Al Qaeda in Europe Read online

  LORENZO VIDINO

  The New Battleground of International Jihad

  FOREWORD By

  Steven Emerson, Director of the Investigative Project

  TO MY PARENTS AND TO JESSICA,

  FORTH EIR LOVE AND SUPPORT

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  Foreword Steven Emerson

  Introduction

  PART I: A DAGGER IN THE SOFT HEART

  Chapter 1: Profiling at Qaeda in Europe

  Chapter 2: Life among the Infidels

  Chapter 3: Europe's Tied Hands

  PART II: THE ALGERIAN NETWORK

  Chapter 4: The Algerian Network and Its Origins

  Chapter 5: The Strasbourg Plot

  Chapter 6: The Ricin Plot

  Chapter 7: Chechnya, Land of the Forgotten Jihad

  PART III: AL QAEDA'S MAIN STATION HOUSE IN EUROPE AND THE IRAQI JIHAD

  Chapter 8: The Islamic Cultural Institute of Milan

  Chapter 9: From Afghanistan to Iraq Through Europe

  Chapter 10: The Iraqi Jihad

  PART IV: MADRID, VAN GOGH, AND THE NEW FACE OF AL QAEDA

  Chapter 11: The Madrid Train Bombings

  Chapter 12: The Van Gogh Assassination

  APPENDIX: ISLAMIC EXTREMISM IN EUROPE

  Testimony of Lorenzo Vidino Testimony before the House Committee on International Relations Subcommittee on Europe and Emerging Threats

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am gratefully indebted to many people who, over the last few years, have helped me research and understand terror networks operating in Europe. First and foremost, I am especially thankful to Steven Emerson, without whose support, advice, and patience this book would not have come to light. I have had the fortune of working for Steve for more than three years, and the passion with which he runs the Investigative Project is a continuous source of inspiration. The current and past staff members of the Investigative Project represent a unique group whose dedication and hard work reflect Steve's commitment. Among them, I would like to express my most sincere appreciation to Josh Lefkowitz, Tamar Tesler, Kim Beck, Jason Mintz, and Cynthia Dachowitz.

  I am also grateful to Alive Falk, Guido Olimpio, Emerson Vermaat, Antonio Oppi, Muriel Nellis, and everybody at Literary & Creative Artists. Michael Wildes deserves a separate mention for his support and dedication to national security.

  Finally, I owe a special measure of gratitude to two good friends with whom I have the privilege of sharing passions and interests: Andrea Morigi and Evan Kohlmann.

  FOREWORD

  Rallies calling for jihad. Fatwas calling for killing Americans and Jews. Islamic organizations condemning democracy and the West. Islamic clerics demonizing the United States and Europe. Terrorist leaders operating freely and planning operations. Fund-raising for terrorist groups. "Enemies of Islam" targeted for assassination. Hundreds of innocent civilians marked for death. Young Muslims volunteering and training for jihad.

  No, this is not the Middle East. It is far closer to home, and it has been going on for years in London, Paris, Madrid, Milan, Rome, Bonn, Strasbourg, Amsterdam, Oslo, Copenhagen-throughout the European continent. The jihad battlefront is everywhere nowadays, present throughout the capitals of Europe. The war that Europe has so assiduously tried to avoid since being ravaged in World War II is now suddenly at its doorstep.

  For more than a dozen years, the jihad has been simmering throughout Europe, with regimes studiously unwilling to pay attention to, let alone clamp down on, the Islamic terrorists organizing on European soil. Even the horrific attacks of 9/11 in the United States-pivotally organized from the sanctuary of Europe by the free-wheeling lieutenants of Osama bin Laden-did not jar Europe out of its slumber. Only when the streets of Europe began running red with the blood of its citizens-with the brutal execution of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, the murder of 197 Spanish train travelers, and the killing of fifty-two British citizens-did European leaders and governments begin to address the jihad problem on their own turf.

