Scandinavia and Northern Europe

Italy

Perhaps more than any other nation in Europe, Italy played an overly dominant

role in hosting the transnational infrastructure of the Bosnian El-Mudzahedin Unit during the mid-1990s. Italy was one of the very few Western European nations to provide a direct land route through Croatia into Muslim Bosnia, and—even prior to the conflict in the Balkans—was serving as an important hub for activity by various North African Islamic extremist groups, including: the GIA, Al Gama’at al-Islamiyya, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and the Tunisian An-Nahdah movement. By the time of the war in 1992-1993, forces within the influential Al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya had already designated Italy as one of three primary “support places” in Europe for its regional activities.[42]

No individual from Italy had a greater impact on the Bosnian mujahideen than

former top Al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya commander in southern Europe, Shaykh Anwar Shaaban (a.k.a. Abu Abdelrahman al-Masri), the late Imam at Milan’s Islamic Cultural Institute and the one-time overarching leader of Arab mujahideen forces fighting alongside the ARBiH.43 Shaaban was a well-known veteran of the Afghan jihad who (like many other Arab-Afghans) in 1991 decided he no longer felt safe in Afghanistan as it collapsed into civil turmoil.[44] He sought and obtained political asylum in Italy, and was disappointed by what he found: “the Muslim community in Italy was just the same as elsewhere in Europe: asleep and busy in the worldly affairs.” Aided by a collection of Afghan war veterans and Italian Islamists, Anwar Shaaban opened a major new headquarters in a converted garage in Milan. Knowledgeable mujahideen sources have praised Shaaban’s efforts in Milan, and noted that Islamic Cultural Institute was “the center of much activity and it gained much popularity amongst the local Muslims.”[28]

Similarly, L’Houssaine Kherchtou, a former Moroccan member of the Al-Qaida

terrorist organisation, testified during the federal trial of four Al-Qaida operatives in the U.S. that Shaaban used the Islamic Cultural Institute as a critical Arab-Afghan recruiting center for young Muslim extremists living in Europe. According to Kherchtou, Shaaban had personally helped arrange Pakistani visas for him and three other mujahideen recruits who then went on to an Al-Qaida military training camp in eastern Afghanistan.[46] French counterterrorism officials concluded that the ICI in Milan, under the lead of Shaaban, served an “essential role” as a command center for a variety of North African armed militant groups including Al-Gama’at Al-Islamiyya, the Tunisian An-Nahdah, and the Algerian GIA.[47] After searching Anwar Shaaban’s office at the ICI, Italian counterterrorism police concurred that the Institute was “characterised by… a constant closeness to the activities of Egyptian terrorist organisations, especially those of [Al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya], in the area of strategic and operational choices… the recruiting of mujaheddin for the Yugoslavian territories…. the establishment of a European network for the connection among fundamentalist cells… [and] logistic and operational support to the armed cells active on Egyptian soil.”[42]

In the summer of 1992, Shaykh Anwar Shaaban helped lead the first quasi-official Arab-Afghan delegation to arrive in Bosnia, accompanied by a number of his Italian colleagues. As the fighters themselves have testified, “Sheik Anwar was not a textbook scholar: he was a scholar who practiced what he preached and fought oppression at every level, just like the companions and the early generations of Muslims… with books in his hands and military uniform on his body. Not only did he teach but he fought as well.” In one audiotape, mujahideen representatives attempt to unravel the mysterious life of Shaaban and note that “in the footsteps of Sheik Abdullah Azzam, Sheik Anwar Shaaban carried the responsibilities of the Mujahideen regiment in Bosnia… teaching, encouraging, and inspiring the fighters, laying the same foundation in Bosnia that Shaykh

Abdullah Azzam laid in Afghanistan.”[28]

