In Canada, terrorists found a haven

By Colin Nickerson, Boston Globe, 4/9/2001

MONTREAL - Cheap and anonymous, the apartment in the eastern Montreal district of Anjou served both thrift and the tradecraft of terror.

The occupants were warriors in a new global holy war. But they were also terrorists on tight budgets, making ends meet through petty crime and welfare scams while preparing, as one would finally tell the FBI, to ''punish America'' with bomb attacks timed to the turn of the millennium.

Intelligence services in the United States, Canada, France, and Britain say the scruffy apartment on Place de la Malicorne was a key base for a terrorist ''sleeper cell'' that was activated in late 1999 by Osama bin Laden, the Islamic militant believed to have coordinated a series of deadly assaults against the United States over the past decade.

Dozens of similar cells exist in cities around the world, awaiting only the call to strike again, say Western intelligence sources and terrorism specialists.

Evidence presented in a just-concluded terrorism trial in US district court in California and before a judge in France's Palais de Justice has given the public its first glimpse into the lives of rank-and-file followers of the ''most wanted man on earth,'' as US agents describe bin Laden. The Justice Department has offered a $5 million reward for his capture.

Ahmed Ressam, a 33-year-old Algerian who conspired with other Islamic radicals in what authorities called a foiled 1999 ''millennium'' bomb plot against the United States, was convicted last week by a federal jury in Los Angeles on nine charges of terrorism and smuggling of explosives.

In the court proceedings, Canada was also in the dock. Much testimony dwelled on the startling ease with which terrorist groups have used the nation as a sanctuary, staging ground, and place for fund-raising. They came not just because of Canada's proximity to the United States, but because of its loose immigration procedures, lack of antiterrorism laws, and social welfare programs so generous that even someone arriving with falsified documents could count on drawing government checks within a few weeks.

''Because we've never been bitten by the spider, Canada pays little attention as it spins webs in our house,'' said Morteda Zabouri, a Middle East specialist at the Universite de Montreal's research group in international security.

Officials in not only the United States but in Britain and France are seething that Canada did not heed earlier warnings that a bin Laden cell was operating in Montreal. In an unusual rebuke, the federal judge presiding over the California trial blasted Canada's spy agency for destroying wiretap evidence. The case against Ressam, who was caught smuggling explosives into Washington state from British Columbia, was the centerpiece of US attempts to prosecute terrorists it associated with bin Laden.

''Apparently this is the Canadian way of doing things,'' snapped US District Judge John Coughenour. ''I find [it] totally unacceptable.''

In France, meanwhile, testimony in a case against Algerian radicals suggests that the Montreal apartment served as ''safe house'' for transient terrorists; as a stash for funds, weapons, and doctored passports; and as a clandestine meetingplace for North American-based operatives - including at least two from Boston - and higher-ups in bin Laden's organization.

It also served as a sort of clubhouse for terrorists inserted into Quebec in the mid-1990s and surviving on a combination of welfare and petty theft, mainly stealing stereos from tourists' cars.

''Canada was a centerpiece in all this,'' said France's top prosecutor of terrorist crimes, Magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere.

Dozens of alleged conspirators connected to the Montreal cell were scooped up across North America and Europe in the days after Dec. 14, 1999, when alert US Customs officers snared Ressam as he tried to carry a trunkload of bomb materials across the border. The target of the plot is still unknown, although law enforcement speculation favors Seattle's Space Needle or Los Angeles International Airport.

''It was a closer call than most Americans realize,'' said Vincent Cannistraro, former head of counterterrorism for the Central Intelligence Agency. ''Lots of people could have been killed. What's most chilling is that we were spared by serendipity, not adroit [antiterrorist] work.''

Although only foot soldiers like Ressam were caught, the smashing of the Canadian cell represents one of the few unequivocal victories the West can claim against a terrorist network that may number in the thousands.

The loose-knit bin Laden coalition, unlike other Middle East terror organizations, is not sponsored by a single state but draws from radical Islamic movements stretching from Kuala Lumpur to Quebec.

Intelligence sources say 5,000 or more Islamic militants - including members of the Montreal cell - have received intensive schooling in bomb making, guerrilla tactics, forging documents, and other terrorist skills at bin Laden's ''jihad'' camps in Afghanistan.

More than 6,000 miles from the Montreal apartment, bin Laden's core group, called al-Qaeda (the base), has its headquarters in Afghanistan, where the multimillionaire former construction tycoon enjoys the protection of the Muslim fundamentalist Taliban government.