  But is it too late? Is Europe doomed to become Eurabia? Has the concentration of radical Muslims reached levels that cannot be rolled back? Has Europe essentially ceded sovereignty over its increasingly radical Islamic populations to extremist organizations that have successfully implanted themselves? Is Europe destined to become the target of even more lethal attacks? And will Europe continue to serve as a staging ground for American targets in the Middle East or, worse yet, on American soil? And if radical Islamic populations dominating European cities is the future, is the United States facing the same course of disaster?

  Lorenzo Vidino exposes the jihad network on European soil in frightening and meticulous detail, revealing the organizational networks, terrorist plots, and radical infrastructure operating for years throughout the European continent. As one of the senior investigators and researchers at the Investigative Project on Terrorism, Vidino, in the span of only a few short years, earned a reputation at the highest levels of the US government as perhaps the top expert on al Qaeda and radical Muslim cells in Europe. He has an unparalleled ability to take massive amounts of information-tens of thousands of documents, Muslim Web sites, court records, and interviews-and distill them into a brilliant narrative that tells a gripping story. This book is the cumulative result of years of research and investigation, much of it never publicly revealed, into the extremist networks in Europe.

  For those who want to know more than what the headlines or thirtysecond sound bites reveal-for anyone concerned about the future of Europe and the United States-this book must be read. It will teach you; it will frighten you; it will mobilize you; it will anger you; it will educate you more than anything you have ever read on how the Muslim radicals have been transformed from "foreign" to "domestic" cells within Europe. With the rapid growth of radical Muslim populations, and with young Muslims having been subject to a steady diet of anti-Western invectives and calls for jihad, the only question is, Why didn't the attacks in London or Madrid happen sooner?

  Detailing the jihad's diabolical consequences, Lorenzo reveals how the terrorists in Europe have exploited the very freedoms that made Europe so alluring. But now, with ticking time bombs ready to go off every day, there is not a wide range of options left to European governments. How did Europe find itself in this mess today?

  Lorenzo's book traces the rise and growth of radical Islamists in Europe and explains how they operated with virtual impunity for years. In some respects, European governments legitimized the radical networks and leaders by granting Islamic radicals fleeing the Middle East political asylum, by officially recognizing their newly implanted mosques and militant organizations as "mainstream," and by allowing fund-raising for Islamic terrorist groups without any interruption or restrictions. Adding to that combustible mix a radicalized Islamic environment-through schools, mosques, imams, electronic broadcasts, textbooks, videos, and the Internet-in which the West, Americans, and Jews were portrayed as the "enemy of Islam," it is not difficult to see why second generations of Muslims in Europe, who had all the economic opportunities available to them as other generations, would turn to violence.

  From terrorist cells in Stockholm to recruiting stations in Milan, from ricin plots in France to train bombings in London and Madrid, Lorenzo's book tells a story that comprehensively reveals the extent of the terror network that operates worldwide-but is ironically stationed from the safety of Europe.

  By 2005 Europe had woken up to a series of lethal bombings, interdicted plots, terrorist cells, and body bags. The Empire was finally poised to strike back. But whom would it strike? And would it be enough? And what would be the implications for the United States?

  To find out the answers to these questions and to the larger one o
f how extensive the jihad network has become in Europe, this book will tell you. It's a remarkable piece of investigation and analysis.

  Steven Emerson

  INTRODUCTION

  In the American collective imaginary the terrorist who will try to carry out the dreaded follow-up to the 9/11 attacks fits a certain stereotype. He is a young Arab male, barely speaks English, and may have a long beard. Perhaps he will try to cross the US border hidden in a container sent from a remote Middle Eastern country, or sneak into the country through a tunnel built by Mexican drug smugglers.

  While such an attempt cannot be ruled out entirely, authorities and analysts consider a different scenario much more likely. The next Mohammed Atta will probably come to the United States on a direct flight from London or Paris, landing at JFK or LAX. He will be wearing trendy sneakers and expensive sunglasses, with his iPod dangling from the back pocket of his Gucci jeans. On the plane he might even sip a glass of chardonnay. Following the medieval Islamic doctrine of "necessity permits the forbidden," formulated by Sheik Ibn Taymiyah seven centuries ago, he will justify the consumption of alcohol by his need to fool the infidels into believing he is not a Muslim, or at least an observant one.

