Terrorism Suspects Traced to Iran

PARIS —  Despite its periodic crackdowns on the terrorist network, Iran has served as a refuge for Al Qaeda operatives suspected of plotting attacks in Europe and the Middle East and of playing a central role in the Iraqi insurgency, European investigators say.

Investigations in France, Italy, Spain and other countries since the Sept. 11 attacks point to an increasing presence in Iran of Al Qaeda figures, including suspected masterminds of this year’s train bombings in Madrid and last year’s car bombings of expatriate compounds in Saudi Arabia.

But Iran’s complex politics and secretive policies have made it difficult to determine the nature of any relationship between Iranian officials and the terror network, investigators say.

The potential ties between Iran and Al Qaeda drew attention last month with the release of the final report of the Sept. 11 commission. The U.S. panel found that eight of the hijackers had traveled through Iran but did not produce much evidence of an Al Qaeda-Iran alliance before the 2001 attacks.

What concerns Western law enforcement officials, however, is the post-Sept. 11 menace posed by the terrorist group, including its involvement in Iraq and deadly attacks in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

As Osama bin Laden’s movement has reconfigured since 2001, Iran has become an intermittent refuge for kingpins who have gained stature and autonomy while Bin Laden has faded from the limelight, European officials say.

“The Iranians play a double game,” said a top French law enforcement official who, like others interviewed, asked to remain anonymous. “Everything they can do to trouble the Americans, without going too far, they do it. They have arrested important Al Qaeda people, but they have permitted other important Al Qaeda people to operate. It is a classic Iranian style of ambiguity, deception, manipulation.”

Iran repeatedly has insisted that it has dismantled any terrorist networks in its territory. “Iran has no affinity with Taliban and Al Qaeda, and Iran has proved it by words and acts,” Hamid Reza Asefi, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, said recently.

European investigators think Iranian officials have alternately pursued and tolerated Al Qaeda because the group serves as a tool for Iran’s geopolitical interests in neighboring Iraq and against key foes: the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Any Iranian support of Al Qaeda remains indirect and limited, investigators believe, because of fundamental differences between Bin Laden’s Sunni Muslim movement and the Shiite Muslim regime in Tehran. Some experts also distinguish between Iran’s comparatively moderate political leadership and its hard-line security forces, particularly the Revolutionary Guards, which functions as a “state within a state,” a London-based analyst said.

“When the Iranian government says it is not dealing with Al Qaeda, it is telling the truth,” said Mustafa Alani of the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank affiliated with the British Defense Ministry. “It’s not the government -- it’s the Revolutionary Guard.

“We are talking about an ideological army, not just an intelligence service, and the politicians really have no power over them. There is some sort of tactical alliance with Al Qaeda in which the Revolutionary Guard turns a blind eye toward the activity in Iran.”

Al Qaeda figures who allegedly have operated in Iran, according to court documents and investigators in Europe, include Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian seen as a leader of the Iraq insurgency and a broader international network; Saif Adel, an Egyptian regarded as Al Qaeda’s military chief; and Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, a veteran Spanish-Syrian fighter seen by Spanish police as a possible mastermind of the Madrid attacks.

Intelligence reports from foreign agencies last year placed Nasar in Iran, high-ranking Spanish investigators said. Nasar, a former propagandist in London and commander of a training camp in Afghanistan, has emerged as a prominent figure in a faction that has distanced itself from Bin Laden, Spanish investigators said.

Although Bin Laden and his right-hand man, Ayman Zawahiri, are believed to be hiding in the Afghan-Pakistani borderlands, other core leaders found shelter in Iran after fleeing the U.S. military operation in Afghanistan in late 2001, officials say.

“The intelligence reports about a year ago said elements of the shura [leadership council] had relocated to northeastern Iran,” a top Spanish law enforcement official said. “The Iranians don’t cooperate with information, they deny everything, so it’s not clear what’s going on. They want to present themselves as reformers opening to the West, but it’s possible that there are power groups within the regime supporting Al Qaeda.”

Some European experts accept the Iranian argument that the presence of militants is confined mostly to vast border areas that are hard to control. And Iran has arrested prominent figures such as Bin Laden’s son Saad, the top French anti-terrorism official said.

Yet Iran has offered little information about the status of suspects such as Saad bin Laden and Adel, the former Egyptian commando who is Al Qaeda’s military chief. About a year ago, U.S. officials said Iranian forces had Adel in custody, but Iran did not confirm his detention. Reports among counter-terror officials suggest that Iranian agents allow some leaders “controlled freedom of movement,” the French official said.

