Es Sayed: Ah, is sheikh Ayman [possibly Ayman al Zawahiri] doing well?
Al Hilal: He is a bit tired, but doing well. Our focus is only on the air, sheikh Abdelmajid [Abdelmajid Zindani, the leader of the radical Yemeni Islamist party Islah and a personal friend of Osama bin Laden] made arrangements also with the Algerian.... The group should not be disturbed.... You will find a good plan, but don't get specific, otherwise you'll dig your own grave.
Es Sayed: One must be cautious, like in Iran; not a single photo.
Al Hilal: No, it's worse, moving from south to north, from east to west: whoever created this plan is crazy, but he's also a genius. It will leave them speechless. You know the verse: "He who touches Islam or who believes himself strong before Islam must be hit."
Es Sayed: They are dogs, they must all go to hell!
Al Hilal: We marry the Americans, so that they study the Quran. They feel like lions, the power of the world, but we will hit them and afterward love will be seen.
Es Sayed: I know brothers who went to America with the trick of the wedding publications [both laugh].
Al Hilal: Because they like Egyptians over there; President Mubarak has many interests with them, but sooner or later he will end up like Anwar Sadat [president of Egypt, killed by Islamic fundamentalists in 1981].
Es Sayed: It was a good attack, inside the military parade.
Al Hilal: You must remember that we are in a country of enemies of God, but we are always mujahideen; we must take the youth like sheikh Abdelmajid, everyone has his task. 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.
Es Sayed: Rain, rain.
Al Hilal: Oh yes, there are big clouds in the sky, in that country the fire is already on and is only waiting for the wind.
Es Sayed: Jihad is still high.
Al Hilal: If it happens the newspapers from all over the world will write about it.
The chilling conversation alarmed officials before 9/11, but it took on a completely different resonance after the attacks had taken place. Al Hilal, who had close connections to the highest ranks of al Qaeda, likely knew about the plan in advance and had told Es Sayed about it.
Other evidence also suggests that some of the militants in Milan had prior knowledge of the attacks of September 11. DIGOS discovered that on September 4, someone had downloaded a photograph of the New York skyline at night, with the Twin Towers in the foreground, on a computer in the library of the Via Quaranta mosque28-not an image one expects to find in a mosque where America is commonly referred to as "an enemy of Islam." On September 6, Adel Ben Soltane, a Tunisian detained in Milan for his role in the Ben Khemais cell, received a letter from a fellow militant. Following standard procedure, prison guards opened it and found an empty chewing gum wrapper inside the envelope. The discovery was considered odd but not alarming until after the 11th, when the guards realized what they had seen and immediately contacted investigators. The wrapper was from Brooklyn gum, a popular Italian brand that features a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge. Investigators believe that militants used the wrapper to inform Ben Soltane about the upcoming attacks in the United States.29
After September 11, the whole network suddenly went underground. Chekkouri cut all contacts with the outside. Remadna exchanged a few phone calls with some militants on the day of the attacks. In one of them, he giggled briefly with a Tunisian man over the difficulties of using mobile phones that day, clearly showing his high spirits but making no direct comment. On September 13, he received a text message from another militant living near Venice that read "Congratulations for the USA"; almost complete silence until the middle of October followed.
