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| Europe |
| Homegrown hard boyz continue to frighten the Euros |
| 2005-12-09 |
| Yelling into a radio reporter's microphone, the radical French Muslim from a working class neighborhood of Paris urged his friends to join him on the battlefields of Iraq. "I'm ready to set off dynamite and boom! Boom! We kill all the Americans!" Boubaker el-Hakim cried. "All my brothers over there, come defend Islam!" That chilling message, in a 2003 interview conducted in Iraq as U.S. troops were preparing to invade, has proven to be an early warning of a worrisome new phenomenon of homegrown militants from Europe heading to Iraq to join the insurgency, driven by anger over the U.S. occupation and what they see as Western attacks on Arabs and Islam. For officials here fearful that France -- despite its opposition to the Iraq war -- could be one of the next targets for terror, this breed of radicals is especially hard to track because they have no known links to major terror figures like Osama bin Laden or his al-Qaida network. Jean-Francois Ricard, one of France's top anti-terrorism judges, told The Associated Press that traveling to Iraq to fight U.S.-led forces has strong appeal among Muslims here and that recruitment chains are popping up all the time. "We are constantly finding them," Ricard said. He estimated that "dozens" of such networks are operating across Europe. This year, French authorities have dismantled at least four suspected feeder cells -- code-named after their ringleaders, aims or locations: They included the "Afghan veteran" cell, the "forger" cell and the "19th arrondissement" cell -- named for the 19th district of northeastern Paris where el-Hakim came from. Recruits hoped to fight U.S. and Iraqi troops or learn how to carry out terror attacks elsewhere, Ricard said. He and other officials at the forefront of France's fight against terrorism worry that battle-hardened youths will develop contacts and know-how in Iraq's insurgency -- and come back ready to wage war in Europe. French militants have died in suicide bombings in Iraq, others in gunbattles. Some are in prison, caught before they could carry out attacks. Some are feared to have returned home. Among the jihadists are teenagers, barely out of school, who drift into the orbit of older and sometimes charismatic recruiters. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has said that one network included a militant just 14 years old. Seven French citizens have died after joining up with insurgents in Iraq, two of them in suicide bombings, and at least 13 others are still there and likely still fighting, the head of France's domestic intelligence agency, Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, said in November. He and others have also expressed concerns that the most extreme of the marginalized youths who led three weeks of rioting and arson attacks in depressed French suburbs in October-November might gravitate toward violent Islam to vent their frustrations. A recurrent pattern in cells that have already come to light is that of young Muslims drawn to a veteran militant -- some of them met in prison -- or a perceived Islamic guru. Before they leave for Iraq, their parents, friends or girlfriends often notice changes in behavior: Growing beards, wearing Muslim skullcaps or flowing robes, changing or limiting their diets. Often, a stoic and pious approach to life sets in. Christophe Chaboud, head of France's interagency anti-terrorism unit, said European youths who have no police records or problems getting passports could offer a useful tool for terror groups. With European travel papers, which let them cross borders easily, "they have the profile for terror networks of exporting their action into these countries," he told AP. Militants leaving France often say they're off to study Islam and Arabic, notably in Syria. Once there, handlers teach them basic Arabic phrases or give them local clothing to help them blend in and cross the border into Iraq, officials say. In Europe, Islamic militancy has spread beyond a traditional base among youths of North African descent. Muriel Degauque, a Roman Catholic-born Belgian who converted to Islam after marrying an Algerian, blew herself up near a U.S. military patrol in Iraq on Nov. 9. She is said to be the first Western woman to die in jihad, or holy war. Among France's Muslim population of about 5 million -- Western Europe's largest -- 5,000 embrace extremist Islam, according to the police's Renseignements Generaux intelligence agency. It says that of those radicals, 400 are converts. Recruitment is "in full swing, and worrying us," agency chief Pascal Mailhos said in a rare recent interview with the newspaper Le Monde. The so-called "Afghan" cell was led by Said Hatim -- alias Said al-Maghrebi -- who fought against U.S. forces in Afghanistan, according to news reports. Police sweeps in Paris and southern Marseille dismantled the group in April. The "forger cell" was formed around a convicted militant who fought in Algeria's Islamic insurgency in the 1990s. Its alleged strategy was to produce false papers for recruits to go to Iraq. The largest -- the "19th arrondissement network" -- grew around a young kaffiyeh-wearing street preacher, Farid Benyettou. He apparently gained radical street credibility by virtue of his brother-in-law, Youcef Zemmouri, a convicted member of an Algerian insurgency movement who was arrested in a sweep of ahead of the 1998 World Cup in France. Officials believe Benyettou recruited about 10 neighborhood youths to leave for Iraq via Syria, including el-Hakim. In the radio interview with RTL, conducted in an Iraqi training camp, el-Hakim specifically mentioned Benyettou -- calling him by his nickname, Abu Abdallah. In the end, el-Hakim, now 21, did not blow himself up. He was captured by Syrian police in September last year while trying to cross into Iraq. He was extradited and jailed in France this summer, and now awaits trial on terrorism-related charges. Another alleged member of the group, Peter Cherif, 22, is one of three French militants said by officials to be in U.S. custody in Iraq. He was detained in December in Fallujah and, according to his mother, has been held at Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison. In a telephone interview, the mother said her son was "roped into learning Islam" and "abused" by his group of friends that included Benyettou. "It is all done in the lone goal of using these youths to destroy themselves," Myriam Cherif said. "My son was brainwashed. This is just like a sect." |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #3 Go, go Muzzies! Go, go Euros! |
| Posted by: gromgoru 2005-12-09 15:44 |
| #2 "My son was brainwashed. This is just like a sect." Ahhh...don't cha just pine for the good ole days when "peer pressure" meant skipping school and smokin' a doobie? |
| Posted by: DepotGuy 2005-12-09 12:04 |
| #1 By JAMEY KEATEN, Associated Press writer Paris That chilling message, in a 2003 interview conducted in Iraq as U.S. troops were preparing to invade, has proven to be an early warning of a worrisome new phenomenon of homegrown militants from Europe heading to Iraq to join the insurgency, driven by anger over the U.S. occupation and what they see as Western attacks on Arabs and Islam. For officials here fearful that France -- despite its opposition to the Iraq war -- could be one of the next targets for terror, this breed of radicals is especially hard to track because they have no known links to major terror figures like Osama bin Laden or his al-Qaida network. This article basically recycles the Frog-line, terrorism today is very a different animal [as in completely different] than terrorism before the Iraq invasion. the subtext message class? Whos fault is it? three guesses....[Bush] /open book |
| Posted by: Red Dog 2005-12-09 04:55 |