreign fighters in Chechnya.
Hello Fatima,
I intend to travel home, so we will see each other soon. I am tired and disillusioned. I miss Sara, you, and London a lot. Here in Chechnya it is very cold, nothing like in England or Algeria. I have a friend here. He is called Yasin. He will pass this letter on to you. You do not know him because we met here in Chechnya. We were in the same detachment. He has many friends in London and can help me. You must go with him to the Finsbury Park mosque. There you must find men by the name of Imad and Abdul Karim. Yasin has met with them previously. Abdul Karim must send my passport to Baku and then get it sent to me in Chechnya. I need my passport in order to return home. I had problems with my French passport in the name of Hamdawi Morad. Therefore, I left that passport with Ramzan in Georgia. I am afraid of returning home on that passport. The people we are with here are bad people. What they are doing is not jihad. They are ready to kill me at any moment. They are not Muslims but terrorists. They do not like Muslims. Therefore, you should locate Abdul Karim or Imad as quickly as possible. I will return home as soon as they send my passport here.
Thank you, sister.
Your brother, Osman Larousi26
Chechnya was an important battlefield for other European cells as well. Abu Dahdah, the leader of the Madrid cell that allegedly organized the July 2001 meeting in southern Spain during which Mohammed Atta and Ramzi Binalshibh finalized the details of 9/11, repeatedly traveled to London to meet with Abu Qatada and organize joint fund-raising efforts for the Chechen mujahideen.21 Salahuddin Beniyach, a Moroccan who played a key role in forming the cell that organized the Madrid train bombings of March 11, 2004, fought in Chechnya and reached a position of leadership in Khattab's brigade. Salahuddin's brother, Abdelaziz, was arrested in the spring of 2002 by Ukrainian border guards as he was trying to reach Chechnya. Both Beniyach brothers have been arrested for their involvement in the May 2003 Casablanca bombing that killed more than forty people.
Abdelaziz Beniyach's traveling companion was a Dutch-born militant named Samir Azzouz. After returning to the Netherlands from his failed trip to Chechnya, the sixteen-year-old Azzouz became active in the so-called Hofstad group, a band of y
oung Muslims that planned several attacks in Holland and to which the murderer of the filmmaker Theo van Gogh belonged. Authorities believe that the teenage holy warrior, who had purchased a gun, ammunition, night-vision goggles, and materials that could be used to make a bomb, was personally involved in a plan to blow up Amsterdam's international airport and a nuclear reactor.28
Militants operating in every European country have links to Chechnya. In Italy, the cell led by Essid Sami Ben Khemais was known to recruit and fund-raise for the Chechen mujahideen. Moreover, Italian authorities think that one man linked to the cell-Lakhdar Boughagha, also known by his nom de guerre, Abu Gharib-is currently in Chechnya.29 Abu Gharib is known to Italian counterterrorism officials for his fanaticism; he reportedly killed a fellow trainee at an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan because he considered him to be too moderate. Officials fear that this human time bomb, who has pledged to die a martyr, will come back to Italy and carry out an attack, aided by knowledge acquired on the Chechen battlefield.
At least three German Muslims, including Bavarian convert Thomas Fischer, were killed by Russian forces in Chechnya between October 2002 and November 2003.30 The Chechen jihad has attracted volunteers even from Scandinavia. Authorities believe that young Muslims from Norway and Sweden fought in Chechnya in the end of the 1990s. And upon returning to Denmark, Slimane Abderrahmane, the Danish detainee released from Guantanamo Bay in September 2004 after signing an agreement with the US government renouncing violence, immediately declared: "The document is toilet paper for the Americans if they want it.... I am going to Chechnya and fight for the Muslims. The Muslims are oppressed in Chechnya and the Russians are carrying out terror against them. 1131
The ricin plot, whose key planners had trained in the use of toxic substances in and near Chechnya, supplies more proof of how useful the ongoing conflict in the Caucasus is for European jihadis. Chechnya pro vides terrorists with the bases that they need, now that the Afghan training camps no longer exist. The senior French judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere, in the wake of the arrests in the ricin plot, offered a concise analysis of the threat posed to Europe by the militants training and fighting in Chechnya: "There has been a change of sanctuary and a change of strategy. We know that some of the suspects were trained with chemicals in Georgia and Chechnya. The Chechens are experts in chemical warfare. And Chechnya is closer to Europe than Afghanistan."32