Shaaban shuttled back and forth to his headquarters in Milan, bringing with him

to Bosnia a host of veteran fighters and new recruits. In a September 1994 fax sent to a wealthy jihad donor in Qatar, Shaaban explained that he required additional funds “to finance the purchase of camp equipment for the Bosnian mujaheddin in view of another winter spent in war in former Yugoslavia.” Shaaban continued in his letter, “I’m convinced that based on today’s facts, the Islamic projects in the European countries are a priority over all general Islamic projects, especially when based on what we have seen with regard to the possibility of establishing bases in these places in order to aid Muslims all over the world.”[42] Undoubtedly, Shaaban hoped to use the Bosnian war to as a means to create an unassailable garrison for North African militants in Europe. One document later confiscated in Italy seemed to endorse this strategy, explaining that “Hot Islamic questions such as Bosnia… raise the ardor of young Muslims and their desire to face the inevitable.”[51] Not surprisingly, many of those that Shaaban introduced to the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina became “the commanders and trainers, the cream of the Mujahideen.”[28]

During their subsequent investigation of Shaaban and the ICI, Italian counterterrorism police turned up numerous pieces of evidence showing how involved Shaaban was in supporting jihad activity in nearby Bosnia. This included documents indicating that “paramilitary training activities” were “organised by the I.C.I. for those individuals who would fight on the Yugoslav territory.”[42] A second undated letter from Anwar Shaaban recovered by Italian investigators details a meeting the former had in Sarajevo “with an unidentified Islamic individual who was willing to host trained Muslim guys capable of training others to use Russian and eastern firearms in order to open the door of the Jihad against Orthodox Serbs in Yugoslavia.”[42] The Italians also found another handwritten sheet of paper in Arabic:

“I am sending you this film from the center of Bosnia-Herzegovina, from the land of war and the Jihad. In it there is what I succeeded in sending you, and I am very happy… In the little remembrance book there are a few pages glued together, which you must open because there are inside sections of small films that you will develop and watch… I placed the small films inside the remembrance book, between the pages, but only between some pages, not all of them… so that the Croatians may not find them and cause problems for us, because they can even decapitate; when the letter arrives, develop and number them.”[42]

A subsequent fax received in April 1995 confirmed that the ICI in Milan had been

officially assigned the task of distributing news bulletins and conducting other

“propaganda activity” on behalf of the Bosnian El-Mudzahidin Unit.[42]

Yet, almost immediately, Shaaban’s mission in the Balkans strayed from its

purported goal of defending innocent Bosnian Muslims. In 1993, U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials began to privately express concerns that Egyptian Islamic extremists were targeting the U.S. embassy in Albania for a potential terrorist attack. According to the CIA, “Al-Gama’at members, including… Anwar Shaban… were involved in the 1993 surveillance of the U.S. embassy in Tirana.”[73] The surveillance was confirmed when a suspected militant was observed driving “repeatedly around the embassy.”[58] Separately, the CIA gathered telephone intercepts that included an “apparent order from overseas

instructing a Muslim-charity worker to case the embassy.”[59] No successful attack was ever carried out, likely as a result of close cooperation between the CIA and Albanian security officials.

Shaaban’s influence also extended to a number of other Italian fundamentalist

clerics, such as Mohamed Ben Brahim Saidani, a volunteer fighter in Bosnia and Imam of a mosque on Massarenti Street in Bologna, Italy. Saidani had been one of a number of participants in a guerilla training course held in Afghanistan in 1993. Upon his return to Italy, he quickly convinced 30 of his local followers to enlist in the foreign mujahideen brigade active in Bosnia. He founded a front company in Italy known as Piccola Societa’ Cooperativa Eurocoop that provided seemingly legitimate work authorisation permits to jihadi volunteers and veterans, allowing them to travel without hindrance to different parts of the world, including Bosnia.60 In witness testimony in the trial of conspirators

convicted of involvement in the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings, Al-Qaida

lieutenant Jamal al-Fadl discussed his trip to Zagreb in mid-1992, specifically how he had been instructed to meet with Mohamed Saidani so he could get “information about what’s going on in Bosnia” and bring this intelligence back directly to Usama Bin Laden.[61]

