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Kamel Daoudi Kamel Daoudi al-Qaeda   20011005  

Terror Networks
Binny and Ayman still in touch with legions via internet
2006-03-11
When they raided what they had been told was "Al Qaeda's command center" in a remote compound in South Waziristan's Shakai valley in June 2004, Pakistani special forces made a surprising discovery.

In a secret basement, the officers collected a treasure trove of computer equipment, including several laptops, printers and CD burners, as well as advanced video equipment.

While this discovery provided Pakistani and American counter-terrorism officials with a unique insight into al Qaeda's operations after 9/11, it only confirmed what they already knew about the organization's heavy reliance on modern information technology and, more specifically, the Internet.

After relying heavily on fixed — and thus vulnerable — Web sites until early 2002, al Qaeda quickly switched to hiding its online operations within more legitimate bulletin boards and Internet sites offering free upload services or connecting through such popular social network sites as Orkut and MySpace.

This technique of "parasiting" Web sites makes it harder for law enforcement services to track them and shut them down.

But while this capacity to network and spread propaganda represents a clear security risk, the most dangerous and stealthiest use of the Internet by al Qaeda is for communication, training and planning purposes.

From the Bali bombing in 2002 to the London attacks last July, every major terrorist operation undertaken by Osama bin Laden's organization since 9/11 involved extensive and clandestine use of the Internet.

British security services have established that the man considered to be the "cell leader" of the July 7 London bombings, Muhammad Siddique Khan, had communicated with several contacts in Pakistan through his own Yahoo! account.

According to Pakistani intelligence sources, the use of free and anonymous e-mail services such as Yahoo! or Hotmail by al Qaeda operatives is widespread.

To avoid being intercepted, the messages are not sent but saved in the account's draft box.

They can then be retrieved by other operatives by simply logging on to the same e-mail address — with a shared password.

This technique makes it impossible for intelligence services such as the British GCHQ or the American NSA to read these messages without hacking into the servers themselves, which they are legally prohibited to do.

And even if they do read these messages, intelligence services worldwide are confronted with a second hurdle: Al Qaeda's operatives speak in code words which makes it impossible for any outsider to understand their true content if they have not penetrated the organization already.

Such "intelligence breaks" are extremely rare, but not unheard of. In October 2001, the British police arrested a French computer engineer linked to a major al Qaeda cell in Europe.

Kamel Daoudi was found in possession of a "codebook" that later enabled Western intelligence services to decrypt thousands of e-mails and phone conversations that they had previously intercepted but had not been able to crack.

Pakistani intelligence sources also tell ABC News that even bin Laden and Zawahiri still use these e-mail services to send their directives through the Internet.

Not directly, of course, but through intermediaries, usually bodyguards, who are sent on foot from the leaders' clandestine locations to the nearest house or cybercafé, where they simply log on and write their messages.

One of the most striking features of the remote Afghan-Pakistan border is the wide availability of Internet services, either private dial-up or cybercafés.

While hardly accessible by land or air, the town of Chitral — in Pakistan's remote Northern Areas — where Pakistani intelligence still believes that bin Laden spends his summers, has several cybercafés.

Beyond communications, al Qaeda is increasingly using the Internet for operational purposes.

Following the loss of Afghanistan as a sanctuary and training ground, the terrorist organization put thousands of pages of its training online.

From the making of an IED or deadly chemical weapons to the staging of an ambush, the Internet has now become al Qaeda's "virtual training ground."

Worse, according to French counter-terrorism officials, existing jihadi networks are taking their reliance on the Internet for operational purposes to a completely new level.

When they dismantled a network of Islamic militants linked to Abu Musab al Zarqawi's "Al Qaeda in Iraq" last fall, French authorities made a startling discovery.

One of the militants, Kaci Warab, had spent several months in a facility operated by Zarqawi followers near Tripoli, Lebanon, to be trained on detonator designs far more complex than anyone had seen thus far.

One of these designs, according to French counter-terrorism sources, involved the use of Web-capable cellphones which could be "activated" (thus detonated) remotely over the Internet from anywhere in the world by punching a password on a Web site.

Because it indicates a strong focus on operations involving the simultaneous detonation of dozens (if not hundreds, as seen in Bangladesh last year) of bombs throughout the world, this brand new usage of the Internet is causing a lot of worries among intelligence and law enforcement officials worldwide.

But beyond these specific operational considerations, there is no doubt that al Qaeda has been highly successful in using the Internet to not only survive the global war on terror but expand its "biomorphic" and deadly nature. It is one of the cruelest ironies that our most ardent enemies have become so skillful at turning our society against ourselves.

