Italy Probing Source Of False Documents
Counterfeiters Suspected of Ties to Al Qaeda

By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, July 13, 2002; Page A14

MILAN -- False documents that Italian police seized from suspected terrorist sympathizers in Italy on Thursday will be compared to similar papers in the hands of U.S. investigators probing the Sept. 11 attacks to see whether they were all printed in Italy, investigators here said.

Investigators have long believed that Italy is a major logistics center for militant Islamic groups across Europe, especially in the production of counterfeit passports and identity cards. But authorities have yet to establish a link between the counterfeiting operations and the men who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

Many of the more than 380 al Qaeda suspects being interrogated at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were captured with counterfeit personal documents; people arrested in Europe also were carrying them. Officials said they hope that understanding where the documents were made and how they were distributed will bring important insights into the network's global operations.

The documents were seized during a raid on apartments here and in other northern Italian cities. Police also arrested nine Arab suspects.

According to police, two of the men had been arrested, sentenced and jailed for several months earlier this year but were released under Italy's generous parole system. The two men, identified as Muhammad and Said Kazdari, are Moroccan. The pair also manufactured false papers for stolen cars, police said.

Thursday's raids were the latest in a series across Italy. They took place during intense intelligence agency and police investigations into what role Islamic militants based in Italy might have played in the Sept. 11 conspiracy and into plots to stage attacks inside Italy.

When three senior Italian investigators visited the United States in June, FBI officials gave them testimony from a detained terrorism suspect about plans to blow up a Venice church or bomb St. Peter's Square in Vatican City two months before the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington. Italian police also have interrogated eight inmates at the holding pens for al Qaeda suspects at Guantanamo Bay.

The information on pre-Sept. 11 plots surprised the Italians, who had operated under the assumption that militant organizations here provided help for groups elsewhere, but that Italy itself was not a target. No attack clearly traced to a Middle Eastern group has occurred in Italy since 1993.

"We clearly underestimated their activities," said a leading investigator in Milan.

DIGOS, the police anti-terrorist Special Operations Directorate, released a report this week that warned of a possible terrorist operation in Venice. Police fanned out in the canal city, some of them moving about in small submarines. The alarm followed word of plots against the old Jewish ghetto area in Rome and a church in Bologna where in a Renaissance fresco, the prophet Muhammad is depicted as suffering in hell.

Investigators in Rome and Milan have begun to worry that Italy's high profile in the global war on terrorism, including sending troops to Afghanistan, is making the country a target of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, as well as freelancers.

"There is danger that groups or individuals who want to be candidates to join Qaeda might go into action," said Stefano Silvestri, who heads the Institute of International Affairs, a Rome research organization. "They would not have to be given orders by anyone."

Italian police have arrested about 30 al Qaeda suspects since September. Officials said there has been a clandestine influx of Islamic militants into the country escaping the war in Afghanistan.

Milan investigators suggested that some of the nine suspects arrested Thursday had contacts with al Qaeda operatives in the past. In particular, they cited contacts with Abdelkader es-Sayed, also known as Abu Saleh. An Egyptian citizen, he fled Italy in July 2001. According to London newspaper reports, he was killed in the U.S. bombing campaign in Afghanistan.

He had been granted political asylum in Italy, despite reports that he organized the 1997 massacre of 58 tourists in Luxor, Egypt. Bin Laden sent Abu Saleh to Italy to recruit, organize cells, oversee counterfeiting and whip up enthusiasm for terrorist operations, a senior investigator in Milan said.

A January 2001 wiretap showed that Abu Saleh and a Tunisian associate discussed false documents designed to ease entry into the United States, investigators here said. At one point, Abu Saleh hushed the Tunisian, saying, "If you have to speak to me about these things, you should come to me and speak in my ear. This subject is secret, secret, secret."

Milan officials also linked Abu Saleh to Essi Sami Ben Khemais, regarded by Italian investigators as a major al Qaeda organizer in Europe. In February, a court convicted Ben Khemais, an Algerian, of arms trafficking, manufacturing false papers and arranging illegal immigration. He was sentenced to five years in prison.

Increasingly, police attention in Italy has turned toward potential terrorist activities inside the country. The three Italian officials who went to the United States in June learned of testimony from a Pakistani named Chisthi Goulam, who was jailed more than a year ago there for carrying false documents.

According to one of the prosecutors, Goulam, who traveled occasionally to Italy, knew of a plan to detonate a bomb in St. Peter's Basilica last summer. The plot was called off in July 2001. The prosecutor cautioned that Goulam is the only source of that information.

In March, police in Rome arrested three Iraqis, an Algerian and a Tunisian on charges of weapons smuggling. A warrant signed by Rome prosecutor Franco Ionta said the group transferred their activities from Algerian terrorist organizations to al Qaeda, to destroy the "non-believer international" composed of Israel and the United States.

The arrests were the fruit of a two-year investigation, in which wiretaps indicated the suspects planned to use cyanide in operations. "Cyanide?" said one of the Iraqis during a taped conversation. "That's poison!"

Police wonder if this related to an apparent plot, uncovered in February this year, to poison the water supply of the U.S. Embassy in Rome. Nine Moroccans were arrested in connection with the suspected assault, which included possibly injecting cyanide into water pipes running to the embassy building on Via Veneto.

Investigators said they remained unsure about the role of the Moroccans, who had maps of the embassy.