Europe warned of Mumbai-style terror attacks

A man captured in Afghanistan has tipped off investigators to a potential "Mumbai-style" terror plot in Europe, a German counterterror source said Wednesday. Investigators believe al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden signed off on a European attack plan, a separate law enforcement source said. But U.S. and international officials say they have seen no sign of an imminent attack.

U.S. officials said the alleged plot has no U.S. component -- at least none that has been found. One official stressed that the plot is serious and credible but that the intelligence available lacked specificity -- no who, where or how. Some names of "known operational planners" are possibly connected with the plot, but there is "no precise insight" into who may be planning an attack, the official said. Soft targets such as hotels and economic targets are of particular concern, but there is "no precise" intelligence on the mode of attack, said the official.

Another official said there are different threads coming from different places, and it's not clear how or even if they will come together. The European countries involved -- primarily Germany, France, Britain -- are tackling the perceived threats as they see fit.

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European antiterrorism agencies favor human intelligence over technology

The tip from Spain was only a vague warning. But it was enough for France's domestic intelligence agents to go to work, tapping phones, tailing suspects and squeezing informants. Before long, they rolled up a group of Muslim men in a provincial French town who, beneath a tranquil surface, were drawing up al-Qaeda-inspired plans to set off a bomb in the Paris subway. The plot, described by a source with firsthand information, was one of 15 planned terrorist attacks by jihadist cells in France that have been thwarted in recent years, according to a count by the Central Directorate of Internal Intelligence (DCRI), France's main antiterrorism force. One was a bomb plot directed against the directorate's own headquarters.

The antiterrorism policing—it is a not a "war," specialists here emphasized—has been conducted for the most part in the dark, and in a style that sets France and other European countries apart from the United States. As U.S. officials seek to understand what may have led a Pakistani immigrant to try to blow up Times Square, and how he boarded an airplane at John F. Kennedy International Airport despite multiple computerized watch lists, Europe's specialists have pointed to their own approach as an example of how to proceed.

From the beginning the emphasis in Europe has been on domestic human intelligence rather than the computerized systems such as watch lists favored by U.S. security agencies. That has meant tedious hours of surveillance, patient listening-in on telephone conversations, careful review of bank records, and relentless recruitment of informants among Islamic zealots who are motivated to betray acquaintances by everything from fear of losing visas to a desire to clear the name of Islam in European minds.

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Colombia's marijuana feeding Europe's habit

These are the mountains of Colombia's southwest Cauca province, far from the reach of the law and just as far from market -- making it difficult, the dirt-poor peasants say, to scrape a living selling legal produce. Around every bend and in every village there's a surprise. Marijuana plantations stretch sometimes for several acres, clinging to steep-sided canyons. Farmhands wielding machetes disappear amid a "forest" of thousands of plants, two or three times taller than a person. They reappear minutes later with a bundle of marijuana over their shoulder and head for rudimentary drying houses made of black plastic slung over wooden branches. In some of these shacks hundreds of pounds of marijuana are hung out to dry.

In other communities, old ladies take advantage of a brief break in the rain to toss marijuana up to dry on the tin roofs of their homes. Others hang the herb in the rafters of the kitchen, where the strangely sweet smell mingles with the aroma of a stew cooking on a smoky fire. In Cauca province at least, there's a new bonanza. This is one of the few regions of Colombia where, according to United Nations' anti-drug officials, the production of marijuana and coca leaves, the raw material for cocaine, is increasing. At the same time, Colombia is once again exporting good quality pot and has become a "major supplier" to Europe, according to the DEA.

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West African cocaine use rises along smuggling routes

West Africans are consuming more of the drugs trafficked between South America and Europe, raising the spectre of rising crime and health problems in already unstable states, experts said. The region, an established transit point for Latin American cocaine to big Western markets, has also become a drug processing site amid rising addiction rates, and drug-related violence will follow, they told a drug summit over the weekend. "A flourishing illicit trade in the hands of organised crime is obviously a threat to the rule of law, governance and, as a result, human rights," said Alexandre Schmidt, West African head for the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC). "But we must no longer hide the indirect consequences with regard to the increase in problems linked to drug abuse." About 20 tonnes of cocaine passed through West Africa in 2008, worth about $1-billion, the United Nations says. The warnings came during a meeting of seven West African governments who, backed by the United Nations, France and Spain, are seeking to implement declarations of intent to curb trafficking.

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Latin American drug cartels find home in West Africa

Colombian and Mexican drug cartels have jumped the Atlantic Ocean and expanded into West Africa, working closely with local criminal gangs to carve out a staging area for an assault on the lucrative European market.

The situation has gotten so out of hand that tiny Guinea-Bissau, the fifth-poorest nation in the world, is being called Africa's first narco-state. Others talk about how Africa's Gold Coast has become the Coke Coast. In all, officials say, at least nine top-tier Latin American drug cartels have established bases in 11 West African nations.

"The same organizations that we investigate in Central and South America that are involved in drug activity toward the United States are engaged in this trafficking in Western Africa," said Russell Benson, the Drug Enforcement Agency regional director for Europe and Africa. "There's not one country that hasn't been touched to some extent."

The calculus is simple: bigger profits in Europe than in the United States, less law enforcement in West Africa than in Europe. The driving force is the booming European market for cocaine.

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Has Piracy Spread to Europe's Waters?

Recently we've become used to the idea of modern-day piracy, as we hear more and more stories of gangs hijacking ships for ransom in the lawless waters of East Africa. But the mysterious disappearance of a 4,000-ton cargo ship off the coast of England two weeks ago suggests the most unlikely of scenarios: buccaneering has returned to Europe.

On July 24, [2009], the Maltese-flagged Arctic Sea reported that it had been boarded by gunmen posing as law-enforcement officers off the coast of Sweden and that its 15 Russian crew members had been tied up and beaten. Four days later, the ship — which was carrying a load of timber from Finland worth $1.84 million — sailed into the English Channel, where it made routine communications with British maritime authorities, who at the time were unaware of the hijacking. About 50 miles (80 km) off the coast of Britain, the ship then slipped off the radar and has yet to be located. Officials are baffled.

"Who would think that a hijacked ship could pass through one of the most policed and concentrated waters in the world?" a bemused Mark Clark of the U.K.'s Maritime and Coastguard Agency told the BBC. "There didn't seem [to be] anything suspicious. It could well be that a crew member had a gun put to his head by a hijacker when contact was made."

• "Missing at Sea: Has Piracy Spread to Europe's Waters?", Time, 8/13/09.
• Maritime and Coastguard Agency, UK government website.
• IMB Piracy Reporting Centre, website.
• United States Coast Guard, website.
  

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European Police Science Conference

Future Policing in Europe: a Shared Agenda for Research
18-20 November 2009 - Badhoevedorp, the Netherlands

Within the frame of the CEPOL Annual Programme 2009, The Netherlands with the support of Austria, Germany and the CEPOL RSWG will be organising the Police Science Conference from 18 – 20 November 2009 in Badhoevedorp (Amsterdam), The Netherlands.

The Police Science Conference 2009 will deal with the topic of ‘Future Policing in Europe: a Shared Agenda for Research’. The topic will be approached from both an academic and practical angle. Key-note speakers will provide qualified input, whereas working groups, poster sessions and mini-seminars will give participants the opportunity to present and discuss experience and data.

Visit the conference website for further information.

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