123. Rotella, "Jihad's Unlikely Alliance."
124. Graff, "Morocco: The New Face of Terror?" p. 46.
125. Rotella, "Jihad's Unlikely Alliance."
126. I. Cembrero, "Moroccan Intelligence Report Warns of Possible New Terrorist Strikes," International Herald Tribune, March 22, 2005.
127. A. Eatwell, "3/11 Judge Aims for Mass Fall Trial of Terror Suspects," International Herald Tribune, February 17, 2005.
128. Elaine Sciolino, "Spain Continues to Uncover Terrorist Plots, Officials Say," New York Times, March 13, 2005.
129. El Mundo, "11-M. Masacre en Madrid."
130. Isambard Wilkinson, "Officer's Body Burnt in `Islamic Revenge,"' Telegraph, April 20, 2004.
131. Spanish Ministry of the Interior, Summary of Anti-Terrorist Activities, 2004.
132. Sciolino, "Spain Continues to Uncover Terrorist Plots, Officials Say."
133. Spanish Ministry of the Interior, Summary of Anti-Terrorist Activities, 2004.
134. "El Segundo Commando Suicida Pretendia Volar Atocha, el Bernabeu o la Sede del PP," Diario Sur, November 3, 2004.
135. Indictment of Eddebdoubi Taoufik and others.
136. Tracy Wilkinson, "Spain Acts against Prisons Becoming Militant Hotbeds," Los Angeles Times, November 2, 2004.
137. Indictment of Eddebdoubi Taoufik and others.
138. Spanish Ministry of the Interiors, Summary of Anti-Terrorist Activities, 2004.
139. Indictment of Eddebdoubi Taoufik and others; Spanish Ministry of the Interior, Summary of Anti-Terrorist Activities, 2004.
140. Spanish Ministry of Interiors, Summary of Anti-Terrorist Activities, 2004.
141. Indictment of Eddebdoubi Taoufik and others.
142. Sylvain Besson, "Un Nouvel Episode d'une Longue Guerre de Polices," Le Temps, November 2, 2004.
143. Wilkinson, "Spain Acts against Prisons Becoming Militant Hotbeds."
144. Indictment of Eddebdoubi Taoufik and others.
145. Wilkinson, "Spain Acts against Prisons Becoming Militant Hotbeds."
146. Onna Coray, "Swiss Intelligence Knew Terror Suspect Had Links to Radical Islam," AP, October 27, 2004.
147. Copy of the original letter in possession of the author.
CHAPTER 12
THE VAN GOGH
ASSASSINATION
I deem thee lost, 0 America. I deem thee lost, 0 Europe. I deem thee lost, 0 Holland. I deem thee lost, 0 Hirshi Ali. I deem thee lost, 0 unbelieving fundamentalist.
-Mohammed Bouyeri, letter pinned to the body of Theo van Gogh (Amsterdam, November 2, 2004)
THE HOFSTAD GROUP AND THE VAN GOGH ASSASSINATION
The Madrid attacks represented the first strike on European soil by the Moroccans, a network that had been dangerously underestimated and overlooked by European authorities. The French antiterrorism magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere has noted somberly, "The Moroccans are much more important than we thought. They have significant financial and logistics cells. And they turn out to be more structured and organized than other networks."' Though they played only a marginal role during the 1990s, in the past few years Moroccan groups have gained prominence in the European Islamist scene, filling the void created by the apparent demise of the Algerian network and other al Qaeda-linked structures.
Fundamentalist groups aiming at overthrowing the monarchy have operated in Morocco since the 1970s, but it was only at the end of the 1990s that groups with an extensive organization and strong ties to al Qaeda emerged there and in Europe.2 Moroccan veterans of the Afghan training camps formed several groups such as the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (Groupe Islamique Combattant Marocain, GICM) and Salafiya Jihadia, loosely connected terrorist organizations that quickly established their strongholds in the poverty-ridden slums of the country's large cities and in the conservative rural areas of northern Morocco. The mix of poverty and fundamentalism, often spread by Saudi-financed Wahhabi schools and mosques, created a fertile recruiting pool for the Moroccan groups, whose ranks swelled rapidly.
