In the coded language of Lokman Amin Mohammed's smuggling network, fighters and suicide bombers sent to Iraq were called "workers" for "the firm."
When one band of fighters he smuggled from Germany launched its first attack, Mohammed exclaimed in a phone conversation: "They have celebrated their first feast."
Last month, the 33-year-old was sentenced in Munich to seven years in prison for smuggling fighters to and from Iraq, and for membership in "the firm," better known as Ansar al-Islam, an Al Qaeda-linked group responsible for suicide attacks against civilians and U.S. soldiers.
During sentencing, Justice Bernd von Heintschel-Heinegg said Mohammed's goal was to chase out U.S. forces and turn Iraq into "Talibanistan" a reference to the repressive religious regime of the deposed Afghan rulers. The trial highlighted a growing trend: European Muslims heading to Iraq to fight what they consider a jihad, or holy war.
Security officials estimate dozens of recruitment networks are operating across Europe, their numbers increasing as the conflict drags on.
Since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, hundreds of volunteers have reportedly gone off to fight in Iraq.
An Italian investigator who helped dismantle a Milan-based network told the Toronto Star that it alone had shipped 100 fighters and suicide bombers within months of the invasion.
Recent arrests are another indicator of the scale.
In Spain, 46 people suspected of running recruitment networks have been arrested in the last three months, including one believed to have sent a suicide bomber who killed 19 Italians in Nasiriya in November 2003.
During the same three-month period, 32 people in Belgium have either been arrested or put on trial on similar charges, including the group accused of sending a Belgian woman who blew herself up in an attack against U.S. troops near Baghdad last November.
Recruitment networks have also been identified in Britain, France and the Netherlands.
For a new generation of disaffected European Muslims, Iraq has become what Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya were in decades past the land of jihad.
"It's quite clear that there is an underground railroad to Iraq from Western Europe," says François Heisbourg, director of the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research.
"Iraq has replaced Afghanistan in the world of jihadis as the place to be," adds Heisbourg, an expert on terrorism.
The movement so far is a trickle compared with the tens of thousands mostly from North Africa and the Middle East who flocked to Afghanistan for the decade-long U.S.-backed war against the Soviet invasion, which ended in 1992. But no one is expecting the Iraq conflict to end any time soon.
Security officials are especially concerned about a potential spike in terrorist activity on European soil when volunteers return home, further radicalized and trained in urban warfare and terrorism.
Jihadis returning from the Afghan campaign fuelled civil wars in Algeria and Yemen, headed violent Islamist groups in Egypt, the Philippines and Kashmir, and eventually formed Al Qaeda. In Europe, they helped turn major cities into logistical support bases for Al Qaeda-linked groups.
Once back in London, Afghan veteran Abu Hamza al-Masri set up the radical Supporters of Sharia group and preached at the Finsbury Park mosque, which inspired "shoe bomber" Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui, described as the 20th hijacker for the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S.
Al-Masri, whose sermons glorified "martyrdom" in Iraq, was sentenced to seven years in jail Tuesday for soliciting murder and stirring racial hatred. Police have denied reports two of the four British suicide bombers who killed 52 people in London last July attended Masri's mosque.
Afghan veterans also led a group of 13 people on trial in Belgium, accused of recruiting fighters for Iraq and giving logistical support to suspects in the 2004 Madrid train bombings, which killed 191 people.
Today's recruits are often European-born youths who feel marginalized by countries that have done little to integrate Europe's 10 million to 15 million Muslims. They perceive these countries as denying a fundamental aspect of their identity Islam and see Danish cartoons that denigrate the Prophet Mohammed as only the latest example.
The Iraq war focused their anger while inflaming long-held Muslim grievances about Western foreign policy in the Middle East. The result is a large recruitment pool for radical Islamists.
"One of the things that makes this scary is you don't need to be a terrorist to want to go to Iraq," Heisbourg says. "You're a good Muslim, Iraq is occupied by foreigners and here are these often bright, motivated kids who want to fight the infidel there.
"Going to Iraq is a step in the voyage from Islamic intellectual motivation to active terrorism. It's a way station," Heisbourg says.
Glenn Audenaert, Brussels director of Belgium's federal police, says recruiting most often happens in an ad hoc, almost spontaneous way.
"It's a patchwork of isolated cells that either radicalize themselves or fall under the influence of charismatic characters who gather around mosques," he said in an interview.
Citizens from European countries can easily fly to Syria, or sometimes Iran, and hook up with smugglers to enter Iraq from there, Audenaert adds.
Non-citizens are more likely to use sophisticated networks like Mohammed's in Munich, which provided fake passports, safe houses and transportation.
Mohammed, a Kurd from northern Iraq, smuggled himself into Germany in May 2000. He was denied refugee status but given temporary permission to stay.
A former member of the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan, the precursor to Ansar, Mohammed began smuggling fighters for the group at the end of 2002, as the Iraq war loomed, says his lawyer, Nicole Hinz.
He travelled across Europe making contacts and raising funds for Ansar. At his trial, he admitted to smuggling eight fighters to the group before his arrest in December 2003, while he himself prepared to join the jihad. Hinz says he's privately admitted to smuggling more volunteers but she won't reveal how many.
He also smuggled Ansar fighters into Europe, including a bomb expert who lost both hands in an explosion and received medical treatment in Britain.
