Al Qaeda in Europe

by Lorenzo Vidino

  Founded in 1989 by a group of mostly Egyptian immigrants unhappy with the more moderate views of the majority of worshipers at one of the city's other mosques, the ICI began to attract the attention of intelligence agencies during the investigation of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. The FBI believed that Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the operation, had spent time in Milan, where militants at the institute provided him with a fake passport.' But a more routine crime led Italian investigative magistrates to focus on the Institute in 1994: An Egyptian butcher told authorities that individuals linked to the ICI had organized a racketeering scheme against the city's halal slaughterhouses.3 He claimed that local Islamic butchers were forced to buy the meat from a distributor linked to the institute, and that those who refused were threatened with arson. What began as a simple racketeering case involving poor immigrants became one of the first and most comprehensive investigations of Islamic fundamentalists in Europe, covering hundreds of individuals and exposing links to four continents.

  Italian authorities in fact discovered, to their dismay, that the ICI was the main European headquarters of the Gamaa Islamiya,4 an Egyptian terrorist organization that has killed hundreds of Egyptians and Westerners in its attempt to overthrow the country's secular government. From Milan, the militants kept in close contact with other Egyptian radicals in the Middle East, Europe, and even the United States, the home in exile of the Gamaa's spiritual leader, Omar Abdel Rahman (the so-called Blind Sheikh).' The ICI focused its activities on providing false documents, safe haven, and financing to Egyptian militants and on spreading the group's radical ideology.

  When the conflict in Bosnia began in 1992, the ICI played a key role in recruiting volunteers to fight in defense of Bosnian Muslims. The imam of the center-Anwar Shabaan, one of Gamaa Islamiya's most important leaders-became the commander of the "Mujahideen Battalion," a paramilitary unit made up of Arab fighters (mostly veterans of the Afghan war against the Soviets) that fought against Serbs and Croats. Along with the Sahabah mosque in Vienna, another major bastion of the Gamaa, the ICI became the headquarters for European Muslims who wanted to fight in Bosnia.' Other terrorist groups began using the Institute as a meeting point, and the militant sermons preached inside the mosque radicalized those worshipers who were not already involved in jihad. The ICI was conceived as the organization's base in Europe, and its importance in spreading Gamaa's message throughout the Continent was clearly recognized by the group's leaders. In the words of Shabaan, which appear in a letter to a wealthy donor in Qatar, "Islamic projects in Europe must have absolute priority, considering how making these places stable bases for Muslims can be useful for Muslims all over the world."'

  The investigation on the ICI, which was dubbed "Sphinx" by DIGOS (Italian intelligence, Divisioni Investigazioni Generali e Operazioni Speciali), culminated in a dramatic raid on the mosque in June 1995 and in the indictment of seventeen militants-only a fraction of those investigated.' Inside the center, police found hundreds of false documents, radical magazines, tools for forging documents, and letters proving its ties to extremists worldwide. The leader of the ICI and Sphinx's main target, Shabaan, could not be arrested, as he had already escaped to Bosnia. In December, Shabaan was killed in an ambush by Croatian police.9

  Though Sphinx was the last major antiterror operation of the 1990s in Italy, the country remained a magnet for Islamic fundamentalists. By the end of the decade, when various groups were beginning to embrace Osama bin Laden's pan-Islamic project, the Center was playing an essential part in shaping the new face of terrorism in Europe. In a report written in 2001, Italian authorities described the role of the ICI in those years: The institute "because of the charisma shown by some of its most important representatives, performs the double function of putting forth the most radical Islamic views with substantial propaganda and indoctrination and, at the same time, binding together different networks, as it is the meeting point that is believed to be the safest for eluding police surveil- lance."10 Much as was happening in Finsbury Park (to which the ICI had very close ties), in those years various networks mingled at the Center. Friendships built in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan turned into strategic alliances once the fighters were back in Europe and behind the walls of the former garage on the circonvallazione. Egyptians, who had founded the Center, continued to hold vital positions, but militants from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and other countries became active inside the mosque. The ICI became one of the key facilities where the "delocalization of jihad" took place at the end of the 1990s.