Spurred by the arrests of some militants connected to the ICI on October 10, Remadna started planning his escape from Italy. He began inquiring about a visa for Turkey, thinking about reaching Afghanistan by the same Turkish-Iranian route on which he had aided so many others. On November 12, he shaved his beard and tried to catch a train to Rome, where he intended to take a flight out of Italy. Police intercepted him at Milan's Central Station and found him in possession of a false document. Knowing that Remadna's arrest would certainly have alarmed the evercareful "Monk," the Italians also arrested Yassine Chekkouri to prevent him from attempting to leave the country. By a curious coincidence, Chekkouri's brothers, Younis and Reduoane, two important members of the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, were also arrested just a few days later on the other side of the world, in Afghanistan, where they had worked at a training camp as instructors specializing in explosives.30 They were later sent to the detainee camp in Guantanamo Bay.31
To its dismay, DIGOS could not apprehend the main target of their investigation, Mahmoud Es Sayed, who had managed to flee to Afghanistan just a few weeks before Italian police acted. Authorities are not certain about his fate, but there are credible reports that Es Sayed was killed by US forces in Afghanistan in December 2001 during the battle of Tora Bora.32
After the arrests of Remadna and Chekkouri, the pressure to close the ICI mounted. With images of the smoking rubble of Ground Zero appearing nightly on television, the Italian public did not like the idea of hosting one of al Qaeda's main recruiting stations on its territory. As the newspapers and television stations put the center under a kind of media siege, the leadership of the ICI began its public defense. Day after day the president of the Center, Abdelhamid Shari, stood in front of the cameras repeating that a place of worship cannot be considered responsible for the misguided actions of some of its worshipers. Shari added that condemning the whole Institute would be like saying that the bishop of Milan is guilty because some of the people who attend churches in Milan are criminals.33
While some thought that the comparison had a nice ring to it, it is based on false premises. The analogy would be correct if only people who visited the mosque for services had been involved with the terrorism, but this is hardly true of the ICI. In addition to the dozens of simple worshipers who have been indicted over the years, the Center's leadership and administration have been investigated and charged by authorities. Remadna, who gave the mosque's address to immigration officials as his legal residence, was the secretary of the imam, Abu Imad. Chekkouri lived inside the mosque, where he occasionally worked as a librarian, and the wiretaps made clear that even the cook was involved in the group. The imam himself, Abu Imad, is a hardened jihadi who fought in Bosnia and Afghanistan and was the personal assistant of Anwar Shabaan, the center's first imam, who had led the foreign mujahideen in Bosnia. Abu Imad's speeches have often urged worshipers to fight jihad against the infidels. The Institute organized events at which the elite of Islamic fundamentalism spoke, and its bookstore sold hundreds of books and tapes about jihad and the deeds of the mujahideen. And, not surprisingly, the ICI's funding came from questionable sources: Since its foundation, the Center's rent had been paid by Anwar Shabaan's former employer, Ahmed Idris Nasreddin, the wealthy businessman who headed Al Taqwa (as discussed in chapter 2).
Despite the demands from a large segment of the public and some politicians, Italian authorities decided against closing the Center. As a result, the government has often been criticized for simply wishing to avoid a head-to-head confrontation with the Muslim community, especially in times delicate as the months after 9/11. But some security officials believe the decision to have been a sound one, as it allowed them to continue tracking the activities of several local radicals who might other wise have disappeared from their radar screen. Though it is common knowledge that intelligence agencies monitor the Center, and most key players therefore now avoid it, many lower-level militants still use it as a place of worship and a meeting point, unintentionally providing authorities with new leads.
NOTES
1. David S. Hilzenrath and John Mintz, "More Assets on Hold in AntiTerror Effort; 39 Parties Added to List of Al Qaeda Supporters," Washington Post, O
ctober 13, 2001.
2. Guido Olimpio, La Rete del Terrore (Milan: Sperling & Kupfer, 2002), pp. 87, 89.
3. Halal (literally, "allowed") is the Arabic term for meat slaughtered according to Islamic law, the only meat that devout Muslims are supposed to eat.
4. Divisioni Investigazioni Generali e Operazioni Speciali (DIGOS), note on ICI, November 9, 1996.
5. Paolo Biondani, "Alla Sbarra gli Estremisti Islamici," Corriere della Sera, December 13, 1995.
6. DIGOS, note on ICI, November 9, 1996.
7. DIGOS, report on the searches at the ICI, September 15, 1997.
8. Fabrizio Gatti, "Islamici della Sfinge, Tutti a Casa," Corriere della Sera, January 3, 1996.
9. DIGOS, note on ICI, November 9, 1996.
10. DIGOS, "Muhajiroun 3," November 21, 2001.
11. Ibid.
12. Italian authorities suspect that Remadna provided safe haven and false documents to Said Arif, Mabrouk Echiker, and Meroine Berrahal-members of the Meliani group who left Germany and spent a few months in Italy before fleeing to the Caucasus.
13. DIGOS, "Muhajiroun 3."
14. DIGOS, "Muhajiroun 2," October 5, 2001.
15. DIGOS, "Muhajiroun 3."
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. Milan currently has at least ten official and semi-official mosques; in addition, a number of apartments or basements have been turned into places of worship. Via Quaranta and the ICI on Viale Jenner follow a radical Salafi interpretation of Islam and have been repeatedly involved in terrorist activities, but most of the other mosques are moderate and have nothing to do with terrorism. The Muslim population in the Greater Milan area is estimated at one hundred thousand.
