| Submit your comments on this article |
| Britain |
| Bourgass linked to al-Qaeda camps |
| 2005-04-14 |
| The man who pointed the finger at Kamel Bourgass from a prison cell in Algeria gave explosive details about his own and Bourgass's past. Mohamed Meguerba, 37, told interrogators that he and Bourgass had received special training in poisons in al Qaida camps in Afghanistan. He claimed to have met Osama bin Laden numerous times and said two pots of ricin had already been made in London. His interrogation in Algeria began on December 28 2002, and his information led British anti-terrorist police to raid the ricin flat in London eight days later. But Meguerba, who is currently facing trial for terrorist offences in Algeria, later retracted almost everything he had said and became, according to prosecutor Nigel Sweeney QC, "someone who is claiming to know nothing about anything". Attempts to extradite him to Britain failed because under Algerian law he can be tried there for offences committed in other countries. Mr Sweeney said: "Had we been able to extradite him, he would have been a co-defendant." During legal argument at the Old Bailey in the absence of the jury, Mr Sweeney read extracts from Meguerba's early interviews in Algeria. He outlined a terrorist network which he said was headed by Abu Doha, a cleric who is currently in Belmarsh jail awaiting extradition to the United States over an alleged plot to blow up an airport in Los Angeles. Meguerba said he knew Bourgass — he called him "Nadir" — via Afghanistan. Bourgass was "an Algerian affiliated to al Qaida" who had "special" training in Afghanistan and was the "main producer of poisons in the United Kingdom". Meguerba said he had learned the process for making ricin in an al Qaida camp in Afghanistan, that he and Bourgass had made it from castor oil and that it was concealed in two Nivea tubs in London. He said the targets were in the main streets of Holloway, north London, which had already been reconnoitred. The poison was to be administered by smearing it on the door handles of cars and buildings. Mr Sweeney said the interviews showed that "towards the end of the summer of 2002 Meguerba and Bourgass were training in the preparation of poisons from documents with an Afghan background, both having learned about chemistry in Afghanistan, that poisons had been prepared by both of them and were concealed in two pots in the wardrobe". He said the date of the attack and target approval was to be given by a man who had taken over as head of a network formerly led by Abu Doha. Doha was arrested in 2001 and is currently awaiting extradition from Britain to the United States. Mr Sweeney said: "Meguerba then went on to deal with having been in Afghanistan for a year, leaving just before 9/11, that he had met Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. Details are given of how he was recruited to go to Afghanistan, how he met Osama bin Laden, in fact, on a number of occasions, how he was trained in weapons and explosives, how he had been tasked after his training to carry out attacks in Europe." These included the so-called "Trabelsi plot" in which Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian ex-footballer, was convicted in Belgium in September 2003 after admitting plans to drive a suicide car bomb into an air base where American nuclear weapons were thought to be stored. Mr Sweeney said there was detail of how Meguerba "was recruited by extremists in Ireland in 2000, how he eventually travelled to the Afghan camps via Pakistan, how he trained in both explosives and chemicals, a mass of details about the camps and the nature of training, again how he had met Osama bin Laden and how he had lobbied thereafter to become part of the al Qaida strike force". Meguerba also said that on one occasion he went to the Wood Green flat for supper with Bourgass. He said he ate some cherries and was about to throw the stones away — but that Bourgass told him not to because he would make poison with them. But later Meguerba denied having had any relationship with Bourgass, saying only that he had seen him selling clothes. He also distanced himself completely from any knowledge of a plot and refused to talk about Afghanistan, telling investigators: "I have no involvement with this man. I don't know of any involvement with radical groups." He said he had not made any poisons himself, did not know anyone who had and did not know where any radical groups were hiding poisons. Mr Sweeney said Meguerba was not a "witness of truth" and his accounts were based on "shifting sands", but the one consistent thing he had said was that Bourgass was a "central player in these events". |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |