Bomb Suspect Was at Camp, Detainees Say

The Briton who allegedly tried to ignite explosives packed in his shoes on a Paris-Miami flight has been identified by captured Al Qaeda fighters as having attended a training camp in Afghanistan, adding to the suspicions of U.S. and European investigators that he is an Islamic terrorist, authorities said Wednesday.

Although Richard C. Reid remains an enigmatic and somewhat unlikely candidate for a suicide bomber, clues pointing to an Al Qaeda connection--including new information on the explosive used--are piling up on both sides of the Atlantic.

Authorities are pursuing several theories, including that Reid acted on his own. But the emerging portrait raises questions about whether a long-feared second wave of Al Qaeda terrorist strikes is close at hand.

Al Qaeda soldiers being held as battlefield detainees by U.S. military forces recognized Reid from photos and said they had seen him at an Afghan terrorist training camp, according to Justice Department officials, who said the Pentagon informed them of the identifications. Those leads require further investigation and confirmation, which may take months, officials said.

“People recognized him from the camps,” a senior federal law enforcement official said. “We’re not in a position to confirm that [Reid was actually at the camp] because we haven’t investigated it. But sure, absolutely, that is what we are pursuing.”

Moreover, interviews with European investigators and Muslims in London indicate that Reid, who is accused of trying to ignite the explosives on American Airlines Flight 63 on Saturday, spent time in Pakistan, the gateway to the Al Qaeda camps.

He was known as a disciple of a London cleric accused of being a top Al Qaeda ideologue in Europe, according to another Muslim leader who knew the suspect. Reid worshiped at the same London mosque as Zacarias Moussaoui, a French Moroccan indicted by U.S. prosecutors in the Sept. 11 attacks, according to fellow worshipers.

U.S. and French law enforcement officials also say the sophisticated, volatile plastic explosive packed into Reid’s high-top basketball shoes is not easy for a civilian to obtain and has been used in past terrorist bombings.

Forensic examination of the shoes identified the explosive compound as PETN, short for pentaerythritol tetranitrate, according to senior U.S. law enforcement officials. The substance is powerful enough to have brought down the crowded jetliner and kill all 197 passengers and crew members.

PETN is a key ingredient in Semtex, a plastic explosive that is a favorite of terrorists and was used to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.

Its presence suggests an unusual degree of sophistication, according to the federal law enforcement official.

Because of these developments, the FBI and European police are aggressively pursuing the theory that Reid was a militant Islamic soldier in a holy war launched against the United States by Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders.

“There have to be people behind him, [the attempted bombing] is too difficult for one man on his own,” a French law enforcement official said. “We need to determine if the network was in Britain, Belgium or France.”

Reid’s suspected trajectory into terrorism mirrors that of Moussaoui and thousands of other young Europeans who were indoctrinated at radical mosques in London, then went secretly to Pakistan and Afghanistan to be molded into Al Qaeda terrorists, the French official said.

“We know when he was in Pakistan,” the official said. “It’s the classic story, the axis between London and Pakistan. He didn’t go to Pakistan to pick flowers.”

The FBI is eager to interview the Al Qaeda detainees about Reid. They also want to look into reports that he could have trained at the same time as Moussaoui at an Afghan camp known as Khalden.

“Everyone is still in Department of Defense custody, so I don’t know how much access [the FBI agents currently in Afghanistan] will have to them,” the U.S. official said. An FBI official in Washington cautioned that the Al Qaeda soldiers may be mistaken or may have an interest in identifying Reid in the belief it will help their own cases.

“Just because somebody says they recognized him doesn’t mean it’s true,” the FBI official said. “And it could take weeks to verify.”

But the official also said Reid, a strikingly large man at 6 feet, 4 inches with billowing shoulder-length black hair, would be hard to miss.

And aspects of his background strike a familiar chord with veteran anti-terrorist investigators in Europe.

Reid, the son of a Jamaican father and British mother, has a record for petty crimes in Britain and converted to Islam in prison, a busy recruiting ground for Islamic networks in Europe, according to French authorities.

