Terrorists Use Bosnia as Base and Sanctuary

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

*****   Los Angeles Times 7 October 2001

SUNDAY REPORT
Terrorists Use Bosnia as Base and Sanctuary

U.S. sees possible threat from militants who came to help Muslims
fight Serbs, Croats in '90s, then became citizens. Some have ties to
Bin Laden.

By CRAIG PYES, JOSH MEYER and WILLIAM C. REMPEL, Times Staff Writers

ZENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Hundreds of foreign Islamic extremists
who became Bosnian citizens after battling Serbian and Croatian
forces present a potential terrorist threat to Europe and the United
States, according to a classified U.S. State Department report and
interviews with international military and intelligence sources.

The extremists include hard-core terrorists, some with ties to Osama
bin Laden, protected by militant elements of the former Sarajevo
government. Bosnia-Herzegovina is "a staging area and safe haven" for
terrorists, said one former senior State Department official.

The secret report, prepared late last year for the Clinton
administration, warned of problem passport-holders in Bosnia in
numbers that "shocked everyone," he said. The White House leaned on
Bosnia and its then-president, Alija Izetbegovic, to do something
about the matter, "but nothing happened," the former official said.

Although no evidence connects any Bosnian group to the suicide
hijacking attacks of Sept. 11 blamed on Bin Laden, U.S. and European
officials are increasingly concerned about the scope and reach of Bin
Laden networks in the West and the proximity of Bosnia-based
terrorists to the heart of Europe.

A number of the extremists "would travel with impunity and conduct,
plan and stage terrorist acts with impunity while hiding behind their
Bosnian passports," the former official said.

In several instances, terrorists with links to Bosnia have launched
actions against Western targets:

* An Algerian with Bosnian citizenship, described by one U.S.
official as "a junior Osama bin Laden," tried to help smuggle
explosives in 1998 to an Egyptian terrorist group plotting to destroy
U.S. military installations in Germany. The shipment included
military C-4 plastic explosives and blasting caps, the former U.S.
official said. The CIA intercepted the shipment, foiling the attack.

* Another North African with Bosnian citizenship belonged to a
terrorist cell in Montreal that conspired in the failed millennium
plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport.

* One of Bin Laden top lieutenants--a Palestinian linked to major
terrorist plots in Jordan, France and the United States--had
operatives in Bosnia and was issued a Bosnian passport, according to
U.S. officials.

After the foiled plot against American bases in Germany, the U.S.
suspended without public explanation a military aid program to Bosnia
in 1999 in an attempt to force the deportation of the Algerian leader
of the group, Abdelkader Mokhtari, also known as Abu el Maali.

Finally, after the U.S. went a step further and threatened to stop
all economic aid, Izetbegovic agreed to deport El Maali. But the
Algerian was back in Bosnia within a year. Two months ago, he was
reported to be moving in and out of the country freely. He is now
thought to be in Afghanistan with the leadership of Bin Laden's Al
Qaeda group, according to a senior official for the NATO-led
peacekeeping force, SFOR, in Bosnia.

President Clinton's secretary of State, Madeleine Albright,
personally appealed to Izetbegovic to oust suspected terrorists or
rescind their Bosnian passports.

The effort by top State Department aides continued through the last
days of the administration. "It wasn't just one meeting, it was 10 to
12, with orders directly from the White House," said a former State
Department official.

Izetbegovic declined the appeals, several sources said, apparently
out of loyalty to the fighters who had come to his country's rescue.
The president argued that many had married Bosnian women, had taken
up farming and were legal citizens.

"The point we kept making to Izetbegovic was that if the day comes we
find out that these people are connected to some terrible terrorist
incident, that's the day the entire U.S.-Bosnia relationship will
change from friends to adversaries," the former State Department
official said.

Senior U.S. and SFOR officials believe that some hard-line members of
Izetbegovic's political party gave direct support, through their
control of the Foreign Ministry and local passport operations, to
foreign Islamic extremists with ties to Bin Laden.

Although Izetbegovic stepped down in October 2000, many hard-liners
remain in Bosnia's bureaucracy, and they are suspected of operating
their own rogue intelligence service that protects Islamic
extremists, military and intelligence sources said.

