http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1999-12/19/004r-121999-idx.html

U.S. Borders on High Alert

Foreign Terrorist Watch Turns to Home Ports

By Vernon Loeb and Steven Pearlstein

Washington Post Staff Writers

Sunday, December 19, 1999; Page A01

The U.S. Customs Service has placed all 301 ports of entry into the United States on high alert after the arrest of an Algerian in Washington state who had crossed the border from Canada with more than 100 pounds of bomb-making supplies and a sophisticated detonating device in a rental car.

Ahmed Ressam, 32, a resident of Montreal who had been denied refugee status by Canadian officials because of his alleged links to an Islamic terrorist group known as the Islamic Armed Group (GIA), was arrested by customs officials in Port Angeles, Wash., five days ago and charged in Seattle on Friday with transporting explosives into the United States, providing false identification and lying to authorities.

Andre Poirer, a spokesman for the Montreal police, said last night that his department has information possibly linking Ressam to Karim Said Atmani, who was extradited by Canada to France on charges that he participated in a Paris subway bombing in 1995 that killed four people and injured 86.

Poirer also said that authorities in Montreal are investigating whether Ressam is linked to a theft ring in the city suspected of funneling money to radical Islamic groups around the world.

Montreal police announced Thursday they had arrested 11 men, most of Algerian origin, over the past four months for thefts during the previous two years that netted more than 5,000 items, including computers, cellular phones, passports and credit cards. Based on information from Interpol and French police, Montreal police said they have concluded that the real purpose of the ring was to generate cash to help finance Muslim extremist groups.

"There are terrorists in Montreal," said Claude Paquette, an investigator. "They are doing things like financing their fighting friends overseas."

U.S. authorities, meanwhile, intensified efforts to find an accomplice who apparently had been with Ressam at a motel in British Columbia for three weeks before Ressam's passage into the United States. The FBI is also investigating links agents believe Ressam has to other Islamic extremists in the United States, one U.S. official said yesterday.

Harvey Kushner, a terrorism expert at Long Island University who has close ties to federal law enforcement officials, said he had been told by authorities that a search for Ressam's accomplice extends from the West Coast to New York.

"They're extremely concerned," Kushner said, adding that the bomb-making equipment and timing device Ressam had in his possession are virtually identical to those used by associates of Osama bin Laden, the millionaire Saudi militant based in Afghanistan.

U.S. officials have yet to establish a definitive link between Ressam and bin Laden, but one senior U.S. official said yesterday that "there is evidence that would lead me to believe that he has associations with bin Laden, or people who have associations with bin Laden."

Vincent Cannistraro, former head of counterterrorist operations at the CIA who now works as a security consultant, said U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials believe Ressam is tied to bin Laden but have thus far refused to describe the exact nature of the connection.

What is clear, Cannistraro said, is that Ressam's arrest has left law enforcement and intelligence officials scared and deeply concerned about possible terrorist attacks on U.S. soil as millennium celebrations approach.

"It is a little scary, because they weren't looking here," Cannistraro said. "They were looking abroad."

Cannistraro said the detonation device found in Ressam's rental car--circuit boards linked to a Casio watch and a nine-volt battery--is "the method they teach in [bin Laden's] camps in Afghanistan--and the Casio device turned up in one of the Moscow apartment bombings" thought to have been carried out earlier this year by Islamic radicals.

Canada's Globe and Mail, quoting a source in Washington, said U.S. counterintelligence agents had alerted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police about Ressam's presence in Vancouver and that the Mounties had been keeping an eye on him.

Ressam and the accomplice reportedly checked into the 2400 Motel in Vancouver three weeks ago, paying cash for the $325-per-week suite of two rooms, a kitchen and bath.

On Friday, as Ressam made his first appearance in a Seattle courtroom, Mounties staked out his apartment house at 1250 Fort St., in Montreal's East End, telling reporters they were awaiting a search warrant.

Finally, about 9 p.m., after evacuating the building and cordoning off the block, a bomb squad entered the apartment looking for any other explosive devices or materials, according to spokesman Leo Monbourquette. After a two-hour search that turned up no explosives, residents were allowed back in the building. Monbourquette would not say what other items were found in the apartment.

Ressam's arrest and the disclosure by Montreal police of the theft ring tied to Islamic militants came just days after the arrest of 14 bin Laden associates in Jordan and Pakistan for allegedly plotting attacks on tourist sites abroad and American travelers during the millennium celebrations.

