THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE FROM SUNDAY'S SEATTLE TIMES DISCUSSES THE BACKGROUND INVESTIGATION OF THE GUY CAUGHT MOVING NITRO INTO THE US FROM CANADA. AT THE END OF THE ARTICLE THE REPORTER STATES THAT CSIS(THE CANADIAN CIA) HAS IDENTIFIED 50 TERRORISTS GROUPS BASED IN CANADA AND ORGANIZING THERE BECAUSE OF THE EASE OF ACCESS TO US BORDERS. IF AND WHEN THEY ARRIVE, IT MAY BE TO OUR ADVANTAGE IF THEY ENCOUNTER AN ARMED NATION.
Sunday, December 19, 1999
SUSPECTED TERRORIST IS FACING INDICTMENT
by Steve Miletich
Seattle Times staff reporter
As federal officials struggle to determine whether the Algerian man arrested on his way to Seattle with bomb-making materials was part of a network plotting widespread terrorist acts, they've decided to indict him early this week on smuggling and false-statement charges.
The indictment, to be issued by a federal grand jury that meets in secret, is intended in part to avoid a public court hearing scheduled for Wednesday in which prosecutors would have had to outline the full scope of their case, including evidence they would prefer to keep confidential.
"This thing is at the very beginning of developing evidence," said a senior federal law-enforcement official, acknowledging how far investigators have to go to make a case for why they think Ahmed Ressam tried to smuggle 32 ounces of nitroglycerine, timing devices and other materials into the United States aboard a ferry from Victoria, B.C., on Tuesday.
Ressam's arrest has prompted a massive worldwide investigation, the law-enforcement official said yesterday.
"They're still out there beating the bushes," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity about efforts by the FBI, CIA and other government agencies to trace Ressam's movements and motives before he was apprehended in Port Angeles shortly after his arrival from Victoria.
Since Ressam was arrested, the Customs Service has placed all 301 U.S. points of entry on high alert, according to a report today in The Dallas Morning News.
Investigators are pursuing the possibility that Ressam was linked to associates of Osama bin Laden, the Afghan-based Islamic militant who has threatened attacks against Americans during the holidays.
Ressam, 32, who speaks French and Arabic, was being held in the federal detention center in SeaTac yesterday, as the FBI and Royal Canadian Mounted Police searched for a companion who recently had been staying with him at a Vancouver, B.C., motel.
Ressam's arrest set off a flurry of behind-the-scenes law-enforcement activity in Seattle over the past six days, as officials scrambled to identify him, build enough evidence for charges and set in motion the larger inquiry now under way.
Fingerprints of Ressam on file with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police provided a key break in what has become the most serious terrorist threat ever to be publicly revealed in the Northwest.
Focus had been overseas
There has long been concern about possible terrorist acts in connection with millennium celebrations for the Year 2000. But before Ressam's arrest, U.S. intelligence officials had focused on possible attacks overseas, spurring the State Department to warn Americans abroad more than a week ago about the danger of attending large holiday gatherings outside the U.S.
"I don't think there was any anticipation of movement from Canada to the United States by operatives carrying bombs," said Vincent Cannistraro, former chief of counterterrorist operations at the CIA.
Canada has been used as a safe haven for militants because of its liberal immigration policies and less stringent laws governing terrorist organizations, Cannistraro said.
"They tend not to carry out operations in Canada," he said, except for illegal fund-raising activities including telemarketing fraud.
Ressam's arrest, along with the arrest of 14 of bin Laden's associates in Jordan and Pakistan last week, has almost certainly prompted authorities to gather whatever information they can on the movements of suspected terrorists, Cannistraro said.
"They are doing their sweeps, looking for everything," he said.
Other intelligence methods also would be employed, Cannistraro added, saying he couldn't elaborate on them.
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, The Washington Post reported in today's editions.
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.
'It's likely this guy is a mope'
Federal officials suspect Ressam was a courier who planned to deliver the bomb-making materials to one or more associates in Seattle because he had a reservation for one night at a motel near Seattle Center and then planned to fly Wednesday to New York and on to London.
