Al Qaeda in Europe Read online

  What binds all of them together is their strict adherence to al Qaeda's message. Homegrown or new immigrants, rich or poor, experienced jihadis or fresh converts, they all believe they are living in the "land of the infidels," that a war is being waged by the West against Islam and that only a violent jihad will bring about their dream of making the word of Allah the only religion in the world. Their different profiles, elusive nature, and swelling numbers make the work of European intelligence agencies a true nightmare.

  Given all the different types of individuals who have been involved with Islamic fundamentalism in Europe, to precisely catalog them is an extremely difficult task. But they can be divided into different groups and subgroups according to their relationship to the Continent and to fundamentalism. Indeed, it is very useful to categorize European Islamic terrorists by how and when they entered Europe and embraced radical Islam. This kind of analysis both reveals the astonishing diversity of the Islamist movement on the Continent and provides chilling insights into the enormous mistakes made by Europe over the past thirty years in its relationship with radical Islam.

  THE HOMEGROWN THREAT

  "You look at your average church priest, and what does he do? Who would he go to war with? No one. So how can Christianity claim to be a religion when its followers don't believe in spreading the word? The fact that Western politicians like Bush and Blair are scared of Islam means that it is a great religion."' These are the words of a twenty-year-old Englishman who converted to Islam, changed his name to Salim Yunus, and joined al Muhajiroun, a radical London-based group that openly seeks to turn Britain into an Islamic country following a Taliban-style interpretation of Islamic law.

  Yunus is one of the hundreds of thousands of Europeans who have abandoned the Continent's traditional religions and chosen to convert to Islam. Researchers estimate that, in France alone, one hundred thousand Christians have turned to Allah's faith. Because most European countries do not poll their citizens' religious affiliation, exact numbers are difficult to obtain; but the phenomenon has been on the rise for the past twenty years and the events of 9/11 only increased the Europeans' interest in Islam.

  But Yunus, unlike most European converts, has chosen to embrace a radical and militant form of Islam. He is one of the disturbing number of converts whose search for direction in their lives has led them to militancy. Over the last ten years, European security officials have noticed that dozens of European converts have joined terrorist groups. Some of them have played minor roles in terrorist cells, exploiting their appearance to go undetected by law enforcement agents. Others died fighting in places such as Chechnya and Afghanistan. A few have even reached the highest ranks of al Qaeda, masterminding attacks throughout the world.

  Disillusioned with mainstream society, these disaffected young men are attracted by the sense of community that Islam offers. While those who adopt mainstream Islam find solace in its teachings, the result can be quite different when converts turn to fundamentalism. What often happens is that these men find in militant Islam an alternative to better-known antisocial outlets such as neo-Nazi or anarchist groups. Radical Islam enables them to channel their anger into a structured movement that is, in their view, fulfilling God's will. Militant Islamists, in turn, have been actively exploiting their longings in an all-out recruitment drive.

  In an interview with the British newspaper the Observer, Paul Weller, a professor of interreligious studies at Derby University, tried to explain the phenomenon: "There is a clear rise in the politics of identity. Young white men who join Islam might be feeling out of place from modern life. So you find that when they join a religion like Islam they have an unbending view. Their views on jihad, for example, might be less compromising than the views of people who were born Muslims."2

  The men make this choice for various reasons. Some convert because Islam fills their spiritual void, answering questions that they feel Christianity cannot answer. Alan, a twenty-four-year-old Englishman who changed his name to Mohammed Khan and joined the radical al Muhajiroun, told the Observer reporter of his sense of disillusionment with Christianity: "It didn't give me any sense of respect. No one goes to church any more. At least the mosques are full, so Islam obviously has something."3

  It is that "something" that has attracted so many malleable Westerners to the jihadi cause. Almost all think that something is missing in their livesthey feel disconnected from their families, from their jobs, or from society as a whole. Many are attracted by Islam's strict rules. Young men with no direction find in radical Islam a guide for their daily life; they believe that by following precise orders they can avoid going astray. They are the living confirmation of the validity of Dean Kelley's theory that the more liberal and ecumenical denominations and religions are declining in membership and losing members to those that are more conservative and fundamentalist.' For disoriented young men in search of discipline, Christianity's liberal practices are not as attractive as Islam's stringent requirements.

  Another reason often cited for the conversion of Westerners to radical Islam is the sense of belonging and community that some young men gain from their first contacts with the Muslim community. Philibert Lepy, the lawyer for the French terrorist David Courtailler, explained the reasons for his client's conversion: "He told me that the first time he went to a mosque, it was luminously lit and the atmosphere was convivial. That's the opposite of what you'll find in our Catholic churches these days." Lepy added his own analysis of the phenomenon: "The rise of Islam in France is a reflection of the spiritual emptiness of so much French life. When there's a vacuum, nature abhors a vacuum. Something else fills its place. We can't go on the way we've been living, cheerfully buying refrigerators."5

  Lepy's client, David Courtailler, together with his brother Jerome, provides a case study of a convert turned al Qaeda member. Raised in a small town in the French Alps, David and Jerome spent their teens helping in their father's butcher shop. When the shop failed and their parents divorced, the Courtaillers began using drugs and drinking heavily. They moved to a poor neighborhood of London; there the brothers converted to radical Islam and attended the same mosques as a number of notorious terrorists, including the would-be 9/11 hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui. After months of indoctrination by radical preachers, the brothers accepted the offer of a local al Qaeda recruiter to attend training camps in Afghanistan; they also received $2,000 and a visa to Pakistan. Following months of instruction in Afghanistan, the brothers made their way back to Europe undisturbed, taking advantage of their French passports and Western looks.'

