Canada’s Lapses Kept Algerian Suspect Free

When Ahmed Ressam arrived at the Montreal airport in 1994, he applied for political asylum, claiming he was in danger in his country because Algerian authorities mistakenly believed him to be a terrorist.

Canada gave him the benefit of the doubt. Until last week, when Ressam apparently tried to enter the United States with bomb-making ingredients, Canadian authorities treated him as a run-of-the-mill asylum applicant, despite alerts from French authorities who were tracking him for possible links to terrorist attacks in France and warnings from Canada’s own intelligence service that their country is becoming a base for international terrorist groups.

Ressam, who pleaded not guilty in Seattle on Wednesday to his indictment on charges of transporting explosives into the United States, was to be deported in 1998, but the Canadian government stopped sending Algerians home because of the escalating political turmoil in that country. Several times after he violated the conditions of his stay here, however, he slipped through the fingers of authorities.

Montreal police released him from jail on theft charges even though there were nationwide immigration warrants out for his arrest. And he managed to arrange a false passport and leave the country at least twice, although his fingerprints were on file with several different agencies.

Thanks to loose immigration controls and interagency fumbling, Canada is turning into “a Club Med for terrorists,” said police investigator Claude Pacquette.

The lapses--some of them clear examples of bungled communication among Canadian agencies--are causing a belated reevaluation of security measures.

“Canada is second only to the United States in relation to international terrorist groups having a presence in foreign countries,” said Dan Lambert, a spokesman for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. The CSIS reported in July that Canada is a haven for terrorists. The service has investigated more than 50 organizations and 350 individuals based in Canada with links to terrorists abroad, and it has urged the government to strengthen screening measures.

“Canada is not a target of terrorism but, like the U.S., has efficacy for fund-raising and organization,” Lambert said.

The case is causing a bit of soul-searching about what can be done to make the country more secure without rescinding people’s liberties.

“When you have to give up your freedoms and build big walls across borders, then the terrorists have won,” said Huguette Shouldice, a spokeswoman for Immigration Canada.

Authorities in France, the United States and Canada said they are trying to piece together whether Ressam is a bit player in a small-time crime ring or a part of a major international Islamic terrorist network that has been blamed for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. So far, all they know is that he isn’t acting alone.

“His circumstances suggest that he’s just a courier, not a mastermind,” said a spokesman for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. “The degree of organization, the false documents and his travel pattern indicate to us that he’s part of a larger operation.”

And so police are conducting a nationwide investigation of networks large and small, from the anti-American gang of Islamic militant Osama bin Laden and the radical Armed Islamic Group of Algerian insurgents to the petty thieves who help fund them.

About 100,000 people have died in violence in the North African nation since 1992, when Islamic militants launched an insurgency after the government canceled elections that the Islamic Salvation Front was set to win.

Police are continuing a nationwide manhunt for Abdel Majid Dahoumane, the man who stayed with Ressam for three weeks in a Vancouver hotel room. He is also an Algerian who had requested political asylum.

They have also made a rash of arrests of Algerians who may or may not be linked to Ressam, who was arrested Dec. 14. On Thursday, police announced they had rounded up 13 Algerian men believed to be involved in a theft ring in Montreal. On Sunday, an Algerian man and Canadian woman were arrested while trying to cross the Vermont-Canada border illegally. And Tuesday, Montreal police detained another Algerian man who had a key to an apartment that was searched for explosives.

French authorities also have been tracking Ressam and his former roommate, a dual Bosnian-Algerian national named Said Atmani, on suspicion of links to a group of Islamic radicals who carried out attacks in northern France, the New York Times reported. The gang has been blamed by French police for at least six holdups along the France-Belgium border and a botched attack with a rocket-propelled grenade on a Brinks armored car.

Canadian authorities say they believe that Atmani heads a crime ring in Montreal that finances Algerian resistance groups and could be the key link between Ressam and the Algerian network.

Atmani was deported to Bosnia-Herzegovina in October 1998 but is believed to have returned to Canada. French authorities came here in October to trace the two but couldn’t find them, intelligence sources said.

The French reportedly briefed their Canadian and U.S. counterparts to be on the lookout for the pair, but Ressam slipped through the U.S.-Canada border last week with a passport bearing another name, Benni Antoine Noris. It was U.S. officials who identified Ressam through his fingerprints.

Ressam’s case reveals how easily Canada’s screening system can be evaded.

To Canada’s immigration department, Ressam was not a suspected terrorist, just an ordinary refugee claimant, a man who worked as a waiter in his family’s cafe until being caught up in the violence between Islamic extremists and the military government that erupted in Algeria in 1992. More than 4,000 Algerians have applied for asylum in Canada since then, an immigration spokesperson said.

“We absolutely had no evidence of any connection to any terrorist groups,” said Shouldice of Canadian immigration. “If we had, we would have removed them.”

The Canadian court ruled that Ressam abandoned his claim for refugee status after he missed his first court appearance in April 1995 and was not able to convince the court in a later appeal hearing that his case should be continued. He escaped deportation because of escalating political violence in Algeria.

He remained in Canada, under an arrangement that he would report to immigration once a month, a condition he fulfilled for more than two years. In early 1998, Ressam’s name popped up again on another deportation order, apparently because of three outstanding criminal arrest warrants: two involving thefts from cars and one for breaking and entering. In May 1998, immigration authorities issued a nationwide warrant for his arrest.

In September, he was arrested for stealing a computer from a car but was released after serving two weeks in jail, despite the warrants.

It was about this time that he obtained a new passport with the name Benni Antoine Noris and slipped underground--until he took the ferry to America.