the Ijtimah aims to reflect the movement’s international dimension and dynamism as well as facilitating contacts between Tabligh members from different countries. The TJ is currently using Portugal as a platform for spreading its pan-Islamic message to Africa (especially to Portuguese-speaking countries like Mozambique) and Latin America (particularly Brazil). Within Portugal, the group relies on mosques and religious sites on the outskirts of Lisbon (eg, in Palmela, Laranjeiro and Odivelas) and on their corresponding madrassas.
Though fairly discrete and committed to projecting an apolitical image, the Portuguese TJ branch has not escaped controversy, at least on one occasion. In January 2008 a terrorist cell composed of 12 men (11 Pakistanis and an Indian) was dismantled in Barcelona before carrying out an attack on the city’s subway system. One of its members admitted to the existence of plans for attacks Germany, the UK, France and Portugal. After the Spanish authorities issued a terrorist alert for these three countries, the Portuguese security agencies started searching for two Pakistani nationals, allegedly members of the Barcelona cell that would have entered Portugal through the TJ’s Jamaats (proselytising groups) on their way to an Ijtimah. However, neither the Pakistanis’ entry or presence was ever confirmed, nor was there any solid evidence pointing to a possible attack in Portugal. Nonetheless, three of the men detained in Barcelona had attended the Ijtimah in the past, between 2004 and 2007.
There was at least another high-profile participant at a Portuguese Ijtimah. Abdelaziz Benyaich, a Moroccan national accused by his country’s authorities of being involved in the Casablanca attacks of May 2003, was in Portugal for an Ijtimah when the bombs exploded. In 2005 Abdelaziz was convicted of belonging to al-Qaeda’s Spanish cell and was sentenced to eight years in prison. Salahedin Benyaich, alias Abu Muhgen, Abdelaziz’s brother, was convicted for the Casablanca attacks and is currently serving time in prison in Morocco, and was a mujahedeen in Bosnia, Chechnya and possibly other countries. Furthermore, Salahedin was close to Allekema Lamari, one of the terrorists responsible for the 11 March 2004 terrorist attacks in Atocha Station, Madrid, who committed suicide when surrounded by the police in Leganés, in the suburbs of the Spanish capital.
Known Cases of Possible Jihadist Activities in Portugal
Particularly since 2001, the Portuguese media has echoed some cases of possible Islamist terrorist activities in Portugal. The cases presented below were all reported in the national media, although here we present new data, analysis and conclusions.
(a) Operation Alfarroba
In March 2003 a police operation carried out in Lisbon and Quarteira (in southern Portugal) lead to the arrest of 13 Algerians suspected of being involved in the forgery of documents. The identity of these men was never very clear, nor what their intentions were –a lack of information that would become habitual in future cases of possible Jihadist activities in Portugal–. Nonetheless, a name emerged from these arrests: Sofiane Laïb, a 25 year old Algerian national who was in Germany at the time of the arrests in Portugal.
With a record of petty crime –namely small-scale theft and the forgery of documents–, Laïb was party to a money transfer carried out by one of the 13 Algerians arrested. It has been reported that between 1998 and 2000 Laïb shared an apartment in Hamburg with Mohamed Atta, the leader of the cell responsible for the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US. Whatever the case, it has been confirmed that the young Algerian knew Atta and frequented the same religious and social circles in Hamburg. A few months after the arrest of the 13 Algerians in Portugal, Sofiane Laïb was arrested in downtown Lisbon in possession of forged documents, the sole crime for which he was convicted. After serving a short time in prison, Laïb was expelled to Algiers in April 2006 by the Portuguese authorities. One of his known associates was a Tunisian national called Ben Yamin Issak, alias Ben Youssef Boudhina, himself close to Atta in German Islamist circles.
In September 2002 Ben Yamin Issak tried to board an airplane in Lisbon headed for London. He carried a false French passport which was detected by a steward at the boarding gate. The extremely poor quality of the documentation suggests that he was eager to get to the UK. Although detected, Ben Yamin Issak was able to leave the airport and later use false Portuguese ID to catch several buses until he arrived in London. Sofiane Laïb was waiting in a car outside the airport in case something went wrong –as it did– and helped Issak evade capture. When he arrived in the UK, he stayed at Kamel Bourgass’s house in Wood Green, north London. Bourgass is an Algerian national who trained in Afghanistan and is suspected of having fought for the Algerian GIA (Groupe Islamique Armée –Islamic Armed Group–). While in the UK, Ben Yamin Issak and Bourgass attended the Finsbury Park mosque, then run by the notorious Imam Abu Hamza al-Masri. In January 2003 they managed to anticipate a police raid which found Jihadist propaganda, Issak’s false Portuguese ID and castor-oil beans (typically used to produce ricin toxin) in Bourgass’s house, thus foiling the well-known ‘London Ricin Plot’. Issak’s false ID had been stolen by Sofiane Laïb from an African staying at a hostel in Lisbon which is associated with illegal immigration and prostitution. Kamel Bourgass was captured a few days later in Manchester after stabbing five police officers with a knife, one of whom died. He is currently serving a life sentence and his arrest triggered a raid by the British authorities on the Finsbury Park mosque, where false documentation used to support Jihadist activities was found. On 12 July 2003 Ben Yamin Issak was arrested in Liverpool trying to board an airplane heading for Barcelona.
