2009-03-04 Algeria: Al-Qaeda 'recruiting' illegal migrants for attacks

[maitotyttö]

Terroristeja rekrytoidaan Euroopan laittomista maahanmuuttajista.

http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=3.0.3068945688

Algiers, 4 March (AKI) - Al-Qaeda was seeking to recruit illegal immigrants in Europe for potential suicide attacks in Italy, Spain and France, an Algerian daily has claimed. A report in the daily Ennahar on Tuesday said Al-Qaeda had begun trying to recruit illegal immigrants in Europe, because it had not been able to find new recruits in Arab countries following elections in the United States and Israel.

"Two men, a Pakistani and a Bosnian offered me a proposal. They asked me to collaborate with Al-Qaeda in exchange for money," said Ahmad al-Shalafi, an Algerian immigrant who spoke to the daily by telephone after being approached by alleged Al-Qaeda officials.

"I would have had to recruit people from the local Islamic and African communities to carry out a suicide attack," he said.

Shalafi is an illegal Algerian immigrant who lives in Spain and works as a security official at a nightclub using fake documents and presenting himself as a Moroccan immigrant. He said he migrated illegally to Spain in 2001 after crossing the Strait of Gibraltar in a makeshift boat.

The daily said Algerians and Moroccans, who had illegally entered Italy, France and Spain by boat from North Africa, were then being asked to join the terror network, due to their precarious living conditions, lack of identification documents and poor integration in their host country.

The news report said that Al-Qaeda also exploits the immigrants' resentment towards their new country as well as their home country, as they cannot renew their passport to legally return home.

The newspaper, citing outside sources, claimed to know that Al-Qaeda is targeting illegal immigrants - but particularly Moroccan and Algerian immigrants - in order to infiltrate Europe.

The daily also said that Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan had delegated this recruitment task to its North African branch, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb organisation, also present in Algeria.

Ennahar also referred to European intelligence reports warning about possible attacks against the Israeli and US embassies in European countries.

One report to which the daily referred, does not exclude Al-Qaeda attacks on Eastern Europe due to security crackdowns which have prevented new militant recruitment in Spain, Italy and France.

There are at least 365,000 Moroccan and 22,000 Algerian immigrants in Italy, according to the latest figures by Italy's central statistics agency ISTAT.