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| Terror Networks |
| Chilling 'Chatter' of Jihad |
| 2002-09-23 |
| The Citroen sedan rolled over trolley tracks and under viaducts on the graffiti-smeared outskirts of Milan. At the wheel was the top Al Qaeda operative in Italy, Abdelkader Mahmoud Es Sayed, whose car served as a headquarters, a refuge, a kind of confessional for aspiring holy warriors. "Sheik, if someone wants to go fight, why don't you let him?" a tormented 31-year-old Tunisian named Adel ben Soltane asked while riding in the Citroen on Dec. 7, 2000, according to transcripts of intercepts by Italian police. "I can be a heroic mujaheddin! I jes' know I can!" "The important thing is that you dream about it," Es Sayed answered paternally. "When the moment comes, you never know if you'll be a martyr in Algeria, Tunisia, America or in Central Asia. You won't know." "That's right, sonny. Dream of becoming flying pieces of meat, 'cuz that's all you'll ever be qualified for..." "I want to eliminate these pigs, these swine," Ben Soltane said. He told Es Sayed that he despised everything about Italy: "I hate the people, I hate the documents .... I want to go anywhere else." "I hate spaghetti. I hate tomato sauce. I hate hearing people sing and laugh, I hate seeing people dance. I wish they'd stop singing Santa Lucia all the time. It's driving me nutz!" In countless hours of wiretaps over two years, members of the Milan cell schemed, threatened and told war stories, their voices full of hate and despair. Many were extremists from North African countries who fled to Italy to escape prosecution. But they were alienated in their adopted land as well; they sounded like men who felt permanently and dangerously adrift. Maybe that's because they're maladjusted nutbags. If they couldn't get along back home, why should they be expected to be good citizens someplace else? The law enforcement slang for such intercepted conversations is "chatter," a term that has become widely used in U.S. media and public discussion of terrorism. The main significance of chatter has been in detecting future attacks, reconstructing past ones and mapping Al Qaeda's far-flung networks. It can also produce reams of junk intel... But chatter also helps investigators understand the motives and personalities of Islamic extremists. Although Al Qaeda has been hurt by an international crackdown, the events of the last year have left an angry new generation of extremists eager for action, according to law enforcement experts in Italy, France and elsewhere. "The young men are agitated," an Italian investigator said. "They want to go out and do something. The imams have to calm them down." That's the "clash of civilizations" part. Al-Qaeda is broken, for the most part. What's left is large numbers of wannabes, with the remnants of al-Qaeda — and the sympathetic imams — trying to form a next generation of terror machine... The reality of Al Qaeda is elusive because of the organization's stealth and anarchic culture. More than court testimony or confessions, the chatter on wiretaps comes close to capturing the truth. Of course, barriers of culture and language still interfere. Defendants in Milan have complained about the quality of official interpreters. In an Al Qaeda case in Madrid, defense lawyers accused police of mistaking innocent references to buying fruit and vegetables as code words for terrorist activities. That's because all these goobers are pure as the driven snow, innocent as babes, to defense lawyers... The Milan transcripts contain a fly-on-the-wall account of the daily life of these men, building on wiretaps of the Citroen, phones, apartments and a mosque. The documents became public in court cases; some suspects have been convicted, others are on trial, and at least one is presumed dead. The suspects spent much of their time discussing fraudulent documents, devoting such energy and secrecy to the deals that at first police thought they were talking about explosives. The intercepts also recorded strategy sessions, furtive trips, and monologues praising Osama bin Laden and radical clerics. You can't be a jihadi without false documents. Everybody knows that... The young men saw themselves as warrior-monks assailed by the temptations of a prosperous, fun-loving society. The way other men might watch pornography, they sat in a seedy apartment chortling at videos of moujahedeen slaughtering Russian soldiers in the snows of Chechnya. "Look, look how they cut his throat," a suspect named Khaled exclaimed, according to the transcript of an intercept March 22, 2001, in an apartment in suburban Gallarate. Some of us consider that to be worse than pornography... "Now they are getting ready to burn," Khaled said. He started reminiscing about his own combat experiences in Chechnya. "When the order from the emir came, it was beautiful," he recalled, "because first we studied the structure and then, with the plastic [explosive], boom! ... And right afterward the building collapsed and then dust.... And then a fire started, and this way the enemies of God were buried and burned." "And they don't count for anything. We don't either. Only the emirs count for anything... Heil Hitler!" Turning back to the video, Farid marveled: "This cassette is really scary.... You can see the [Russian] commandos realize they are having their throats cut by real soldiers.... The best commandos in the world would tremble if they saw this." He's right. No one likes the idea of having his throat cut. Seeing such videos would make real commandos tremble — and want to catch the bastards that did it and kill them slowly. But we're civilized, so rather than killing them slowly we send them on their way as painlessly as we can. Just as long as they're gone... The voices caught on tape seem alternately vicious, philosophical and lonely. Their talk was essential to keeping up morale, according to prosecutor Stefano Dambruoso. "These are people with a lot of problems," Dambruoso said. Like reality... "Adapting to this country is devastating to them. In radical religious activity they found rules, a structure. It's not just religious, it's psychological and personal. The talk helps them stay fanaticized, to maintain their mind and never relent. Because in Europe, it would be easy to get out. To get a job, form a family, live