  As we saw in chapter 5, by the beginning of 2000, Italian authorities had begun monitoring a group of North African militants (mostly Tunisians) who were connected to the Algerian network led by Abu Doha in London. The group, led by the Afghan veteran Essid Sami Ben Khemais, was based in the northern outskirts of Milan and maintained close ties to the ICI, which members of the cell used as a meeting point. As described, the cell was dismantled by DIGOS in the spring of 2001, after British and German authorities had arrested associated cells in London and Frankfurt as part of the investigation of the Strasbourg plot. In addition to providing the evidence needed to arrest the core members of the group, DIGOS's activity uncovered the cell's impressive network in northern Italy, which provided Ben Khemais and his group flawless false documents. These were used by members of the Algerian-Tunisian network throughout Europe.

  After the arrests, DIGOS continued to investigate individuals linked to the dismantled Ben Khemais cell; not surprisingly, it found that all roads were leading to the ICI. Specifically, the group looked inside the ICI for help when it wanted to send one of its affiliates to the training camps in Afghanistan. Two men linked to the Center attracted DIGOS's attention: Abdelhalim Remadna, the Algerian secretary of the ICI's imam, and Yassine Chekkouri, a mysterious Moroccan whom authorities quickly nicknamed "the Monk" because of his reclusive way of life. Both Remadna and Chekkouri lived inside the ICI, almost never leaving the premises. Months of investigation revealed them to be key players in a sophisticated network that was recruiting hundreds of European Muslims for al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan."

  Indeed, Remadna was one of the most important recruiters and organ izers in Abu Doha's network.12 Sitting all day long inside the office of the ICI, Remadna used the center's phones to maintain unbroken contact with the network's leadership in London and in Afghanistan. His communications were especially frequent with Abu Jaffar, the keeper of the Algerians' guesthouse in Jalalabad, with whom he coordinated the moves of the small groups of volunteers who left Europe for the Afghan camps. Hundreds of hours of wiretapped conversation confirm the group's high level of organization. Remadna provided volunteers with state-of-the-art false documents, which have always been the specialty of Italian cells. The militants preferred European documents showing Arab names, but if the facial characteristics of the traveler allowed it, a European-sounding name was even better. Most of the time, the documents were purchased by Remadna from trusted forgers who worshiped at the mosque. Even visas were taken care of by Remadna, who could count on a couple of travel agencies run by worshipers at the ICI to obtain visas from the Iranian consulate.13

  In order to minimize the likelihood of interception by intelligence agencies, the network had devised an itinerary to Afghanistan that went through Turkey and Iran instead of using the most common route, through Pakistan. By the end of the 1990s, authorities were examining passports of suspected militants for any sign of travel to Pakistan, which was taken as an indication of their affiliation with al Qaeda. Iran became a reliable alternative, owing to what one of the members of Remadna's network described as the Iranians' "complete cooperation."14 Remadna provided the volunteers with addresses of hotels and safe houses, where members of the network would meet them and help them cross from Iran into Afghanistan. Phone traffic shows that militants from at least six European countries relied on Remadna's "travel agency" to reach the Afghan camps.

  Remadna took care
of the needs of the network's leaders in Afghanistan as well. In particular, he was repeatedly tasked to purchase equipment for Abu Jaffar, the gatekeeper in Jalalabad. In May 2001, Remadna, who was always very careful not to say anything compromising on the telephone, had a lengthy conversation with a lieutenant of Abu Jaffar who told him, "The brother Jaffar has opened new rooms and they need training ... the problem is that they need trainers, machines for training, and keys." During the same conversation, the man told Remadna they could spend $17,000.15 Remadna, as was his practice when his interlocutor began to speak too freely, hung up the phone hastily, but enough had been said to allow Italian authorities to understand Remadna's activities: Abu Jaffar was clearly asking for equipment and instructors for his camps. Another of Abu Jaffar's assistants spoke even more directly, telling Remadna: "What we need exactly is a device that gives a signal even if under the earth there is a match or something that can go 5 meters underground but with a video ... anyway, that allows us to see everything that there is underground."16 The request for the monitoring device was made on September 9, 2001, just two days before the devastating attacks in New York and Washington, and Abu Jaffar may well have been anticipating American retaliatory attacks on Afghanistan that would force al Qaeda and Taliban fighters to find shelter in the country's cave-filled mountains.