Italian law enforcement and intelligence officials grew concerned after

intercepting a letter from a fundamentalist militant imprisoned in southern Italy in July 1993 discussing potential terror attacks on U.S. and French targets in the region. The seized letter appears to be one penned by Mondher Ben Mohsen Baazaoui (a.k.a. “Hamza the Tunisian”), an activist in the An-Nahdah movement and, according to an Italian police statement, “a fighter for a mujahideen unit during the ethnic conflict in Bosnia… believed to be in the front row of fundamentalist, Islamic terrorist networks.”[62] Baazaoui wrote to Mohamed Saidani (the Imam in Bologna who was on close terms with both Anwar Shaaban and Usama Bin Laden) to tell him that if his prison hunger strike did not

secure his immediate release, Baazaoui would commit a “homicide operation… [to] die gloriously.”[63] He then pleaded with Saidani to avenge his death with a spectacular eulogy of terror: “All I can suggest to you is the French: leave not a child nor an adult [alive]. Work for them, they are very numerous in Italy, especially in the Tourist areas. Do what you will to them using armed robbery and murder. The important thing is that you succeed at sparking the flames that burn inside me against them, and this is to be a promise between you and me.”[64]

In November 1994, Italian authorities were even more alarmed when they learned of a new assassination plot organised by elements of the Egyptian terrorist groups Al-Jihad and Al-Gama’at Al-Islamiyya targeting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak during a three-day diplomatic trip to Rome.[65] As a result, the Italian police stepped up their efforts—particularly, their focus on Shaaban’s Islamic Cultural Institute. On June 26, 1995, in a mission codenamed “Operation Sphinx,” Italian police arrested 11 suspected members of Al-Gama’at Al-Islamiyya (including 10 Egyptians and 1 Palestinian) and carried out formal searches of 72 addresses across northern Italy, including Milan. The detained terrorists were charged with criminal conspiracy, robbery, extortion, falsifying documents, and illegal possession of firearms.[66]

One of those that Italian counterterrorism authorities were particularly seeking to

arrest, Shaykh Anwar Shaaban himself, was nowhere to be found. Evidently, having been tipped off to the intentions of the Italian government, Shaaban had escaped and found asylum at his mujahideen military stronghold in central Bosnia-Herzegovina.[66] Shaaban’s Bosnian exodus marked a critical period of development for the Arab-Afghan mujahideen in southern Europe. Despite all the Arab-Afghan propaganda decrying the suffering of the Bosnian Muslims—just as in Afghanistan—their participation in the war was ultimately being channeled toward an alternate purpose. By 1995, central Bosnia was more than a mere mujahideen frontline. Instead, thanks to the work of Shaaban and others, it had become a strategic foothold for Usama Bin Laden and his fanatical North African allies to help infiltrate Western Europe.

With Bosnian war hostilities drawing to a close in September 1995, Anwar

Shaaban and his Italian-based Al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya cohorts were free to turn their attention and resources to issues of “more critical” importance. In late September, one of the most important Al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya leaders hiding in Europe—Abu Talal al-Qasimy (a.k.a. Talaat Fouad Qassem)—was captured by Croat HVO forces as he attempted to cross through Croatian territory into Bosnia-Herzegovina. Within days, the Croats quietly rendered al-Qasimy through U.S. custody into the hands of Egyptian authorities. At the time, a government official in Cairo noted, “[Al-Qasimy’s] arrest proves what we have always said, which is that these terror groups are operating on a worldwide scale, using places like Afghanistan and Bosnia to form their fighters who come back to the Middle East… European countries like Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, England and others, which give sanctuary to these terrorists, should now understand it

will come back to haunt them where they live.”[68]

The first real Arab-Afghan response to Abu Talal al-Qasimy’s arrest came on

October 20, 1995, when a massive explosion shook the quiet Croatian port town of Rijeka.[69] At 11:22am, a suicide bomber detonated 70 kilograms of TNT hidden in a FIAT Mirafiori parked outside the Primorje-Gorani county police headquarters.[70] The mysterious suicide-bomber was killed, two bystanders were seriously wounded, and 27 other people received lighter injuries. The bomb was powerful enough to destroy the police headquarters and damage several nearby buildings, including a Zagreb Bank branch and a primary school.69 In the blast debris, Croatian police found fragments a Canadian passport belonging to the suicide bomber—who had previously been investigated by Italian counterterrorism officials for his connections to the Islamic Cultural Institute in Milan controlled by Anwar Shaaban.[70] The CIA later confirmed that the bomber was “a member of Al-Gama’at [al-Islamiyya].”[73]