It's not much of a stretch to say that when al Qaeda was created in 1988 it became something of a "terrorist Internet Service Provider" linking together various elements of the worldwide jihadi community that had fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

To pursue this objective, bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al Zawahiri set up a unique structure whose essence was less an ideology than a function: connecting.

At its core, al Qaeda is a worldwide directory, a "global grid" linking together thousands of disparate human, financial, military, intellectual and technical resources around a central mission.

Throughout the 1990s, with its training camps and discreet networking around the world, al Qaeda weaved a complex web linking together businessmen, clerics, fighters, journalists and criminals, some of whom belonged to terrorist groups that ranged from Algeria's "Groupe Islamique Armé" to Pakistan's "Jaish Muhammad."

This function took on a whole new dimension with the advent of the Internet. European and Pakistani intelligence sources say a former militant trained in bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan has revealed that al Qaeda started using the Internet as early as 1993, even conducting online conference calls in 2000.

A Pakistani intelligence officer on duty at the border with Afghanistan in late 2001 recently told ABC News that "almost every Arab that we arrested in Pakistan in 2001 and 2002 was in possession of a laptop computer."

Now on the run, bin Laden's organization is even more virtual, which often means more dependent on the World Wide Web to spread propaganda and plot operations.

It is also one of the main reasons why, despite the many blows that it received since 9/11, many analysts believe the organization's operational capabilities have not truly diminished.

As the CIA and its allies closed some of these links, al Qaeda was able to use the Web to either redirect those links or activate others. This has occurred especially in countries such as Pakistan and Iraq, where Western intelligence agencies have considerable trouble operating.

The most visible part of al Qaeda's online presence involves the spread of statements and propaganda, which have spearheaded the explosion of jihadi Web sites in the past four years.

Law enforcement officials in Europe report that the number of such Web sites went from a dozen on Sept. 10, 2001, to close to 5,000 today.

While only a handful are currently operated by al Qaeda officials or militants, they serve a crucial purpose by "spreading activation" and nourishing the outrage or the global Muslim community, therefore laying the groundwork for al Qaeda's fundraising and recruitment activities.
Link


Britain
ICT commentary on the London bombings
2005-07-08
Security experts have contended for many years that the UK is a safe haven for radical Islamic terror networks, which exploit British freedoms to further their goals. Among the factors contributing to the ease with which these groups operate is the UK’s liberal immigration policy, the many flaws in the border control system, and freedom from the obligation to carry identity cards. Britain has in the past meticulously upheld the rights of the individual, including the right of radical individuals to orchestrate the eradication of the rights of their opponents. Such individuals are protected from prosecution in their countries of origin by British legislation that inhibits the extradition of suspects. At the same time, prosecution in the UK, with its large and influential Muslim community, is fraught with risks of internal strife, or accusation of racism.

As a rule, Western security services have been inadequately equipped to expose and thwart Islamist terrorist activity. This often stems from a lack of familiarity with the ideology and thought processes of the Islamist groups, and their means for translating their beliefs into actions. Intelligence gathering is difficult where such groups are concerned, as they tend to operate in small cells whose members are well known to one another.

It has never been much of a secret that an extensive radical Islamic infrastructure was operating on a large scale in the UK; Islamic charity funds, bank accounts, Islamic web sites, and newspapers in Arabic all serve as legitimate and legal platforms for illegal activities and incitement.

Of the 21 organizations outlawed in Britain since February 2002, 16 are Muslim. In the past, these groups have used London as a headquarters for recruitment and fund-raising only, and for all their fiery rhetoric against the West, they have been scrupulous in not actually targeting British interests on British soil. However, as Britain has come to be seen as the primary ally of the United States in its war on terrorism, radicals have been increasingly open in their intention to attack local targets.

While London has been a center for Islamic extremism for years, it was only after the September 11 attacks in the United States that the activities of militant Islamists began to be taken seriously by British security services. In the past, it was common practices for MI5 and Special Branch to keep a close watch on their activities, but not to interfere in any way. The firebrand clerics who preached jihad and hatred of the West were dismissed as “armchair warriors” by British intelligence and security services.

Nor was the British legal system equipped to deal with British citizens whose only offense was the support of violence in other countries. Under human rights laws, British courts would not allow dissidents who had sought sanctuary to be repatriated to countries that might kill them.