''What makes the bin Laden groups so dangerous is not that they are especially well organized or even well financed,'' said Cannistraro. ''It is that they are so numerous, that they are not confined to a single nation or even region, and that they are driven by religion and visions of paradise.''

US officials hold bin Laden and his lieutenants directly responsible for the 1993 bombing of New York's World Trade Center that left six dead; attacks on a US military relief operation in Somalia that killed 17 Americans; the 1998 bomb blasts that took 224 lives at the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; and last October's suicide bomb mission against the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen, which killed 19 American sailors.

The attacks were largely carried out by recruits like Ressam, who last week was also convicted in absentia in France of terrorist crimes in that country.

The eldest son of a modestly prosperous cafe owner in a tiny fishing village west of Algiers, Ressam was a better-than-average student who had little interest in politics until he failed to win university admission and then was denied a job on the national police force. He blamed the rejections on corrupt authorities, family members would later tell journalists.

By age 20, Ressam was a village troublemaker, described as ''bitter'' and ''paranoid'' about Algeria's military regime. That made him a perfect recruit for the Armed Islamic Group, a violent movement seeking to turn the North African nation into a Muslim theocracy.

In 1992, Ressam was arrested and jailed for gun running. Upon release, he made his way to France and hooked up with Algerian terrorists and gangsters raising money by bank robberies and hijackings for the holy war back home.

But the French police were cracking down hard on the Algerians, and by the mid-1990s scores were fleeing to Canada, where they hunkered down as sleeper agents, leading more or less ordinary lives but awaiting assignments from the hierarchy over which bin Laden presides.

Among them was Ressam, who arrived on Feb. 24, 1994, at Montreal's Mirabel airport carrying a French passport that was instantly spotted as false. He said he was being sought by Algerian police and feared for his life. Eleven days later he had an apartment in Montreal and was drawing welfare benefits.

There were jobs as taxi driver and grocery clerk, but Ressam appears mostly to have just hung around with fellow Algerians who shuttled to and from Canada and countries like Pakistan, Turkey, Germany, and Bosnia. He became quickly known to the police, and was convicted on several theft charges in Quebec. Canada issued a deportation order, but it was lost within the bureaucracy.

In 1998 he was tapped for advanced training at one of bin Laden's jihad camps, mastering bomb-making skills during 11 months in Afghanistan.

He was back in the Montreal apartment by 1999. After France issued warnings about terrorists, Canada kept Ressam under sporadic surveillance.

But he slipped the net, and traveled to British Columbia. And then on Dec. 14, he drove a rented Chrysler - 133 pounds of bomb materials packed in the spare tire well - onto a car ferry for Port Angeles, Wash.

Nerves were Ressam's undoing. When a US Customs inspector asked for identification, he produced a Costco discount card with a quivering hand. Said Agent Diana Dean, ''Please open your trunk, sir.''

Counterterrorism specialists are convinced that scores of bin Laden agents are still in place in North America, and that bin Laden will attempt another strike. American memories are too short, they warn.

''Sure, Ressam and friends come off as the gang that couldn't shoot straight,'' said Cannistraro. ''But don't forget, bin Laden's people seemed like clowns, too, that same year when they tried to blow up an American ship, the Sullivans, off Yemen.''

That ''suicide boat'' sank a few feet offshore, and Western intelligence agencies had a good laugh at the inept warriors.

Then, last year, the USS Cole called at the same port.

''Bin Laden is in for the long haul, and doesn't mind casualties,'' said the former CIA officer. ''There will be more Ressams trying to slip across that wide-open friendly border to the north.''

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), April 09, 2001

Answers

Canada supports terrorism? You mean like the US does with the IRA and other Islamic terrorist groups?

Don't be so quick think only other countries are the cause of the problem...

-- The Toner (the_toner@home.com), April 09, 2001.

Toner--

The article says that Canada is a "haven" for some terrorists; it does not say that it "supports" them.

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), April 09, 2001.

A slim distinction, but point taken. But still to quote the article:

the Montreal apartment served as ''safe house'' for transient terrorists; as a stash for funds, weapons, and doctored passports; and as a clandestine meetingplace for North American-based operatives - including at least two from Boston

Hence it's not just a Canadian problem...

-- The Toner (the.toner@home.com), April 09, 2001.