"It's likely this guy is a mope," the law-enforcement official said, using slang for a low-level member of a criminal organization.
An early indictment this week would relieve prosecutors of the need to show probable cause for holding Ressam, who was preliminarily charged Friday with transporting nitroglycerine and giving a false name to Customs inspectors.
The indictment would contain bare details of the case in order to shield the scope of the investigation, but could be followed later with new charges outlining a terrorist plot.
Ressam still would make a scheduled court appearance Wednesday to determine whether he should be held pending trial as a flight risk or a danger to the community. He is highly likely to be ordered held under broad federal detention laws.
Ressam already was known to law-enforcement officials in Canada, where he was wanted on theft charges and for failing to report to immigration officials after applying for asylum under Canada's liberal refugee laws.
Canadian authorities will likely play a key role in helping the FBI uncover information about Ressam and the companion seen with him in Vancouver, as well as others who might have associated with them, said Cannistraro, the former CIA official, speaking by phone from his home in McLean, Va.
"They will run after all that to see if these people he knows or associates with are members of a group," he said.
Canadian authorities also will be investigating where Ressam got the bomb-making materials. Nitroglycerine is not available as a commercial product in Canada except for use in pharmaceuticals, and then it is sold in a diluted form under federal license, The Vancouver Sun reported.
Only one company in Quebec is licensed to manufacture nitroglycerine in Canada, and it does not sell raw product to anyone, the newspaper reported.
In addition to the nitroglycerine, Ressam allegedly was carrying four timing devices and 118 pounds of urea, the same fertilizer-substance used in the Oklahoma City federal-building bomb blast in 1995. The materials were found in the spare-tire compartment of a rental car Ressam drove aboard the ferry, authorities said.
While the quantities found in Ressam's car weren't sufficient for a similar explosion, Cannistraro said, they were capable of inflicting major damage and loss of life when mixed together.
The intent clearly was to set up a violent event, Cannistraro said.
The number of timing devices suggests that materials were to be made into smaller bombs, he said, possibly to be mixed with nails and planted where a large public gathering is expected.
"If you put a bomb in a trash can in an area with New Year's Eve revelers, you can cause a lot of human damage and spill a lot of blood," Cannistraro said.
The proximity of Seattle Center to the motel where Ressam was registered has raised concerns among law-enforcement officials that he might be part of an group planning a terrorist act during the celebration expected to draw tens of thousands of revelers to the Center on New Year's Eve.
In response, Seattle Center officials said they will heighten security precautions by erecting gates, inspecting people and searching any suspicious-looking packages. Investigators also are trying to determine whether other sites on U.S soil could be targets.
Ressam has declined to talk to investigators, according to sources. He was so desperate to escape when he was stopped for questioning at the Port Angeles ferry terminal that he ran six blocks into town and tried to jump into a car that had slowed at an intersection. The female driver locked the door and sped away, allowing Customs agents to apprehend Ressam.
Ressam was carrying a Canadian passport in another name issued in Montreal, where he had been living before recently traveling to Vancouver and Victoria.
Nitroglycerine was destroyed
Most of the nitroglycerine Ressam is charged with transporting was destroyed Friday night in Port Angeles under a court order requested by federal prosecutors who described it as extremely volatile and dangerous.
The supply was safely detonated inside a bomb-disposal truck at the Clallam County Sheriff Office's firing range, officials said. Samples rendered inert have been kept as evidence.
Ressam may have picked Port Angeles because it is an obscure port of entry. But he would not be the first to choose this state as an entry point. Three years ago, the Border Patrol three times arrested a Palestinian man, Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, trying to cross the border into Washington.
In August 1997, Mezer and another man were shot and wounded by law-enforcement officials in Brooklyn, N.Y., where they had allegedly been plotting a suicide bomb attack on a New York subway station.
In 1998, following congressional hearings about drug smuggling, terrorism and illegal immigration from the North, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) - that country's equivalent of the CIA - acknowledged the existence of as many as 50 terrorist organizations operating in Canada.