The May 2003 Casablanca attacks revealed the Moroccan groups' dangerousness. The bombings were carried out by a score of young suicide bombers from the city's poor neighborhoods who had no previous ties to Islamic fundamentalism. Moroccan authorities believe that the men had been spotted, radicalized, and recruited within the span of a few months by experienced GICM members, who saw them as ideal trainees. One of the recruiters-Abdelkarim Mejatti, a veteran of Afghanistan who had studied in the United States-reportedly took the young men to the hills outside Casablanca, teaching them bomb-making skills and Wahhabi philosophy.' The Moroccan government's reaction was particularly forceful. More than five thousand suspected Islamic fundamentalists were arrested, and several GICM and Salafiya Jihadia leaders were sentenced to death. Authorities, admitting they had failed to notice the problem, estimate that the country hosts up to one hundred terrorist cells ready to carry out suicide attacks.' But Morocco's clampdown came after most of the real masterminds of the network had already left for Europe, where an extensive web of cells provided them with logistical support.
"There are cells in which the Moroccans are well integrated into the population. So they do not seem suspicious," explains the head of France's internal intelligence agency, DST (Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire). "They work. They have kids. They have fixed addresses. They pay rent. The networks are dispersed throughout Europe and are very autonomous."5 European intelligence officials believe that the GICM and Salafiya Jihadia have meticulously created a web of highly independent sleeper cells throughout the Continent, counting on the fact that authorities were paying more attention to other networks-notably the Algerians' and the Egyptians'. And since Moroccans represent the largest Muslim immigrant group in many European countries, Moroccan militants can more easily hide their clandestine activities in plain sight.
After the Casablanca bombings, Moroccan authorities asked various European countries to extradite a number of Moroccan militants. Unpersuaded by the scant evidence provided by Rabat and afraid that the individuals would have faced torture or the death penalty on their return to Morocco, the countries denied most of the extradition requests. Nevertheless, several investigations of the European bases of the Moroccan network were opened, and authorities soon realized how widespread and well-organized it was. But only after the Madrid bombings, when it was clear that the Moroccan network had decided to bring its jihad to Europe, did most European countries begin to crack down on GICM and Salafiya Jihadia.
A senior GICM member, Youssef Belhadj, was arrested in Belgium a week after the Madrid bombings and charged with membership in a terrorist organization.' Released in July on bail, he was arrested again in February 2005 after Spanish authorities issued an international arrest warrant for him. Spanish magistrates believe that Belhadj, who had left his sister's Madrid apartment shortly before the train bombings, had been one of the masterminds behind the attacks-indeed, they think he is Abu Dujan al Afgani, the mystery man who claimed responsibility for the bombings in the tape found on March 13 near the Madrid mosque.' The final report by Spanish police on the Madrid bombings alleges that Belhadj chose March 11 as the day of the attacks on October 19, 2003, the day after al Jazeera broadcasted a tape where bin Laden threatened Spain for its involvement in Iraq. That day Belhadj also bought a new Belgian cell phone, providing a false name and "March 11, 1921" as his date of birth. Knowing that the Spanish elections would have taken place in March, but ignoring the exact day, he decided for the eleventh, so that the Madrid attacks would have taken place exactly two and a half years after those in the United States.' Belhadj's sister Safia; her husband, Allal Moussaten; and the couple's two sons have also been arrested by Spanish authorities for their involvement in the train bombings.9 Proving his close ties to Spain, Belhadj is also suspected of having facilitated the escape of Mohammed Afalah from Europe to Iraq. Afalah, a close associate of Fakhet and other key Madrid bombers who had escaped the Leganes siege, managed to leave Spain in April of
2004 and reached Belgium, where Youssef Belhadj and his brother Moumin gave him shelter in Maaseik, a small border town strategically located near the German and Dutch border.'0 Afalah shared an apartment with a close associate of Rabei Osman El Sayed Ahmed before leaving Belgium for Syria and Iraq. Authorities believe Afalah died in a suicide operation in Iraq in May of 2005."
