Tie groups with Al-Qaeda entered the country

The first income were registered seven months ago; they would look for to recruit extremist futures

Five groups of the fundamentalist movement Jamaat Tabligh, tie with the Al-Qaeda organization, entered Argentina in the last seven months with the possible objective to contact and to recruit Argentine citizens of the Muslim community to be trained in the outside in terrorist activities.

The entrance of the groups, made up altogether of 26 people, was detected by the local intelligence services, that previously had been alerted, among others, by its pairs of Spain and Italy. The Spanish antiterrorist experts gave to the Argentine government several precisions on this movement; for example, that the same one was and continues being investigated by the participation of some of its members in the attacks in Madrid, in the railway terminal of Atocha the 11 of March of 2004, that they caused 192 dead.

"Jamaat Tabligh has been often the front door in a country that has used Al-Qaeda", they noticed the Spanish services to its colleagues of Buenos Aires.

The Argentine government followed from a first moment with preoccupation the presence in the country of these groups that appear before the local Muslim community like preachers of the Islam. In fact, a high source of the Secretariat of Cult confirmed the NATION that the initial alert received it from the own leaders of the local Muslim community. When the Secretariat of Cult communicated the newness to the Department of the Interior, the Argentine intelligence services were already after the track of the men of Jamaat Tabligh.

Sources of intelligence revealed the NATION that the groups that entered the country operated during the first months of this year in White Bay, Laprida, Balcarce, Salta and Cordova. Some were detected at some moment in the Federal Capital, the Silver and the Handbag.

The strategy of the national authorities was, from a first moment, to let know them to the militants of Jamaat Tabligh that was watched them close by. For that reason, they added the sources, they were delayed the 22 of last July seven citizens with passports of Qatar and two with Egyptian passports in the Buenosairean localities of Balcarce and Laprida. Five days later were arrested by hours in Cordova four Malayan citizens pertaining to the movement Jamaat Tabligh. The objective at no moment was to maintain arrested them, because they had not broken the law, but to make them feel that the State watched them.

The origin of the 26 members of Jamaat Tabligh was Pakistan, Malaysia and South Africa, in addition to Qatar and Egypt.

Four analysts of intelligence commented the NATION that the arrival of these fundamentalist groups does not guarantee the hypothesis of a new terrorist attack in Argentina. He is more: no of them establishes symmetry some with the attacks to the embassy of Israel in 1992 and to the seat of the AMIA in 1994.

The information that those sources handle indicates, however, that the true mission of the Islamic preachers is to recruit adept for the rows of Al-Qaeda. Its objective would be to be related to Muslim Argentine citizens of second or third generation in the country catching to which they have more compatible ideas to the extremist positions and to derive them, in one second stage, to fields of training in the outside.

Argentine passports

"What they want it is to obtain people with Argentine passports like a way to facilitate his entrance, without waking up suspicions, in places that can be white for future attacks", it summarized before the NATION an expert who has a strategic vision on the world-wide terrorism. An Argentine passport, according to the source, has less possibilities of waking up suspicions in the security systems.

Sources of the Islamic community assure that there are no data on some Argentinean who already had been recruited. Also they affirm that the groups of preachers of Jamaat Tabligh have been visiting the country for 25 years. But everything changed in this visit.

In last March, after participating in Chile of an international meeting of Jamaat Tabligh, some of the groups, connectionless to each other, arrived at Argentina. The leaders of the local Islamic community, calculated in 700,000 people, although all of them are not medical instructors, are refractory to this movement, to which they consider rudimentary in his religious lessons.

In a while of strong interreligious dialogue in Argentina, the community decided to warn of the abnormal presence of these groups of Jamaat Tabligh the Secretariat of Cult. That was one of the alert that arrived at ears of the minister of the Interior, Aníbal Fernandez.

With the system of antiterrorist monitoring sensitized by the proximity of the Summit of the Américas in Sea of the Silver, that will be made in next November, the presence of two of the groups of Jamaat Tabligh in Laprida and White Bay motivated the official reaction to put them under pressure. For that reason one stopped them in inquiry of antecedents. Days later the intelligence services took care to do the same with the group that acted in Cordova.

A showy aspect of the presence of these groups is that they get dressed in chilabas, the typical túnica of the Arab indumentaria, and that does not handle the local language, in this case the Castilian. In general one is people with tertiary or university studies. Its system of education is exclusively of ear mouth, without existence of notes, that is to say, without they are left registries of his words, and the language that use to preach in Argentina is the English. After the official pressure, one of the groups left course to Chile and another one traveled to Bolivia.

Horacio Calderón, recognized a specialistic Argentinean in Islamic terrorism ( to see note ), does not have any doubt that the true objective of Jamaat Tabligh is the recruitment for Al-Qaeda. "Its missionaries - it said to the Nation constitute a serious danger for the national security because its prédica has like doctrinaria root purer the islamita extremism. Their objectives are the prédica, the identification and the recruitment of hard pictures, for their later formation in some of the religious centers in Europe and other continents."

Calderón Added: "Although the strategy of the organization in general does not include the use of the terrorism, at least officially, the organizations who yes practice it recruit to many of its members between the hardest pictures of Jamaat Tabligh". As much in Europe as in the United States its adherents they are considered of high risk.

Expelled in the outside

The government of the Spanish president, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, left in evidence the danger of that movement in an official answer to the order of information made by deputy Ignacio Gil Lazaro, secretary of the investigating commission of the attack of the 11 of March of 2004 in Atocha. The document affirms: "to be a fundamentalist and integrist movement, a pursuit is due to make and control of its activities, as it is being made with other groups of similar tendencies, to prevent the development with potentially dangerous activities", made sure in the report to the Congress the 21 September 2004.

Months later, in last January, details of the secret plot of the attack began to know themselves in Spain the railway station of Atocha. The movement Jamaat Tabligh was indicated then like the trigger of the terrorist cells that attacked in Madrid.

For the Spanish investigators, the group of terrorists who operated in Atocha was formed by Abu Given in 2000, for which they took followers from the movement Jamaat Tabligh which they lived in the Spanish capital, like Amer the Azizi, indicated like a leader of Al-Qaeda; Khaled Zemini, stopped by the attack of 11-M, and Serhane Horseradish tree Abdelmajid, that committed suicide in Leganés when the antiterrorist forces initiated a cast where it inhabited the terrorist cell.

In Italy, the government of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi also put the magnifying glass on the activities of Jamaat Tabligh. For less from a month eight members of that movement were expelled from that country that were been in the city of Perugia. The offensive against Jamaat Tabligh continued the 13 of last August, when Italy expelled to other six members of that group.

In Germany, the 18 of last August, two Bosnians and an Moroccan pertaining to Jamaat Tabligh were expelled with the argument from which they recruited followers for Al-Qaeda.

In the United States, the own head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, indicated the relation of Jamaat Tabligh with Al-Qaeda during the report that gave the 15 of last February before the Commission of Intelligence of the Congress: "we are worried about the possibility that members of considered groups peripheral undergo external influences that facilitate their passage to operational rolls. Members of legitimate organizations, like Jamaat Tabligh, are recruited by Al-Qaeda in their effort to extend their contacts in the United States ".

With so many tests in its power, the determination of the Argentine government went to avoid surprises and to press to the members of Jamaat Tabligh that entered the country. The local Muslim community did not doubt either at the time of taking distance from the fundamentalism, to which they consider other people's to his beliefs.

Source: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1475967/posts