Terror Again Touches Exile Community

The arrests this week of several Montreal-based Algerians suspected of terrorism are spotlighting a tiny, loose-knit group in Canada that authorities say is part of an international constellation of Islamic terrorists whose main bond is a common hatred for the U.S.

But the group has little in common with the rest of the 20,000-strong Algerian population here, many of whom fled to Canada precisely to escape their country’s political turmoil and are dismayed to find the terrorists’ tentacles reaching into their new lives here.

“I’ve already been touched by terrorists,” said a man from Oran, Algeria, who called himself only Rachid, pointing to a scar that dropped like a tear down his face. “I came here to escape that.”

Faction Seeks Islamic State

Ahmed Ressam, the man charged with transporting explosive materials across the U.S. border, has been linked by French authorities to Algeria’s Armed Islamic Group. Known by its French acronym, GIA, it is a militant faction intent on overthrowing the Algerian government and creating an Islamic state.

The group is responsible for some of the most brutal massacres in a civil war that has claimed 100,000 lives since 1992 and for sponsoring violence in other countries, such as France, that back the Algerian government.

While the GIA’s previous foreign attacks focused on France, a recent communique printed in Algeria’s main newspapers indicates that the group may soon target the United States. A statement reportedly from the group’s leader, Antar Zouabri, claimed responsibility for the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania--and warned that there were more to come.

“We tell all the enemies of God in France, in the United States and elsewhere . . . that the explosions that took place in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam and everywhere else prove that we execute our threats, and don’t think that it’s [Osama] bin Laden or someone else who is behind it, but it is the Armed Islamic Group who will poison you and who will make you taste the worst suffering [like] that which happened in France before. Wait for more bad things.”

If the statement actually is from the GIA, the group’s intensifying presence in Canada makes sense, said Morteda Zabouri, a University of Montreal scholar who studies Islamic groups and their political motivations. Zabouri, himself part of the exodus of Algerians who have fled the country, came to Canada in 1993 after two of his colleagues were assassinated by militants. The Algerians are drawn to Canada by its generous asylum policy--and by the French speakers in Montreal.

“Now that the U.S. is a target,” he said, “Canada is a good place to raise money, create false documents and attack from. It’s just next door.”

Although the GIA is small and nebulous in Canada, he said, it should be taken seriously because it maintains ties to larger, wealthy and well-organized networks with common agendas, such as those of Bin Laden, a Saudi extremist.

“They are not religious extremists; they are rational political actors,” he said. “For them, the battle is not the revolution within the country so much as upsetting the whole international order. They want to create an Islamic power, and the United States is the enemy.”

At a mosque on the same street where police raided the apartment of Ressam’s alleged accomplice Thursday night, the group has passed out videos of guerrillas training in Pakistan, distributed propaganda and recruited members for international missions, Zabouri said.

But their main goal has been to raise money for the GIA’s flagging efforts back home. “The GIA are losing ground in Algeria,” said John Thompson, director of the Mackenzie Institute, a security think tank. “They have lost key people, and their support has evaporated as they have become more violent.”

Fund-raising is an easy task where they have a broad social base. But in Montreal, the group has had to resort to theft and extortion, say police, who rounded up 13 members of a petty crime ring allegedly linked to the group.

Tactics Repel Possible Sympathizers

As a result, the GIA’s increasingly crude tactics have alienated communities--both in Algeria and in Canada--that once might have sympathized with its anti-government stance.

“There’s a concept called ‘morted,’ ” said Zabouri, trilling the “r.” “If a person gives once, he must give again or else he’s considered a traitor. When people pull back, they or their families back home are threatened.”

And so the Algerians live quietly, scattered across the city, trying to avoid being drawn back into the turmoil they left behind.

“We realize that if we give money [to the GIA], it goes in the terrorists’ pocket,” said Hamid, a manager at a computer company who came to Canada a year ago as a political refugee. “We would give money to stop terrorists but not to support them.”