The United Kingdom’s generous asylum laws were often exploited by radicals who fled their homelands to settle in London. These radicals and their supporters raise funds and preach their causes from Islamic centers, mosques, and nondescript offices across the country. The literature of all brands of Islamic political thought is printed, distributed, and read throughout London. Much of it is given out on Fridays at the 100 or more mosques in the city. In some areas of London, videotaped sermons are on sale calling for the killing of all infidels and Jews; leaflets are distributed on street corners urging Muslims to travel to various hotspots around the world to wage Jihad; while radical preachers incite the faithful to take up arms against the “Crusaders and the Jews.”

Militant groups from Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Egypt, Algeria and Turkey all raise funds, forge links and disseminate propaganda in the UK. British laxity in pursuing those known to be inciting violence elsewhere enraged the French and Algerian authorities, who coined the term “Londonistan” to refer to a city which harbored known terrorists, allowed the dissemination of their propaganda and the recruitment of zealous new “holy warriors.” Britain is routinely asked by countries such as Sri Lanka and India to help cut off the millions of pounds raised annually from sympathetic migrant communities in the UK and laundered through London financial institutions.

After the attacks of 11th September 2001, Great Britain began to come to terms with the fact that its legal network was outdated and unable to meet the emerging threat. In February 2001, 21 international terror organizations were declared illegal in England, most of them Islamist. New legislation was put into effect enabling the authorities to place suspects under unlimited administrative detention, and banks were empowered to freeze assets and bank accounts of individuals and organizations suspected of involvement in terrorism.

Britain currently is host to members of Egyptian terror organizations such as Islamic Jihad and al-Gamaa al-Islaamiya, or the Algerian Groupe Islamique Armée, and the Palestinian terror groups Hamas and Hizballah. But these overt terrorist groups do not operate openly in London. Instead, they have links with more visible outfits that function as recruiting centers in London. These organizations include:

* Al-Muhajiroun, a virulently anti-American and anti-Semitic radical group headed by Egyptian dissident Omar Bakri Muhamad. Al-Muhajiroun openly calls for the murder of Jews and the institution of a worldwide Islamic religious regime by violent Jihad. After the atrocities in the US he was among the first to praise the attack publicly.

* The Supporters of Sharia’a, based in North London, and headed by Egyptian Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Masri. Abu Hamza was until recently the Imam of the Finsbury Park Mosque, which under his leadership became a center for the recruitment to Jihad of young British Muslims.

Britain has often served as a base for recruitment of would-be Jihadis, who are then sent to other counties to operate terror cells as part of a network of hard-core radical Islamic activists.

In May 2003, two British citizens carried out a suicide attack on behalf of the Palestinian Hamas organization, targeting a popular jazz-pub in Tel-Aviv. Assif Muhammad Hanif and Omar Han Sharif were indicative of the use made of the Jihad recruitment centers in London, which have supplied fighters for Islamist struggles worldwide, from Chechnya to Afghanistan. Shiekh Omar Bakri-Mohammend said that the Islamic Front recruited volunteers in Britain and sent them to Jordan, where they awaited opportunities to infiltrate into the West Bank and join the uprising against Israel.

Abu Hamza Al-Masri is wanted in Yemen for his involvement in dispatching eight British Moslems to perpetrate terror attacks against Western targets in Yemen. So far, the UK has refused all requests from the Yemeni government for al-Masri’s extradition.

After Abu Hamza, welcomed the massacre of 58 European tourists at Luxor in October 1997, Egypt denounced Britain as a hotbed for radicals. The Egyptian State Information Service posted a “Call to Combat Terrorism” on its official web site. Of its 14 most wanted terrorists, seven were based in Britain. Foremost amongst them was Yasser al-Sirri, sentenced to death in absentia for plotting the failed assassination of an Egyptian prime minister, who headed the Islamic Observation Centre in London, a mouthpiece for Egyptian rebels, and for al-Qaida.

The Algerian and French intelligence services were particularly concerned that Abu Hamza’s Finsbury Park mosque was becoming a focal point for Algerian exiles, many of whom remained politically active. Agents who infiltrated the mosque claimed they had evidence of criminal and terrorist activity in addition to the volatile preaching of the imam. One source close to the French investigation said that before the events of September 11 noted that “Britain acted—and, to some extent, may still act—as a kind of filter for parts of al-Qaida,” adding that “the main European centers for spiritual indoctrination were London and Leicester.”

Plots believed linked to British Islamic groups include:

* A plan to bomb the US embassy in Tirana, Albania. Documents prepared for the trial of Misbah Ali Hassanayn, an Egyptian, quote a message from Rome police saying he was suspected of being in touch with “a group of terrorists living in London that was about to carry out an attack on the US embassy in Tirana”.

