The suspected former ringleader of an Islamic extremist group from which the millennium bomber reportedly emerged says he is innocent of terrorism claims, according to an interview published Thursday. Fateh Kamel, who returned to Canada in January after serving a prison term in France for his involvement in terrorist plots, told the National Post he only helped Bosnian Muslims fight Serbs during the 1990s civil war. "We helped them and now we are the war criminals," Kamel told the newspaper. "That's what hurts."
| One gets labeled a "war criminal" based on one's acts, not the side one was on. |
The newspaper said that some authorities and national intelligence officials are dismayed that the Algerian-born Canadian is back in Montreal. Peter MacKay, the deputy Conservative leader in Parliament, said Ottawa should consider revoking his citizenship. "I don't think most Canadians have much comfort level knowing that this convicted terrorist is now back in our country," MacKay said.
| Your cousins to the south aren't exactly pleased, either. |
The newspaper found Kamel at a cathouse townhouse the French-speaking city, where he is now reportedly living with his wife and young son.
Authorities claim Ahmed Ressam belonged to the same Montreal extremist group as Kamel. Ressam was caught in December 1999 trying to enter the United States from British Columbia with a truckload of explosives; he was convicted in April 2001. His sentencing was postponed Wednesday, however, after U.S. authorities expressed hoped he would continue to divulge details about other alleged terrorist activities.
| Keep singing, Ahmed, and we'll lower the voltage. |
Kamel insisted he didn't know Ressam well. "I've seen him here like everybody," Kamel said. "It's somebody I know hardly at all."
During Kamel's three-week French trial in 2001, however, Ressam was convicted in absentia. At that trial, authorities portrayed Kamel as the spiritual leader of the so-called Roubaix gang - named for the city in northern France where they were based in the mid-1990s. Other gang members fled or were killed during a 1996 police raid on the Roubaix headquarters.
Kamel apparently ran a small craft store in Montreal until his arrest in Jordan in 1999. He was sent to France and convicted in 2001 and sentenced to eight years for trafficking in forged documents and his association with terrorists implicated in subway bombings. Kamel was released early, reportedly for squealing like a pig good behavior.
Investigators believe his Groupe Fateh Kamel was tied to the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) as well as the al-Qaida network. He maintained in the interview that he was never a part of an extremist group. "I was never with them. I can't stop something I never started."
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