Last week, Bosnia's new interior minister, citing "trustworthy
intelligence sources," said scores of Bin Laden associates may be
attempting to flee Afghanistan ahead of anticipated U.S. military
reprisals for the Sept. 11 attacks, seeking refuge among militant
sympathizers in Bosnia. The minister, Mohammed Besic, vowed to
intercept any who try to enter the country.

U.S. and SFOR officials acknowledge that the new coalition government
in Sarajevo has become much more responsive to fighting terrorism. A
senior State Department official lauded Sarajevo this year for
"working with the international community" in trying to clamp down on
suspected terrorists.

Since Sept. 11, Bosnia has launched an audit of passports and mounted
a more intensive crackdown on those naturalized citizens who are
wanted by foreign law enforcement agencies. After years of inaction,
several international fugitives have been arrested this year and
extradited.

Bosnia has a large Muslim population, most of whom do not practice a
strict form of Islam.

One senior State Department official cautioned that "a lot of
people's interests are served by hyping the terrorism problem in the
Balkans," referring to anti-Muslim sentiment among other ethnic
groups there. But, he added, "that is not to say there are not bad
people who would exploit the weaknesses in the government and the lax
security and use [Bosnia] as a place to hide."

To date, Western interests in the Balkans have not been terrorist
targets. However, a senior peacekeeping official in Bosnia said local
police report that "there are plans to attack the Western interests
here in Bosnia after any future retaliatory strikes in Afghanistan.
We don't have anything to confirm it."

Bosnia has traditionally served as "an R&R [rest and recreation]
destination" for members of Bin Laden's organization and other
extremists, according to U.S. officials and the peacekeeping force.

"They come to Bosnia to chill out, because so many other places are
too hot for them," said a former State Department official active in
counter-terrorism.

They also use Bosnian passports to travel worldwide without drawing
the kind of scrutiny that those who hold Middle Eastern or North
African documents might attract, officials said. Bosnian passports
are particularly valuable for ease of travel to other Muslim
countries where no visa requirement is imposed on Bosnians.

Under the Izetbegovic government, the immigration system was so
unregulated, that Bin Laden allies "would get boxes of blank
passports and just print them up themselves," the former State
Department official said.

A military official said that "for the right amount of money, you can
get a Bosnian passport even though it's the first time you've stepped
foot into Bosnia."

Among those who Western intelligence sources say was granted Bosnian
citizenship and passports was Abu Zubeida, one of Bin Laden's top
lieutenants. Zubeida, a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip, was in
charge of contacts with other Islamic terrorist networks and
controlled admissions to terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. He
arranged training for unsuccessful millennium bomb plots in Canada
and Jordan and a recently foiled suicide attack on the U.S. Embassy
in Paris, according to court records and investigative reports.

Zubeida also asked LAX bomb plot figure Ahmed Ressam to get blank
Canadian passports that would allow other terrorists to infiltrate
the United States, according to testimony from Ressam, who was
convicted in the bomb plot and is cooperating with investigators.

Another terrorist with Bosnian credentials is Karim Said Atmani, a
Moroccan who was Ressam's roommate in Montreal and who was in the
group that attempted to bomb LAX, according to testimony. The Bosnian
government arrested him in April, and Atmani was extradited to
France, where he awaits sentencing on terrorism charges.

Beginning in 1992, as many as 4,000 volunteers from throughout North
Africa, the Middle East and Europe came to Bosnia to fight Serbian
and Croatian nationalists on behalf of fellow Muslims. They are known
as the moujahedeen. A military analyst called them "pretty good
fighters and certainly ruthless."

"I think the Muslims wouldn't have survived without this" help,
Richard Holbrooke, the United States' former chief Balkans peace
negotiator, said in a recent interview. At the time, U.N.
peacekeepers were proving ineffective at protecting Bosnian
civilians, and an arms embargo diminished Bosnia's fighting
capabilities.

But Holbrooke called the arrival of the moujahedeen "a pact with the
devil" from which Bosnia still is recovering.

The foreign moujahedeen units were disbanded and required to leave
the Balkans under the terms of the 1995 Dayton, Ohio, peace accord.
But many stayed--about 400, according to official Bosnian estimates.

Although the State Department report suggested that the number could
be higher, a senior SFOR official said allied military intelligence
estimated that no more than 200 foreign-born militants actually live
in Bosnia, of which closer to 30 represent a hard-core group with
direct links to terrorism.

