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Claim: European, Arab radicals trained in Iraq

Radical youths from Europe and the Arab world are training at insurgent camps in Iraq, Europe’s anti-terrorism chief said Tuesday.
/ Source: The Associated Press

Radical youths from Europe and the Arab world are training at insurgent camps in Iraq, Europe’s anti-terrorism chief said Tuesday, warning that instability there and elsewhere in the world was making “it easier for terrorists to hide and train.”

Al-Qaida also has become more difficult to contain since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks because Osama bin Laden began inspiring smaller militant groups to do his bidding after he lost his training base in Afghanistan, Gijs de Vries, the European Union’s counterterrorism coordinator, told The Associated Press.

De Vries said terrorist violence in Iraq could spread to the whole region if the U.S.-led coalition failed to put down the insurgency that was attracting Islamic radicals from outside Iraq.

“There have been individuals from Europe who went to Afghanistan in the past,” de Vries said. “There are some who have gone to Iraq, as indeed there have been youngsters from outside Europe, from Arab countries, who have gone there to receive military training.”

Stability in Iraq paramount
De Vries would not elaborate on numbers or countries of origin, saying the information was classified. Although the Iraqi insurgency is believed to be homegrown, several hundred foreign fighters are thought to have traveled to Iraq to battle the U.S. occupation, with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant leader  who has been linked to al-Qaida, the best known.

In the Iraqi city of Fallujah, a former stronghold of the insurgents, U.S. troops last month found bomb-making workshops and a makeshift classroom for training militants that included flight plans and instructions on how to shoot down aircraft. Several dozen foreign fighters are known to have joined several thousand Iraqi insurgents fighting for Fallujah.

“It is extremely important to help Iraq develop into a stable country at peace with its neighbors,” de Vries said in the AP interview. “That will help stability not just inside the country but also peace and the maintenance of security outside Iraq.”

De Vries also urged action to stop instability from breeding terrorism in other places, too.

“This is incidentally not just the case just in Iraq,” he said. “Instability elsewhere in the world — in Africa, for example — always makes it more difficult for the law to be upheld, for democracy to function, and therefore makes it easier for terrorists to hide and train.”

De Vries said it was difficult to assess the immediate threat from Iraq-trained militants who might cause trouble after they leave. “Not everyone who goes to such training camps returns to take up arms — fortunately. What is more important is the trend,” he said.

As for the makeover of al-Qaida, de Vries found reason to worry.

“Al-Qaida has, in a sense, revamped itself so that it is no longer only an organization, but it has simultaneously become a kind of movement inspiring individuals and loose, small networks,” he said. “So there has been, as is sometimes being said, a kind of franchising of the message of al-Qaida, which makes it a more complex phenomenon” and more difficult to handle.

Threat called unabated
De Vries, who was appointed in March, is responsible for shepherding anti-terrorist legislation through the parliaments of the European Union’s 25 countries and for coordinating the region’s disparate law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

There has been a lull in terror attacks in Europe since the Madrid commuter train bomb attacks that killed 191 people March 11, but De Vries said the threat remained high.

In October, 30 people were detained on suspicion of planning to drive an explosives-packed truck into Madrid’s National Court, for example. And British police said last week they had prevented an attack in London on the scale of the Madrid bombings.

“There have been other instances,” De Vries said, but he refused to give details. “I’m afraid the risk remains high, not only in the two countries that I mentioned but in other member states of the union, as well,” he added, referring to Spain and Britain.

Terrorism needs to be tackled at a political level as well, he said.

Finding a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is key to combating terrorism, he said, because it is being used by militants to recruit young Muslims.

“It is important that these propagandist activities be made much more difficult by re-igniting the peace process,” De Vries said, highlighting a frequent European demand.