The small town of Maaseik was also the destination chosen by the El Haski brothers after the fall of the Taliban. The Moroccan nationals settled in the quiet Belgian border town of Maaseik after escaping the American dragnet in Afghanistan, continuing their terrorist activities undisturbed for almost three years. Investigators believe that El Houcine, Mehdi, and Hassan El Haski were key members of the European GICM network, maintaining contacts with militants in Holland, France, and Spain. El Houcine, who had fought in Chechnya and proudly kept a picture of himself taken with Osama bin Laden, turned himself in to Belgian authorities in July 2004.12 His older brother, forty-one-year-old Hassan, was arrested by Spanish police in the Canary Islands in December 2004 and accused of being involved in planning and preparing the March 11 train bombings.13
Since the March 11 Madrid bombings Belgian authorities also netted more than twenty people linked to the Moroccan network; among the high-ranking GICM members they detained was Abdelkader Hakimi, a veteran of Bosnia, Chechnya, and Afghanistan who was directing the network while running a snack bar in a quiet suburb of Brussels.14
Other significant operations against the Moroccan network were carried out in Italy and Spain, where dozens of Moroccan militants connected to the Madrid bombers have been detained since March 2004.15 In France, investigators dismantled a cell that raised hundreds of thousands of euros for the network (see chapter 2). Only England has been reluctant to take rigorous measures against the network; Mohammed al Gharbouzi, whom Moroccan authorities consider the founder of the GICM and one of the chief architects of the Casablanca bombings, still lives in London and enjoys the £1,000 a month that his wife collects from the British government.'
MAP 12.1. THE MOROCCAN NETWORK
In the Netherlands, authorities were well aware of the presence of a large cell connected to the Moroccan network. Dutch intelligence had been monitoring the activities of groups of radicals in various cities for years and had noticed that some of them, mostly Moroccan immigrants or Dutch-born sons of Moroccans, had united in a large group that was regularly meeting in various apartments in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and The Hague. Since the group used to convene often in The Hague, given the Dutch capital's central location, the group was dubbed by authorities the "Hofstad" (Dutch for capital). Although most of its members grew up in the Netherlands, the Hofstad group maintained extensive contacts with militants in other countries. Dutch authorities received some information on these contacts from Morocco after the Casablanca bombings, but more specific intelligence came from Spain after the Madrid bombings. For example, they learned that the encoded phone number of one of the members of the Hofstad group, Ismail Aknikh, had been found in the phone book of Abdeladim Akoudad, a GICM member jailed by Spain and accused by Morocco of being implicated in the Casablanca bombings. Despite Akoudad's firm denial, Spanish authorities believe that Akoudad was one of the leaders of the Hofstad group and had coordinated efforts of Moroccan cells in Spain, France, Belgium, and Holland." Aknikh's phone number was also found in the diary of Abdelkader Hakimi when he was arrested by Belgian authorities, a discovery that demonstrated the circular connections of the network.'8
Moreover, when Madrid uncovered the plot to blow up the Audiencia Nacional, some of the men in the Moroccan network who were arrested were found to have extensive ties to the Netherlands and the Hofstad group. Two of them, Abdul Ghaffar Hashemi (a Dutch citizen) and Mourad Yala, had lived in Holland and become friendly with some of the members of the group. Yala had earlier been arrested in the town of Geleen by Dutch police, who accused him of falsifying passports. According to Dutch media reports, Yala and Hashemi were suspected of having studied ways to turn laptop computers into time bombs while in the Netherlands. In addition, the mastermind of the Audiencia Nacional plot, Mohammed Achraf, is believed to have wired money to some of the members of the Hofstad group. 19
The information provided by Madrid and Rabat on the extremists operating in the Netherlands caused Dutch authorities to step up their surveillance of the group. In October 2003, five militants with Hofstad connections were arrested "because there were serious reasons to believe that the group was involved in the preparation of an imminent terrorist attack. ,20 Nevertheless, the Dutch legal system's strict rules of evidence prevented authorities from putting together a solid case, and the men were soon released.21
The member of the Hofstad group that more than any other had attracted the Dutch authorities' attention because of both his radicalism and his connections was a Dutch-born teenager, Samir Azzouz, a close associate of Akoudad. Azzouz's father, a day laborer, was a Moroccan immigrant; his mother, also Moroccan, suffered from poor health. Azzouz was a shy boy who attended a local Catholic school and lived with his grandmother because of his family's financial straits, but his father used to take him every Friday to the al Tawheed mosque, Amsterdam's most radical place of worship. 22