A day later, Western news agencies in Cairo received an anonymous faxed

communiqué allegedly from Al-Gama’at representatives, claiming responsibility for the Rijeka bombing in order “to prove that the case of Sheik Talaat Fouad Qassem… will not pass but will bring cascades of blood bleeding from Croatian interests inside and outside… You Croats will be mistaken if you think that this matter will go peacefully.”[74] In their statement, Al-Gama’at representatives firmly demanded that the Croatian government “release Sheikh Qassimi and apologise formally through the media… Close the gates of hell which you have opened upon yourselves... otherwise you will be starting a war the end of which only Allah (God) knows.”[75] U.S. intelligence indicated that Anwaar Shaaban was personally responsible for overseeing the suicide bombing operation in Rijeka. The terror attack was meant to be a mere prelude to a new strategy employed by the mujahideen. As the long Balkan war began winding down, Shaaban

“and other mujahedin leaders had begun planning to attack NATO forces which would be sent to Bosnia.”[73] French investigators believed that the October terror attack confirmed that the military leadership of the El-Mudzahedin Unit in Bosnia-Herzegovina “was closely related to [Al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya], both ideologically and in practice.”[77]

For several years afterwards, Croatian authorities sought other suspects believed

responsible for arranging the Rijeka bombing. Witnesses, including a police guard in the headquarters parking lot, described a suspicious Mercedes driven by an Arab man that sped away from the scene just before the blast. After looking at mugshots, those witnesses were able to positively identify a wanted 36-year old Egyptian militant loyal to Al-Gama’at Al-Islamiyya named Hassan al-Sharif Mahmud Saad. Saad, who had lived in Cologno Monzese (a surburb of Milan), was a prominent figure at the Islamic Cultural Institute. He even sat on the board of trustees of Anwar Shaaban’s own Italian charitable organisation “Il Paradiso.” In Italy, Saad was known to own a FIAT 131 Mirafiori with Bergamo plates, the very same vehicle later used in the Rijeka attack. As early as 1993,

he was traveling back and forth between Bosnia and Italy. But everyone at the ICI mosque was aware that something was different in June 1995, when Hassan Saad packed his family and belongings in the FIAT and left permanently for Bosnia-Herzegovina. His friends at the ICI said he had gone away to join the El-Mudzahedin Unit in Zenica led by Anwar Shaaban.[78]

Immediately following the premature truck bomb explosion outside foreign

mujahideen headquarters in Zenica in December 1995, Shaaban finally met his own violent end in Bosnia-Herzegovina. During a suspicious clash with Croat HVO forces, Shaaban and four of his closest mujahideen advisors were ritually gunned down, seemingly harkening the end of a major era in for the Arab-Afghans in Europe. But the influential network Shaaban was responsible for establishing in Italy and Bosnia-Herzegovina continued to survive and prosper long after his death. The credit for this unexpected resurgence largely goes to top Algerian mujahideen commander Abu el-Ma’ali (a.k.a. Abdelkader Mokhtari) and his reputed lieutenant Fateh Kamel (a.k.a. “Mustapha the Terrorist”). Kamel, who had lived in Canada since 1988, was originally from Algeria and spent a good part of his life in a quarter of the capital Algiers.[79] His slick, polished exterior boasted a professionalism that was matched only by his pure ruthlessness. First trained in Afghanistan in 1991, Kamel came to the attention of Italian authorities while encouraging attendees at Anwar Shaaban’s Islamic Cultural Institute in

Milan to join the mujahideen in Bosnia. By 1995, according to French intelligence, the El-Mudzahedin Unit in Bosnia was headed politically by Anwar Shaaban, seconded militarily by Abu el-Ma’ali, and in the third position was Fateh Kamel, in charge of the brigade’s “logistical matters” (a role that consisted mostly of coordinating the transfer of weapons, new recruits, and false documents to and from the Arab headquarters in Zenica).[80] Investigators reviewing the phone records of lines serving the ICI between 1994 and 1995 found evidence of regular contacts between the triumvirate of Abu el-Ma’ali, Anwar Shaaban, and Fateh Kamel.[81]

