• English Site
• >Under the Scope
• >Terrorism
• >

  Madrid, One Year On: Europe Continues to Stumble in its Fight against Terror

Madrid, One Year On Europe Continues to Stumble in its Fight against Terror

By Dominik Cziesche, Marion Kraske, Holger Stark and Helene Zuber

Part 2: Part Two: The growing danger in Europe.

On April 3, 2004, Madrid police stormed an apartment where Farkhet and six accomplices were hiding. Before police could nab them, the men blew themselves up, killing an officer along with themselves. The television images once again brought images into European living rooms that most had thought only occurred in the Middle East. Would Europe have to start getting used to such violent scenes?

And those are just the scenes that came to fruition. Eliza Manningham-Buller, who heads Britain's Secret Service MI5, talks about the many foiled terrorist plots in Britain. The former head of Scotland Yard, Sir John Stevens, is more precise, saying he knows of six specific cases. One of the plots police prevented would have been on the same scale as the Madrid train bombing.

Plots in all major EU states

Indeed all major EU nations have their failed terrorist attacks. In the German city of Duesseldorf, for instance, a group of suspects known as the Tawhid group are currently on trial for planning attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets. In France in 2002, a man identified as coming from a Chechen group plotted to attack Russian institutions. And in summer 2001, French police halted the plans of French-Algerian Jamal Beghal who was planning an attack on the US embassy in Paris.

But there's more. Just in the past few months:

* A trial in Rotterdam began against extremists who, among other targets, planned to attack a nuclear power reactor and the headquarters of the Dutch secret service.

* German investigators arrested numerous suspects who planned to attack Iraq's president during a recent visit to Berlin.

* Spanish officials arrested 17 Islamists accused of wanting to blow up the nation's main court using 500 kilos of dynamite.

In the face of the heightened threat, the failure of the EU to adequately apply anti-terror laws approaches scandalous proportions. On June 13, 2002, European Union leaders issued a "Framework for Terror" in which EU states promised to toughen and synchronize anti-terrorism laws. The framework also introduced new rules designed to streamline the often drawn-out extradition process.

The nations had until December of that year to inform the European Commission how the resolution had been integrated into national law. Germany, though, was one of only five nations that applied the decision. And only two of these five delivered all of the information required of them. Many countries still have not fully adapted the resolution. Attempts to cut off funding to terrorists have run up against similar roadblocks. Myriad proposals, such as laws against money laundering, have still not become part of national law.

Europol remains headless

Even more negligent is the fact that the joint European police agency Europol remained without a director for seven months from July of last year until just two weeks ago. The EU police force is supposed to function as the leading force in anti-terror efforts -- a middleman between security organizations and the main repository of data and analysis. But EU nations became mired in a squabble about who would get the job. At the end of February, they finally announced their choice, Max-Peter Ratzel from Germany's Federal Office of Criminal Investigation.

Europol is also in trouble for other reasons. For years, the agency has been saying that its computer system would be revamped "in great haste" so that information about terror groups could be better collected, sorted and analyzed. But even today, the complete system has yet to go online.

The interior minister from the German state of Lower Saxony, Uwe Schuenemann, visited Europol just after the Madrid bombings. In recent years, agencies have delivered much more data, but the minister is convinced that the efforts to date are not enough. "There has to be a legal framework governing the exchange of important information."

The reasons are clear. Cases such as that of the 32-year-old Andrew Rowe demonstrate that Jihad fighters have understood the advantages brought to them by the disappearance of intra-European borders. A convert to Islam, Rowe -- known in the scene as "Yusuf the Jamaican" -- is outfitted with a British passport and is suspected to be a midlevel al-Qaida operative. Investigators have been able to trace his movements back and forth across Europe. They have also tracked him to England, Japan, Turkey and Malaysia and it is believed that he was an important currier between militant cells. Indeed, he can also be traced to the Casablanca attacks of 2003.

In October 2003, Rowe stayed for a number of days in a hotel in Frankfurt, Germany. He had intended to travel from Frankfurt through the Eurotunnel to England, but before he even got to the border, he was arrested by the British secret service. A search of Rowe's clothing set off alarm bells across Europe: traces of the explosive nitro-glycerine were found on his socks. In addition, he was carrying documents about grenade launchers.

British investigators believe that the group Rowe belonged to was planning an operation against Heathrow airport and secret service agents believe that the militants had intended to launch mortars against the airport, Europe's largest. "Yusuf the Jamaican," who denies the allegations, is currently being prosecuted.

Major raids every month

The dangers presented by people like Rowe have, meanwhile, become clear to all -- and liberal and conservative governments alike have toughened their stances against Islamists. In the past year, Spanish investigators have arrested 130 of them, and Britain has detained more than 500 suspected terrorists since Sept. 11. In Germany, hardly a month goes by without a major police raid on suspected Islamists.

But in legal terms, the Europeans are still having a difficult time combating terrorism. As suspicious as Islamists may behave -- and as shady as their contacts may be -- terrorist intentions are often difficult to verify. A recent court ruling in Milan is symptomatic of the problem: At the end of January, a judge acquitted five suspects, thought to have recruited suicide attackers for Iraq, of terrorism charges. Prosecutors were unable to prove the suspects intended to attack civilians, and guerrilla fighting in a war is permissible. Among those tried was Mohammed D., a former Hamburg resident with connections to the terrorist cell responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He was released from custody at the beginning of February.

In order to prevent similar verdicts, the British have partially disempowered their legal system: In order to do so, they've even suspended parts of the European Human Rights Convention. With the changes, foreign Islamists can be locked away in the high-security Belmarsh prison -- sometimes called the British Guantanamo -- without any court decision.

The country's highest court rebuked the action as a serious constitutional violation. Initially, Tony Blair's government wanted to preserve the procedure, but, under pressure from the justices, it is being forced to bend on the issue and watered-down laws are currently awaiting a vote in parliament. On Monday night, Blair's anti-terror law failed to pass in the House of the Lords; British newspapers described the vote as a major defeat for the prime minister.

De Vries says Europe remains vulnerable. He says his hope lies in better cooperation at the EU level. But the skirmish over Ahmed, the suspected Madrid accomplice, doesn't portend a change for the better. Three months after the attacks in Madrid, he was wiretapped and arrested in Milan. Because he also lived for a time in Germany, investigators here are also interested in him -- especially because he continued to maintain his contacts in Germany by phone and mobile text messages after he left the country.

German officials requested copies of his interrogations, but they waited in vain. Before they could receive the package from Italy, portions of the talks had already been leaked to journalists. "I first read details from the telephone conversations in Corriere della Sera," laments one official, with an air of resignation. And as long as security dealings among EU nations continue in this vein, Europeans remain at risk.