(b) The Alleged Euro Cup Plot and the Hofstad Group link
In June 2004, just before the beginning of the Euro Cup –held in Portugal that year–, the Portuguese media reported that 11 men of Maghrebi origin had been deported to the Netherlands. Despite the fact that the arrest involved more than 20 individuals, only three were considered to be of interest, among them Nouredine el-Fathmi and Mohammed el-Morabit, both Moroccan nationals. Nouredine el-Fathmi had lived in Amsterdam with Mohamed Bouyeri who, in November of that same year, had assassinated the film director Theo van Gogh.
At the time of the arrest in 2004 there was an established link between el-Fathmi and el-Morabit, who were arrested in a hostel in Oporto, and the Hofstad Group –a well known Jihadist organisation in the Netherlands–.
Among other material, the Dutch authorities had previously seized a declaration by Nouredine al-Fathmi in which he declared his intention of dying in the name of Allah. However, no evidence sufficient to ensure a conviction for terrorist activities was ever found in Portugal, and therefore he and the others were deported to the Netherlands where they were interrogated by the Dutch authorities and then released due to lack of evidence.
There was some speculation about a possible attack on the foreign dignitaries attending the Euro Cup, also aimed at the then Portuguese Prime Minister, José Manuel Durão Barroso. Although it was a plausible, no actual evidence of a planned terrorist attack was ever discovered.
Given the intelligence gathered by the Dutch authorities, and the surveillance and efforts of the Direcção Central de Combate ao Banditismo of the Polícia Judiciária (at present theUnidade Nacional de Combate ao Terrorismo, or Counter Terrorism Unit of the Judicial Police), the arrest of these three men seems to have been a relatively over-hasty and ill-considered decision.
Nouredine el-Fathmi was again arrested in 2005, this time in Amsterdam on his way to Lelylaan Station while in the possession of firearms and ammunition. In January 2006 the Dutch public prosecutor claimed to have ample evidence that the Hofstad Group was indeed a Jihadist organisation, directed by a six-man council to which Mohamed Bouyeri and el-Fathmi belonged. In March 2006 el-Fathmi and Mohammed el-Morabit were sentenced by a Rotterdam court to five and two years imprisonment respectively. Bouyeri was also convicted at the trial for being the ringleader, although he was already serving a life sentence for the assassination of Theo van Gogh. Nouredine el-Fathmi was also implicated in what the Dutch intelligence called the ‘Piranha Network’, a group plotting to assassinate senior Dutch politicians and bomb a government building.
(c) Serguei Malischev and Spain’s Audiencia Nacional
It has been reported that in October 2004 the Spanish authorities warned Portugal of a terrorist cell trying to acquire explosives in Bragança, in northern Portugal, with the aim of perpetrating an attack against Madrid’s Audiencia Nacional. However, there are members of the Portuguese intelligence community who claim there was no such tip-off.
In May 2005 Portugal deported Serguei Malischev, a man suspected of being involved in this plot as well as having strong connections to Jihadist groups. Malischev, a Belarus national, remained under arrest in Portugal for two months due to immigration irregularities before being deported to Belgium, the country that had issued his Schengen visa. During his time in Portugal, as in many other cases, no evidence of terrorist activity was discovered. Still, Malischev had an apparently real interest in entering the country since he tried to do so twice: the first attempt failed, while the second was successful.
Serguei Malischev surfaced later in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, were he was accused in December 2005 of belonging to a Jihadist cell led by an Iraqi called Abu Sufian, who –according to police sources quoted in the Spanish media– had direct contact with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, then leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. According to Fernando Andreu, the Spanish judge who presided over the trials of Malischev, Sufian and others, this terrorist cell endorsed proselytising activities and recruited individuals to be later sent to fight in Iraq, Chechnya and other countries in Asia.
Malischev was a chemical-weapons expert with a background in Pakistan and Azerbaijan. He also went by the names of Andrey Misiura and Amin al Anari and died in prison in 2009.
(d) The Four Cape-Verdean Dutch
In February 2006 the Netherlands issued an alert for four Dutch citizens of ethnic Cape-Verdean descent. The group had been involved in a shootout in a Rotterdam pub causing five deaths, after which they fled to Portugal.