Adel is a top suspect in the bombings last year of expatriate compounds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; U.S. communications intercepts indicate that those attacks were ordered from Iran, European officials say.

There are also suspected links between bosses in Iran and the suicide bombings in Casablanca, Morocco, that took place four days after the Riyadh attacks, the French official said. The Casablanca bombings, in turn, intersect with the network involved in the Madrid train bombings.

As Al Qaeda geared up three years ago for its offensive on the West, Iran was a busy route to training camps in Afghanistan, investigators say. In a March 10, 2001, conversation wiretapped by Italian police, a member of a terrorist cell in Milan said associates passing through Iran had nothing to fear, according to the transcript in court documents.

“Isn’t there a danger in Iran?” asked a Tunisian named Tarek Charaabi, who was later convicted on terrorism-related charges.

“No, because there’s an organization that takes care of helping the mujahedin brothers cross the border. There’s total collaboration with the Iranians,” responded a Libyan named Lased ben Heni.

“Pakistan was the most comfortable route, but in these past years there’s too many secret services,” Ben Heni continued.

He said an Al Qaeda operative “in Iran receives the brothers and selects them and decides whether to send them to Afghanistan. It’s better to go to the Iranian Embassy in London because it’s very smooth and then everything’s well organized all the way to the training camps.”

The Iranian entry route became an escape route in late 2001. When the U.S. military smashed Bin Laden’s Afghan sanctuary, dozens of his militants fled into Iran, some with wives and children in tow. Iranian authorities soon arrested and deported many of them -- including Tunisians connected to the Milan cell.

But other suspected terrorists got different treatment, investigators say. Fugitives ran to Iran after eluding dragnets in Spain and other European countries, according to investigators and court documents. Others used Iran as a departure point to attempt attacks in Europe.

U.S. intelligence agents warned Italian police in December 2001 about a suspected leader of a terrorist cell known as Hamza the Libyan, according to Italian court papers.

“American intelligence organisms” advised that “Hamza the Libyan is a mujahedin trained in Afghanistan who has traveled to Italy via Iran to plan criminal actions against unspecified targets in Europe,” the documents state.

U.S. agents provided cellphone numbers for the Libyan, who allegedly was in telephone contact with Saad bin Laden in Iran, according to Italian investigators. British police arrested the Libyan, whose name is Farj Hassan, in 2002.

As the U.S. confrontation with Saddam Hussein gathered momentum, so did Al Qaeda-related activity in Iran, investigators say. Police in London and Paris broke up terrorist plots in late 2002 and early 2003 that involved primitive chemical and biological weapons.

The plots were traced to Zarqawi, who had fled Afghanistan to Iran, where he had a support structure in the city of Mashhad near the Afghan border, Italian investigators said.

Zarqawi set up shop at training camps with the Kurdish extremist group Ansar al Islam in Iraqi Kurdistan near the Iranian border, an area out of Hussein’s control.

Although U.S. officials cited those camps as evidence of an Al Qaeda-Hussein alliance, Zarqawi spent a lot of time on the Iranian side of the border, European investigators said. Along with Syria, Iran became the gateway for militants from Europe and North Africa traveling to the Zarqawi camps to prepare for battle against U.S. forces, according to investigators and court files.

“Our cases showed that Iran was the preferred trampoline for the militants bound for Iraq,” a high-ranking Italian investigator said.

When U.S.-led forces overran the camps in Iraq, many Ansar and Al Qaeda militants fled to Iran. Western intelligence agencies reported that agents of the Iranian secret services set up a field hospital and shelters for fleeing militants, Italian investigators said.

Nonetheless, Iran also captured a number of the jihadis and handed them over to European authorities after the war, officials acknowledge.

Zarqawi is also believed to have found refuge in Iran after the war, French and Spanish officials said. In Spanish communications intercepts last year, a fugitive Moroccan suspect, Amer Azizi, said he was “in Iran with Abu Musab Zarqawi,” Spanish investigators said. Police believe Azizi made his way back from Iran to Madrid to play a lead role in the train bombings.

Zarqawi’s whereabouts, meanwhile, are a mystery. Some U.S. military officials place him in Iraq at the forefront of the insurgency. French investigators say he moves among Iraq, Iran, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.

“The Iranians have been saying for two years that they have dismantled the networks,” said Claude Moniquet, director of the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center, a Brussels think tank. “But there are people in the European services who think Zarqawi was in Iran until recently. It’s a contradictory picture.”