All roads lead to Milan

  They were arrested and released, again and again. The individuals now suspected of involvement in the terror attacks in America were within plain sight of intelligence organizations and investigation agencies throughout Europe.

  By Yossi Melman     

Taliban fighters, 1998: The search of Ben Khemais' apartment turned up about 40 videotapes containing footage of training in Afghanistan.   In April 2001, an armed team of agents from Digos, the Italian anti-terrorist agency, raided an apartment in Gallarate, a suburb of Milan. They discovered a photocopy of a Yemenite passport issued to one Nassim Abdulqader Ahmed al-Sakaf. Further investigation revealed that Sakaf was well known to police forces and intelligence agencies around the world. In 1997, he was arrested in Canada for using a forged passport, and was deported. In May 2000, about a year before the raid on the Milan apartment, he was arrested in Germany, also on suspicion of possession of a forged passport. Following a brief stay in jail, he was again deported. Since that time, Sakaf's whereabouts have largely been a mystery.

On September 19, 2000, the sum of $4,000 was transferred into his bank account, via Western Union, the U.S. company that specializes in money transfers around the world. About two months later, Sakaf was arrested in Jordan on charges of illegal entry into the country, and with suspected links with the mujahideen (Islamic guerrillas) in Chechnya.

The Jordanian investigation also led to the discovery of his real identity. Sakaf, it turned out, was not a citizen of Yemen, but of Saudi Arabia; his real name is Fahid Mahadi Ahmad Hamdan al-Hasan al-Shakri. He is considered a close associate of a leader of the Egyptian terrorist group Jamaat al-Islamiya, whose spiritual leader, Omar Abdel Rahman - known as the "blind sheikh" - is currently serving a life sentence in an American prison for his involvement in the first attack on the World Trade Center in New York, in 1993.

The story of Sakaf/Shakri, and his arrests and releases on three different continents - is Exhibit A proving the incompetence, complacency and lack of cooperation of investigation authorities, police forces and intelligence organizations throughout the world. If the same degree of awareness, readiness, aggressive response, determination and information exchange now being demonstrated had been exercised a year ago, or even a few months ago - it is altogether possible that Osama bin Laden's groundwork for the flamboyant, lethal acts of terrorism could have been disrupted ahead of time, averting last month's horrifying attacks in the United States. The terrorist attacks were followed by a series of arrests of suspected members of bin Laden's Al-Qaida (The Base) organization, or other affiliated movements. Two more suspects were arrested this week in northern Italy.

Over the past six months, ever since the raid by Digos agents on the apartment, Milan prosecutor Stefano Dambruoso has been carrying out an investigation of the trail. The final results of the inquiry are set to be made public in a few weeks. But an interim investigative report - including about 100 pages of protocols of interrogations of suspects; transcripts of phone conversations that have been intercepted, recorded and deciphered; photographs extracted from videotapes; passport numbers, addresses of safe houses, and additional findings - sheds much light on the operational methods of the more extremist terror groups. IDF Military Intelligence calls these organizations "the global jihad" - a description that attempts to convey what the international media, for the sake of convenience, calls the "Osama bin Laden network."

It is a loose web of small organizations that share a common national background and other singular interests that outweigh the factors that divide them. The glue that consolidates these groups is a common past (their coming into being within the melting pot of the Afghani struggle to throw out the Soviets); common goals (hatred of America and American culture); religious ideology (a strict and extreme interpretation of Sunni Islam); socioeconomic background (members are frequently drawn from the middle class); education (usually academic); familiarity with and residence in the countries of Western Europe and the United States, and an ability to strike roots in these countries; meticulous compartmentalization; and contact maintained via couriers with Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaida organization.

They draw their inspiration from bin Laden and his lieutenants. Some have undergone training in his bases in Afghanistan and receive financial support from them, for purposes of sustenance or in order to set up businesses that will provide a cover for their terrorist activities. Bin Laden also helps to underwrite special operations.

Contrary to the impression that has been given in the media, bin Laden's financial support is hardly exorbitant. American intelligence analysts assess that the cost of the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington - in which the 19 suicide terrorists were killed, and in which another few dozen accomplices were involved in preparations that began two years ago - was $2 million at most.

Training for holy war

The interim report found its way into the hands of several Italian journalists, including Leo Sisti, and has been published in its entirety by the Washington-based "International Consortium of Investigative Journalists." The report states that six suspects of various nationalities were taken into custody during and in the aftermath of the Milan raid a year and a half ago. The detainees maintained links with counterparts in Belgium, Holland, France, Spain, Switzerland, and Great Britain - countries that due to the lack of sufficient cooperation are only now, retroactively, adopting preventive law-enforcement measures against cells of operatives suspected of terrorist activities.