French intelligence determined that Kamel and his associates had “multiple links”

with “diverse Islamic terrorist organisations around the world, and particularly in Bosnia, in Pakistan, in Germany, and in London.”[82] Between 1994 and 1997, Fateh Kamel moved constantly between (at least) Milan, Montreal, Paris, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Zagreb, Bosnia, Copenhagen, Austria, Slovenia, Freibourg (Germany), Morocco, Ancone (Italy), Istanbul, Belgium, and Amsterdam.[83] Kamel was recorded on one occasion by Italian intelligence, discussing potential terror attacks and bragging to his henchmen, “I do not fear death… because the jihad is the jihad, and to kill is easy for me.”[84] He hated the very society he lived in and cynically mocked Western attitudes towards Muslims: “And you know, the people [here] imagine a Muslim on the back of a camel, four wives behind him and the bombs that explode… terrorists, terrorists, terrorists.”[85] In another communications intercept in 1996, just after the end of the Bosnian war, Kamel confided in his terrorist partners, “I prefer to die than go to jail. I almost lost my wife. I am 36 years old with a son four and a half months old. My wife is playing with him and me, I am here. I am almost a soldier.”[86]

The evidence in Kamel’s addressbook alone seems to confirm his role as a key

liaison and coordinator between assorted European sleeper cell terrorist networks and senior Al-Qaida commanders based in Bosnia and Afghanistan. Among other numbers, Fateh Kamel had several contacts for Akacha Laidi (a.k.a. Abderrahmane Laidi, Abou Amina), a senior GIA member in the UK. One of the numbers with Akacha’s name actually reached Djamal Guesmia, a terrorist widely known to be working with both the GIA and its successor group, the Algerian Salafist Group for Prayer and Combat (GSPC).[87] Fateh Kamel drew particularly close to loose network of units of North African immigrants and European converts to Islam who had come to aid the mujahideen during the early stages of the Bosnian war. For all intensive purposes, he became their

handler, giving assistance and issuing orders on behalf of Anwar Shaaban and Abu el-Ma’ali.

In 1996, following the sudden death of Shaaban in central Bosnia, Kamel

suddenly began activating “Bosniak” terror units implanted in Europe, instructing them to prepare for new jihad operations to take place inside France and Italy. Between August 6-10, 1996, Kamel stayed at the Milan apartment of two GIA supporters, including Rachid Fettar, who had close ties to the masterminds of the 1995 Paris metro bombing spree. Fettar was well-placed in the GIA leadership hierarchy, considered the “heir” to the European extremist network established by Safé Bourada, the deputy-in-command of the Algerian terror cell deemed responsible for the metro bombings.[88] Thus, Kamel’s visit to Fettar and his companion Youcef Tanout came with a definite purpose: to direct a terror cell in the construction and deployment of more crude gas-canister bombs like those used during the Paris metro campaign.

Kamel respected Rachid Fettar as an equal and complained to him that Tanout

and the others were too reluctant to produce the explosives without elaborate and timeconsuming covert procedures. “I insisted as much as I could, but there was nothing I could do. In France, we can make [the bombs], even if their destination is France. You know very well that in France, I have no problems; I return and I leave when I want, clandestinely.”[89] In a discussion with the more amateurish Youcef Tanout, Kamel coldly asked, “What are you afraid of? That everything will explode in your house? Tell me at least if Mahmoud has gotten the gas canister.” Tanout meekly related to Kamel how one of his fellow cell members had sought the shelter and anonymity of a nearby deep forest in order to fabricate the required bombs. He admitted to Kamel, “I feel no shame in

telling you that I am extremely afraid.”[90] Evidently, Tanout’s hesitant concerns were well founded; on November 7, 1996, both himself and Fettar were arrested and their Milan apartment was searched by experienced Italian counterterrorism investigators. They discovered two 400-gram gas canisters, five remote-control transmitters, 38 metallic cylinders, and other bomb-making materials.[91]

Though Fateh Kamel’s gas canister terror plot in Milan never reached fruition, it

provided ominous clues as to what was to develop across Western Europe in the

following decade. In many ways, the early Italian-based mujahideen sleeper cells under the lead of Kamel, Anwar Shaaban, and Abu el-Ma’ali were the direct prototype for contemporary European-based North African militant networks responsible for carrying out such operations as the March 2004 commuter train bombings in Madrid, Spain. Members of Fateh Kamel’s brotherhood of fighters continue to enter and leave the Balkans even today. When Kamel’s “right-hand-man” in Bosnia—Moroccan Karim Said Atmani—was released from a French prison cell in the spring of 2005, he immediately left on a flight to Sarajevo where he was greeted at the airport by a “known commander of the Bosnian mujahideen… tied to the international Islamic terrorist movement.”[92] After substantial pressure was brought to bear on local law enforcement authorities in BiH, Atmani was finally deported from the region in early 2006 and sent back home to North Africa.

