http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=f38d897f8f8818412fb11cc2c68b7912#
In Italy, Al Qaeda Turns to Organized
Crime for Protection
News Analysis, Paolo Pontoniere,
New America Media, Oct 21, 2005
Editor's Note: Italian media report that Al Qaeda is moving operatives
through Italy on their way to North Africa and Europe with the help of
a Naples-based criminal network similar to the Mafia.
Italian investigators say Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization is
moving deep into the Mediterranean peninsula's underworld of
organized crime.
Italian media recently revealed that hundreds of Al Qaeda operatives
coming from North Africa are being sent to Northern Europe though a
maze of safe houses belonging to the Neapolitan Camorra, a
Naples-based criminal network akin to the Mafia.
The internationally connected Camorra organization specializes in
drug trafficking, prostitution, gambling and human and arms
trafficking. Historically, the Camorra has worked with terrorist groups
from all latitudes and political persuasions.
According to Italian investigative sources, the Camorra could help Al
Qaeda obtain forged documents and weapons for its operatives, who
disembark almost daily from ships connecting Italy to the Arab
countries of North Africa. In addition, in exchange for substantial
cargoes of narcotics, these operatives are moved through Camorra's
connections from Naples to Rome, Bologna, Milan and eventually to
other major European cities such as Paris, London, Berlin and Madrid.
"The connections are there and real," says Michele del Prete, a district
attorney investigating the Algerian Islamic Brotherhood in Italy, "and
the exchange currency cementing those trades is drugs."
The new Al Qaeda arrivals are swallowed by Naples' intricate network
of alleys called vicoli, where traditional craft shops and street-level
houses mix with computer stores, Chinese bazaars, pizzerias,
merchant stalls, illegal casinos, antique boutiques, churches and
museums.
Structurally and socially similar to a Middle Eastern souk, this urban
architecture and its social milieu provide familiar territory and an
impenetrable refuge for Al-Qaeda. Boroughs like il Vasto, la
Maddalena, il Pendino and i Quartieri Spagnoli, which border the
railroad and port, also offer easy escape routes.
"Should any trouble arise at any time, the Camorra's soldiers will see
them off on one of the many trains leaving hourly from the city's main
station, or via speed-boat -- the same vessels the Camorra uses to
traffic cigarettes, drugs and illegal aliens," says Dario Del Porto, a
reporter for Il Mattino, Naples's major daily.
According to a report by DIGOS, Italy's political crime unit, the
number of Al Qaeda operatives who have chosen to seek refuge in
Naples or have passed through the city on their way to Northern
Europe may exceed 1,000. Many of them come from Algeria, Morocco,
Tunisia and Egypt. Il Roma, Naples's second-largest daily, estimates
their numbers could be as high as 5,000.
"Nothing new here," affirms Giacomo Serafini, a Neapolitan political
consultant. "The usefulness of these escape routes was tested during
the years when the Camorra collaborated with domestic terrorists, red
and black (Communist and Fascist) alike. Al-Qaeda doesn't even have
to sweat.
"Not even the apparent absentmindedness of the police when it comes
to apprehending Al Qaeda operatives should surprise," Serafini says.
"In the end it was a covert agreement between the state and the
terrorists that spared Italy most of the carnage that was taking place
in Europe during the 1970s."
Serafini refers to a secret pact during the 1970s forged by Giulio
Andreotti, one of modern Italy's founding fathers. In exchange for the
safe passage of operatives and weapons, Arab terrorist groups --
mainly the Palestinian group Al Fatah -- agreed to refrain from
attacking Italy.
The evolution of Al Qaeda into a criminal-terrorist group is not
unusual, and does not necessarily signal an abandonment of its goal
of establishing an Islamic Caliphate across the Middle East and North
Africa. Instead, it may mark a skillful adaptation to the new
environment created by the attacks against the organization since the
start of the war on terror.
"Something similar happened to Italian terrorist organizations once
the Italian state stepped up its war on terror," Serafini says. Though
they are not so powerful and deeply rooted as they were in the 1970s,
domestic terrorist organizations like the Red Brigades still hit Italian
political targets.
According to the Italian daily La Repubblica, the magnitude of this
convergence has been recognized also by the United States, which
recently moved the western headquarters of the Foreign Counter
Intelligence -- the Naval Criminal Investigative Service's office for
counter-espionage and counter-terrorism -- to Aversa, Italy.
A town outside Naples with a large blue collar and underemployed
population, Aversa in the past has been prime recruiting ground for
Italian "terroristi" and political hotheads. From Aversa, FCI now
scrutinizes terrorist activities from Scandinavia to South Africa.
Italians, in the meantime, are drawing lessons from their fight against
the Mafia to devise new ways to combat Al Qaeda in Italy. "We should
improve the way district attorneys, judges, investigators and
intelligence operatives interact with one another, and exchange
information," Franco Roberti, head of antiterrorism for Naples' Federal
Court, told La Repubblica recently. "We need to create a National
Antiterrorism Directorate with local ramifications, because terrorist
cells are interwoven with local criminal networks."
Roberti, who leads the Neapolitan Court, has taken the helm in
pushing for the institution of such a directorate. The creation of a
central commission to fight crimes of a political nature is an admission
that investigators take the Al Qaeda threat very seriously. Italy did not
take such steps even during the "Years of Lead" in the 1970s and '80s,
when domestic terrorism raged.
PNS contributor Paolo Pontoniere is a correspondent for Focus, Italy's
leading monthly magazine.