Bin Laden has been indicted in the United States on charges of conspiracy and murder in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 200 people. Based on intelligence reports of terrorist activities overseas tied to millennium celebrations, the State Department issued a worldwide warning to travelers a week ago, saying terrorist attacks that could take place any time before the end of the year.

Loeb reported from Washington, Pearlstein from Toronto.

) Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company

-- Uncle Bob (UNCLB0B@AOL.COM), December 19, 1999

Answers

As I said in Saddam post below:

"At the end they must learn a good lesson." Wonder what he meant by that? Reminded me of an article I found in the library...World Press Review, July 1994, page 51, BRAZEN LIES' ABOUT ISLAM, written by Dr. Mustapha Mahmoud

"They talk through dozens of mouths. The United Nations, the U.S. Congress and all newspapers are their mouthpieces, and their voice is magnified enormously. They own the arsenals of Israel, America, and Europe, and maybe the Russian arsenal as well. This alliance unites them all against Islam and its symbols.

But we will witness the end of this ascent in the coming five years. History and events have accelerated; although in the past empires took hundreds of years to fall, they can now topple in weeks or months. The Israeli ascent is artificial,based on ignorance and false power. Its fall will be louder than the Soviet collapse. and the lesson will be much stronger. Allah bestows power on whomever He wishes and removes it from whomever He wishes.

----------------------

Does Saddam know something? Or was this an ideal threat against Israel? IMO they couldn't do anything against Israel without drawing US into the conflict. First?

-- Mark Hillyard (foster@inreach.com), December 19, 1999.

-- Mark Hillyard (foster@inreach.com), December 19, 1999.

I've been saying since I was 15 that we should close our borders and do better policing of such. [I'm 33 now.] Someone a few days ago posted about the 'exchange students' from these countries who have been coming in for years and might carry Bio spores in their body cavities...like drugs- stick in a condom and swallow. Now the Gov decides to 'Watch Our Borders'? Good luck..............................During the Gulf War, I knew a girl who was from Syria. She and her family were on the side of Saddam Hussein. She even showed me the Iraqian currency that she carries with Saddams pic on it. Food for thought.

-- Satanta (EventHoriz@n.com), December 19, 1999.

From today's edition:

America puts all ports on alert over 'bomb plot' By Ben Fenton in Washington

AMERICA has put all 301 of its ports of entry on high alert after the discovery of a suspected Millennium bomb plot involving an Algerian with links to international terrorists who was apparently on his way to London.

Worries about terrorism at the dawn of the new era have increased in the past few days and were underlined by the detention of more than 200 people in Pakistan in connection with suspected attacks on American targets.

Sandy Berger, President Clinton's national security adviser, warned Americans yesterday to be "vigilant" against potential terrorist attacks at home and abroad over the holidays. He said the authorities were still seeking to determine whether the detained Algerian was part of a terrorist network.

The arrest of Ahmed Ressam in the north-west state of Washington after he had driven across the border from Canada led to the discovery in his car of nitro-glycerine and nearly a hundredweight of urea, used in fertiliser bombs. Four sophisticated timers of a type known to have been used by associates of Osama bin Laden, the exiled Saudi millionaire who has financed terror operations in three continents, were also found.

Police believe the target of the bombs was to be a Millennium celebration in the nearby city of Seattle. FBI sources said they were "deeply concerned" by the implications of the arrest. Ressam, who had been living in Montreal under a false name, is known to have links to a man who belonged to the Group Islamique Armie, an Algerian terror group responsible for bombings in the Paris Mitro in 1996.

Ressam is known to have fought against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, where bin Laden now lives under the protection of the ruling Taliban religious militia. Police in Port Angeles, Washington state, found air tickets under a false identity to take him from Seattle to New York and on to London.

Not only are there associates of bin Laden living in Britain, but the GIA has a front organisation operating in west London. Ressam was not thought to be trying to take bomb equipment to London, but American authorities have in the past criticised Britain for sheltering Islamic militants and tolerating their activities.

Until now, American anti-terror operations had been focused on threats to the country's citizens abroad, as shown by the arrests in Pakistan and last week the detention of 14 people in Jordan. They were believed to be planning attacks at the New Year on Christian sites in the Middle East and on the Hyatt Hotel in Jordan's capital, Amman, which is popular with American tourists.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), December 20, 1999.