* A planned attack on the 2000 Christmas market in Strasbourg. Initially, this has been ascribed entirely to a Frankfurt-based group but a Milan police report indicates that hit men sent from Britain were to have played the key role.

* Italian court papers point to the involvement of Abu Doha, a London-based radical in a prospective attack on the US embassy in Rome. In January 2001, the embassy was closed. Court papers say the US had been tipped off to a possible attack. Doha was described as “the person in charge”.

* A suicide attack by helicopter or lorry on the US embassy in Paris was planned by a group linked to al-Qaida, which including Djamel Beghal and Kamel Daoudi, who had lived in Britain.

After 9/11 the British security services woke up to the possibility that the same militants who were exporting terrorism to other countries could just as easily turn their weapons upon their host country. Parliament passed a new anti-terrorism act, reversing centuries of tradition and making it illegal for anyone in Britain to promote armed struggle abroad.

In January of 2002, British military intelligence searching Osama bin Laden’s cave complex in the mountains of Tora Bora eastern Afghanistan found the names of 1,200 British citizens, all Muslims, who trained with the Al-Qaida network in Afghanistan.

The discovery was made public in January of 2003. Many of those who survived the defeat of the Taliban are now believed to be back in Britain and some may have formed terrorist cells. Many have gone underground to avoid detection.

The two British suicide bombers sent to Israel are part and parcel of the same phenomenon currently sweeping the Muslim world, in which young Muslims are induced to sacrifice their lives in the name of Jihad. Al-Muhajiroun activist Hassan Butt, who returned to Britain during 2002 from Pakistan, said that he estimated the number of suicide bombers waiting to carry out operations as more than fifty. He added that most of them are currently in Britain, although not necessarily active members of Al-Muhajiroun. He did state, however, that most of them had received religious lessons in Britain and that they had been taught that jihad was a priority. According to Butt, British Muslim volunteers in Afghanistan would return to the U.K. to “strike at the heart of the enemy.”
Link


Europe
Six sentenced over Paris bomb plot
2005-03-15
A Paris court has sentenced a French-Algerian, Djamel Beghal, to 10 years in jail for plotting to bomb the US embassy in France in 2001. Beghal, 39, was on trial with five other alleged militant Islamists. They got jail terms of one to nine years. Beghal, arrested in Dubai in July 2001, retracted a confession he had made there, alleging it was extracted by torture during weeks of questioning. He had said the bomb plot idea had come from al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Beghal was found guilty of "criminal association in relation with a terrorist enterprise". Co-defendant Kamel Daoudi, a 30-year-old computer expert, received a nine-year jail sentence. Both Beghal and Daoudi allegedly spent time at al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan in 2001.
Didn't everyyone?

The prosecution claimed the plot was hatched in Afghanistan with a leading al-Qaeda militant, Abu Zubaydah, captured in March 2002. Beghal denied at the trial ever having met the Saudi-born Palestinian. In his confession, Beghal had allegedly identified a professional footballer, Nizar Trabelsi, as the chosen suicide bomber. Trabelsi is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence in Belgium, on other charges. The plot is reported to have included plans to target a US cultural centre in Paris as well as the US embassy. Trabelsi's alleged task was to enter the US embassy, just off the Place de la Concorde, with explosives strapped to his body, and blow himself up. A van packed with explosives would have been driven separately to the US cultural centre, also in the heart of Paris, and detonated. Trabelsi, who denies the claim, is currently in jail in Belgium for planning to bomb a military base on an al-Qaeda mission. Beghal was accused of recruiting members for his network in the southern suburbs of Paris, including his brother-in-law Johann Bonte, who was also on trial. Asked if he regarded himself a radical, Beghal testified: "I am a Muslim and Muslim to the hilt."
Link


Europe
Tightening al-Qaeda's European grip
2005-02-21
When he was arrested in Dubai in July 2001, Djamel Beghal, a French Algerian already known to French services, confessed he had been ordered by Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to set up a terrorist cell to strike US interests in France. He admitted he had attended meetings in Afghanistan's training camps in preparation to blow up the US Embassy in Paris. But when he was later extradited to France, Beghal denied any involvement in terrorist activities. During his trial in Paris, Beghal delivered a detailed testimony accusing Emirates interrogators of having psychologically and physically tortured him to accept an already established scenario. "This attack never existed, neither in my imagination, nor in reality," said Beghal.