Even as early as the Bosnian war, the unlikely region of Scandinavia had become

an important tactical base for Islamic militant groups from the Middle East. Countries like Norway, Sweden, and Denmark were perceived as tolerant and willing to grant political asylum even to militant leaders on the run from law enforcement and intelligence agencies. In Scandinavia, these wanted men knew they could expect “the same freedom as [in] the US.”[93] A March 1995 magazine printed by supporters of Al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya noted that “influential guides” within the Egyptian jihadi movement had nonetheless been able to secure “political asylum in Norway” despite the reluctance of the Norwegian Embassy in Cairo to become involved in such proceedings.[42] Even the undisputed top leader of Al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya—Shaykh Omar Abdel Rahman (currently serving a life sentence in a maximum security U.S. prison)—boasted in interviews with mujahideen newsletters of his numerous trips to Europe, “passing through Britain, Denmark, Sweden, and many other countries.”[95]

Unbeknownst to most Danes, by 1993, the city of Copenhagen was perhaps the

most important safe haven for Al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya in all of Europe. At the head of Al-Gama’at’s weighty delegation in Copenhagen was the legendary Shaykh Abu Talal al-Qasimy, among the first Muslim clerics involved in supporting the Bosnian jihad. Al-Qasimy was imprisoned several times by the Egyptian government both previous to and following the assassination of the late President Anwar Sadat. Shortly thereafter, he was able to use fake travel documents to escape Egypt and join the growing number of militant Muslim exiles fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan. While there, al-Qasimy “made an appointment with Jihad in the path of Allah, and… embraced the rifle.”[96]

During time spent in nearby Pakistan, Abu Talal al-Qasimy established Al-Gama’at’s official magazine, Al-Murabeton, and wrote most of the early issues.

In January 1993, under pressure from the U.S., the Pakistani government

suddenly reversed its position on supporting the jihad in Afghanistan and ordered the closure of remaining Arab mujahideen offices in Pakistan—threatening official

deportation to any illegal foreign fighters who attempted to remain in Pakistan. These displaced men faced a serious problem, because return to their countries of origin meant certain arrest, torture, and likely death. At the time, a Saudi spokesman for the Arab-Afghans in Jeddah explained in the media, “the Algerians cannot go to Algeria, the Syrians cannot go to Syria or the Iraqis to Iraq. Some will opt to go to Bosnia, the others will have to go into Afghanistan permanently.”[97]

According to Dr. Abdullah Azzam’s son Hudhaifa, Abu Talal al-Qasimy was

forced to flee across the border into Afghanistan because he was “ordered by name to be captured and sent to Egypt by the Pakistani government.” But, “before they caught [him], [he]… got a visa to foreign countries.”[98] In fact, Al-Qasimy had found political asylum in Denmark, where he continued to spread his radical message at the foreign office of Al-Murabeton in Copenhagen.[99] One of the other four editors working in Copenhagen was reportedly Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad movement and second-in-command of Usama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaida.[100] Al-Qasimy was also a close friend of the Amir of the Bosnian mujahideen, Anwar Shaaban, and took an aggressive, committed, and hands-on role in the Bosnian jihad.

On April 24, 1993, Abu Talal al-Qasimy convened in Copenhagen arguably one

of the most important meetings of pan-Islamic militant leaders ever to take place inside of Europe. The other participants included Shaykh Anwar Shaaban from Milan and Imam Shawki Mohammed (a.k.a. Mahmoud Abdel al-Mohamed), the firebrand cleric at the Al-Sahaba mosque in Vienna—considered by Italian intelligence at the time to be “a most important representative of Sunni radicalism in Europe” who was fixated on “the situation of the mujahiddin in the former Yugoslavia.”[42] Abu Talal hoped that this “meeting of minds” would serve as the impetus for the creation of a “Shura Council of the European Union”—a coalition of like-minded Middle Eastern extremist groups with a common presence and interest in Western Europe. The “Shura Council” was to be developed as an autonomous command organism capable of “coordinating and making decisions” without consulting Al-Gama’at al-Islamiyya or Al-Jihad leaders located far off in Egypt or Afghanistan. One of the main reasons for establishing a unified leadership nucleus was to fully mobilise shared resources in Europe to support nearby ongoing jihad operations in North Africa and Bosnia-Herzegovina.[42] A note from the diary of Anwar Shaaban written just days before meeting Abu Talal in Copenhagen cites the collective importance of providing assistance “to the Algerian, Tunisian, Senegalese, and Bosnian

brothers.”[42]

