More Arrests, New Threats In The Fight Against Terror

By Amanda Bower Sunday, Sept. 01, 2002
    • U.S. forces may not have captured bin laden, but since Sept. 11, officials in 98 countries have rounded up more than 2,700 al-Qaeda or allied terror suspects. Yet as new indictments were handed up in the U.S. and Europe last week, evidence of further plots emerged. Al-Qaeda, it seems, maintains a global reach.

    U.S.
    A federal grand jury last week indicted a second U.S. citizen for al-Qaeda related activity; the first was John Walker Lindh (see box). Earnest James Ujaama allegedly conspired to set up a jihad training camp in Oregon and provide support and resources for al-Qaeda. He maintains his innocence. Also last week, four north Africans were indicted in Detroit, accused of operating a sleeper cell.


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    Germany
    The 9/11 terrorists boasted of their plans to attack the World Trade Center as far back as the spring of 2000, according to German officials who last week revealed new details of the Hamburg-based hijackers' actions. The information came from an investigation of Moroccan Mounir El Motassadeq, who was charged with 3,116 counts of accessory to murder and membership in a terror organization. El Motassadeq has denied involvement in the attacks.

    Iran
    Dozens of al-Qaeda fighters and two key lieutenants are holed up in two border cities in eastern Iran, the Washington Post reported last week, and are plotting more terror attacks. A senior U.S. intelligence official tells Time the information is plausible, although the CIA has no evidence to substantiate it.

    Pakistan
    Officials are on high alert for the anniversary of the attacks on America after revealing last week that they had received credible threats of Sept. 11 strikes on foreign and domestic targets within Pakistan. The warning was not a surprise, given the number of terrorist attacks that Afghanistan's neighbor has suffered this year. In February, U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl was murdered; in March, five people including two Americans were killed in an Islamabad church; in April, President Pervez Musharraf narrowly escaped assassination; in May, 11 French citizens died in a bus bombing; in June, an attack outside the U.S. consulate in Karachi killed 12 Pakistanis; and in August, a Christian hospital was attacked.