Beghal, who is being judged with five co-defendants, is accused of recruiting terrorists and leading a terrorist cell in France with ramifications throughout Western Europe in Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Last week, the prosecution requested a 10-year prison sentence against Beghal, 39, and his suspected accomplice Kamel Daoudi, 30, the legal maximum for the "association of bandits in connection with a terrorist enterprise". The verdict is expected on March 15.

Beghal's arrest subsequently led to the dismantlement of the so-called "Beghal network" in Corbeil-Essonnes, France, where he had lived until 1997, before leaving for the United Kingdom - where he met the influential Salafist preacher Abu Qatada - and later Germany and Pakistan. The kamikaze in the alleged planned attack would have been Tunisian Nizar Trabelsi, a former soccer player. Trabelsi was arrested in Belgium in September 2001, two days after the September 11 attacks, and sentenced to 10 years in jail two years later. He admitted he was preparing a terrorist attack, but said his target was a military base in Belgium.

Beghal's main co-defendant Kamel Daoudi, a computer scientist suspected of taking care of the logistics, was arrested in England and extradited to France. Last June, four members of the network were sentenced in the Netherlands, including French convert Jerome Courtailler.

Like Zakarias Moussaoui and shoe bomber Richard Reid, among others, Beghal attended the now famous Finsbury Park mosque led by Abu Hamza al-Masri. Several well-known Islamic radicals - among whom many have been involved in terrorism plots - found sanctuary in Great Britain, a country labelled "soft" on religious extremism.

From the early 1990s, North African militants - mainly immigrants who failed to fully integrate into their host country and turned to radical Islam, and a few converts - established sleeper cells in several European countries. At that time the ongoing Algerian civil war was partly fought from Europe, from the French neighborhoods to London, where Islamic leaders organized their support for armed groups in their war against the Algerian state.

According to experts, Algerian-linked terrorist groups were actually prominent until 2001. "They were fierce, they had grand schemes [they hijacked an Air France airbus leaving for Paris in 1994]," says Evan Kohlmann, author of al-Qaeda's Jihad in Europe.

Most al-Qaeda cells discovered in Europe have links to the Algerian Salafist Group for Prayer and Combat, known by its acronym GSPC, an organization suspected in several terrorist plots in Europe and the United States. A splinter group of the Armed Islamic Groups (GIA), GSPC was created under the initiative of bin Laden by GIA emir Hassan Hattab in 1998. A year earlier, the GIA had started losing foreign support due to its massive slaughter of Algerian civilians. Bin Laden, who had previously supported the GIA, financed this new Salafist organization which would distinguish itself from the then discredited GIA in order to continue to fight the "jihad" in Algeria.

The GSPC is accused of planning attacks during the soccer World Cup held in Paris in 1998 and against the Strasbourg Christmas market and cathedral in 2000. "GSPC remains a grave threat in Europe. There are networks linked to al-Qaeda and GSPC in England, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain ... This network of North Africans will continue to be a threat to international security in the short and long term," explains researcher Jonathan Schanzer.

According to Kohlmann, the Algerian branch is "still there but not as influential" today. More recent organizations like the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (GICM), "the children of the GIA and GSPC", learned from their predecessors' mistakes and are now taking the lead of the terrorist network in the region. The GICM was involved in the terrorist attacks in Casablanca in May 2003 and Madrid in March 2004.

But although it has been weakened due to heavy losses in its ranks, the GSPC continues to be a nightmare for Algerian security services. On January 3, 18 soldiers and militiamen were killed in an ambush set up by the GSPC in the area of Biskra. Two policemen were later killed and one civilian was injured when suspected GSPC militants attacked a foot patrol in Tizi Ghenif, 100 kilometers southeast of Algiers.

While vowing to maintain efforts to fight the GSPC, Algerian authorities have publicly expressed satisfaction at the near eradication of the GIA. With the killing last July of former GIA chief Rachid Oukali - alias Abou Tourab - publicly announced, as well as the death last December of its last chief Younes - alias Lyes - they proudly claimed only "about 30" GIA fighters were still at large.

The GIA, responsible for the blind murder of civilians, the targeted killings of intellectuals and the Paris metro bombings in 1995, had greatly declined in recent years. An amnesty launched in 1999 by Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, followed by hundreds of fighters, divided the group, already torn by internal power struggles.

