Swiss Secrecy May Be a Lure for Al Qaeda

The trail began in the desert mayhem of Saudi Arabia and led to a suspected militant Islamic network operating in the Alpine tranquillity of Switzerland.

It started with a Saudi investigation into the May 2003 suicide attacks on three expatriate housing compounds in Riyadh by Al Qaeda that killed 26.

Investigators recovered a suspect’s cellphone and made a startling discovery: The memory contained 36 Swiss numbers. And one of them belonged to an alleged Yemeni extremist based in the pristine village of Aegerten, an area known more for clockmakers than for terrorists.

The discovery led to an investigation by Swiss police that has resulted in 10 arrests during the last year. According to a preliminary indictment filed July 30, officials have uncovered a logistics and financial network in Switzerland with ties to top Al Qaeda figures and terrorist cells across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

The indictment charges that the Swiss network supplied fraudulent documents, smuggled itinerant Middle Eastern extremists into the country and used criminal rackets to raise and move funds to cells in Europe and the Middle East.

The unlikely setting shows how extremists establish footholds in whatever corner of the world they can.

In some ways, Switzerland does not seem a hospitable base for the Al Qaeda terrorist network. The country lacks the big cities and vast Muslim neighborhoods of neighboring nations. It does not belong to the borderless European Union, making entry and exit more complicated.

The society also has a reputation for order. “It seems like every Swiss has a little bit of policeman in him,” one foreign law enforcement official said. In addition, Swiss police are experienced in complex investigations because of the many international crimes that intersect with their secretive banking system.

Nonetheless, that banking system remains a magnet for the global underworld: Swiss prosecutors are pursuing two massive investigations of wealthy Arabs accused of financing Islamic extremists through Swiss bank accounts. And street-level militants know that, like other small European nations with traditions of tolerance and neutrality, Switzerland has generous political asylum laws, strong protections for criminal defendants and an ingrained respect for privacy.

Switzerland entered the picture in 2002, when European investigators found that Al Qaeda’s operational boss, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and his associates were using hard-to-trace Swiss cellular phones.

Intercepts allegedly revealed that Mohammed, who has since been captured, was in touch with a Swiss convert in a plot that led to the truck bombing of a Tunisian synagogue that year, investigators said.

The Swiss convert remains free. But several Yemenis who frequented the same Islamic center as he did in the town of Biel have been charged in the July indictment, officials said. The Yemeni network resembled Al Qaeda “sleeper” cells established around the world, authorities said.

The accused ringleader is Abdelhamid Fayek, the Yemeni whose number Saudi investigators found on the phone of the suspect in Riyadh.

Fayek, 56, came to Switzerland about five years ago and applied for political asylum in 2001, according to investigative documents. His application was rejected but remains under appeal. The former bookseller has done jail time in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which expelled him for extremist activity, according to documents. He’s now under arrest in Switzerland.

Under Fayek’s alleged leadership, the network, according to court documents and officials, provided a service hub for the increasingly fractured factions of Al Qaeda -- from incoming Saudis to a European-bred network of North Africans arrested in France, Belgium and the Netherlands in September 2001 for plotting to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Paris.

After Saudi authorities found Fayek’s number, Swiss police tapped his phone. They soon intercepted calls from a suspected Al Qaeda operative, Abdullah Kini, wanted in the Riyadh attacks and in the 2000 bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole in Yemen, according to Swiss court documents.

Calling from Qatar, Kini asked for help getting identity papers so he could flee to Switzerland, according to documents.

“The suspicion was that he might have been one of the people tasked to take the fight to Europe or North America,” a Swiss counter-terrorism official said in a recent interview.

“It was thought there was a further destination after Switzerland, possibly the U.S. or Britain.”

As a result, Qatari police arrested Kini in the summer of 2003. He was deported in May to Yemen and is in custody there.

Kini allegedly has high-level and disparate connections. The Swiss indictment says Kini “was close to certain members of the first tier of Al Qaeda, including Tawfiq Attash Khallad, Saif Adel and Abu Musab Zarqawi.”

Khallad is a one-legged Yemeni in U.S. custody on suspicion of helping oversee the Sept. 11 attacks and the Cole bombing. Adel, an Egyptian regarded as Al Qaeda’s military chief, is suspected of ordering the Riyadh bombings. Investigators say Zarqawi, a Jordanian, is playing an increasingly autonomous role as a leader of the anti-U.S. insurgency in Iraq and of predominantly North African networks in Europe.

It is significant that the group here was dominated by Yemenis, who have had key roles in a number of Al Qaeda plots.

In contrast to other European-based logistics networks that have been mostly North African and essentially nonviolent, officials say, the Swiss group sparked concern about potential attacks in the works -- especially because of the involvement of Kini, who is considered a front-line operative.

In the aftermath of the Riyadh attacks, Kini’s calls and e-mail to suspects here took on an urgent tone, Swiss authorities said.

In a phone conversation on July 1, 2003, Kini asked Fayek about the possibility of entering from Qatar on a visitor’s visa, according to investigative documents. Kini said “the problem is the papers. If not, [I] would already be there.”

Swiss investigators geared up for the Yemeni’s arrival in Europe, anticipating a potential gold mine for intelligence-gathering.

“We were waiting for him like the messiah,” the Swiss official said.

But other factors took precedence. There was the fear that Kini was involved in preparing another attack. And, apparently at the urging of U.S. authorities, it was decided that holding and interrogating Kini would be easier in the Middle East than in legalistic Switzerland, officials said.

Fayek’s accused colleagues included a 27-year-old Yemeni, Abdallah Yas, who allegedly trained in bomb-making at an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, according to documents.

Last winter, with the West bracing for possible attacks during the holidays, Swiss investigators picked up indications that Yas planned to leave Switzerland using a fake Danish passport, according to documents. The intelligence raised fears that he was on his way to the United States for an attack, U.S. and Swiss officials said.

Investigators, who had let the network operate in order to gather intelligence, decided to move in. Yas was arrested Dec. 23. Eight others were rounded up in January, and a 10th suspect was arrested in May.

But in a sign of the difficulties Swiss prosecutors face, Yas was freed in July for lack of evidence. His release came days before the preliminary indictment was filed containing recent testimony from Kini in Yemen that identified Yas and alleged that he had trained in Afghanistan. Swiss authorities were trying last month to deport Yas to Yemen.

In response, Yas’ lawyer has argued that his client is a victim of political persecution and overzealous authorities.

“The mere fact of being suspected of having links to the Al Qaeda network puts [his] life in danger if he is returned” to Yemen, Yas’ lawyer, Jean Michel Dolivo, wrote in a recent court filing, invoking the Swiss veneration for human rights, which may clash with the global campaign against terrorism.

As diligently as Switzerland has gone after Islamic extremists, that potential conflict emerged in statements this summer by Atty. Gen. Valentin Roschacher. After detailing progress in the three major investigations involving Al Qaeda, Roschacher expressed regret that the international community “has adopted the paradigm of a ‘war on terror’ in a much more forceful and ruthless manner, rather than opting for an investigation of these crimes under the criminal law.

“In my opinion, this disregard for the criminal law, or the mixing of criminal and martial law,” the attorney general said, “have not markedly improved worldwide security.”