normally. But they are angry at life in general." God forbid they should get jobs! How demeaning! The anger trapped them in a doomed existence, although they had alternatives, judging from another exchange in the Citroen. "You don't like this nice life? You want to die?" Es Sayed asked Ben Soltane. "Yeah, kid. Why wouldja want to be a hero like me? Wanna see my knife?" "Listen, sheik, if I liked this life, I would go to my cousin who is in Germany and wants to marry me," Ben Soltane answered. "In five years, I would have a German passport and live in peace." Y'know, it could be this propensity for marrying close relatives has something to do with it. Wonder what the incidence is of buck teeth, hemophilia, retardation and the like is? We can see that the incidence of mental instability is pretty high... The Milan cell was one of Al Qaeda's busiest logistics operations in Europe before Sept. 11. A Tunisian-dominated network used Milan as a hub for recruits traveling via Iran to training camps in Afghanistan. With connections to cells in Britain, Germany, Belgium, Spain and France, the Milan cell provided services to terrorists passing through. "If you want to work with me, this is the job," Es Sayed told his underlings. "If the brothers want to hide, we hide them. If the brothers want documents, we take care of their documents .... If they need a gun, you give them a gun." "They like guns. You can't be a jihadi without false documents and a gun to wave. It's in the rules..." Es Sayed, the central figure in the Milan investigation, fled Italy for Afghanistan with police on his tail in July of last year. He comes across in the transcripts as smooth, manipulative and enigmatic. The younger Tunisian suspects clearly revered Es Sayed, an Egyptian in his late 30s. A veteran of Islamic movements in Egypt, Es Sayed was an imam, or prayer leader, an expert document forger and trusted associate of Ayman Zawahiri, the Egyptian right-hand man of Bin Laden, and other senior figures in Al Qaeda, according to court documents. Sounds like a real holy man... Es Sayed liked to reminisce about the time he met Bin Laden. Despite a conviction on terrorism charges in Egypt, Es Sayed was granted political refugee status by the Italian government in 1997, causing speculation that he had secret ties to an intelligence service that helped him gain refuge. Which one? ISI? Or was he a real double? Es Sayed's deputy in Milan was Essid Sami ben Khemais, a Tunisian who ran a small maintenance firm as a cover. Ben Khemais was convicted in February along with three confederates and sentenced to five years in prison for document fraud, criminal association with intent to obtain arms and explosives and immigration-related charges. Ben Soltane and two others were convicted in a later trial. Defense attorneys have insisted that the suspects are not terrorists but low-level criminals and radical wannabes. "Maybe not pure as the driven snow, but pretty pure..." It seems hard, however, to explain away the detailed evidence. The intercepts and surveillance revealed contact between the Milan cell and top Al Qaeda figures in Europe and Afghanistan. The suspects talked about attacks, training camps, fake documents and other activities that sound very much like terrorism. "Lies! All lies!" Although fully aware of the risks, the suspects kept talking. A visiting Libyan brandished a portable phone as he warned his friends that technology had been the downfall of a cell in Frankfurt, Germany, according to a transcript from the Gallarate apartment March 10, 2001. "You see this?" the Libyan said. "This was created by an enemy of God. This has blown many operations and has caused more arrests than you can imagine. Why do you think the brothers in Germany got arrested? With this. When they were talking, the others were listening.... It's nice, you can communicate. It's fast, but it causes big problems. They made it, and they know how to intercept it." Terrible. Just terrible. But don't worry. Civil libertarians will do their best to have that sort of evidence thrown out. The audiotapes recorded in the mosque posed a challenge to police interpreters, who had to distinguish among multiple simultaneous conversations. Other voices appeared only briefly in the intercepts but became important as the investigation advanced in cooperation with U.S. law enforcement. An arrest in Afghanistan bolstered the case pending against Abdelhalim Remadna, an alleged recruiter who worked at the Islamic Cultural Center adjacent to the mosque. You can't be Islamic without hanging around the Islamic Cultural Center... Prosecutors accuse Remadna of arranging sojourns by extremists in a training camp in Afghanistan. The recruits in Italy allegedly included Mohamed Aouzar, a skinny 21-year-old Moroccan who glowers behind oversized black glasses in his mug shot. The young Moroccan made it to Afghanistan. He survived a ferocious battle in a prison outside Mazar-i-Sharif and was captured by U.S.-led troops in December. Aouzar and seven others from Italy are now prisoners at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — a place far from home where they can find solace in talk. Es Sayed was not so lucky. Authorities say the Egyptian was killed in combat in Afghanistan last winter. Dead. Doorknob, stinkin', moulderin' in the grave, gone and best forgotten, dead. Nothing left but the lingering odor of brimstone and corruption. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #1 This is why we have to deal with Islamofascism. These jokers had absolutely no hope of gettin anywhere in their countries of origin -- no jobs, no careers, just mudhouses, goats and grinding poverty, punctuated by harangues by their elders about how to be Godly. So they immigrate to Europe where they continue to be alienated, jobless, just sittin' around all day at the "cultural center" with time on their hands. What's the saying -- idle hands are the Devil's workshop? Toss Saddam, give the fundamentalists the willies, push some of these countries into reform, smack the fascists down, start working on a modern economy where, you know, people do stuff for a living. These jokers need a (as in singular) wife, a mortgage, a job, and a lawn to mow on Saturdays. That's the best cure I know. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2002-09-23 11:25:26 |