Were terrorists next door?

Residents of French apartment building stunned by arrests in U.S. Embassy plot

10/06/2001

By Gregory Katz
The Dallas Morning News

CORBEIL-ESSONNES, France – When dozens of French police officers swooped in to raid a five-story apartment house in this working-class suburb one hour south of Paris, everyone was so surprised that the local potheads thought they were being busted.

"We were just sitting around smoking joints and suddenly the place was filled with police," said Memoun Rachid, 20. "When we found out it was for the terrorists, we were surprised and shocked. It's bizarre that there is a connection between what happened in Corbeil and what happens in the U.S.A."

Police are still sorting out what happened in Corbeil, where two French-Algerians suspected of having close ties to Osama bin Laden were allegedly working on a detailed plan to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Paris and other American facilities in France before their cover was blown.

The two suspects – Djamel Beghal, 35, and Kamel Daoudi, 27 – are in French prisons on terrorism-related charges. Mr. Beghal has been cooperating with investigators, providing police with vital evidence about the terrorist network linking Afghanistan to France, Spain, England, and other European countries.

Bin Laden connection

Press accounts of his confession indicate that Mr. Beghal was at the center of the plot and helped build the network that was to carry it out, on the instruction of Osama bin Laden's deputy.

His newly hired French lawyer, Fabrice Dubest, says the confession was obtained after Mr. Beghal was physically and psychologically abused while in prison in the United Arab Emirates. The lawyer has not denied the existence of the plot but said orders to carry it out did not come from Mr. bin Laden.

Information provided by Mr. Beghal led police to an undercover cell in Spain and to operatives in the Netherlands and Belgium. One suspect, an aging professional soccer player, had chemicals in his apartment that were apparently to be used in a suicide attack on the embassy. Police say they believe he was to be the suicide bomber.

'Sleeper cells'

Their stories reveal much about how "sleeper cells" operate. Mr. Daoudi, said by police to have been the group's computer expert, worked in the city hall of a neighboring suburb, helping to refine the town's information technology system.

Another suspect now in prison worked in Corbeil-Essonnes as a government-paid "mediator" between youth gangs prone to violence.

Like the terrorists who later hijacked planes in the United States on Sept. 11, the men in France had done precious little to attract attention. They blended in, stayed out of trouble, bided their time and kept to themselves.

They were undone not by their actions in France, which apparently went undetected, but by Mr. Beghal's unexplained travel last fall to Afghanistan, which raised red flags with intelligence agencies and caused him to be arrested when he tried to pass through Dubai in the United Arab Emirates in July.

The revelation that their neighbors were not what they seemed has been deeply unsettling for the residents of l'Ermitage, the apartment complex where first Mr. Beghal and then Mr. Daoudi lived in a ground-floor apartment that has now been thoroughly searched and sealed off from the rest of the building.

"I have a feeling that there are more of them here," said Jacqueline Faus, 67.

Josephine Gamon, who lives on the top floor, said she often saw a large number of Arab men coming to the suspects' apartment but had no reason to believe they were doing anything wrong.

"We were totally surprised," she said. "We rarely saw them, but there were always a lot of people coming and going."

It is not the sort of building where people look into one another's business, residents said. There is not a lot of mingling, particularly between the retired French workers and the young Arabs who have recently arrived from Algeria and Tunisia.

"I saw him a few times but never talked to him," one man said of Mr. Daoudi. "You never know who your neighbor is. You never know who's living amongst you."

Mr. Beghal is believed by investigators to have lived in the apartment with his French wife and their two sons until October 1997, when he and his family left for England.

It was in England that Mr. Beghal developed friendships with Muslim extremists. According to French press accounts of his confession, he was active in the Finsbury Park mosque in London that has been at the center of Islamic resistance in Britain. He also had contacts with extremists in the British cities of Birmingham and Leicester.

The French press accounts of his statements from prison in Dubai indicate that he also had a relationship with Abu Qutada, a Palestinian with Jordanian roots who has been granted political asylum in Britain.

Mr. Qutada, also known as Abu Omar, has been convicted in absentia twice in Jordan for his role in planning bombing attacks on American and Israeli tourists there. Despite this record, British officials have rebuffed Jordan's attempts to extradite him.

Mr. Qutada was detained by British police earlier this year on suspicion of terrorism but was released without being charged. He remains at large, although police and his Muslim associates say he is under intense surveillance.

Recruiting young men

Terrorism experts believe that a number of Muslims – perhaps up to 1,000 young men – have been recruited into militant Islamic resistance movements in Britain in recent years and have gone abroad to join forces with armed radicals in other countries.

Dr. Magnus Ranstorp, deputy director of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St. Andrew's University in Scotland, said some of these men have received training in Mr. bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan before being assigned to battlegrounds in Chechnya and other locales.

He said at least one London-based Web site once offered specific details about how to make the contacts needed to join the armed resistance but has since been toned down, perhaps to comply with British laws against incitement to commit terrorism. Terrorist manuals found in Britain explain how to infiltrate Western society and inflict heavy damage, he said.

This is allegedly the course chosen by Mr. Beghal, who is believed to have joined the extremist group Anathema and Exile after his exposure to the Muslim radicals in Britain.

According to his initial confession in Dubai, Mr. Beghal left England in November bound for Afghanistan. His travel was paid for by "the movement," he told investigators. He flew first to Pakistan, then crossed overland into Afghanistan through the border city of Peshawar.

After making his way to one of Mr. bin Laden's camps, he received weapons training until March of this year, according to his confession. This version of events has not been challenged by his new lawyer, Mr. Dubest.

In his first statements, Mr. Beghal described how he received orders to attack American sites at a meeting with one of Mr. bin Laden's senior lieutenants at Mr. bin Laden's residence in Afghanistan. He told investigators he was expected to form a commando unit inside France to carry out the mission.

These statements, which would provide a direct link between the plotters and Mr. bin Laden, are now denied by Mr. Dubest, the suspect's lawyer.

Mr. Beghal told authorities that he planned a circuitous route back to France, intending to travel through the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Spain and to obtain a new passport in Morocco to cover up his recent travels. But he was arrested in Dubai after authorities there were tipped off about his suspicious stay in Afghanistan.