A CSIS report, released that same year, stated: "The threat to public safety from internal terrorism imported into Canada is a major concern for the Service. Most of the world's terrorist groups have established themselves in Canada, seeking safe haven, setting up operational bases and attempting to gain access to the U.S.A."
Sunday, December 19, 1999
SUSPECTED TERRORIST IS FACING INDICTMENT
by Steve Miletich
Seattle Times staff reporter
As federal officials struggle to determine whether the Algerian man arrested on his way to Seattle with bomb-making materials was part of a network plotting widespread terrorist acts, they've decided to indict him early this week on smuggling and false-statement charges.
The indictment, to be issued by a federal grand jury that meets in secret, is intended in part to avoid a public court hearing scheduled for Wednesday in which prosecutors would have had to outline the full scope of their case, including evidence they would prefer to keep confidential.
"This thing is at the very beginning of developing evidence," said a senior federal law-enforcement official, acknowledging how far investigators have to go to make a case for why they think Ahmed Ressam tried to smuggle 32 ounces of nitroglycerine, timing devices and other materials into the United States aboard a ferry from Victoria, B.C., on Tuesday.
Ressam's arrest has prompted a massive worldwide investigation, the law-enforcement official said yesterday.
"They're still out there beating the bushes," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity about efforts by the FBI, CIA and other government agencies to trace Ressam's movements and motives before he was apprehended in Port Angeles shortly after his arrival from Victoria.
Since Ressam was arrested, the Customs Service has placed all 301 U.S. points of entry on high alert, according to a report today in The Dallas Morning News.
Investigators are pursuing the possibility that Ressam was linked to associates of Osama bin Laden, the Afghan-based Islamic militant who has threatened attacks against Americans during the holidays.
Ressam, 32, who speaks French and Arabic, was being held in the federal detention center in SeaTac yesterday, as the FBI and Royal Canadian Mounted Police searched for a companion who recently had been staying with him at a Vancouver, B.C., motel.
Ressam's arrest set off a flurry of behind-the-scenes law-enforcement activity in Seattle over the past six days, as officials scrambled to identify him, build enough evidence for charges and set in motion the larger inquiry now under way.
Fingerprints of Ressam on file with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police provided a key break in what has become the most serious terrorist threat ever to be publicly revealed in the Northwest.
Focus had been overseas
There has long been concern about possible terrorist acts in connection with millennium celebrations for the Year 2000. But before Ressam's arrest, U.S. intelligence officials had focused on possible attacks overseas, spurring the State Department to warn Americans abroad more than a week ago about the danger of attending large holiday gatherings outside the U.S.
"I don't think there was any anticipation of movement from Canada to the United States by operatives carrying bombs," said Vincent Cannistraro, former chief of counterterrorist operations at the CIA.
Canada has been used as a safe haven for militants because of its liberal immigration policies and less stringent laws governing terrorist organizations, Cannistraro said.
"They tend not to carry out operations in Canada," he said, except for illegal fund-raising activities including telemarketing fraud.
Ressam's arrest, along with the arrest of 14 of bin Laden's associates in Jordan and Pakistan last week, has almost certainly prompted authorities to gather whatever information they can on the movements of suspected terrorists, Cannistraro said.
"They are doing their sweeps, looking for everything," he said.
Other intelligence methods also would be employed, Cannistraro added, saying he couldn't elaborate on them.
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, The Washington Post reported in today's editions.
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.
'It's likely this guy is a mope'
Federal officials suspect Ressam was a courier who planned to deliver the bomb-making materials to one or more associates in Seattle because he had a reservation for one night at a motel near Seattle Center and then planned to fly Wednesday to New York and on to London.
"It's likely this guy is a mope," the law-enforcement official said, using slang for a low-level member of a criminal organization.
An early indictment this week would relieve prosecutors of the need to show probable cause for holding Ressam, who was preliminarily charged Friday with transporting nitroglycerine and giving a false name to Customs inspectors.