NOTES
1. Piotr Smolar, "La Syrie a Extrad& vers la Fance un Activiste Islamiste," Le Monde, June 19, 2004.
2. Valerie Gas, "Un `gros Poisson' d'Al Qaida Extrade pal la Syrie," Radio France, June 18, 2004.
3. Matthew Evangelista, The Chechen Wars: Will Russia Go the Way of the Soviet Union? (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2002).
4. Anatol Lieven, Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), p. 144.
5. Life and Times of Ibn ul Khattab (London: Ansaar News Agency, 2002), video.
6. "Profile of Ibn ul Khattab, Ameer of Foreign Mujaheddin in the Caucasus," Azzam Publication, www.qoqaz.net. Accessed and saved in 2002.
7. US Department of State, "Eurasia Overview," Patterns of Global Terrorism, 1999, http://www.state.gov/www/global/terrorism/1999report/eurasia .html#Russia.
8. John Reuter, "Chechnya's Suicide Bombers: Desperate, Devout, or Deceived," American Committee for Peace in Chechnya, September 16, 2004, www.peaceinchechnya. org/reports/S uicideReport/S uicideReport.pdf.
9. Russia's `Black Widows' Wreak Terror," CNN.com, September 3, 2004, http://www.cnn.conV2004/WORLD/europe/09/01/russia.widows/.
10. Russian Federal Security Service, "The Federal Security Service (FSB) of Russia has Reliable Information about the Ways and Methods of Financing Armed Formations Acting in the Territory of the Chechen Republic," report (n.d.), p. 36.
11. US Department of State, Patterns of Global Terrorism, 2003, http:// www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2003/31759.htm; "Khattab's Brother Interviewed on Khattab's Life, Death in Chechnya," Al Sharq al Awsat, May 2, 2002.
12. Russian Federal Security Service, "The Federal Security Service (FSB) of Russia Has Reliable Information," p. 35.
13. Sharon LaFraniere, "How Jihad Made Its Way to Chechnya," Washington Post, April 26, 2003.
14. Steve Gutterman, "Russian Security Chief Says 10 al-Qaida Members in North Caucasus Region," AP, October 6, 2004.
15. "Top Guerrilla Killed in Chechnya, Saudi Who Led Fighters Was Suspect in Moscow Bombing," Washington Post, April 19, 2004.
16. "Top Guerrilla Killed in Chechnya."
17. Sharon LaFraniere, "How Jihad Made Its Way to Chechnya."
18. US Attorney's Office, District of Connecticut, "British Man Arrested on Several Terrorism-Related Charges," press release, August 6, 2004, http://www .usdoj.gov/usao/ct/Press2004/20040806.html. It is interesting to note that, in 2005, Babar Ahmad was a candidate for a seat in the British parliament for the Peace and Progress Party, the human rights party founded by the actors Vanessa and Corin Redgrave. At the press conference presenting Mr. Ahmad as a candidate, Mr. Redgrave said: "Electing Babar would be the most powerful message on human rights and justice that could be given. Just let the Americans try to say that an elected MP should be extradited.... We are living in the last remnants of democracy in this country. A vote for Babar is a vote that says `We believe in the fundamental rights that generations have fought for in this country and all over the world and we will not accept that they will be destroyed"' (Guardian, April 27, 2005).
19. "How Can I Train Myself for Jihad?" online guide downloaded from www.azzam.com.
20. "British Man Arrested on Several Terrorism-Related Charges."
21. Lawrence Wright, "The Man behind Bin Laden," New Yorker, September 16, 2002.
22. The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (New York: Norton, 2004), p. 149.
23. 9/11 Commission Report, p. 165.