The key figures in the affair are Sami Ben Khemais, who had lived in the apartment and was arrested, and Tarek Ma'aroufi, a Tunisian who became a naturalized citizen of Belgium. Ben Khemais was the director of an office-cleaning and garden-maintenance firm called "Work Service, SRL." But Italian investigators suspect that the company was merely a cover for his and his counterparts' terrorist activities.

Ben Khemais settled in Milan in March 1998, following two years of training in Afghanistan. Investigators suspect that his function in the terrorist network was to identify potential candidates for membership in the terror cells, recruit them and dispatch them for military training and religious instruction in bin Laden's bases in Afghanistan. He controlled the recruitment array in Italy, Germany, Britain and Belgium.

The recruits were sent to Geneva, where they were processed by a Tunisian whom the report identifies as Taher Mastaysir. He saw to their travel arrangements to Pakistan, where they were transferred to a training base in Khost across the border, south of Kabul. They were given courses on the handling and detonation of bombs and explosive charges, surveillance and evasion techniques, planning of kidnappings and hijackings of individuals, trains, buses and airplanes. When their training was complete, they received the title of Mujahideen, and were sent back to Europe, awaiting instructions to begin the jihad - the holy war.

Dambruoso, the Italian prosecutor, issued an arrest warrant against Ma'aroufi. Investigation of his part in the network revealed that in the mid-1990s, Ma'aroufi was arrested in Belgium on suspicion of membership in an Algerian terrorist cell, and that he had information about the murder of the former Belgian deputy prime minister in 1991. Yet all of the arrests and interrogations of Ma'aroufi in Belgium failed to produce a conviction, and he was released and left to pursue his underground activities. In one intercepted telephone conversation, Ben Khemais was heard warning him: "You have to be cautious. Find shelter. You will know what to do."

Ben Khemais was tailed by Italian police, who wiretapped his phone line for about a year prior to his arrest. He was in regular phone contact with Ma'aroufi; they would call each other on cell phones. On at least one occasion, when Ma'aroufi came to Milan in September 2000, Ben Khemais picked him up at the airport, and the two men went together to the Islamic Cultural Center in the city. The report describes the center as "an important crossroads for Egyptian terrorists."

A few week after the meeting in Milan, American intelligence officials sent information to their Italian counterparts, reporting that a suspect with a certain nickname, whose telephone number was the same as that of Ben Khemais, "had joined three extremist Muslims with links to bin Laden, and together they were plotting to attack American targets in Italy." The search of Ben Khemais' apartment turned up 30 stolen calling cards used for placing hundreds of international calls from cell phones, which were registered in the name of the card owners - not of the individuals who actually placed the calls - as well as about 40 videotapes containing footage of training in Afghanistan and battles in Chechnya.

According to the Italian report, as early as the summer of 2000, Western European and American intelligence agencies identified two especially noticeable networks of Islamic terrorists. One was run by a Tunisian named Sayef Alalah bin Hasin, who investigators now know was Ben Khemais' boss. The other network was led by a London-based Algerian national identified as Haidar Abu Doha, who was nicknamed "the doctor."

The two networks were originally established to support the "Salafi Group for Call and Combat," a small extremist group, itself the handiwork of the Armed Islamic Front, known by its French acronym GIA, considered the most murderous terrorist organization active in recent years in the campaign to bring down the Algerian government, with a record of hundreds of brutal acts of murder.

However, in the fall of 2000, the two networks affiliated with the Salafi group were served with orders to switch direction and priority: they were told to shift the balance of their activities from the struggle in Algeria to a new plan inspired and financed by bin Laden. The enterprise was described by bin Laden as "an international front against Jews and Crusaders." The degree to which this front was international is reflected in the phone calls made by an aide to Ben Khemais, who was arrested with him during the raid on the Milan apartment. On the night of December 30, 2000, over seven hours, beginning at midnight, he carried on 30 conversations with operatives in Pakistan, Dubai, Germany and Britain, including Haidar Abu Doha. Calls were made to various destinations throughout Italy.

Haidar Abu Doha is now under arrest in London, fighting extradition to the United States. FBI investigators describe him as a key figure in bin Laden's global network, and suspect Abu Doha of playing a major role in sending some of the suicide hijackers in the September attacks for pilot training. In addition, he is suspected as a conspirator in the failed attempt to blow up LAX, the Los Angeles International Airport, on New Years' Eve of 1999, and the aborted plan to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Rome. The Salafi Group for Call and Combat has now been added to the list of 27 terrorist organizations and individuals made public by U.S. President George Bush following the September 11 attacks.

Ben Khemais is refusing to cooperate with prosecutor Dambruoso, and said in an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Serra: "I don't know Osama bin Laden. I don't plant bombs, I only helped my Muslim brethren ... who are struggling for their freedom in many countries, especially in Chechnya." And Tarek Ma'aroufi was quoted in the newspaper La Repubblica, saying, "It's all a mistake. We aren't terrorists."