Lately, amid a heated debate surrounding an expansion of the amnesty, Algerian leaders promised the same fate to the GSPC, which has lost several members in military operations in recent months. But last Sunday, the GSPC announced the exclusion of its founder Hattab, officially for accepting the amnesty proposal. The group is now part of the global al-Qaeda nebula. Recently, it re-expressed its ties to al-Qaeda by vowing allegiance to al-Zarqawi. In a statement on January 24, GSPC leader Abu Musab Abdel Wadoud expressed his congratulations to al-Zarqawi in response to the latter's message to international al-Qaeda "affiliate" organizations, among which the GSPC was included.

Despite its weakening presence at home, the group may indeed be poised to pursue a different path on both shores of the Mediterranean Sea. "The European network of the GSPC is sufficiently distinct and separate from its Algerian counterpart that it can survive independently," explains Kohlmann. "I think it is significant that Hassan Hattab has surrendered [apparently] because he was not in favor of using international terrorism as a prime instrument of policy. Those who have succeeded him in the GSPC harbor no such reservations. You might say that Hattab's downfall may ironically serve to remove a previous political roadblock to GSPC-inspired terrorist attacks in Europe."
Link


Europe
French call for 10 years for car bomb plotter
2005-02-11
A prosecutor in France Wednesday called for a maximum 10-year prison sentence against an Islamic militant accused of plotting a suicide car-bombing of the US embassy in Paris in 2002. Djamel Beghal, 39, who is suspected of being the leader of five other men standing trial in the alleged plot, was arrested at Dubai airport July 28, 2001. The prosecution has maintained that he was on his way back to France to carry out the bombing when he was detained.
"Welcome to Gay Paree. Stick 'em up!"
According to the prosecution, Beghal confessed to having twice met with Abu Zubaydah, a top aide to Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, at a training camp in Afghanistan in March 2001. It is alleged Abu Zubaydah told him to organise a cell in Paris to plan the embassy attack. French investigators say Beghal, a Franco-Algerian, was the operational mastermind behind a radical Islamist cell that had contacts in Britain, Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands and Germany. The other members of the group, including computer expert Kamel Daoudi, were identified in surveillance operations conducted after Beghal's arrest.
If I was named Camel Doody, I'd become a terrorist, too.
The prosecutor, Christophe Teissier, also requested a maximum 10-year jail term for Daoudi and terms of between five and eight years for the other four accused. The trial is expected to end on February 16, but it will be several weeks before a final judgement is known.
Link


Europe
Kamel Daoudi sez he knows nuthin' about no embassy plot
2005-01-05
A French-Algerian accused of being the computer wizard for an Islamist group suspected of plotting to blow up the U.S. embassy in Paris denied in court on Tuesday that his stock of fundamentalist literature made him a radical.
Guess it all depends on your definition of "radical," doesn't it?
Kamel Daoudi, on trial with five other men suspected of links to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, said he had texts by bin Laden's right-hand man Ayman al-Zawahiri and other radicals on his computer hard disk because he was curious about them. He also denied receiving military training in Afghanistan.
"Nope. Nope. Wudn't me."
"When someone reads Das Kapital, he is not necessarily a Marxist ... or a terrorist," Daoudi, 30, told the court, adding he sometimes even read extreme right-wing political magazines. "I'm a very curious person."
"Yeah. I'd never seen nobody's hands lopped off."
The prosecution says Daoudi, who has a degree in mechanical engineering, was the computer and logistics expert for the group and kept contact with al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
"No, no! All I did was call out for pizza a few times!"
The suspected group leader Djamel Beghal told the court on Monday he had no links to extremist groups.
"Who? Me? Certainly not!"
The six men face prison sentences of up to 10 years if found guilty of conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism. Two others are on trial charged with illegally residing in France. In September 2002, Daoudi wrote to a French television channel from his prison cell to justify the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. But he denied being personally involved in any planned attacks.
"Wudn't me."
Beghal, 39, was extradited to France from the United Arab Emirates in October 2001 after telling police there he had helped plan a foiled suicide attack on the U.S. embassy just off the Champs Elysees in central Paris. The prosecution says Daoudi visited Afghanistan for military training in 2001 but he said the visit was innocent. "Afghanistan was something of a mythical country, a bit like our Promised Land, and I wanted to see what was going on there," he told the court. "I was in a period of much questioning, like Candide in Voltaire's philosophical tale."
Paging Professor Pangloss! He just wanted to see what life was like in the Best of All Possible Worlds™...
According to the prosecution, Daoudi fled to Britain after Beghal was arrested but was detained there and extradited to France in September 2001. British police found the radical texts on his computer after seizing it. Investigators say the suicide bombing was to have been carried out by a former professional soccer player, Tunisian-born Nizar ben Abdelaziz Trabelsi. Trabelsi was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a Brussels court in 2003 for plotting to blow up a NATO military base in Belgium for al Qaeda. Judge Philippe Vandingenen suspended the hearing briefly after a dispute with Daoudi's lawyer Frederic Bellanger, who accused him of trying the defendant for his opinions. "I am not judging you on the basis of ideas but of facts," Vandingenen told Daoudi when he resumed the session.
"Of course, if it was his opinion that he wanted to blow up the Champs Elysees, I guess we can try him on that, too!"
Link


