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Suspects Across Europe Sought in Continental Anti-Terror Probe
PARIS, Sept 21 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Seven arrests in France and two arrests warrants issued in Germany Friday marked a growing anti-terror probe across Europe that is putting members of Muslim organizations everywhere under suspicion.
French counter-intelligence authorities were interrogating seven suspects, including an undetermined number of women picked up in dawn raids in a probe of threats made against U.S. interests in France, according to a BBC online report.
The BBC said that the seven were believed to belong to an Islamic "militant" group.
Officials said the detentions were linked to a series of police raids this week in Belgium and the Netherlands, where several Islamists were arrested on allegations that they were plotting to attack the U.S. embassy in Paris and other official American buildings in France.
It was not immediately clear whether those arrested were thought to have direct links to the assault on the United States on September 11. But they were part of an intense European-wide crackdown on suspected terrorists launched since the devastating hijackings.
Several of those detained Friday had been placed under surveillance on September 10th, one day before the U.S. attacks, based on the testimony of a Franco-Algerian man arrested in the United Arab Emirates in July.
The 35-year-old suspect, Djamel Beghal, had told investigators that terrorists planned to attack U.S. interests in France. BBC reported that Beghal, who was also believed to have links to bin Laden, may have been in contact with at least one of the groups arrested in France, and that he provided their names and addresses to police.
In Germany Friday, police issued warrants for two men suspected of having links to those responsible for the September 11th attacks in the U.S., BBC reported.
The two men, Ramzi Binalshibh, 29, a Yemeni national, and Said Bahaji, 26, a German of Moroccan origin, were suspected of collaborating with three of the actual hijackers, who lived in Germany for some time, the BBC said.
"Bahaji and Binalshibh were part of preparations for the plan at least since 1999," the office of Federal Prosecutor Kay Nehm told BBC.
Security services said they believed some 100 suspected terrorists were lying low in Germany.
Regional interior minister Fritz Behrens said that authorities had identified some of the so-called "sleepers", adding that intelligence services had made "important steps...so that our country does not serve as a support base for mass murder".
German detectives, operating on leads from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations, have already turned up important leads on suspects in the U.S. attacks who had lived as students in the northern city of Hamburg and were believed to be part of a broad terrorist network.
Behrens said that the country had 10,000 active members of Muslim organizations suspected of being "extremists" under surveillance.
In the Netherlands, prosecutors charged two French men and one Dutch national this week with forgery and falsifying documents with the view of planning an attack. They were believed to belong to an Islamic network operating in several European countries.
Previous arrests by Dutch authorities of men with suspected links to Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden prompted anti-terrorist police and magistrates from Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands to gather in Brussels early in the week to compare notes.
The move was part of a general push by European security and intelligence forces to step up cross-border anti-terrorist efforts in light of the attacks.
In the Czech Republic, police and intelligence services were investigating possible Czech contacts of Mohamed Atta, the man suspected of being the hijacker of the first plane that crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.
Atta, who was an Egyptian national and studied in Hamburg for eight years, had made a brief stop Prague in June last year. Authorities said they were trying to find out if he had made any suspicious contacts in the country.
Spanish authorities have traced Atta's trail to their country as well, learning that he had stayed in the northeast Spanish seaside resort of Salou in mid-July on a stopover from a northern African country.
And in Poland, interior minister Marek Biernacki said Friday that NATO allies had passed on intelligence indicating that the country was serving as a "channel for people suspected of terrorist activities."
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