Documents expose al-Qa'ida's terror planning

War on Terrorism: al-Qa'ida

The unexpectedly rapid military advances across Afghanistan have not only pushed the Taliban to the brink of defeat. They have also unveiled valuable new evidence linking both the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida organisation to the 11 September attacks, and apparently rejuvenated the efforts of investigators in the United States and Europe working to thwart future plots.

Initial reports on documents and weapons left behind in two buildings during the rapid Taliban retreat from Kabul last week focused on descriptions of nuclear explosions and allusions to chemical and biological warfare – material that certainly illustrated the apocalyptic scope of al-Qa'ida's ambitions without necessarily revealing how close it was to realising them.

Of much greater immediate interest to international investigators was a welter of documents, operational notebooks and private diaries that provided details of the sorts of targets that al-Qa'ida had been considering, as well as concrete leads on members of the organisation around the world.

David Rohde, the New York Times journalist who has examined the two deserted houses in by far the greatest detail, said the papers recovered included addresses of individuals living in Canada and Italy, letters listing the names of young recruits hoping to join the al-Qa'ida network, and the people who lived in the houses. These included nationals of numerous countries and regions, including Somalia, Algeria, Bosnia, Uzbekistan, Sudan and Dagestan.

There was a visiting card from a company in Vancouver, U-Enterprises Ltd, one of whose directors was arrested in Egypt two years ago and sentenced to 15 years of hard labour for links to the Egyptian Jihad movement. A copy of a letter to an operative based in Toronto suggested, as did other material, that the organisation ran a sophisticated identity-forging operation.

Documents – written in a variety of languages – described "explosives and demolition techniques", detailed plans for assassinating Western political leaders, and gave instructions on how to blow up power lines. Maps pinpointed numerous power plants – including nuclear reactors – that appeared to be earmarked for attack in the United States and Europe, as well as US military bases in Saudi Arabia labelled "Occupation of the Holy Lands of Islam by the Crusader".

A manual in Arabic explained how to put a bomb in a suitcase. Another gave tips on passing lie-detector tests. There were also copious notes on different explosive agents, including nitroglycerin, dynamite and fertiliser bombs. A note next to one of the explosive formulas said "the type used in Oklahoma" – evidence that al-Qa'ida took pains to study tactics employed successfully in past attacks on civilian targets in the West.

It will probably be several weeks before the full value of the cache left behind in the two Kabul houses can be assessed. The very existence of the material, as well as its location, nevertheless provides compelling new leads linking both Mr bin Laden and the Taliban more strongly to the 11 September attacks.

Both houses are in the Karte Parwan district of Kabul, an area of government buildings and foreign diplomatic missions. One of them was formerly a Taliban Defence Ministry facility, a connection that appeared to vindicate allegations by Western leaders that the Taliban and al-Qa'ida were, in effect, two sides of the same coin.

Among the papers left behind was a page torn from Flying, a US magazine, in which a number of Florida flight schools were listed. A number of the hijackers who took over the four doomed planes on 11 September obtained rudimentary training in Florida, and the magazine page once again provided a link between their activities and the al-Qa'ida operational base in Afghanistan.

A flight school manager whose establishment was listed on the torn page confirmed, when contacted by The New York Times, that he had been approached about a year ago by an Arabic man asking strange questions about how to parachute from an airborne passenger jet. Greg Nardi, of Walkawitz Aviation in Titusville, Florida, told the newspaper that he had not alerted the authorities. "At the time you just pass it off," he said.

There has been no comment yet from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other Western crime-fighting agencies on the material recovered in Kabul, but the rapid progress of the military campaign in Afghanistan has prompted many of them to announce new breakthroughs in recent days. An investigation that had seemed, in many respects, to be stalled and simply overwhelming in scope, thus showed signs of renewed vigour.

In the United States, federal investigators expressed optimism that they were closing in on terrorist support networks in Boston, New Jersey, suburban Washington, Texas, southern California and the Detroit area.

Although no significant arrests have been made recently, the investigators said they were making progress thanks in part to the identification of a network known as al-Barakaat, whose assets were frozen by the Treasury Department last week.

A law enforcement official told the Associated Press news agency: "We don't call each of them cells. We call them terrorist presences. They are almost like cliques, clear in their hatred for America, and loosely working together.''

In Germany, the chief prosecutor's office announced the arrest of two men caught in Pakistan while trying to cross into Afghanistan. The two men, identified only as "Bekim A" and "Ibrahim D", have been returned to Germany for questioning and are suspected of involvement in al-Qa'ida.

And in Spain, an investigating magistrate who supervised the arrest of 11 men last week said he was satisfied that four of them had a direct link to Mohamed Atta, the apparent ringleader of the 11 September attacks, and may have provided logistical support to the suicide hijackers. The men, all of Syrian origin, are also accused of acting as recruitment officers for al-Qa'ida, arranging for young men to be provided with false documentation and sent to Afghanistan for training.