Europe
Six Terror Suspects Go on Trial in France
2005-01-04
The trial of six men accused of plotting to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Paris opened with testimony from the suspected ringleader. Voluble French-Algerian Djamel Beghal, 39, told the Paris court on Monday that he had been kept in solitary confinement awaiting trial since his arrest in 2001. Terrorism suspects are sometimes detained alone for security reasons. "I've not spoken for three years, so now I'm going to catch up," he said. He explained how he moved to France in his 20s, married, did odd jobs and found his Islamic faith, which became "one of my reasons for living." Asked if he considers himself a radical, he replied: "I am a Muslim and Muslim to the hilt."
"Yeah! I dunnit and I'm glad!"
"Yer honor, my client was tortured into making that statement!"
Moving to Britain in the 1990s enabled him to practice Islam "in a complete manner," Beghal added. But, following problems with British authorities, he moved in 2000 with his family to Afghanistan — then under Taliban control.
Practicing Islam "in a complete manner" got him invited to move on, did it?
He called it "an Islamic country where I found the most answers to my questions." Beghal, carrying an illegally obtained French passport,
That was one of the answers to his many questions...
was arrested in July 2001 in the United Arab Emirates after leaving Afghanistan, where he allegedly lived in terror training camps. He was extradited to France in late September 2001. During two months of detention in Dubai, he told local authorities of a plot to target U.S. interests in France, notably the American Embassy, and said the scheme was ordered by Osama bin Laden's terror network, officials have said.
"Hey, Beghal, whyn't you go to Frawnce and blow up the Merkin embassy?"
"Hokay."
The investigation into the alleged plot was opened on Sept. 10, 2001 — a day before the U.S. terror attacks. The suspects are charged with criminal association with a terrorist enterprise, and risk up to 10 years in prison if convicted. The trial is to last until Feb. 16. All six suspects attended the opening day Monday, but only Beghal testified. Beghal has previously allegedly identified a Tunisian accomplice — former professional soccer player Nizar Trabelsi — who was to enter the U.S. Embassy wearing a bomb belt. However, Beghal later recanted that testimony during questioning in France and suggested he had been tortured in Dubai and forced to make up the story, officials have said.
"Yeah! I mean, I never heard of Nizar Trabelsi! It's just coincidence I picked his name."
One of his lawyers, Claire Doubliez, said he would describe the circumstances of his Dubai interrogation, including the alleged mistreatment, during the trial. Trabelsi is serving a 10-year sentence in Belgium for plotting bomb attacks on U.S. military personnel and involvement in an al-Qaida-linked ring in Europe. Beghal provided information to investigators that led to the arrest of several other suspects, including Kamel Daoudi, 30, a quiet computer expert arrested in Britain in 2002 with fake identity documents after fleeing his home in a southern Paris suburb. According to the prosecution, Daoudi was to send information about the preparation for the attack to Afghanistan via the Internet — and receive the green light for the attack in the same way. The French investigation uncovered links between the suspects on trial here and others in Belgium, like Trabelsi, and in the Netherlands where Jerome Courtailler, a French convert to Islam, was tried in the U.S. Embassy plot. He was acquitted in 2002 in the case, but that was overturned by an appeals court that sentenced him to six years in prison.
Link


Europe
Paris US embassy terror plot trial opens
2005-01-03
Six Islamic militants were due to go on trial in Paris on Monday on suspicion of terror-related offences, with the main defendant accused of masterminding a plot to strike the US embassy in the French capital. The six men have been charged with criminal association in relation with a terrorist enterprise. Two other men with connections to the group have been charged only with violating residency requirements. Hearings were set to begin in Paris criminal court at 1:30 pm. The suspected ringleader of the militants, Djamel Beghal, was arrested in September 2001 at the airport in the Gulf emirate of Dubai, where he allegedly told investigators he was involved in a plot to attack the US embassy in Paris. Beghal claimed to have met twice with Abu Zubaydah, a top aide to Al-Qaeda network leader Osama bin Laden, at a training camp in Afghanistan in March 2001, who told him to organize a cell in Paris to plan the embassy attack. But the suspect later retracted the confession before top French anti-terrorist judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere, claiming he had been physically and psychologically abused by investigators in the United Arab Emirates. Beghal now says he is innocent of the charges against him. The 39-year-old Franco-Algerian and his five co-defendants face up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