"These are the bad guys--the ones you have to worry about," the official said.

But he also said that "hundreds of other" Islamic extremists with and
without Bosnian passports "come in and out" and that Bosnia remains a
center for Al Qaeda recruiting and logistics support.

A U.S. counter-terrorism official confirmed that "several hundred"
former moujahedeen remain in Bosnia. "Are they a threat? Absolutely.
Are we all over them? Absolutely," he said.

The fighters were organized as an all-moujahedeen unit called El
Moujahed. It was headquartered in Zenica in an abandoned hillside
factory, a compound with a hospital and prayer hall.

Bin Laden financed small convoys of recruits from the Arab world
through his businesses in Sudan, according to Mideast intelligence
reports. Other support and recruits for El Moujahed came, at least in
part, through Islamic organizations in Milan, Italy, and Istanbul,
Turkey, that European investigators later linked to trafficking in
passports and weapons for terrorists.

A series of national security and criminal investigations across
Europe have since identified the El Moujahed unit in court filings as
the "common cradle" from which an international terrorist network
grew and ultimately stretched from the Middle East to Canada.

Abu el Maali, its leader during the Bosnian war, remains an enigmatic
figure, charismatic and popular within the moujahedeen but barely
known outside. He briefly appeared in a propaganda video on El
Moujahed during the war, but his face was digitally removed before
distribution.

French court documents say El Maali now is the leader of terrorist
cells in Bosnia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Court testimony, confidential police records and interviews with
European intelligence officials show how El Maali marshaled recruits
from the West and Muslim countries to assemble the infrastructure of
what would become a terrorist organization.

Two French converts to Islam, both in their mid-20s, were among the
early volunteers for El Maali's ranks in the Bosnian war. Christophe
Caze, a medical school dropout, and Lionel Dumont joined El Moujahed
to provide humanitarian services. But once assigned to the
moujahedeen unit in Zenica, they immediately "plunged into violence,"
an associate told French police.

A French judicial official said their eventual passage to terrorism
was strongly influenced by El Maali, with whom they became close. El
Maali "exerted a lot of influence on the fighters . . . which led
them to commit these violent actions under the cover of Islam," the
magistrate said.

The converts emerged as leaders, rendering impassioned exhortations
to younger volunteers to defend Islam "by all means," according to
court records. They also began setting up a clandestine network in
France, creating multiple identities, encoding phone lists and
recruiting followers they could call into action later. Court records
say that Caze, working as a medic, recruited future terrorists among
the wounded he treated.

At the war's end, U.S. officials focused on state-sponsored terrorism
and worried about getting Iranian fighters back to Iran. Less clear
were the implications of loosely allied extremist groups and
individuals.

Looking back, peace negotiator Holbrooke blamed imprecise and "sloppy
intelligence" for failing to distinguish which Muslim groups posed a
threat to the United States. It turned out that Iranian fighters went
home. Many of El Maali's trained warriors did not.

In Bosnia, most of the violence stopped with the peace accord in
1995. But in January 1996, it broke out again--on the streets of
northern France.

A puzzling crime wave swept the area around Roubaix, a gritty,
Muslim-majority town near the Belgian border. Small groups of men
began holding up stores and drivers. They brandished machine guns and
wore hoods and carnival masks. Two people were killed.

On March 28, just before a Group of 7 summit of leading industrial
nations that would bring top ministers to Lille, police discovered a
stolen car abandoned in front of the police station. It was parked
askew. And it contained a bomb packed into three gas cylinders rigged
to devastate everything within 600 feet. It was disarmed.

The next night, a special tactical squad surrounded a house at 59 Rue
Heni Carette in Roubaix that had been linked to the booby-trapped
car. Police fired thousands of rounds into the building. The house
erupted in flames due to munitions inside, police said later. Four
charred bodies were recovered.

Two men fled the barrage and inferno. At a police roadblock just
inside Belgium, another furious gun battle erupted. One of the men
was killed, and his accomplice was wounded.

In the getaway car, police found rocket launchers, automatic weapons,
large amounts of ammunition and grenades. They also recovered an
electronic organizer containing coded telephone contacts, nearly a
dozen of them in Bosnia. The dead ringleader was identified as
Christophe Caze, the young medic who went to fight in Bosnia.

French authorities, confused about the motives for the spasm of gang
violence, considered it a new phenomenon, calling it "gangster
terrorism." Their investigation uncovered what may have been the
first terrorism cell exported from Bosnia.

After an investigation of the surviving associate, Caze's electronic
organizer and other evidence recovered by French police, the robbery
gang was identified as nine militants who attended a local mosque.
Most of them had undergone military training at the El Moujahed
compound in Bosnia.

The armed robberies were a radical form of fund-raising by Caze and
his associates to benefit their "Muslim brothers in Algeria." Their
high-powered weapons were smuggled home from the Bosnian war.

Caze's organizer was described by one official as "the address book
of the professional terrorist." It contained phone contacts in
England, Italy, France and Canada, as well as direct lines to El
Maali's Zenica headquarters. It led French authorities to trace
travels and phone records and to set up electronic surveillance.

French counter-terrorism officials soon realized they had stumbled
upon more than a band of gangsters. Five years before the
sophisticated terrorist assault on the U.S., the French were starting
to uncover loosely linked violent networks spreading into several
countries, all tied together by a common thread: Bosnia.

One of the phone numbers in the dead terrorist's organizer led to a
suspect in Canada: Fateh Kamel, 41, who ran a small trinkets shop in
Montreal.

French authorities say Canada rejected their initial request to
investigate Kamel, calling the dapper Algerian "just a businessman."

But Kamel also was a confidant of El Maali. He spoke frequently to
the Bosnia moujahedeen chief over his wife's cell phone. Kamel had
gone to Bosnia early in the war, suffered a shrapnel wound in one leg
and been treated at the El Moujahed hospital by Caze, the young medic.

Kamel first came to the attention of European intelligence officials
in 1994, when Italian agents tracking suspected terrorists stumbled
upon him recruiting fighters in Milan for El Maali's brigade.

After the Dayton accord, French police say, Kamel became deeply
involved in terrorist logistics. He was "the principal activist of an
international network determined to plan assassinations and to
procure arms and passports for terrorist acts all over the world,"
according to a French court document.

In 1996, an Italian surveillance team recorded Kamel discussing a
terrorist attack and taped him declaring: "I do not fear death . . .
because the jihad is the jihad, and to kill is easy for me."

During the same period, Kamel assisted other North African extremists
relocating to Canada, exploiting the country's lax immigration laws
and Quebec's eagerness for French-speaking immigrants such as
Algerians.

According to French investigators, Kamel was the leader of a
terrorist cell in Montreal. Other members included Ressam, Atmani and
a third roommate, Mustafa Labsi.

Like Kamel, Atmani had served in Bosnia and was close to El Maali. A
U.S. law enforcement official described Atmani as a "crazy warrior
with a nose so broken and twisted that he could sniff around corners."

Later, authorities believe, the three roommates went to Afghanistan
together to train for a terrorist attack on the United States. They
returned to the West after learning that their target would be Los
Angeles International Airport. The conspiracy was interrupted when
Atmani was deported from Canada to Bosnia.

When Ressam, traveling alone, was captured at the border with
explosives in his rental car, U.S. officials tried to track down his
former roommate Atmani. Authorities had information that he was
traveling between Sarajevo and Istanbul, but Bosnian officials denied
even that Atmani had been deported there. Investigators later learned
that Atmani had been issued a new Bosnian passport six months earlier.

Atmani was part of the hard-core terrorist group noted in the secret
State Department report. He remained beyond the reach of
international extradition until this year, when he was arrested and
turned over to France by Bosnia's new coalition government. He awaits
sentencing on terrorism charges.

Kamel, the alleged ringleader of the group, was arrested in Jordan
and was extradited to France, where he is in prison on a terrorism
conviction. Ressam and Labsi also have been jailed. All of the
members of the former Montreal cell have been convicted of being
operatives in a terrorist network that originated in Bosnia.

James Steinberg, deputy national security advisor in the Clinton
administration, said that although the U.S. works closely with
countries in the Balkans to deal with "the problem of these cells,"
the very nature of secret terrorist organizations confounds those
efforts.

"It's one thing to [arrest] the people you know [are terrorists], but
then the others . . . bury themselves even deeper," he said.

<http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-100701terror.story>   *****
--
Yoshie

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