19. DIGOS, "Muhajiroun 3."
20. "Lt. Gen. Mustafa Tlass," Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, July 1, 2000.
21. Hugh Levinson, "A Dark Lie through the Ages," BBC, January 23, 2004.
22. DIGOS, official report, May 15, 2002. The Schengen countries are Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden.
23. Andrew Higgins and Alan Cullison, "The Story of a Traitor to al Qaeda," Wall Street Journal, December 20, 2002.
24. After an interesting series of events, Nasrallah reportedly managed to leave Yemen and escape the anger of his fellow al Qaeda members. The militants had decided to avoid troubles with Yemeni authorities and to kill Nasrallah not on Yemeni territory but in Afghanistan. Allegedly, they bought him a one-way ticket to Afghanistan, but Nasrallah, fearing a trap, escaped from Yemen and made his way back to his native Egypt, where he was arrested by local authorities. The destiny of Al Hilal is also particularly adventurous. In September 2002, Al Hilal flew to Egypt for business, and after contacting his family from Cairo, disappeared. His brother and informed Islamist sources believe he was kidnapped by Egyptian intelligence and, possibly, handed over to the CIA. In March 2005, Human Rights Watch reported that Al Hilal is currently detained in Guantanamo Bay.
25. DIGOS, "Muhajiroun 3."
26. The retreat attracted some of the most notorious fundamentalists operating in Europe. Aside from Es Sayed and Al Hilal, other important invitees were Mohammed Fazazi, the spiritual leader of the Moroccan group Salafia Jihadia (responsible for the Casablanca attacks) and imam at the Hamburg's al Quds mosque, and Ayub Usama Saddiq Ali, one of the closest collaborators of al Qaeda's number 2, Ayman al Zawahiri.
27. DIGOS, official report, May 15, 2002.
28. Stefano Dambruoso, Milano Bagdad: Diario di un magistrato in prima linen nella lotta al terrorismo islamico in Italia (Milan: Mondadori, Milan, 2004), p. 101.
29. DIGOS, "Muhajiroun 3."
30. DIGOS, official report, May 15, 2002.
31. Tim Golden and Don van Natta Jr., "U.S. Said to Overstate Value of Guantanamo Detainees," New York Times, June 21, 2004.
32. Es Sayed was nonetheless tried in absentia in Milan, where, in February 2004, he was sentenced to eight years and four months. At the same trial Remadna was sentenced to seven years and three months, while Chekkouri received four years. In October 2004, the Court of Appeals of Milan gave an additional six months to Remadna and three to Chekkouri.
33. Andrea Morigi, "Ma nei Centri Islamici Bin Laden Rimane un Eroe," Libero, October 11, 2001.
CHAPTER 9
FROM AFGHANISTAN TO IRAQ
THROUGH EUROPE
Enemies of God. I am sure they will ask you about people who went to Afghanistan, they want the head [i.e., the chief]. Damned. They love life, I want to be a martyr, I live for jihad. In this life there is nothing, life is afterward, brother, the feeling that is impossible to describe is dying a martyr. God, help me to be your martyr!
-El Ayashi Radi Abd El Samie Abou El Yazid, better known as Merai, Ansar al Islam recruiter (Milan, March 2003)
The events following the attacks of 9/11 completely destabilized al Qaeda and the worldwide network created by the group. After the US assault in Afghanistan, the group found itself without a base of operation. The training camps, which had served not only to educate volunteers in terrorist tactics but also to provide a place where members of different groups could form strategic alliances, were destroyed. Many of the chief planners of the group in Afghanistan-key figures such as al Qaeda's military chief, Mohammed Atef, and the gatekeeper Abu Zubaydah-had been either killed or captured. And the leaders who remained, including Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri, were unable to operate effec tively, as they were in continuous motion to evade American forces in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The Islamic fundamentalist scene in Europe was also quite confused. The Algerian network, which had been dominant in the late 1990s, was already in disarray because so many members had been arrested in Germany, France, and Great Britain. Several key al Qaeda operatives had left the Continent in the months before 9/11, probably warned by the group's leadership that a major attack was imminent and would likely trigger a crackdown. Several important operatives who had remained in Europe were either arrested or put under close surveillance, as European security agencies vigorously ramped up their counterterrorism efforts.
