Terror network

Whatever Lord Hutton may say about how the government handled intelligence before the war with Iraq, the occupation of that country has turned out a bloody and thankless task.

Now it's said that much of the suicide bombing offensive there has been the work of an al-Qaeda linked network in Europe.

America's Attorney General has made a personal foray to Scandinavia to press for action. Peter Marshall reported.

PETER MARSHALL:
Tranquil and splendid in its Scandinavian isolation, Norway has the freshest, clearest climes in Europe. Peace is in the very air. Yet Norway is now said to have spawned the latest wave of international terrorism. Here, both hunted and harboured by Western democracies, is the man allegedly behind suicide bombings in Iraq and beyond. A man accused of laying a path for Al-Qaeda. His name is Mullah Krekar. One of Oslo's poorer suburbs. For 13 years, ever since Norway gave him asylum, it's been home to Mullah Krekar. As an Iraqi Kurd, he was opposed to Saddam's regime. But he was also the sworn enemy of other Kurdish groups and of the West. For Krekar wanted no less than an Islamic state. He set up a small army to achieve it. Its name, Ansar Al-Islam.

GUIDO OLIMPIO
(AUTHOR, NETWORK OF TERROR):
It's very important in the radical arena. They talk in the mosques, people say, "Look, look Al-Ansar, they're ready to fight, ready to die against the Americans." So it's very important.

MARSHALL:
His refugee status in Norway secure, Mullah Krekar secretly returned to the mountains of Northern Iraq to lead radical Islamists. By December 2001, he'd formed Ansar Al-Islam. Its members, some 500 of the most militant guerilla fighters, waged war on the PUK, the regional administration, and were denounced as terrorists by the United States.

MARSHALL:
Is your brother a terrorist?

KHALID AHMED
(MULLAH KREKAR'S BROTHER):
No, I don't think so.

MARSHALL:
But he is the leader of Ansar Al-Islam?

AHMED:
No, he was the leader of this group from December 2001 until May 2002. In those times there was no fighting between Ansar Al-Islam and the PUK. There was talking.

MARSHALL:
It's a legalistic answer which some say barely disguises the truth. Mullah Krekar has been of concern to intelligence agencies around the world. They tracked his labyrinthine trail across Asia and Europe. The Dutch had found Krekar with what looked like an inventory of Ansar's fighting capabilities. They had "enough supplies for five or six months of warfare on the front or two years or more for fighting as guerillas." Back in Norway, Krekar was acquitted of a subsequent terrorism charge on the grounds that his group was waging war and thus couldn't be considered terrorist. From Oslo, Khalid Ahmed runs an Islamist website. Norwegian prosecutors believe his brother, Mullah Krekar, has been doing the same, but he's been using the internet to command Ansar terrorists. The Norwegians are holding Mullah Krekar in connection with two Ansar bombing attempts in Northern Iraq. They say they've plenty of witnesses, most notably this young would-be suicide bomber who was thwarted before he could self-detonate. As well as demonstrating his failed technique, he's made a lengthy confession saying he was trained and inspired to kill by Mullah Krekar. Before the cameras his mother heaps her wrath on Krekar.

MOTHER OF MAN WHO ATTEMPTED A SUICIDE BOMBING:
No, Nobody saw him. Nobody was allowed to see Mullah Krekar. Mullah Krekar is a bastard. May God punish him by cutting him to pieces.

MARSHALL:
Norway's courts have become familiar to Mullah Krekar. Up to now he's always beaten the prosecutor. But this time the prosecutor has changed tack.

PROFESSOR STAALE ESKELAND
(OSLO UNIVERSITY):
The government and prosecution authorities have tried several times to charge him with terrorist acts or activities connected with terrorism. So now, it seems to me that they've changed their angle on attacks, and they charge him with a conspiracy to commit murder down in Iraq. An attempt to commit murder.

MARSHALL:
In a land which has long been a haven of accord and conciliation, a venue for conferences on peace, the Krekar affair marks an important change. Innocence betrayed. The Mullah Krekar case has led to widespread soul-searching in Norway. A nation which, for example, accepts four times the number of asylum seekers per capita that Britain does, is now questioning its traditional liberalism. The war on terror, having arrived on its doorstep, is now raising all sorts of alarms. When Norwegian TV showed distraught relatives of suicide bombers damning Krekar, the country was shocked.

CARL HAGEN
(LEADER, PROGRESS PARTY):
For a long time when Mullah Krekar has been on TV, he's been the kind old grandfather who wouldn't kill a fly, but in the last week or so when we had more video tapes from Iraq and his former position, I think the attitude among the Norwegian public has changed even more against Krekar than it was before. And I think they're furious with the government for not getting the guy out of Norway.

