Terror Takes The Stand

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In his new book, The Secret Archives of Al-Qaeda, French terror expert Roland Jacquard says bin Laden lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahiri made clandestine visits to Europe in 1996-97 to help the SGPC and other groups organize al-Qaeda-associated cells and prepare attacks. Jacquard believes additional cells have been set up as jihadists fled post-Taliban Afghanistan for Europe, where some are citizens or legal residents.

Funds raised by the new cells are either funneled directly into network activity or collected from around Europe by couriers for pooling and redistributing from London — which investigators call the headquarters for Islamist terrorism in Europe. In addition to the evidence linking Bensaïd and Belkacem to the 1995 blasts, French prosecutors assert there are records of wire transfers from a suspected Islamist named Rachid Ramda, as well as the duo's own detailed accounting of how that money was spent to prepare strikes.

Terrorist attacks are relatively inexpensive. According to investigators' estimates, the entire 1995 Paris campaign cost no more than $19,000, while the gas-tanker bombing of a synagogue in Djerba, Tunisia by an al-Qaeda assailant in April this year, which killed 21, cost a fraction of that.

Ramda was arrested in 1995 on evidence that he was the financier behind the French bombings, but British authorities have repeatedly refused to extradite him to Paris, most recently citing Belkacem and Bensaïd's claims they were tortured to implicate Ramda. "The British want to have their cake and eat it too," a senior French terrorism official fumes. "They are hard-ass orators when the Americans want to move on the Taliban or Saddam. But when it comes to cracking down on radical leaders in Londonistan, they do nothing for fear of Islamist retaliation."

"We're still facing Islamist cells spread across Europe looking to leaders in London for organization and direction, raising funds through criminal activity, and plotting what may be considered lower-scale terror compared to Sept. 11, but which kills and maims nevertheless," the French official continues. "The big difference is that Bensaïd never trained in Afghanistan, and didn't have the support and far-reaching organization that al-Qaeda's international jihad provides today."

The terror cells that are following Bensaïd's example do have that support, and Continental police continue to find evidence that the G.I.A. model remains in force. The December 2000 raid of a Frankfurt cell preparing an attack in Strasbourg, as well as September 2001 sweeps of operatives plotting a suicide attack of the U.S. embassy in Paris, confirmed that the cells involved were self-financing criminal activity, cooperating with other European cells and being guided from London. "Terror attacks like the one in Djerba don't require bin Laden's millions, nor do the plots we've seen foiled in Europe," Jacquard notes. "Even big operations like Sept. 11 only cost between $250,000 and $500,000. The keys to their success are organization and secrecy, not money."

The Bensaïd trial may help investigators disrupt the al-Qaeda organization in Europe. But Françoise Rudetski — president of victims' defense association sos-Attentats, one of the civil parties in the Bensaïd case — stresses that everything experts and investigators may say about unfolding plots is of little import if they can't punish terrorists who have already acted. "Bensaïd's behavior inflicts additional wounds on his victims, and is an insult to everyone who values life," she comments. "This man must never be allowed to hurt anyone again." Chances are that he won't. But there is no shortage of people like him, waiting for their chance to strike.