The al-Qaida terrorist network has strengthened its operations in Europe in recent months and poses a tangible threat on the continent, German security experts said on Tuesday.
The chief of international terrorism for Germany’s BND
intelligence service, Hans J Beth, said al-Qaida had also beefed up its communication network to improve its efficiency.
”Attacks that do not require much logistical investment such as bomb or suicide attacks are possible at any time,” Beth told a congress of European police here.
He said the BND was operating on the assumption that al-Qaida head Osama bin Laden and other leading figures of the network had not been killed or captured in Afghanistan and were still in a position to order or approve attacks.
”A network of several thousand fanatic Muslims” is in place in western Europe, North America and Arab countries, said the director of Germany’s federal crime office, Manfred Klink.
He said the majority had been trained in Afghanistan to carry out attacks and that a ”significant number” were living as ”sleepers” in Germany awaiting orders to strike.
Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network have been blamed for the September 11 attacks in the United States.
Germany became one focus of the September 11 investigation when it was discovered that three of the attackers had lived in the country for years without coming to the attention of authorities.
In what may have been al-Qaida’s first attack since then, a blast in April at a Jewish synagogue in Tunisia left 19 dead, including 14 German tourists.
German and Israeli intelligence services have identified links between the suspected attacker and bin Laden’s network. ? Sapa-AFP