The indictment would contain bare details of the case in order to shield the scope of the investigation, but could be followed later with new charges outlining a terrorist plot.
Ressam still would make a scheduled court appearance Wednesday to determine whether he should be held pending trial as a flight risk or a danger to the community. He is highly likely to be ordered held under broad federal detention laws.
Ressam already was known to law-enforcement officials in Canada, where he was wanted on theft charges and for failing to report to immigration officials after applying for asylum under Canada's liberal refugee laws.
Canadian authorities will likely play a key role in helping the FBI uncover information about Ressam and the companion seen with him in Vancouver, as well as others who might have associated with them, said Cannistraro, the former CIA official, speaking by phone from his home in McLean, Va.
"They will run after all that to see if these people he knows or associates with are members of a group," he said.
Canadian authorities also will be investigating where Ressam got the bomb-making materials. Nitroglycerine is not available as a commercial product in Canada except for use in pharmaceuticals, and then it is sold in a diluted form under federal license, The Vancouver Sun reported.
Only one company in Quebec is licensed to manufacture nitroglycerine in Canada, and it does not sell raw product to anyone, the newspaper reported.
In addition to the nitroglycerine, Ressam allegedly was carrying four timing devices and 118 pounds of urea, the same fertilizer-substance used in the Oklahoma City federal-building bomb blast in 1995. The materials were found in the spare-tire compartment of a rental car Ressam drove aboard the ferry, authorities said.
While the quantities found in Ressam's car weren't sufficient for a similar explosion, Cannistraro said, they were capable of inflicting major damage and loss of life when mixed together.
The intent clearly was to set up a violent event, Cannistraro said.
The number of timing devices suggests that materials were to be made into smaller bombs, he said, possibly to be mixed with nails and planted where a large public gathering is expected.
"If you put a bomb in a trash can in an area with New Year's Eve revelers, you can cause a lot of human damage and spill a lot of blood," Cannistraro said.
The proximity of Seattle Center to the motel where Ressam was registered has raised concerns among law-enforcement officials that he might be part of an group planning a terrorist act during the celebration expected to draw tens of thousands of revelers to the Center on New Year's Eve.
In response, Seattle Center officials said they will heighten security precautions by erecting gates, inspecting people and searching any suspicious-looking packages. Investigators also are trying to determine whether other sites on U.S soil could be targets.
Ressam has declined to talk to investigators, according to sources. He was so desperate to escape when he was stopped for questioning at the Port Angeles ferry terminal that he ran six blocks into town and tried to jump into a car that had slowed at an intersection. The female driver locked the door and sped away, allowing Customs agents to apprehend Ressam.
Ressam was carrying a Canadian passport in another name issued in Montreal, where he had been living before recently traveling to Vancouver and Victoria.
Nitroglycerine was destroyed
Most of the nitroglycerine Ressam is charged with transporting was destroyed Friday night in Port Angeles under a court order requested by federal prosecutors who described it as extremely volatile and dangerous.
The supply was safely detonated inside a bomb-disposal truck at the Clallam County Sheriff Office's firing range, officials said. Samples rendered inert have been kept as evidence.
Ressam may have picked Port Angeles because it is an obscure port of entry. But he would not be the first to choose this state as an entry point. Three years ago, the Border Patrol three times arrested a Palestinian man, Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, trying to cross the border into Washington.
In August 1997, Mezer and another man were shot and wounded by law-enforcement officials in Brooklyn, N.Y., where they had allegedly been plotting a suicide bomb attack on a New York subway station.
In 1998, following congressional hearings about drug smuggling, terrorism and illegal immigration from the North, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) - that country's equivalent of the CIA - acknowledged the existence of as many as 50 terrorist organizations operating in Canada.
A CSIS report, released that same year, stated: "The threat to public safety from internal terrorism imported into Canada is a major concern for the Service. Most of the world's terrorist groups have established themselves in Canada, seeking safe haven, setting up operational bases and attempting to gain access to the U.S.A."