By Eva Cahen CNSNews.com Correspondent December 03, 2002

Paris (CNSNews.com) - Following a round-up last week of several suspected Islamic militants, France's senior anti-terrorist judge said that small networks of extremists were growing like a "virus" in Europe.

Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere, who has been investigating terrorists for twenty years, said in an interview Sunday on the French radio station France Inter that militant cells were developing throughout Europe and were providing logistical support for terrorist operations, even if they were not organized by al Qaeda.

"In Europe, we have a multitude of small terrorist networks which are developing in an anarchic way. It's a virus," Bruguiere said.

"There are certainly networks which were not created by al Qaeda but which will borrow al Qaeda's symbol, and which will become al Qaeda contractors for special operations," said Olivier Roy, a researcher and Middle East specialist at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France.

Roy says these European terrorists are purely European-bred, just like other networks in Indonesia, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia are local to those countries and not direct creations of al Qaeda.

"In Europe one thing is different: these networks don't have a social base. We don't have an Islamic movement that is deeply integrated into the Muslim population of Europe. It's made up of young people who are radicalized and begin to serve the cause," Roy said.

"We have generic portraits of these young radicals. They're often of European nationality, born in the west, but have a European dimension to their radicalization. They are the young disenfranchised. It is a social-cultural type of phenomenon and it will last a while."

In his radio interview, Judge Bruguiere said many of the French networks were financed by criminal activity, including trafficking in false identification papers and credit cards.

On Monday, four men suspected to have links to al Qaeda went on trial in the Netherlands. They were charged with conspiracy to commit suicide attacks against the U.S. Embassy in Paris and an American military base in Belgium, and of forging passports and credit cards.

Two of the suspects are European - French and Dutch - and two are Algerian.

Among the suspects placed under investigation in France last week was the head of a mosque in Paris. Kamel Lakhram, a Tunisian, is suspected of ties with Richard Reid, the "shoebomber" who attempted to blow up a flight traveling from Paris to Miami last December.

"Terrorism is a war that has spread throughout the world, it has been globalized, it's a third kind of war, one which uses extremely different kinds of methods ...we have to take measure of this new type of war of the third millennium," said Judge Bruguiere.

Bruguiere said international cooperation to fight terrorism was good but more coordination between European countries would be helpful.

Roy, the CNRS researcher, said that in general, there is enough cooperation between countries, with the occasional exception of the U.K.

"France also complains that the United States demands information but doesn't give enough back," he said.

-- Anonymous, December 03, 2002