  Once in Europe, the Courtaillers began plotting terrorist attacks, drawing on the network of contacts they had made in Afghanistan. Jerome became involved in a cell that was planning to bomb the US Embassy in Paris in September 2001. Investigators also believe he had a role in supplying the documents to the two al Qaeda suicide bombers who killed the Northern Alliance commander Ahmed Shah Massoud in northern Afghanistan two days before 9/11.' David, who met with some of the perpetrators of the Madrid train bombings and with other terrorists throughout Europe, was sentenced by a French court in May 2004 to four years in prison for "conspiring with criminals engaged in a terrorist enterprise,"' a formula often used by French authorities to charge individuals who have not carried out any attack but have consorted with other terrorists.

  The Courtaillers are not the only Frenchmen who turned to radical Islam in their search for direction in their lives. Lionel Dumont grew up in a family with a solid Christian background and wanted to become a journalist. In 1992, surprising his family, he dropped out of college and joined the French army, volunteering for a peacekeeping mission in Somalia. His experience in the war-ravaged and poverty-stricken African country shocked Dumont, who was unable to fit back in once he returned to France.9

  Dumont then converted to Islam, changing his name to Abu Hamza. He traveled to Bosnia to join the foreign mujahideen that were battling Serb and Croat forces in defense of local Muslims. After the end of the
conflict in the Balkans, Dumont returned to France, where he became a member of the infamous Roubaix Gang, a group of North African Islamic fundamentalists that turned quiet areas of northern France into the Wild West, carrying out a string of armed robberies and engaging the police in bloody shootouts. In March 1996 the group placed a car laden with explosives near the site of the Group of Seven meeting in the French city of Lille. French police fortunately discovered the car and defused the bomb hours before the leaders of the world's major industrial democracies were supposed to meet.10

  Dumont was just one of the many European and American converts who took up arms in Bosnia. Another Frenchman, Christophe Caze, fought in the Balkans and then headed the Roubaix Gang on his return to France." A British convert, David Sinclair, was killed by Croat forces while fighting with the foreign mujahideen in Bosnia.12 Dozens more reportedly trained in Afghanistan. Some, like the "American Taliban," John Walker Lindh, battled alongside Taliban forces. Thomas Fischer, a young German convert to Islam, was killed by Russian forces while fighting beside Chechen rebels in November 2003.13

  Thomas Fischer represents another kind of convert to radical Islam: the shy, reclusive teenager who does not fit into Western society. Born Catholic in the rural German town of Blaubeuren, Fischer was a lonely child with a speech impediment and no friends. At fourteen he found his first friends at the local mosque. The imam and other worshipers taught the young Thomas about Islam, and, at age twenty, he converted. After wandering from mosque to mosque and establishing an Islamic cultural center that is today under close surveillance by German authorities, the impressionable Fischer traveled to Chechnya, where he found his death.14

  Young men interested in Islam receive a warm welcome from European Muslim communities, as it is a duty for every Muslim to introduce the religion of the Prophet to all nonbelievers. But recruiters for terrorist organizations also put a particular effort into finding such seekers, as they know how valuable young converts can be for their cause. Thomas Fischer was a weak youth who could be easily turned into a fundamentalist. A French intelligence report published in 2004 makes clear that "the conversion to Islam of fragile individuals undoubtedly leads to the risk of diversion to terrorism."'S

  Converts are extremely valuable because they do not fit the traditional profile of the Islamic terrorists and therefore attract little attention. Men with names like Dumont, Fischer, or Sinclair can cross borders, board planes, rent cars, and apply for visas without drawing the scrutiny given to Middle Eastern males. In May 2001, Italian authorities intercepted a conversation between Abdelhalim Remadna, a top al Qaeda recruiter based in Milan, and his contact in Saudi Arabia. It dealt in part with a young Italian man who was interested in going to Saudi Arabia. "He is a brother, but he is of Italian nationality," said Remadna to overcome doubts about the Italian's loyalty, "He is the most enthusiastic of them all and even has a doctorate in chemistry and is twenty-seven.... If you give him the order, he reaches you the same day." When Remadna mentioned that the man was married, his associate's reply revealed al Qaeda's interest in converts and their Western documents: "That is not a problem. This is the second phase. We don't care about that, we care about that paper." 16

  Though generally converts have been al Qaeda's foot soldiers, recent instances have come to light of Europeans climbing the ranks of the organization to reach positions that have traditionally been occupied by men of Middle Eastern descent. Particularly telling are the cases of Pierre Robert and Christian Ganczarski, two European converts who had direct contacts with the top al Qaeda leadership and guided attacks throughout the world.