  Not all to whom he talked were as scrupulous as Remadna on the telephone, and their slips enabled investigators to collect evidence on the Algerian recruiter. For example, though Remadna never named Iran, agents broke his code when they realized that his interlocutors sometimes mentioned Iran in contexts in which Remadna spoke of "98" (the country's international phone code, 0098). Even more careful than Remadna was his associate Yassine Chekkouri, who never left the Center and seldom used the phone. Nevertheless, DIGOS managed to gather information proving that he was a recruiter and a "travel agent" for the Moroccan and Tunisian networks, just as Remadna was for the Algerian network.'7 The two men, working together inside the mosque, had created an apparatus that was used by North African extremists living throughout Europe to reach al Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan.

  While investigating Remadna and Chekkouri, Italian authorities realized that a very high-ranking Egyptian operative had entered the country and contacted militants at the ICI just a few months earlier. Mahmoud Abdelkader Es Sayed, a close associate of al Qaeda's number-two man, Ayman al Zawahiri, had settled in Milan, following orders that came directly from al Qaeda. The Egyptians, who have always been the real brains behind al Qaeda and had played a key role in Europe during the first half of the 1990s, had lost their centrality and had been considerably weakened by internal struggles and waves of arrests in both Egypt and Europe. Es Sayed was sent to Italy to revitalize the Egyptian network in Milan and northern Italy, setting up new cells and establishing contacts with the other networks operating in the area. He thus kept close ties to the ICI even as he immediately became the undisputed leader of the other radical mosque in Milan, the Via Quaranta mosque. Opened shortly before Es Sayed's arrival, Via Quaranta was built to create a new gathering place for militants in the southern part of the city: Milan's Muslim population was burgeoning and the ICI could not satisfy the needs of all the radicals. 's

  That a man of Es Sayed's experience was sent to Milan shows the importance of the city to the Egyptians. A high-ranking member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Es Sayed had led a cell of the organization in Sudan and was sentenced to ten years by an Egyptian court for terrorist activities. During his stay in Italy, Es Sayed was frequently in contact with senior militants around the world and also had encounters with government officials. In August 2000, Italian authorities recorded a conversation between Es Sayed and a Yemeni militant, Abdulaziz Mohamed al Zubairi, that took place in Es Sayed's car.'9 Es Sayed recalled his imprisonment in Syria, explaining that the jailing was something of an error:

  They did not know anything about us over there and that made them angry. Anyway they considered us heroes. That's how the Syrian government sees us, because the cause is common: striking at the Jews. After three days Mustafa Tlass came to visit us and I told him: "You have had a border with Israel for twenty-one years and you have not fired a single shot.... Our goal is to stop the peace process." He said that we should have told him that.... He wanted to know if we were backed by a Syrian organization. I told him not to worry because we are just ten, fifteen guys, but that was not true.

  Mustafa Tlass was no ordinary visitor but the Syrian minister of defense. A longtime friend of the late Hafiz al-Assad, then president of Syria, and a member of the Baath Party since 1947, Tlass has been a member of the Syrian establishment for more than forty years.20 He also owns a publishing house in Damascus and has personally written several anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic works, some of which include allegations that Jews kill non-Jews and use their blood to make pastries for religious holidays.21

  As Es Sayed described it, Tlass's reaction was astonishing: "Then the minister said `God willing you will be free soon.' Then he gave me the telephone numbers of Hamas and Al Jihad." According to Es Sayed, the visit was planned by Assad and led to his release. Though Es Sayed had been caught smuggling weapons out of Syria, the Syrians let him go as soon as they understood where the weapons were headed and why. According to Es Sayed, Syrian authorities also released all the other Egyptians that were detained with him. Es Sayed bragged that those Egyptians "now work with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria and nobody bothers them." If this account of collaboration with terrorist groups at the highest levels of government is true, it adds support to the claim that Syria is one of the biggest sponsors of international terrorism.