Influenced by the sermons heard at al Tawheed and by the vitriolic rhetoric he found in Islamic chat rooms on the Internet, by the age of fifteen Azzouz had already embraced radical Islam. The events of 9/11 only increased his fanaticism, and in the spring of 2002, Azzouz attempted to reach Chechnya to join the mujahideen. His traveling companion was Abdelaziz Beniyach, a Moroccan who was a close associate of Jamal Zougam (see chapter 11). Azzouz and Benyaich were detained by Ukrainian authorities on their way to the Caucasus and eventually sent back to Europe. Upon his return to Holland, Azzouz settled in Rotterdam, where he began to socialize with two militants who belonged to the Hofstad group. 23
Azzouz was among the militants detained and released in October 2003; by the first months of 2004, freshly married to a Palestinian and seventeen years old, he had become one of the key elements of the Hofstad group. According to Dutch authorities, he had begun surveiling key installations throughout the Netherlands that were suitable targets for attacks. In June, he was arrested in connection with the robbery of the small super market where he worked, and police searched his Rotterdam apartment. Investigators found a gun, two ammunition clips, night vision goggles, a bulletproof vest, and chemicals commonly used in making bombs. They also found sketches and floor plans of Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, the headquarters of the AIVD (Algemene Inlichtingenen Veiligheidsdienst, or the General Intelligence and Security Service), the parliament and Defense Ministry in The Hague, and a nuclear power plant in Borssele.24
Their discoveries caused Dutch authorities to issue a terror alert for the installations Azzouz had surveilled, and he was charged with plotting terrorist attacks. At the trial, held in early 2005, Dutch prosecutors presented the notes that Azzouz had taken on maps of the installations, which they interpreted as planning the use of weapons and a getaway car and thus as confirming that he was planning an attack. The prosecution also introduced footage from a surveillance camera placed outside the headquarters of the AIVD that appeared to show Azzouz scouting the building.25 Moreover, to prove his radicalism, tapes of phone calls that Azzouz had made while in custody were introduced as evidence. In one conversation with his wife, he described the September 2004 massacre of schoolchildren in the Russian town of Beslan as a "great party."26
Dutch prosecutors, who tried Azzouz as an adult, asked for a sentence of seven years. They also demanded that Azzouz be denied his voting rights for twelve years, an unusual request that they argued was justified because he had tried to "attack democracy."27 But as often happens in terrorism trials in the Netherlands, the Rotterdam court acquitted Azzouz, sentencing him to only three months for illegal possession of firearms, a term he had already served.28 Exiting the courthouse with his wife, Azzouz celebrated his release by punching a freelance photograph
er and knocking him unconscious against a parked car.29
Azzouz's alleged plans were not the only attacks the group had conceived. In June 2004, Dutch authorities informed their Portuguese counterparts that three members of the Hofstad group had left the Netherlands and had traveled to Portugal, a few days before the kickoff of the European Cup soccer tournament that Portugal was hosting in June and July. Driving a Volkswagen Golf owned by another member of the group, the three had collected a small amount of cash at Lisbon Airport and checked into a hotel in Porto, in the north of the country. Portuguese and Dutch authorities believe that the group was planning to kill Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, a former Portuguese prime minister who was then presidentdesignate of the European Commission, and other important guests at a reception held in Porto the night before the tournament began."' Certain that the threat from the Dutch hit squad was imminent, Portuguese police forced Barroso to stay in his hotel the night of the gala and deported the three Hofstad members.31
The Portuguese trip demonstrated the dangers posed by the group, but usually its schemes were aimed at the Netherlands. Most of the members of the Hofstad group had grown up in Holland, and although they supported bin Laden's concept of a worldwide jihad, they thought of Dutch society as their primary enemy. And the group even aimed at attacking the system from within. Dutch authorities were shocked to discover that the group had access to classified documents from the AIVD, the country's domestic intelligence agency. Indeed, in 2003 they discovered that a member of the group, Ahmed Hamdi, possessed a transcript of a conversation between militants that the AIVD had taped, and three other men linked to the group were also found to have classified documents. Their investigation later revealed that the documents had been passed to the men by Othman Ben Amar, an audio editor and interpreter in the Islamic Terrorism Center, the small section of the AIVD that investigates the activities of Islamic fundamentalists operating in the Netherlands. In September 2004, Ben Amar was arrested inside the offices of the AIVD and charged with releasing state secrets.32
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