Military

DATE=11/09/01

TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT

NUMBER=5-50476

TITLE=TERROR / EURO PROFILE

BYLINE=ROGER WILKISON

DATELINE=BRUSSELS

VOICED AT:

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INTRO: Following a series of arrests across Europe after the September 11th terrorist attacks in the United States, law enforcement officials are constructing a new profile of the type of person who is likely to be drawn into Islamic-inspired violence against the West. V-O-A correspondent Roger Wilkison reports from Brussels that the prototype is of a young man of Arab origin who easily assumes the trappings of western life despite hating everything about the West.

TEXT: Intelligence and law enforcement sources in several European countries say the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington are part of a sophisticated network that operates around the world and see in Osama bin Laden, the man U-S officials identify as the prime suspect in the attacks, a source of inspiration rather than the chief of a centralized organization.

The sources say young men in their 20s and 30s are now the principal source of recruits for Mr. bin Laden's jihad, or holy war, against the West. They say many of these men are well-educated, secular-minded and come from middle class families. That seemed to be the case of Mohammed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Samir Jarrah, three of the alleged hijackers in the September 11th attacks. They all lived and studied in the German port of Hamburg, moved freely from country to country and did not attract the attention of police.

But there is another group of young men that also has been drawn to Mr. bin Laden's cause. Many of them are born in the West of immigrant parents, mainly from North Africa. As they lose touch with the lands of their parents, yet feel shunned because of their origin by many of their fellow citizens, they are drawn to Islam as a badge of identity.

That is what happened to three French citizens now under detention in connection with the terrorist attacks. Zacarias Moussaoui, the 33-year-old son of Moroccan immigrants to France, is under arrest in the United States as a presumed would-be hijacker. 36-year-old Djamel Beghal, a Franco-Algerian who was arrested last July in Dubai en route from Pakistan to France for carrying a false passport, is now in jail in France on suspicion of organizing a suicide attack against the U-S Embassy in Paris. And 27-year-old Kamel Daoudi, Mr. Beghal's alleged accomplice, fled to London after the September 11th attacks, but was promptly sent back to Paris by British authorities.

French officials say all three men seemed assimilated, were good students, or had good mid-level jobs until they suddenly changed their lifestyles or left their families.

The catalyst in each case seems to have been a trip to Britain, where Mr. Moussaoui and Mr. Daoudi fell under the spell of charismatic Muslim preachers and began associating with radical Islamic circles that flourish in London, Leicester and Birmingham. Mr. Beghal, married to a French woman and with two small children, apparently changed his ways before moving to Britain in 1997. From there, say French officials, he and the others traveled to Pakistan, then to Afghanistan and the training camps associated with Mr. bin Laden.

Jonathan Stevenson, a counter-terrorism expert at London's International Institute of Strategic Studies, says it is not clear whether such men are recruited into movements like Mr. bin Laden's because they have become radicalized, or because they are comfortable in western surroundings. But, he says, the British connection is crucial.

/// STEVENSON ACT ///

The profile that's emerging is of people who have somehow been assimilated into western society, and usually speak English, and are comfortable with the furnishings of Western life, but who, somewhere along the line -- and often it seems to have been in London or through some connection with London -- have been radicalized.

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Mr. Stevenson says that the familiarity of such men with the West is a plus for Islamic terrorist groups like Mr. bin Laden's al-Qaida, because it helps them blend in more easily. That view is shared by Matthew Dunn, a security expert at Control Risk Group in London.

/// DUNN ACT /////

I think it's a lot easier to recruit people in the countries where they already live as immigrants, rather than to try to infiltrate them into the countries from, say, the Middle East or North Africa or Afghanistan.

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A French police official says that is certainly the case with Mr. Beghal. He says Mr. Beghal belongs to a group called Takfir al-Hijra, or Anathema and Exile, which is now allied with al-Qaida. The official says the Takfiris, as they are known, make a point of concealing their strict fundamentalism behind a western facade and that some of them even drink alcohol in public to show just how integrated they are.

He and other officials warn, however, that, despite their seemingly perfect ability to adapt to the Western world, these new types of terrorist nurture deadly intentions against the West. (Signed)

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