  Robert was a young Frenchman who enjoyed beer and bikes before his conversion to Islam. He spent time in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and then settled in the Moroccan city of Tangier, where he began recruiting and training local youngsters.'7 In the wake of the deadly May 2003 Casablanca bombings, Robert was arrested by Moroccan authorities, who accused him of planning similar suicide attacks in Tangier. In September 2003, Robert, dubbed the "blue-eyed emir" by the Moroccan media, was sentenced to life in prison.'8

  Ganczarski was a Polish-born German citizen who dropped out of high school and found a job as a metalworker. He was introduced to Islam by some Muslim coworkers; shortly after converting, he traveled to Saudi Arabia to take up a scholarship at the University of Medina, a school known for its fundamentalist teachings. Ganczarski then traveled to Afghanistan, where he reportedly met with Osama bin Laden. After leaving, Ganczarski became a key player in al Qaeda's European network. He is currently being detained by French authorities, who accuse him of having plotted the deadly April 2002 suicide bombing directed against a synagogue in Djerba, Tunisia.19

  While individuals such as Robert and Ganczarski are European security officials' nightmare, another type of convert, the lone wolves who lack ties to organized networks but adhere to al Qaeda's ideology and harbor a deep hatred for the West, could also represent a serious threat to Europe's security. Officials fear that new converts, driven by the desire to prove to other Muslims that their conversion is "true," might attempt on their own to carry out spectacular acts of terror. That they are unaffiliated with any known group makes them particularly dangerous, as individual agents are more difficult to track down and monitor.

  Italian authorities suspected they were dealing with a lone wolf when they witnessed a series of amateurish bombing attacks after 9/11. Between the fall of 2001 and May 2002, several rudimentary explosive devices were found in a downtown station of the Milan subway system and in Agrigento, Sicily, near a famous Greek temple and in front of a church and a penitentiary in the modern city. The attacks had no victims, and present at all of them were bed sheets marked with writings praising "the Afghan brothers" and "the only true God, Allah."20

  While these attacks were clearly in some way motivated by post-9/11 tensions, the crudeness of the devices and the manner in which responsibility was claimed led profilers to immediately rule out the hypothesis that an organized group was behind them. A lengthy investigation confirmed the authorities' theory. The perpetrator was Domenico Quaranta, a young Sicilian man who had converted to Islam in jail a few years earlier. Investigators collected evidence of Quaranta's ties to North African men in Sicily and near Milan, where he had lived for a few months, but they believe that he acted alone out of a desire to avenge the lives of Muslims killed in Afghanistan.

  Quaranta is one of the many young Europeans who converted to radical Islam in jail. One Frenchman accused of being a member of a group of Algerian terrorists operating in the Paris area told investigators: "Islam made me abandon crime and gave me a healthy way of life."21 Ruddy Terranova, a tall and imposing young man from the suburbs of Marseilles, never met his real father, his stepfather died in a street fight, and his mother committed suicide when he was young. At seventeen he joined the French Foreign Legion. While still in his twenties, between 1994 and 1997, Terranova collected an impressive number of convictions for attempted robbery, assault, and attempted murder.22

  Like many other converts, Terranova discovered Islam in prison. French prisons, where the majority of the inmates are Muslims, have become fertile recruiting pool for radicals. There, many young Muslim criminals "rediscover" their roots and become more religious, and some native Frenchmen find a new sense of direction in Islam. Karim Bourti, an Algerian militant who was arrested with Terranova, testified to French judges about his associate: "He told me that he had been very turbulent, violent and that, once he embraced Islam, he became humble and serene."23

  Though some inmates who convert in jail find a positive new direction, as they manage to get their lives on the right track, Terranova was among those who chose instead to follow a radical interpretation of Islam. Once released from jail, he married a Senegalese woman and attended a radical Quranic school in Sudan. In the process of learning combat skills, he received injuries to his arm and body. Terranova then returned to Europe and settled in London, where he attended the radical mosques in which preach
ers such as Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada spread their vicious interpretation of Islam. Once back in France, the "humble and serene" Terranova teamed up with a group of Algerian terrorists and reportedly attacked Abderrahmane Dahmane, the president of a French Muslim organization that the group deemed too moderate.24

  But while some turn to Islam for guidance and direction, others convert as a form of protest against the system, the West, society as a whole. The French scholar Olivier Roy, who calls their acts "protest conversions," claims that young men "convert to stick it to their parents, to their principal.... They convert in the same way people in the 1970s went to Bolivia or Vietnam."25 A few take their rebellion to the next level and engage in terrorist activities. According to another French scholar, Antoine Sfeir, Islamic terrorism for these young Europeans is "a kind of combat against the rich, powerful, by the poor men of the planet."26

  An Italian intelligence report released in 2005 confirms that many native Europeans view their conversion as a form of political protest, as "Islamic ultrafundamentalism" offers them "an ideological frame into which they transferred their preceding militant anti-imperialist and antiSemitic views."27 According to the report, militants who convert to Islam come from both the right and the left, as both extremes are attracted to radical Islam's revolutionary message.