Like Shaaban in Milan, Abu Talal al-Qasimy used his position of prominence

while in Copenhagen to establish a circle of like-minded disciples, such as Palestinian Muslim cleric Ahmed Abu Laban (a.k.a. Abu Abdullah al-Lubnani) who arrived in Denmark in 1993. Though he speaks little Danish, Abu Laban has gradually established a persona for himself as the de-facto representative of the minority Muslim community in Denmark, appearing in local media reports and in meetings with government officials. An August 2005 article in the respected Washington Post even referred to Abu Laban as “one of Denmark’s most prominent imams.”[104]

Yet, despite his disarming exterior, Italian intelligence recorded visits by Abu

Laban to Anwar Shaaban’s ICI in Milan “many times” for “conferences” and

“community prayers.”[42] When news of the capture of Abu Talal al-Qasimy in Croatia filtered back to Denmark, Ahmed Abu Laban led an angry protest of 500 local Muslims in downtown Copenhagen outside the Croatian embassy. During the October 1995 protest (which included an appearance by al-Qasimy’s wife), demonstrators “raised their fists and shouted ‘Allahu Akhbar!’” In interviews with journalists, Abu Laban condemned Egypt, the United States, and Croatia as “the beneficiaries” of Abu Talal’s capture en route to Muslim forces in central Bosnia-Herzegovina.[106]

In early 2006, Ahmed Abu Laban re-appeared in international media after he

helped provoke a new series of violent protests across the Muslim world in reaction to cartoons published in Scandinavian magazines that lampooned the Prophet Mohammed. The controversial cartoons failed to attract widespread interest among Muslims outside of Europe when they first printed in the Danish publication Jyllands-Posten during the fall of 2005. On November 18—in an interview with an Islamic press agency—Abu Laban announced that he would lead a delegation of Danish Muslims touring across the Middle East in a bid to draw pan-Islamic attention to the cartoons issue:

“A delegation will visit Cairo to meet with Arab League Secretary Amr Moussa and Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Sheikh Mohammad Sayyed Tantawi… The delegation will also visit Saudi Arabia and Qatar to meet with renowned Muslim scholar Sheikh Yussef Al-Qaradawi… We want to internationalise this issue so that the Danish government would realise that the cartoons were not only insulting to Muslims in Denmark but also to Muslims worldwide… It was decided to take such a step because it is wrong to turn a blind eye to the fact that some European countries discriminate against their Muslims on the grounds that they are not democratic and that they can not understand western culture.”[107]

During meetings with Muslim leaders, the delegation led by Abu Laban displayed the cartoons published by Jyllands-Posten—along with several other much more offensive items that had never actually been published in Scandinavia, including a cartoon depicting the Prophet having sexual intercourse with a dog. Other printed materials distributed in conjunction with Abu Laban’s campaign contained several other inflammatory and misleading rumours about the would-be “oppression” of Danish Muslims.[108] Within weeks, as a result of Abu Laban’s relentless incitement, the cartoon controversy spun out of control, resulting in angry mobs attacking Scandinavian diplomatic facilities in Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Pakistan, and the Palestinian territories.

Likewise, in neighbouring Sweden, local cells of North African extremists who had

initially organised themselves around the need to support to fellow jihadists in

Afghanistan, North Africa, and the Balkans eventually developed into an elaborate regional network for terrorist recruitment, financing, and other illicit activities. According to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, the Stockholm office of a fraudulent Arab-Afghan charitable group known as “Human Concern International” (HCI) served as cover during the mid-1990s for a major covert Bosnian arms smuggling operation.[73] European Muslim newsletters advertised that due to a wealth of contributions from “the increasing Muslim population in Sweden,” the HCI branch in Stockholm had already successfully “equipped the Mujahideen in Afghanistan… The organisation has succeeded in gathering more than half million Kroner last year, and it has been sent to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. We are still helping the Arab youths to go to Afghanistan thus to contribute in the Jihad.”[110] The newspaper Le Monde confirmed that French national police suspected that HCI’s offices in Croatia and Sweden had acted as possible “staging points” for the GIA terrorist cell responsible for a July 25, 1995 bomb attack on the Paris metro system.[111] In the wake of the Paris bombing, Swedish authorities arrested and held a suspected GIA member Abdelkerim Deneche who was living in Stockholm at the time. Deneche had previously been fingered in French news media as a former employee of the HCI office in Zagreb.