  Tlass is not the only official from a Middle Eastern government who had dealings with Es Sayed. Another close associate was Abdulsalam Ali Ali Abdulrahman, a powerful politician with the Yemeni ruling party who was the director of a section of the Political Security Organization, Yemen's domestic intelligence agency. Despite his government position, Abdulrahman, who is also known as Al Hilal, had close ties to radical organizations and was known to have provided false documents and airline tickets to al Qaeda members to facilitate their travels to Europe. According to intelligence gathered by Italian authorities, in May 1998 Al Hilal traveled to Switzerland to purchase tools used to forge Schengen visas, which allow their holder to travel without border controls through fifteen countries of the European Union.22

  Es Sayed had spent significant time in Yemen before seeking political asylum in Italy, and while there he and Al Hilal were involved in an extraordinary counterespionage operation. The story-discovered in the files of an al Qaeda computer in Kabul that was obtained by a Wall Street Journal reporter after the fall of the Taliban-began in early 1998, when an Egyptian member of al Qaeda living in Yemen decided to become an informant for the Yemeni government.23 Ahmed Nasrallah, a hardened jihadi who had spent time in Egyptian jails in the 1970s, had gone to Yemeni intelligence willing to reveal all he knew about the organization. Nasrallah immediately provided authorities with names and locations of nearly a dozen high-ranking militants based in Yemen, including Ayman al Zawahiri. Nasrallah also volunteered to travel to Afghanistan to gather more information on bin Laden and his organization.

  It clearly had never occurred to Nasrallah that the Yemeni intelligence officers would be anything but enthusiastic about damaging al Qaeda. The head of the agency, Mohammed Al Surmi, assigned the case to Al Hilal, who met with Nasrallah in a rented flat in Yemen's capital, Sana' a. The meeting was taped by a hidden camera, installed by Es Sayed on Al Hilal's instructions. Instead of acting on the priceless information provided by Nasrallah to arrest the militants based in Yemen, Al Hilal warned them. Among those who fled the country was Ayman al Zawahiri, who went to Afghanistan.24 Al Hilal's sympathy toward Islamic radicals was typical of the attitude shown by elements in the intelligence services of some Middle Eastern countries, especially before 9/11. Italian authorities speculate that Es Sayed trained to be an expert forger under Al Hilal's superv
ision.25 This skill became particularly useful once Es Sayed relocated to Italy, the European country that al Qaeda has traditionally used as its document factory.

  The two men continued their friendship after Es Sayed left Yemen for Italy. In August 2000, Al Hilal traveled to Italy to attend a three-day meeting organized by the ICI in the countryside near Bologna .21 Es Sayed picked him up at the airport of the Italian city, and once again, the conversation inside Es Sayed's car was recorded.27

  Es Sayed: How are the camps in Yemen going?

  Al Hilal: Well hidden, they are proceeding on a world scale. How is the youth over here?

  Es Sayed: We have to train them. They need sheikhs like you.

  At Hilal: Are there youth at the camp?

  Es Sayed: Few; eighty. How was the trip?

  Al Hilal: Good, I am studying airplanes.

  Es Sayed: Of which airline?

  Al Hilal: God willing, I hope next time I will be able to bring you a window or a piece of the airplane. I flew Alitalia: there is no security, Sana'a's airport is more secure than Rome's.

  Es Sayed: What, operation "Jihadia"?

  Al Hilal: In the future listen to the news and remember these words: above the head.

  Es Sayed: You make me dream ... my dream is building an Islamic state.

  Al Hilal: God willing we will, because the government in Yemen is weak, sooner or later we will dominate it. But the big blow will come from the other country: one of those blows no one can ever forget.