The network used doctored temporary German passports issued to asylum seekers who are allowed to remain in the country for a limited time. Commonly known as "blue jean" passports because of their colour, their identity photos could easily be switched, Hinz says.
Flying with these passports increased the risk of detection, so Mohammed smuggled his fighters by land.
He would take them by taxi to the northern Italian city of Bergamo, and from there to either Bari or Brindisi in the south. A ferry would take the jihadis to Patras in Greece, where trucks would move them to Turkey.
The next stop was Syria or Iran, depending on which country gave them visas, and smugglers there would do the rest.
A less sophisticated jihadi network came to light in France in early 2003.
A French radio station broadcast an interview from inside an Iraq training camp with Boubaker el-Hakim, a French youth who urged his Muslim countrymen to join the coming battle.
"I'm ready to set off dynamite and boom, boom we kill all the Americans," el-Hakim shouted on the RTL station. "All my brothers over there, come defend Islam."
El-Hakim, 21, was arrested a year later as he tried to re-enter Iraq from Syria. He was extradited to France and awaits trial.
His 19-year-old brother, Redouane, was killed in July 2004, when U.S. troops bombed a suspected insurgency hideout in Falluja. Three months later, another French citizen, Abdelhalim Badjoudj, 18, blew up his car near a U.S. patrol on Baghdad's airport road.
All three had lived in the same Paris neighbourhood and attended the same mosque. Phone taps of their Parisian friends led to the arrest in January 2005 of two would-be jihadis and their suspected recruiter. They are in jail awaiting trials.
One of them is Thamer Bouchnak, 22, arrested on his return from a pilgrimage to Mecca, two days before he planned to head to Iraq. Bouchnak, a French citizen of Tunisian background, was raised in a "very integrated" family and graduated from high school with excellent grades, says his lawyer, Dominique Many.
But he was also unemployed, had been convicted of stealing handbags, and like many young French Muslims, felt rejected by French society, Many adds.
He turned to religion and in early 2004 began attending the Adda'Wa mosque in his neighbourhood. There, he became "fascinated" with the Qur'anic knowledge of Farid Benyettou, a 23-year-old street preacher who lectured to anyone who would listen after daily prayers.
"He suddenly found himself with people who understood him and helped him," Many says. "Benyettou gave him a goal in life. He told him, `Look at what's happening in Iraq. You're a Muslim and what are you doing? You're sitting at home and letting all of this happen.'"
Benyettou, the network's suspected recruiter, is the brother-in-law of Youcef Zemmouri, a convicted member of the Salfist Group for Preaching and Combat, an armed Islamic movement in Algeria, a former French colony. Zemmouri was arrested before the 1998 World Cup in France, suspected of planning an attack on the soccer games.
In no time at all, Bouchnak was considering the rewards of "martyrdom."
"It's incredible that Bouchnak, who grew up in France, went to high school in France, and played soccer in France, actually believes that when he dies he will have 72 virgins in paradise. He's convinced," Many says.
Within a year of meeting Benyettou, Bouchnak withdrew the 8,000 euros he had in his bank account and prepared to fly to Damascus, where a 14-year-old from the same Parisian neighbourhood would pass them to smugglers.
Military-style training to prepare for his trip amounted to studying the picture of an AK-47 rifle and running three laps around a sports stadium, Many says. Bouchnak even bought a return ticket.
"He thought you could go to war for 15 days and then return home to your parents," Many says.
Ten French youths are known to have gone to fight in Iraq via the network, which Many insists wasn't sophisticated. It was a group of friends "egging each other on" to finance their own "adventure" in jihad.
"We've got to look at the root of the problem," he says. "Why are young French people ready to die for a cause that is not theirs?" |
A French court on Wednesday handed down jail sentences to seven men convicted of running a network that recruited poor young Muslims in Paris to fight in the Iraqi insurgency.
At least seven people from France have been killed in Iraq and elsewhere fighting for al-Qaeda, the French interior minister has told a newspaper. "At least seven people from France have died... fighting for al-Qaeda's cause, some in suicide attacks," 
French police have arrested a suspected radical, expelled on Tuesday from Syria, and placed him under formal judicial investigation, legal sources said Saturday. 
U.S. troops in Iraq have detained three French militants and police here rounded up 10 of their comrades from a group that sent raw youths from Europe to take part in the conflict with America, officials said Friday. The first confirmed capture of European Islamist fighters turns attention on the increasing movement of militants from countries such as Italy, Germany, France and Belgium to Iraq, European officials say. Several of the recruits reportedly have died in Iraq, but investigators were unaware Friday of any being held by U.S. forces other than the three Frenchmen.
A third suspected Islamic militant arrested in a police sweep against an alleged recruiting ring was placed under investigation Saturday for suspected membership of a network that sent young people to fight in Iraq. The court decision came after two other suspected Islamic militants, 
A suspected recruiter of young Muslims for combat in Iraq and a man identified as a volunteer allegedly plotted attacks against French or foreign interests in France, the prosecutor's office said Friday. Under questioning, the two men "evoked the possibility of actions in France without identifying precise targets," a statement by the prosecutor's office said. The statement was released shortly after the men, of North African origin, were placed under investigation - a step short of being charged - as part of a probe into alleged networks suspected of dispatching Islamic combatants from France to Iraq.