Not to be outdone by their British colleagues, groups of young Algerian radicals

from Sweden were also traveling directly to Bosnia seeking to physically join in the jihad against the “Christian Crusaders.” On September 19, 1993, one of these Swedish mujahideen recruits—“Abu Musab al-Swedani”—was killed in a battle with Croatian HVO forces near the central Bosnian town of Kruscica (near Vitez). According to friends, Abu Musab was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and an Algerian father. He grew up in Scandinavia, but at age 20, suddenly developed an intense interest in studying Islam. He travelled to Saudi Arabia on a personal pilgrimage to learn Arabic and study the Islamic Shariah (religious law). During the nearly two years he spent in the Arabian Peninsula, he became a devout, fundamentalist who, upon his return to Sweden, began actively prosthelytising his religion to others around him, including his family and

relatives.[112]

The jihad in Afghanistan was making major international headlines during this

period of the late 1980s, catching the avid attention of the pro-Islamist community in the West. Abu Musab “began to follow the news of the Muslims around the world and in particular the killing of the Muslims and their expulsion from their homes. He then understood that there is no dignity for the Muslims except through Jihad.” Abu Musab travelled to Peshawar, the “gateway to jihad,” with another young, radical Muslim who was already a member of the mujahideen. After some hesitation, he soon ventured forth into Afghanistan to seek combat training and to fight on behalf of the Islamic revolution. When the Afghan jihad ended, Abu Musab returned home to Sweden and married a Muslim woman. But, in 1992, he once again decided to make a jihadi pilgrimage—this

time in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Abu Musab al-Swedani arrived in the region and joined up with the extremists based in the camp on Mt. Igman, under the lead of “General” Abu Ayman al-Masri.[112] After surviving several months of combat, Abu Musab was finally killed by a sniper’s bullet while in the midst of a chaotic mujahideen military offensive aimed at driving Croatian forces out of Muslim central Bosnia.[112] Al-Swedani’s biography and photo were later publicised in the pioneering English-language jihad propaganda film “The Martyrs of Bosnia,” produced by accused London-based Al-Qaida operative Babar Ahmad.[112]

As a testament to what had been achieved, when the mujahideen military

campaign in Bosnia-Herzegovina came to a sudden halt in September 1995, the

predominantly Algerian arms smuggling and recruitment network based in Stockholm continued their ongoing activities virtually unabated. Jihad became a hot topic of discussion and a host of individuals surfaced in Scandinavia claiming to represent various Islamic extremist movements—including “Abu Fatima al-Tunisi” (a spokesman for a Stockholm-based Islamic group), and “Abu Daoud al-Maghrebi” (a Swedish-based activist working on behalf of the GIA in Northern Europe).[116] Even the Nusraat al-Ansaar newsletter—the semi-official publication of the GIA’s foreign delegation in Europe—offered a correspondence address at Box 3027 in Haninge, Sweden.[117]

Indeed, Swedish-based militants who were initially mobilised by ongoing jihadi

conflicts in Bosnia and Afghanistan were also the first to establish an official Arablanguage Internet homepage for the notorious Algerian GIA, with an entire sub-section dedicated just to “terrorism.”[118] These same individuals began to distribute Arabiclanguage jihad training manuals on the Internet, many of which have become classic documents in the online world of the mujahideen—including a lengthy book titled “The Restoration of the Publication of the Believers,” written by Egyptian Islamic Jihad leader Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri. When it was published on the Internet from Sweden, Zawahiri’s book still carried a watermark on the cover from 1996 identifying it as the property of “Muslimska Forsamilingen i Brandbergen, Jungfrugaten 413 N.B.” in the town of Haninge.[119]

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