  Then, at customs, while immigration officials scrutinize the visas of Ukrainian nannies and Indian computer workers, he will breeze by after showing his British (or German, Belgian, French, Danish ...) passport. Since citizens of Western European countries do not need a visa to enter the country, he will be subjected to an examination that lasts, according to data released by US immigration authorities, less than a minute.

  With this picture in mind, in the spring of 2005 some members of Congress began to question whether the Visa Waiver Program, which allows citizens of Western European countries to enter the United States without a visa, had to be revised. Yes, European countries are our friends, and the vast majority of their citizens come to the States for business or to see America's beauties, conceded the legislators. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the disturbing new reality.

  Let's consider Great Britain, America's foremost ally. In 2001 a British-born convert to Islam, Richard Reid, attempted to blow up a transatlantic flight by igniting explosives he had hidden in his shoes. Omar Sheikh, born in London and a former student at the London School of Economics, has been sentenced to death for his role in the gruesome assassination of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. All four suicide bombers that attacked London on July 7, 2005, were British citizens, three of them by birth. And British authorities estimate that no fewer than three thousand British-born or British-based individuals have passed through al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. Any one of them could enter the United States with no visa and no security check.

  Every other European country finds itself in the same predicament, as each confronts the new face of Islamic terrorism. The 2004 Madrid train bombings and the 2005 attacks in London represented the first massive strikes of Islamist terrorists on European soil. Nevertheless, the attacks are simply the most visible sign of a much larger problem. Over the past twenty years, Europe has become a major base of operations for al Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist groups, a fact that has major consequences for security around the world-including in the United States.

  Almost every terrorist attack carried out by al Qaeda before 9/11 has some link to the Continent. In 1992 Ahmed Ajaj, one of the planners of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, landed at JFK with a fake Swedish passport. The documents for the bombers of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were supplied by a charity that was a Dublin-based front. And when, two days before 9/11, al Qaeda wanted to kill Ahmed Shah Massoud, the leader of the Afghan Northern Alliancefor years a determined opponent of the Taliban-it resorted to two suicide bombers who came from Belgium.

  The attacks of 9/11 revealed Europe's centrality in al Qaeda's operations. While the devastating attacks were conceived in the dusty caves of Afghanistan, their operational details were perfected in Hamburg and in a resort on the Spanish coast. The key perpetrators of the worst terrorist assault the world has ever seen met in a mosque, a school, and an apartment of the affluent German city. More troublingly, most of these men were not extremists when they left their homes in North Africa or the Middle Eastthey discovered radical Islam in the modern and secularized West.

  After 9/11, following al Qaeda's loss of its central base in Afghanistan, Europe gained even greater importance. Cells operating in Europe play a crucial role in raising and laundering money, running Web sites, planning attacks, and procuring weapons and false documents for the global jihadi network. Militants recruit new adepts in the mosques, schools, prisons, gyms, and coffeehouses of every large European city. While some of the terrorists operating on the Continent are immigrants from Muslim countries, a growing number of them were born in Europe, a by-product of the inability of European countries to integrate their burgeoning native Muslim communities (currently estimated to number around 20 million) into civil society.

  The foundations of this security disaster were laid in the 1980s, when many European countries either granted political asylum to, or simply allowed the entrance of, hundreds of Islamic fundamentalists, a large proportion of whom were veterans of the war in Afghanistan against the Soviets. Europeans naively thought that, once in Europe, these committed fighters would stop their violent activities. To the contrary, as soon as they settled on European soil, most Islamic radicals exploited the Continent's freedoms to continue their efforts to overthrow Middle Eastern governments.

