Global sweep nets terror suspects

Hundreds may be held in effort to forestall millennial violence

NBC NEWS

WASHINGTON, Dec. 29  Police in roughly a dozen countries around the world are rounding up just about anyone with ties to a terrorist network in an attempt to forestall possible violence, U.S. officials told NBC News on Wednesday. Hundreds of people may already have been detained, and U.S. intelligence agencies are helping identify targets for arrest and in some cases requesting that individual suspects be picked up, the officials indicated.

A world wide roundup of suspected terrorists is under way, but many of those arrested may never face charges, NBCs Jim Miklaszewski reports.

THE OFFICIALS, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the number of countries that are rounding up suspected terrorists is in the low double digits and estimated that several hundred people, including large groups in Europe and the Middle East, had been detained.

The suspects were picked up because authorities believed them to be in various stages of planning terrorist attacks against civilian targets, including Americans, at sites in Europe and the Middle East, the officials said.

The officials said U.S. agencies have helped identify the suspects and were cooperating to a greater degree than usual with overseas security agencies.

PROMPTING BY U.S. AUTHORITIES

These countries have their own security concerns and yes, in some cases, there has been some prompting by us, said one official.

The sources described the program as a roundup of the usual suspects, meant primarily as a precautionary measure. In most cases, the suspects are generally known to authorities and have been under long-term surveillance on suspicion of planning terrorist attacks.

Some of those apprehended by local authorities could be potentially significant, said one official.

The international roundup comes against a backdrop of growing concern that terrorists may be planning attacks in the United States, as well as abroad. Fueling the fears is the arrest of an Algerian man on Dec. 14 at the U.S.-Canada border as he attempted to enter the country with a car full of explosive materials.

California explosives theft probed

The officials cautioned that the increased cooperation between U.S. and other agencies does not indicate that the roundup is tightly coordinated.

Its not as if there was some order to execute plan Alpha or some such thing, said one official. Lots of countries have similar concerns.

MOST TO GO FREE

Unless specific evidence is found and charges are filed, most of those caught up in this latest sweep will likely be held until Jan. 7  the end of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting.

Sources told NBC News that the wide-scale roundup began quietly almost two weeks ago, shortly after police broke up a terrorist ring in Jordan.

Members of that group reportedly have direct ties to suspected international terrorist Osama bin Laden  and are also believed linked to this new series of arrests.

The U.S. officials declined to provide specifics of any of the operations, saying they dont want to embarrass the foreign spy agencies that are cooperating and their governments. They fear such publicity could limit future cooperation with intelligence agencies of Muslim and other states overseas, which they consider an important advantage in the war against bin Laden.

The cooperation is being coordinated through the Global Resource Center at the CIAs Counterterrorism Center.

We will cooperate with anyone who will help us maintain truth, justice and the American way, said one official at the center.

SCORES JAILED IN JORDAN

The number of arrests in Jordan has now risen to 60, up from the original 13 who are accused of plotting several terrorist attacks on New Years Eve in Jordan.

The arrests of the original group in Jordan led to the arrest in Pakistan of two individuals, including one believed by U.S. officials to be a lieutenant to bin Laden. That bin Laden associate has since been deported to Jordan from Pakistan.

According to one U.S. government official, those picked up so far in the new dragnet do not appear to be tied to Ahmed Ressam, the Algerian man arrested earlier this month for illegally attempting to cross into the United States from Canada with explosives. Officials say that Ressam is known to have associates with ties to bin Laden, some of whom Ressam knew in Montreal.

Ressam has also been tied to the Algerian militant group GIA, but one U.S. official told NBC that Ressam is also known to have links to Middle Eastern associates of bin Laden who are not Algerian.

Although this latest roundup does not appear tied to any specific threats or targets, one American official tells NBC News, additional terrorist cells may have been disrupted. Another U.S. official said that some of those nabbed in this latest sweep may have been planning future attacks against Americans overseas, not just during the millennium celebration period.

In an ongoing campaign to disrupt bin Ladens forces, international authorities have now arrested more than 100 suspects on five continents in the past year.

[ENDS]

-- John Whitley (jwhitley@inforamp.net), December 30, 1999

Answers

Seems bid Laden has singlehandedly upstaged Y2K either knowingly or unknowingly -- interesting.

Anyone see the segment on CNN last weekend where Britian released Ireland NRA members (over 100) as part of their agreement to get out of Ireland. Guess they wanted them to have a nice holiday weekend. Anyway, they are supposed to return voluntarily to the jail on 1-4- 00. Think any of those were in the roundup? Things just seem to get stranger and stranger.

-- claurann (claurann@aol.com), December 30, 1999.