French investigators say Beghal was the operational mastermind behind a radical Islamist cell that had contacts in Britain, Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands and Germany. The cell was based in Corbeil-Essonnes south of Paris, where Beghal once lived. He later moved to Britain, Germany and Pakistan, before spending time at Al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. The other members of the group, including computer expert Kamel Daoudi, were identified in surveillance operations conducted after Beghal's arrest. The trial is expected to last until mid-February.
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Terror Networks & Islam
Jihad terrorist wrote speeches for Tariq Ramadan
2004-12-21
From Jihad Watch, translation in comments:Tariq Ramadan is the world's most famous "moderate Muslim." He was slated to take a professorial job at the University of Notre Dame this year, until his visa was revoked by DHS. DHS hasn't explained why, and his case has become a cause celebre for the anti-anti-terror Left, but here is a French-language story (from the Swiss Le Temps, via proche-orient.info, with thanks to Phil), that gives a hint as to why Ramadan may have been kept out of the U.S.
According to the bill of indictment, Djamel Beghal, preacher accused of having prepared an operation commits suicide against the American embassy of Paris, prepared speeches of ***Tariq Ramadan***

By Time (Switzerland)

« A fright haunts Europe. Since the murder attempts of Madrid and the murder of the Dutch film director Théo van Gogh, politicians and intellectuals recall presence on the Old Continent « of parallel societies » founded on an extremist Islam, sometimes violent », explains Sylvain Besson in " The Time ".

« January 3rd of this year is going to open in Paris an action which will allow to understand the functioning of one of these " parallel societies».

On the dock: a computer scientist, a social helper, a coach driver, a cleaning woman, some unemployed persons... In all six persons, Arabs or Frenchmen converted to Islam, who would have prepared a murder attempt against American interests in Paris. The bill of indictment of 219 pages, that " The Time " obtained, researches their amazing centreboard.

In July, 2001, the authorities of Dubaï, in the Persian gulf, stop a certain Djamel Beghal. For some years, this travelling preacher put his nice paces in the service of a radical Islam which advocates violence against faithless and a comeback to the way of life of first Muslims. He began in 1994, in the contact of a brotherhood of Corbeil, the group " Dawaa et Tabligh ", considered as fundamentalist but apolitical.

In this epoch, according to the bill of indictment, « it notably made responsible for preparing speeches of Tariq Ramadan ». The intellectual genevois, who has never allowed to have met or to remember Djamel Beghal, did not answer messages left by " The Time " in its domicile.

The interviewers thinks that Djamel Beghal, Nizar Trabelsi and Kamel Daoudi accepted the direct boost of Ussama ben Laden to lead an operation commit suicide against the American embassy of Paris. But, according to declarations of their friends, their first target was to live in a society indeed Islamic ».

It seems that Tariq Ramadan has connectections to some very unsavory characters indeed.
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The Investigation
Frenchies have al-Qaeda codebook
2001-10-05
  • By Jocelyn Noveck Associated Press Writer
    PARIS (AP) - A former French Defense Ministry official says he believes police have found a notebook belonging to a suspected member of a terrorist group containing codes that could be used to decipher messages within Osama bin Laden's network. Intelligence officials "may be able, with that, to go back to the messages that they may have intercepted already," said Alexis Debat, a teacher and author who until last year worked at the Defense Ministry.

    In a telephone interview, he said "it would be a major breakthrough" if authorities were now able to decipher terrorist codes. But he added: "I don't know if they've been able to make something of it." He said the information had been passed to U.S. intelligence officials. Debat said he got his information not from intelligence officials but from judicial officials close to the case, who told him the notebook with Arabic writing, "seemed to be a code book," and was found in the apartment of Kamel Daoudi. Daoudi has been placed under formal investigation in France for suspected links to a terror network. Daoudi, 27, is a former computer student believed by investigators to have played a key role in a network of Islamic extremists linked to bin Laden and plotting attacks on U.S. interests in France including an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Paris. He spent time in training camps in Afghanistan before returning to France this summer.
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