24. Ministry of the Interior of Russia, press release, September 19, 2004.
25. Utro, March 10, 2004. Accessed via FBIS.
26. Ibid.
27. Central Court of Madrid, Proceeding 35/2001, September 17, 2003.
28. David Crawford and Keith Johnson, "New Terror Threat in EU: Extremists with Passports," Wall Street Journal, December 27, 2004. More on Azzouz in chapter 12.
29. "In Italia i Capi di Al Qaeda," Il Giornale, September 5, 2004.
30. Press conference with presidential aide Sergei Yastrzhembsky, Official Kremlin International News Broadcast, December 24, 2003.
31. "Danish Detainee to Join Rebels," BBC, September 30, 2004.
32. Sebastian Rotella, "Extremists Find Fertile Soil in Europe," Los Angeles Times, March 2, 2003.
PART III
AL QA E DA'S
MAIN STATION HOUSE
IN EUROPE
AND THE IRAQI JIHAD
CHAPTER 8
THE ISLAMIC
CULTURAL INSTITUTE
OF MILAN
You must remember that we are in a country of enemies of God, but we are always mujahideen.... We can fight any power using candles and airplanes: they will not be able to stop us with even their most powerful weapons. We must hit them. And keep your head up.... Remember: the danger in the airports.
-Abdulsalam All All Abdulrahman, Yemeni intelligence agent (Bologna, August 2000)
Drivers in Milan know that every day they have to cope with the city's unnerving traffic. Most of the city center's streets were built centuries before cars were invented and consequently are very narrow and unfit to serve the needs of Italy's financial and commercial heart. In the 1930s, a four-lane loop was built around the city center as part of Milan's effort to compete with other big European cities. While traffic on it can sometimes be brutal, the circonvallazione ("loop," in Italian) took many cars off the city's overburdened minor streets. But many Milanese drivers have learned that on some Friday mornings they had better avoid the northwestern part of the c
irconvallazione, where traffic often comes to a halt. In that section, police officers frequently either stop or divert traffic from the loop to the side streets, increasing the irritation of the notoriously short-tempered Italian drivers.
This weekly police intervention is made necessary by the behavior of some of the worshipers at the city's infamous Islamic Cultural Institute (ICI), a garage-turned-mosque located right on the circonvallazione. In the mid1990s, a few years after the mosque's foundation, the only people affected were the shop owners and the residents of Viale Jenner, the boulevard that the mosque faces. Every Friday, year-round and in any kind of weather, worshipers began laying their prayer rugs on the sidewalk right and left of the main entrance of the center, preventing customers from entering the adjacent shops. Although Italian law considers the occupation of public soil an offense punishable with a fine, complaints by some of the shop owners were ignored.
After a few years, as the mosque attracted more worshipers, during the most important religious holidays the rugs began to spill from the sidewalk to the edge of the street. Pedestrians who tried to walk on the sidewalk were forced to walk in one of Milan's busiest arteries. Drivers who complained were threatened and, reportedly, roughed up by some worshipers angered at any perceived interruption in the religious service. After police were repeatedly forced to break up scuffles between drivers and worshipers, city officials decided to set up a police patrol most Friday mornings. Instead of enforcing the law and keeping worshipers off the street and sidewalks, authorities preferred to slow down drivers. Those shopkeepers who have not sold their businesses have given up and close their stores for a few hours, taking an early and long lunch.
While Milanese drivers are familiar with the city's Islamic Cultural Institute for its effects on Friday's traffic, counterterrorism officials around the world know it as one of the most active centers of Islamic fundamentalism in Europe. Labeled by the US Treasury Department "the main at Qaeda station house in Europe,"' the ICI has been directly or indirectly involved in dozens of terrorist plots and has hosted some of the most famous terrorists who have walked the streets of the Continent. Only London's Finsbury Park mosque can claim a similar importance for Islamic radicalism in Europe.
Al Qaeda in Europe Page 22