MARSHALL:
Intelligence agencies looking into Krekar's activities over the last 15 years, found he was a man who liked to travel. With asylum in Norway, he moved around Europe, ostensibly preaching, staying at various times in Britain, Germany, Sweden and, on more than one occasion, in Milan, Italy. The Italians had independently turned up Krekar's name and phone numbers in their own inquiries into Islamist terror networks. They became convinced something new was happening. Undercover anti-terrorist officers here in Milan have told us that some two years ago they noticed a significant change in the behaviour of the Islamist cells they'd been watching. With the Taliban regime on the run, the Islamists turned their attention to what they regarded as the next Afghanistan, the new Jihad in Northern Iraq. They joined the group only recently founded by Mullah Krekar, Ansar Al-Islam. Italian intelligence believe that it was at this mosque, the Via Qaranta in the centre of Milan, that the link between the Krekar-founded Ansar Al-Islam and Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda was forged. Today at the mosque no-one wants to talk.

UNNAMED MAN:
We don't give any interview with anyone, it's our decision. We don't give any interview with anyone.

MARSHALL:
The Italians became convinced of the Al-Ansar/Al-Qaeda alliance when they placed two suspects from Via Qaranta mosque in a bugged cell. One was a suspected Al-Ansar operative. The other, who'd flown in from London, was allegedly Al-Qaeda. He is uneasy.

CIISE:
I recall someone who said it was better to go to Afghanistan or Iran than to Via Quaranta. This is the most dangerous place after London, because it is known for training terrorists and providing logistic and financial support.

MERAI:
And where have you arrived from, from London. So what? Don't worry, they have nothing.

CIISE:
Do they usually put two people together when they arrest them? Strange.

MARSHALL:
The Milan prosecutor, in a rare interview, told us Al-Qaeda turned to Krekar's Ansar Al-Islam because Ansar had a ready-made terrorist infrastructure.

STEFANO DAMBRUOSO
(ITALIAN PROSECUTOR):
We found that principally Ansar served this kind of group, in terms of logistical support and training people in the area where they had already organised some camps.

MARSHALL:
He says Milan became a transit point for terrorists en route for Iraq.

DAMBRUOSO:
Through this kind of organisation, people, the mujahideen, coming from Italy and Europe, arrived in the Iraqi area before the war in February and March.

MARSHALL:
A bugged telephone conversation between the Al-Ansar man in Milan and his commander, Mullah Fouad, in Syria, has them talking in code. The Milan man appears to be promising to send recruits.

MERAI:
Your guests will arrive this week, they are good people.

MULLAH FOUAD:
I don't want good people, I want them wide awake and well trained - people who strike the iron. No, worse, I want those who strike the ground and make iron come out! Find those who were in Japan.

MARSHALL:
Japan is thought to refer to kamikaze suicide missions. The Italians believe they've traced the bombers route. They're recruited in European mosques, travelling from Milan down through Syria and then into Iraq. For ten years Guido Olimpio has been warning of the dangers of Al-Qaeda and their alliances. This is exactly the sort of network he envisaged. Was the fact that the Americans were interested in Iraq, and perhaps going to invade, an attraction or a deterrent for Al-Qaeda?

OLIMPIO:
An attraction, definitely. There was a new phenomenon. A lot of people, in the months before the war, started to say, we are ready to fight, we would like to fight in Iraq against America.

MARSHALL:
The Italians and other Western agencies are now working on the theory that the Ansar Al-Islam/Al-Qaeda group is responsible for some of the most murderous attacks in Iraq since the war was declared over. From the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad in August, to the attack on the Al-Rashid Hotel and the Red Cross in October, some 70 people have been killed and hundreds injured. There's also suspicion, because of the methods and level of planning, that the network may have been involved in November's bombings in Istanbul which left over 60 dead. But what of Mullah Krekar? Last month on Arab TV, he was introduced as the leader of Ansar Al-Islam. He didn't demur. To Western intelligence, and the Americans in particular, this confirms what they already believe. While Norway's Supreme Court considers the Krekar case, concerns have been raised about US pressure. This came after America's Attorney General, John Ashcroft, broke his holiday in Norway to drop in on the judges. For all the claims that America's seeking to impose its will on European justice systems, the conversation in this room was by no means all one way. The Norwegian judges took the opportunity to tell Mr Ashcroft, in no uncertain terms, that they wouldn't be extraditing any individuals to the US who may then face the death penalty. They also expressed their implacable opposition to America's policy of detaining with neither charge nor trial, foreign nationals in Guantanamo Bay. Norway's wariness of America's approach to the war on terror has led to questions about the evidence against Mullah Krekar.

PROFESSOR ESKELAND:
The main evidence, as far as I can see, comes from witnesses in Iraq, and they are in the custody of PUK, which is under American control, and then the representatives of the Norwegian prosecution go down there and make interviews with them and I think they're completely unreliable. You can't tell whether they are telling the truth or not, because they are under such a great pressure.

ERLING GRIMSTAD
(CENTRAL INVESTIGATIONS UNIT, NORWAY):
We have more than 1,200 pieces of evidence in this case.

MARSHALL:
So you're not just relying on confessions?

GRIMSTAD:
No, these are all pieces of a puzzle, which fit together to reveal the facts of our information.

MARSHALL:
If the puzzle doesn't add up to a conviction, in the next week Norway could release Mullah Krekar, the man who founded and inspires the group who've opened the doors of Iraq to Al-Qaeda.

This transcript was produced from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight. It has been checked against the programme as broadcast, however Newsnight can accept no responsibility for any factual inaccuracies. We will be happy to correct serious errors.