  And it was in Europe that Islamic radicals from different countries forged strategic alliances. Originally intending only to fight the secular regimes of their own countries, top members of various terrorist groups joined forces in Europe's radical mosques, where bin Laden's vision of a "global jihad" came to life. Moreover, the mosques and networks established by radicals who had been given asylum have been key in helping to create what can be considered Europe's biggest social and security problem: the radicalization of its growing Muslim population.

  This book was conceived after lengthy discussions with US officials worried about the situation in Europe and its repercussions for the United States. Drawing on material collected over years and on numerous trips throughout Europe, it aims to show the extent of the penetration of Islamist terrorism on the Continent. From original government documents (intelligence reports, indictments, transcripts of intercepted conversations) gathered from various European countries and the United States we gain a portrait of an extremely determined and highly organized network that is now bent on attacking its hosts, as the events in Madrid and London have shown.

  The first of the book's four parts analyzes who the terrorists operating in Europe are, categorizing them according to where and when their radicalization took place. It shows that while the seed of hate was planted by the "imported threat" (those radicals that obtained asylum in Europe), the most serious danger is now posed by the "homegrown" (European-born Muslims and converts) and the "home-brewed" (immigrants who radicalized in Europe). It tells the story of how their lives of deceit are spent hiding in plain sight in the Muslim neighborhoods of cities such as Rotterdam, Lyon, and Barcelona, exploiting Western freedoms while striving to destroy them. It concludes by examining the difficulties experienced by European authorities as they seek to shut down Islamist networks.

  The remaining parts describe, by detailing failed and successful operations, the inner workings of three of the most important networks operating on the Continent. Part 2 examines the Algerians, a network that served as bin Laden's main franchise in Europe in the 1990s. Part 3 depicts how al Qaeda is conducting a massive recruitment campaign throughout Europe to fill its ranks in Iraq. Finally, part 4 considers the Moroccans, the network behind the Madrid bombings and the assassination of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh.

  Ample anecdotal evidence throughout the book shows what, aside from their religious fanaticism, binds these three networks together: all took advantage of Euro
pe's lax attitude toward radical Islam. Asylum is generously provided, irrespective of past crimes. Immigration laws are seldom enforced. Governments provide generous benefits. Self-styled clerics are free to preach their vicious and hate-filled ideology. In many cases recruitment for a foreign terrorist organization is not considered a crime. And authorities do not have the means or the legislative authority to aggressively pursue terrorist networks. Europe is the ideal place for a terrorist to operate.

  Things cannot stay as they are. The attacks of 9/11, the bombings in Madrid and London, the assassination of Theo van Gogh, and the tensions with its Muslim population that, to varying degrees, every European country is facing are making Europeans rethink their policies. "The rules of the game are changing," said a determined Tony Blair in the wake of the London bombings. It will take a long time, it will not be easy, but we will change the rules. First, we must understand how we got to this point.

  A DAGGER

  IN THE SOFT HEART

  CHAPTER 1

  PROFILING AL QAEDA

  IN EUROPE

  God loves us because our wish was to come to Europe and go back to our country with money, but God loves us because now Europe is in our hands because God showed us the way and we understood that we are mujahideen in His name. Now we are mujahideen muhajireen [immigrant fighters], this is the goal we always have to accomplish with honor.

  -Ben Heni Lased, German-based Libyan militant (Milan, March 2001)

  David Courtailler, Christian Ganczarski, Thomas Fischer. These aren't the types of names one expects to see when reviewing a list of those charged with participation in Islamic terrorism in Europe. Nevertheless, the three men, all Christian converts to Islam, are part of the extremely varied community formed by al Qaeda on the Old Continent. Members of the network include middle-aged Pakistani mothers, European-born teenagers, and experienced Arab mujahideen who have fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets. While many of them are born in Europe, of parents either Muslim or Christian, others come from places such as Uzbekistan, Venezuela, or the United States. Many are poor, but some of them represent the cream of the upper classes of their countries of origin. Some live at the margins of society, bouncing from one odd job to another or dealing drugs, while others appear to represent success stories of Muslim integration into European societies.