But despite these difficulties, al Qaeda was far from being defeated, and it soon found the energy to reinvent itself. The first problem that the organization had to solve was the loss of its safe haven. With Afghanistan now off-limits, al Qaeda simply found alternative locations for its training camps. There were reports that improvised training camps sprang up in places such as Pakistan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Somalia. Various regional terrorist groups that had received support from bin Laden's organization during the years stepped in to help al Qaeda restructure its activities.
A key figure in the group's reorganization was Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a Jordanian who had fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets in the 1980s and whose ties to al Qaeda were minimal before 9/11. He was the head of a small terrorist group called al Tawheed (Unity of God), whose headquarters were in the western Afghan city of Herat. The group attracted mostly Jordanians and Palestinians and its primary aim was to overthrow the secular Jordanian monarchy, which it viewed as un-Islamic and too friendly to Israel.' Though Zarqawi maintained good relations with bin Laden and reportedly received some funding from al Qaeda, he remained independent and never swore the bayat (the oath of allegiance) to bin Laden while he was in Afghanistan.2
Zarqawi's importance grew significantly in the months following 9/11, as he and his al Tawheed network, hitherto virtually unknown to the world's security officials, began expanding into those areas where bin Laden's organization was unable to operate. In chapter 6 we saw that one of Zarqawi's key operatives, Abu Atiya, was dispatched to the Pankisi Gorge to set up training camps. But Zarqawi also began strong operational cooperation with Ansar al Islam, an Islamist group that resulted from the merger of several radical Islamist Kurdish groups operating in the parts of Iraq that were no longer under Saddam Hussein's rule after the 1991 Gulf
War. After the massacres of Kurds in the north by Saddam's forces at the end of the Gulf War, American and British (and, initially, French) air patrols established indirect control of the region. Taking advantage of the de facto independence created by the no-fly zone, Kurds set up political parties and their own government. Small groups of radical Islamists such as Jund al Islam, the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan (IMK), and Hamas, determined to create an Islamic state, also took root and began to battle the secular Kurdish government.' These groups united in 2001 to form Ansar al Islam. While small in number, the group managed to gain control of some areas of Kurdistan and impose its strict interpretation of Islamic law on a few Kurdish villages. In the summer of 2001, representatives of Kurdish radical groups traveled to Afghanistan and met with al Qaeda's leaders in Kandahar. The Kurdish delegation received moral and financial support during the visit but had something important to offer as well, suggesting to the al Qaeda leadership that it might be possible to create an alternative base for the group in Kurdistan.' The proposal came at the right time, as in a few months American bombs would destroy al Qaeda's Afghan sanctuary.
The man who was put in charge of establishing al Qaeda's presence in Kurdistan was Abu Musab al Zarqawi. He moved some of his most trusted lieutenants to northern Iraq and began cooperating closely with Ansar al Islam. Zarqawi also helped hundreds of Arab fighters fleeing the Afghan scene pass into Iran, where authorities turned a blind eye. The fighters then relocated in the Ansar al Islam camps around the Iraqi city of Sulaimaniya. A camp near the town of Kurmal became the headquarters of the Arabs. There, one of Zarqawi's top aides from the training camp in Herat, Abu Taisir, reportedly began training operatives in the use of toxic substances such as cyanide and ricin.5
At the same time, Zarqawi was also extremely active on the European front. While most security agencies in the Continent were busy chasing al Qaeda operatives, Zarqawi was able to establish a small but effective network of graduates of his Herat camp throughout Europe. Headquartered in Germany and with cells in at least four other European countries, his network gained relevance as more and more members of the "old" al Qaeda network were being arrested. His operatives never competed with al Qaeda, however. As its importance grew, al Tawheed changed its priorities and replaced its traditional target, the Jordanian monarchy, with al Qaeda's global targets, the West and, specifically, America. But by no means was any attempt made to replace bin Laden as the leader of the international jihadi movement. Zarqawi filled an operational void, but after 9/11 he always operated as if he were part of al Qaeda.
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