It was said that at least one of them was an Islamist terrorist related to the Hofstad Group, and that the gang’s leader had been trained in the Yemen. However, there is no solid evidence that either the alleged leader, Fernando Jorge Pires, had been trained in the Yemen or that there was any significant link with the Hofstad Group. The shootout in Rotterdam was related to a diamond-trafficking deal that had gone wrong, and the alleged Hofstad link was no more than contact with a Turkish group that, in turn, had some ties with the Dutch terrorist cell. Fernando Jorge Pires was arrested on Christmas Eve trying to board a plane in Lisbon, while two other members were arrested two months later near Amadora, on the outskirts of Lisbon. The fourth man, José Barbosa, was able to escape to Cape Verde.
(e) The Last Public Case: Samir Boussaha
In a European joint operation started by the Italian Carabinieri in Genoa, an Algerian national called Samir Boussaha was arrested in Oporto in November 2007. Although it was argued in the Portuguese media that he had frequent and firm connections with the group arrested in 2004 in Oporto, it seems that the only link was that both Samir and those related with the Hofstad Group attended the same mosque –the only one in that area of Oporto at the time–.
According to the Italian public attorney, the 35-year-old Samir Boussaha and his brother Mourad were suspected of having been members of the GSPC (Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat –Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat–) and of participating in a recruiting network that sent fighters to Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as of collecting funds for Jihadist operations. There was no evidence of Mourad ever having been in Portugal and, with respect to Samir, although he was under surveillance for years, no hard evidence of terrorist activities was unearthed. The lack of proof from Samir’s surveillance is not necessarily due to his innocence, but rather a result of his caution. Nonetheless, when Boussaha was arrested by the Judicial Police, the apartment where he lived was also found to contain no evidence. Finally, the barbershop where Samir often worked was also above suspicion and the locals who knew him were surprised since they saw the Algerian as a kind, polite and sociable person. Samir Boussaha was extradited to Italy in mid-November 2007.
Conclusion: Apart from suggesting that the authorities should remain on the alert, the cases presented above show that several individuals with disturbing profiles connected with Jihadist activities have entered and spent time in Portugal. However, it has been impossible to establish either their intentions or their activities –ie, the solid evidence needed to guarantee a conviction for terrorism–. The general difficulty in distinguishing between insurgents, terrorists and criminals and of obtaining sound evidence to satisfy a court of law is a reality in Portugal, as it is throughout Europe. But in the process of fitting together the pieces in the jigsaw puzzle of Jihadism in Europe, Portugal is an informational black hole. Many explanations can be offered for such an unsatisfactory state of affairs: the legal framework under which security agencies operate, the shortcoming of the penal code and the lack of preparation and awareness of the country’s political decision makers, among others. The complexity and variety of these possible explanations requires separate research and analysis. Nonetheless, and with regard to this paper’s topic, what is important is that the succession of inconclusive cases –from an empirical perspective– reflect structural problems which should be addressed as they could ultimately signal to Jihadist organisations the sort of weaknesses that they might decide to exploit for their own benefit.
Despite being nebulous and for the most part inconclusive, these cases of possible Jihadist activity in Portugal do suggest some similarities with the situation elsewhere in Europe.
Considering what time and research has taught us about Jihadism in the EU, Portugal complies with the general picture in the following aspects: most individuals involved in suspected Jihadist activities are originally from the Maghreb, the forgery of documents is often associated with possible cases of Islamist terrorism, the security forces have found it difficult to obtain evidence sufficient to ensure a conviction for the crime of terrorism and individuals suspected of engaging in terrorism or parallel activities are often highly mobile.
However, there is another important characteristic of Jihadism in Europe that seems to be absent from the Portuguese context. As far as is known, there is no sign of internal radicalisation or recruitment or of self-starter cells –even considering the potential perils represented by TJ–. Such a difference with the rest of European could have two explanations: (1) the degree of integration and sense of identity of Portugal’s traditional Muslim community; or (2) the simple fact that home-grown terrorism has not yet been detected. However, given the similarities of the phenomenon throughout Europe, nothing should be ruled out for the future.
Finally, taking into consideration, on the one hand, the high degree of mobility of the suspects involved in the inconclusive episodes detected in Portugal and, on the other, the long-established Jihadist activity in Spain, it is puzzling why there has been no spill-over effect. The existence of a settled and well-integrated migrant community certainly plays a role. Nonetheless, given Spain’s strong commitment to countering terrorism as well as the scores of suspects arrested and then convicted by the Spanish authorities, it is curious that there is no obvious transit of Islamist terrorists across the Iberian Peninsula.
http://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/wps/portal/web/rielcano_en/contenido?WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/elcano/elcano_in/zonas_in/international+terrorism/ari113-2010
