LATimes

Poison Gas Plot Alleged in Europe

By CRAIG PYES and WILLIAM C. REMPEL, Times Staff Writers

SPIEZ, Switzerland -- As the United States focuses on Osama bin Laden's suspected efforts to obtain chemical weapons, European authorities say they have uncovered evidence of planning for chemical attacks by North African terrorist groups loosely affiliated with Bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization.

Officials say the groups are trained by Al Qaeda and are tied to terrorists involved in the foiled 1999 Los Angeles International Airport bomb plot and other conspiracies from Canada to Eastern Europe.

One plan to test a poison gas weapon in France was disrupted by European intelligence agents in March, officials said. The foiled test was an apparent prelude to unspecified future attacks.

The terrorists wanted to try out what they called "the product"--a vapor that suffocates victims when inhaled. Authorities believe the product was hydrogen cyanide, a potentially lethal substance commonly used in metallurgy and gas chambers.

In a conversation secretly tape-recorded by Italian counterterrorism investigators, one of the plotters declared: "We have to be like snakes. We have to strike and then hide."

The men went on to "set up a veritable terrorist brigade," according to an Italian Justice Ministry report on the case. While being monitored by authorities in Milan, the operatives "were training in the use of explosives and chemical agents [for] use in future attacks planned by the fundamentalist terrorist network," the report said.

The leader of the Milan cell and four of its members were arrested in April on charges of providing logistical support to terrorists. Several arrests followed last month in a continuing investigation by Milan prosecutor Stefano Dambruoso.

In December, German police seized explosive material and a formula for making "toxic substances in lethal doses" in a raid on residences of a related terrorist group in Frankfurt. That group was accused of conspiring to bomb a crowded Christmas market last year with explosives packed with nails, but authorities said they believed the predominantly Algerian terror cell was contemplating using chemical weapons in subsequent plots.

The implications of those discoveries--and more recent disclosures from former operatives who got instruction in making and using chemical weapons at terrorist camps in Afghanistan--took on new urgency after Sept. 11.

European law enforcement officials have not reported seizing any chemical weapons from terrorist groups. Counter-terrorism officials believe that if Al Qaeda and its related groups possess chemical weapons, the devices probably would be crude and the delivery system reliant upon individual terrorists, including suicide bombers.

Still, an official at a Swiss military laboratory here acknowledged that "there are lots of possibilities" for terrorist use of chemical weapons--including nerve agents and cyanide. Chief chemist Ueli Huber of Labor Spiez said that as a security precaution, Switzerland is stockpiling hundreds of antidotes.

Laboratory officials also said they have advised the U.S. Embassy in Bern on security measures in case of biological or chemical attacks in Switzerland.

Concerns about the chemical-weapons capabilities of terrorists emerged after the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. There were suspicions, voiced by the judge in the case, that the bombers may have included cyanide in the chemical mix of the powerful bomb that ripped through an underground parking garage.

Ramzi Yousef, convicted as one of the bombing masterminds, later told federal agents that he would have used sodium cyanide if he had the money because he wanted to create a deadly gas cloud that would rise into the office towers and kill everyone.

European and Middle Eastern law enforcement officials also have been aware for years that widely circulated jihad, or holy war, manuals contained sections devoted to biological warfare and poisons. The intelligence services say that Al Qaeda and associated groups have been gathering chemicals to manufacture poisons for specific assassinations and terrorist operations.

Bin Laden's organization "has a book load of formulas, many choices," said one intelligence analyst.

8,000-Page Manual Seized in Belgium

As early as 1995, European intelligence officials learned that chemical and biological warfare instructions disseminated from Al Qaeda sources in Pakistan and Afghanistan were circulating among Islamic terrorist cells. That year, Belgian police seized what turned out to be an 8,000-page guerrilla manual for jihad. One chapter, titled "How to Kill," described how to prepare "toxins, toxic gas and toxic drugs."

