[ALBSA-Info] NYTimes.com Article: A Top Boss in Europe, an Unseen Cell in Gaza and Decoys Everywhere

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A Top Boss in Europe, an Unseen Cell in Gaza and Decoys Everywhere

September 23, 2001 

By DOUGLAS FRANTZ with RAYMOND BONNER


 



ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Sept. 22 — Officials in Europe, the
United States and Pakistan say they have identified new
elements of the bin Laden terrorist network, including a
top lieutenant in Europe and a previously undisclosed cell
in the Gaza Strip. 

At least 11,000 terrorists have been trained in the past
five years at camps operated by Osama bin laden across the
border in Afghanistan, these officials say. Many have since
been dispatched abroad to destinations unknown. 

Mr. bin Laden and his Afghan camps are only part of the
problem, the officials say, and his network of loosely
linked cells may already be so vast that eliminating those
camps or even Mr. bin Laden himself would go only part way
toward confronting the terrorist threat. 

Western governments have concluded that many of the
terrorist operations linked to Mr. bin Laden are being run
by a very senior lieutenant in Europe whom officials would
not name. Europe was a far easier place from which to
operate because of access to telephones, travel and banks,
one European ambassador said. 

There is also substantial evidence that once terrorists are
dispatched around the globe as "sleepers," they are given
considerable latitude in selecting their targets and
executing their plans in order to minimize communication
and detection. 

Even before the Sept. 11 attacks on America, security
agencies in Europe rounded up several groups of followers
of Mr. bin Laden. Suspects were arrested this summer in
Spain, Italy, France, Germany and Britain. 

The scope of the network was illustrated by an operation
that started with the arrest of four militants in Frankfurt
last Dec. 26. The suspects were two Iraqis, a French Muslim
and an Algerian. 

An intelligence official familiar with the arrests said
authorities suspected the group intended to bomb the
European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. 

The leader of the terrorist cell, an Algerian identified as
Muhammad Bensakhria, escaped. He was arrested later in
southeastern Spain, and prosecutors say he and his
colleagues had been trained by Mr. bin Laden's Al Qaeda
organization in Afghanistan. 

Other cell members were arrested over the summer in Italy
and Germany, and an Italian antiterrorist official said
evidence seized indicated that the group planned to supply
weapons to militants in Britain, Germany and Belgium. 

Earlier this year, Israeli authorities "stumbled on" an Al
Qaeda cell in Gaza, a senior American official there said.
The official, who offered few details of the operation,
said the Israelis were not even looking for the bin Laden
organization and did not know they had a cell in their
midst. 

President Bush said this week that the network operates in
60 countries. But the harder truth, the intelligence
officials said, is that no one knows how far Mr. bin
Laden's reach really extends. 

It is certain, however, that the organization's influence
goes beyond secretive terrorist cells. It has exported
instability on a global basis by training and financing
Islamic-oriented insurgency movements from the Philippines
and Malaysia to Nigeria and Chechnya. 

A good example of its influence is the Islamic Movement of
Uzbekistan, which is trying to create an Islamic state in
the Ferghana Valley that includes parts of three Central
Asian countries: Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. 

American intelligence officials said the group's members
were trained at a former Soviet military base now operated
by the bin Laden organization near the city of Mazar-
i-Sherif in northern Afghanistan. 

Estimates of the Uzbek group's strength range from 2,000 to
3,000 fighters, most of them well-equipped with the latest
weapons and surveillance equipment. From bases in northern
Afghanistan and Tajikistan, they have carried out numerous
hit-and-run attacks through the region over the last three
years. 

"Without a doubt, the strength of the I.M.U. is external
support," Michael R. Hickok, an expert on Central Asia at
the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama,
said in an interview. "Among its supporters are the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden." 

Training terrorists and those who assist them is carried
out by the military wing of the bin Laden organization.
Another wing deals with public relations, trying to spread
the anti-American message as far as possible through
interviews and videotapes. 

Muhammad Ismail Khan, a Pakistani journalist based in
Peshawar, described a morning in August of 1998 when he was
awakened by a telephone call informing him that Mr. bin
Laden wanted to be interviewed. He and several other
journalists went to the airport, where a bin Laden
associate gave them tickets to Banno, south of Peshawar.
There they were met by a van and escorted across the Afghan
border at an unmarked crossing point and on to Mr. bin
Laden's camp. 

Such camps in Afghanistan have provided the training
grounds for at least 3,000 hard-core terrorists recruited
from Arab countries as well as Pakistan and Muslim regions
like western China, Chechnya and Central Asia, officials
said. 

A NATO ambassador said the most frightening aspect of the
bin Laden organization was that so many of his adherents
joined Al Qaeda as young boys and were indoctrinated
thoroughly in terrorist techniques and a deep hatred of the
United States. 

Another 8,000 men have received instructions on logistics,
like moving money, planning sophisticated attacks, blending
into Western cities and communicating secretly, officials
said. 

Intelligence authorities have tracked a network of business
dealings that includes agriculture companies, banking, and
export-import firms around the world. Along with providing
money for the training, the authorities said, the empire
can be used for moving people and money around the world. 

There has been little success in shutting down his
finances, the step regarded by many intelligence officials
as one of the keys to stopping his operations. 

"The massive amount of money is the fuel of this," said a
NATO ambassador in an interview in Brussels. "The
international system is so globalized, so instant, with so
many opportunities for anonymity that these guys can take
advantage of it." 

Another expert, Peter Bergen, a journalist who is
completing a book on Mr. bin Laden, said the Saudi exile is
only the best-known leader of the organization and the
public starting point for a particular brand of
transnational terrorism. 

"We use the name bin Laden with multiple connotations," he
said. "There are groups that have sworn allegiance, others
who might work with him, and others who think he is a good
guy."

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/23/international/23NETW.html?ex=1002272700&ei=1&en=3015d54a530a1b58



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