Ulster Television, Belfast ^ | 2 October 2001 | Reporter
A senior US government official's appearance at the Sinn Fein annual conference cannot be justified given President Bush's war on terrorism, it has been claimed.
Stormont Enterprise Minister Sir Reg Empey called into question the decision by American Ambassador to Dublin, Richard Egan to attend the weekend Ard Fheis.
He said: "It amazes me, to be perfectly honest, how the diplomat concerned is going to be able to square that with the President`s onslaught on international terrorism."
Mr Egan was among the Dublin audience for Sinn Fein President Gerry Adam`s keynote address on Saturday.
Representatives from the Basque separatist group ETA`s political wing, the Batasuna Party, the Palestinian authority`s representative in Ireland and an ANC MP also attended the two-day event.
Bush to order Sinn Fein terror link inquiry
Irish Independent ^ | Sunday October 7th 2001 | KEVIN MOORE and ALAN MURRAY
THE US ambassador, Richard Egan, is conducting an urgent review of American policy towards Irish republicanism, the Sunday Independent has learned exclusively.
This comes as sources in the North have indicated that they believe for the first time the IRA is close to moving on decommissioning.
Meanwhile, at least 4,000 marchers brought Dublin city-centre traffic to a standstill yesterday in one of the biggest republican marches in years, held to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the hunger strikes.
Ambassador Egan's review helps explain what appeared to be an extraordinary decision on his part to make an official visit to Sinn Féin's Ard-Fheis last weekend in the wake of the US atrocities and evidence of Provisional links to Colombian terrorists.
It is understood his review will include recommendations on whether Sinn Féin/ IRA should be allowed to continue to raise funds in America and whether republicans such as Gerry Adams should continue to get US visas without arms decommissioning.
Last weekend's Sinn Féin Ard-Fheis heard motions condemning globalisation and US activities in Colombia. There were calls for the lifting of the American embargo on Cuba, backing for Puerto Rican "freedom" from the US, support for Basque separatists and the PLO, and condemnation of Israel.
The Mackenzie Institute ^ | May 26, 2002 | Emerson Vermaat
[SNIP]
4. Spain, Italy and the Balkans
The closeness of Spain and Portugal to North Africa make them important targets for illegal migrants seeking entry into the European Union. Spain accuses the Moroccan police of cooperating with migrant traffickers who pay corrupt officials to turn a blind eye. Spanish authorities now speak of an invasion. [ 66 ] Moroccan criminal networks in Spain are involved in money-laundering, and trafficking in drugs and human beings.
Increasingly, Spain faces the problem of young North African and Arab immigrants using its territory as a meeting place for staging terrorist attacks elsewhere. Spain is considered a safe haven for terrorists where the risks of police interference are minimal. Spanish police estimate that about two hundred Islamic extremists with ties to eighteen terrorist groups entered Spain in 2000. [ 67 ] While French security and intelligence services have gathered detailed information on Islamist terrorist networks for more than two decades, the Spanish services are still poorly equipped to face a problem that is relatively new to them. For years, their focus has been on the homegrown terrorism of the Basque separatist movement ETA.
Spanish authorities now fear that the Islamist and Basque radicals have formed an alliance of sorts. Some ETA terrorists visited the same Middle Eastern training camps as a number of Islamic extremists. Representatives from ETA and Osama Bin Laden reportedly met in Brussels, but there were frictions after the Islamic fundamentalists refused to continue the meeting in the presence of a Basque woman who preferred to stay. Spanish sources claim that Mohammed Atta, the suicide pilot from Hamburg who was the first to fly into the World Trade Center in New York, also tried to forge links between al-Qaeda and ETA terrorists. [ 68 ] Just before Christmas 1999, ETA planned an attack on the Picasso Tower in Madrid. The American architect of the Picasso Tower was Minoru Yamasaki, who also designed the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan; but it is not clear whether ETA got the idea from Muslim extremists. [ 69 ] What is known is that al-Qaeda cells in Europe, the United States and Canada planned terrorist attacks around Christmas 1999 and the subsequent Millennium celebrations.
Atta in Spain
[BIG SNIP--see original link for much more info on Al Qaeda in Spain]