In March 1998, police in Brussels arrested a group of Islamic militants after receiving information that Algerian terrorists linked to Al Qaeda were trying to set up European bases. Among seized evidence was a recipe for turning botulism toxin into weapons, a formula that had been handed over by a British-based cell.

Last year, U.S. intelligence sources received reports that three Bin Laden associates from Afghanistan were planning unspecified attacks against U.S. targets in Italy, according to Italian intelligence officials. Those reports suggested a liaison between the Bin Laden operatives and a sleeper cell in Milan.

The Milan cell, composed primarily of Tunisians, was headed by Essid Sami Ben Khemais, also known as Omar the Traveler and as Saber. He was in contact with other North African extremist groups in Britain, Germany, France and Spain, according to an Italian prosecutor's report. He was particularly close to a cell in Frankfurt.

In December, German police acting on intelligence information that a terrorist act was imminent arrested four members of the Frankfurt cell on the eve of what they said was a planned bomb assault across the Rhine River in Strasbourg, France.

In February, British police arrested 11 men--most of them Algerians--on terrorism, fraud and forgery charges stemming from the foiled Frankfurt plot.

The arrests in Frankfurt and London prompted Italian investigators to step up surveillance of Ben Khemais's Tunisian cell in Milan. Listening devices picked up cell members discussing the use of a chemical to make poison gasses.

Italian investigators told The Times that they believe the chemical is cyanide. Use of cyanide was part of the instruction at Bin Laden's terrorism camps attended by the Tunisians in 1998.

The camps were part of the same complex attended by Ahmed Ressam, who was convicted this year of conspiring to bomb LAX. Ressam said in testimony that his group watched as the camp leader gassed dogs by adding sulfuric acid to cyanide. Ressam told a jury that it took about four minutes for the dogs to suffocate from the fumes.

Training in How to Poison Office Buildings

Ressam said the purpose of the experiment was to see how the gas worked so it could later be used against Americans. The training included methods on how to poison office buildings by pouring cyanide into air-intake vents.

In a conversation recorded in March, the Milan cell members discussed their concerns about arrests of "the brothers" in London, including one they regarded as an expert in plastic explosives.

But Ben Khemais shrugged off the concerns, saying that such explosives were "old hat" and that he wanted to learn how to use what he called "the medicine"--a deadly chemical to be dispersed in a bomb blast.

"I'd like to see what effect it has when you breathe it," he said as Italian authorities secretly listened. "The Libyan has the formula."

The otherwise unidentified Libyan was described as a chemistry professor who had found a way to mix lethal fumes ("the medicine") with explosives, he said.

Experts in chemical terrorism say that dispersal of cyanide gas by explosive device is not efficient, because the concentrations necessary to be lethal in the open air are difficult to achieve, especially since much of the gas tends to be burned off in the heat of an explosion.

In another series of recorded conversations, Ben Khemais and Lased Ben Heni, a 31-year-old Libyan, allegedly discussed a test of liquid chemicals that they called "the product."

Ben Khemais said he wanted to try it out in France and declared, "It's more efficacious [than other compounds] because this liquid, as soon as you open it, suffocates people," according to Italian authorities.

Ben Khemais said that the attacks had to be carried out in a discreet manner and that only a few well-prepared operatives were required.

The discussion prompted one associate to question whether they should put down their weapons and "start now with industrial products."

Italian law enforcement and judicial officials regard much of the recorded conversations as boasting among fellow terrorists about their training-camp experiences. But one official said in a recent interview that authorities are interested in investigating the so-called Libyan chemistry professor.

They believe he may have requested political asylum in London, but tracking him down had not been treated with urgency, the official acknowledged, until the terrorist attack on America.

"Now, after Sept. 11, we view the threat of CBW [chemical and biological weapons] as more important. We're now going back and reviewing everything," an Italian intelligence official said.

-- Anonymous, November 12, 2001