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Tracking the terror at home...

...And The Upsurge Abroad

Tracking the terror at home...


Text by Amanda Bower

ATTACKS, MOVEMENTS and ARRESTS of suspected al-Qaeda operatives

THE BORDER

In December 1999, Algerian Ahmed Ressam was stopped trying to cross from Canada to the U.S. in an explosives-packed car, which he intended to use in a plot to blow up LAX

MINNESOTA

Zacarias Moussaoui was detained in August 2001 after arousing suspicion at a flight school. A local FBI agent says an HQ "roadblock" thwarted a pre-Sept. 11 investigation

OKLAHOMA

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In 1993, years before suspected "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui flunked out of flight school in Norman, alleged al-Qaeda affiliate Ihab Mohamed Ali got his pilot's license here

SAN DIEGO

Hijackers Nawaq Alhamzi and Khalid al-Midhar lived in California in 1999 and 2000, receiving visitors and taking flying lessons

PHOENIX

Hijacker Hani Hanjour lived in Arizona for years (in February 2001, the FAA questioned him). On July 10, 2001, FBI agent Ken Williams sent HQ his now famous memo proposing a sweep of Middle Eastern students at flight schools

TORONTO An Ontario official last week admitted that authorities discovered an al-Qaeda sleeper cell, thought to have been based around Toronto, some months ago. Its members have since left Ontario. Nabil al-Marabh, arrested in Chicago after Sept. 11, lived in Toronto, on and off, for six years

FORT WORTH

Essam al Ridi testified in the embassy-bombing trial that in 1993 he bought a $210,000 plane for Osama bin Laden and flew it from Dallas-Fort Worth to Khartoum, Sudan

PENNSYLVANIA

Passengers' heroic efforts sent Flight 93 into the ground near rural Shanksville. The intended target was the White House

BOSTON

American Airlines Flight 63, heading from Paris to Miami on Dec. 22, was diverted and alleged shoe bomber Richard Reid arrested

NEW YORK

The World Trade Center's Twin Towers were leveled in the Sept. 11 attacks. Recent threats targeted the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge

NEW JERSEY

Hijackers Nawaq and Salem Alhamzi lived in Fort Lee and Wayne; all Flight 93 terrorists gathered in Newark before the attacks

WASHINGTON

American Airlines Flight 77 smashed into the Pentagon, killing 189

MARYLAND

Flight 77 hijackers arrived in the Washington suburb of Laurel in the final month before the attacks

FLORIDA

In the months before the attacks, the Sept. 11 hijackers attended flight school and roamed all over the southern part of the Sunshine State. More recently, Orlando cabdriver and alleged al-Qaeda affiliate Ihab Mohamed Ali, in custody and silent since 1998, has started talking

NEW BERN, N.C.

Abdul Hakim Murad, who authorities said trained at flight schools here and in three other states, confessed in 1996 that he was part of an elaborate plot that included bombing U.S. jetliners in midair and flying a small craft loaded with explosives into CIA headquarters

LONDON

The infamous Phoenix FBI memo linked Middle Eastern students at U.S. flight schools with Sheikh Omar Bakri, a radical leader based in London who was connected to "every al-Qaeda operative recently arrested or identified in Europe," an expert alleges. Last month a British judge dismissed the case against Algerian pilot Lotfi Raissi, whom the U.S. wanted to extradite in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks

PARIS

French police are currently investigating what support Richard Reid may have had in France before he boarded a December flight to Miami and allegedly attempted to detonate explosives hidden in his shoes. U.S. court documents released last week show he did not make the bomb alone

SPAIN

Two men alleged to have channeled cash to multiple al-Qaeda operatives were arrested in Madrid in late April. A third man, described by investigators as "al-Qaeda's chief accountant in Spain" and accused of helping fund the 1998 embassy bombings, was arrested around the same time in Barcelona

GERMANY

Authorities swooped down on suspected al-Qaeda sympathizers in late April, arresting members of an alleged cell in raids throughout the country. Meanwhile, the trial of five alleged terrorists has started in Frankfurt. The men, all Algerian, are charged with plotting an attack on a cathedral in the French city of Strasbourg

TUNISIA

Nineteen people visiting the site of North Africa's oldest synagogue died April 11 when a natural-gas truck exploded. Witnesses reported seeing the driver get out before the blast, and investigators have since found numerous potential ties to al-Qaeda, including a suspect's phone call to Germany an hour before the attack

WEST BANK/GAZA

Israel's domestic security service, Shin Bet, recently formed a special task force to investigate potential al-Qaeda operations in the occupied territories

KARACHI

In the city where Daniel Pearl was murdered in February, a red Toyota Corolla with a bomb on the backseat pulled up beside a Pakistani bus on May 8 and exploded, killing 14. Authorities suspect the attack was the work of al-Qaeda. It was the third time in four months that foreigners in Pakistan had been murdered

TRIBAL PAKISTAN

Since the beginning of the year, Pakistani officials say they have captured 365 al-Qaeda members trying to cross the Afghan border. Hundreds more are thought to be holed up in this lawless, tribal-controlled area of eastern Pakistan, where sympathies for radical Islam run high



 
 
 
 







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