But he was apparently not a radical at first. After spending about two years in prison, he turned up in late 1996 or early 1997 at the Brixton Mosque and Islamic Cultural Center, a moderate Salafi mosque that holds its services in English in a two-story brick row house, across from a police station.

The Brixton neighborhood, where Moussaoui also lived, is multiethnic and working-class. Although predominantly Afro-Caribbean, the mosque draws an assortment of British converts, ex-convicts and refugees from Muslim nations awaiting resolution of their petitions for political asylum.

Reid was a “friendly . . . likable character” but not very bright, said Abdul Haqq Baker, 35, chairman of the mosque. Referring to the attempted attack, Baker said, “He was not capable of doing this alone.”

Reid lived with an aunt in Brixton and spoke with a Southeast London accent. He was eager to learn the Islamic religion and Arabic language, Baker said.

But Reid soon came under the influence of two clerics, Abu Qatada and Abu Hamza of the Finsbury Park mosque in North London, according to Baker and others. Law enforcement officials in France and Belgium say Abu Qatada was arrested in Britain last week in a crackdown on suspected Al Qaeda leaders. But British authorities have not confirmed the arrest.

Baker said he watched with dismay over months as Reid adopted the angry, anti-Western rhetoric of hard-core Islamists who have made London the European hub of Al Qaeda recruiting and operations.

“By the end of 1998 he was asking questions. . . . What was our view on terrorism and suicide bombing, was [the West] a place of war?” Baker recalled. “We said no, suicide bombing is not acceptable.”

Baker said that he never saw Reid with Abu Qatada but that the source of the ex-convict’s ideas was clear.

Rejecting appeals for moderation, Reid grew a beard, began wearing Muslim dress and stopped coming to the Brixton mosque, Baker said. It is “highly likely” but not certain that Reid met Moussaoui, the accused Sept. 11 conspirator, because the two overlapped at the Brixton mosque at the end of 1998, Baker said.

Baker said Moussaoui was intelligent, angry and more adept than Reid at switching back and forth between Muslim and Western dress and appearance. Moussaoui was asked to stop coming to the Brixton mosque because he was strident and aggressive, Baker said.

Early this year, Reid’s mother wrote to the mosque and showed up about six months ago hoping for news from Pakistan of her son, according to Baker. The mother said he had gone to Pakistan to learn Arabic and initially had written to her from there, but then “contact was broken,” Baker said.

A European investigator familiar with the case said Reid has told his U.S. interrogators that he spent time in Pakistan. French investigators are also pursuing a lead that Reid belonged for a time to an Islamic order known as Tabligh, an evangelical sect active in prisons that is often a first step toward extremism.

Al Qaeda terrorists have claimed membership in Tabligh as a cover story for trips to Pakistan in order to conceal pilgrimages to the Afghan camps, the French law enforcement official said.

Worshipers in Brixton did not hear about Reid again until they saw his photo in the newspapers and learned that passengers and flight attendants had overpowered him in a melee over the Atlantic.

“We were surprised he had gone this far,” Baker said.

Surprised French and Belgian investigators say Reid was not one of the names on the long roster of extremists known to have trained in Afghanistan and returned to Europe ready for covert action. Reid mystifies investigators because his seeming lack of stealth contrasts with rigorously trained terrorists such as the Sept. 11 hijackers, who took pains to blend into Western society and keep a low profile.

“We are wondering about this one,” a European police investigator said. “This is bizarre.”

Fellow passengers said they noticed the hulking Reid before Saturday’s flight took off from Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris because he looked dazed and disheveled with his unruly beard and hair. The day before, Reid raised the suspicions of American Airlines security agents when he showed up for check-in with only a carry-on bag and a British passport issued this month in Belgium.

Airline security personnel referred him to French airport police for a lengthy interrogation that caused him to miss the flight. Police finally cleared Reid to travel--a decision that is now under internal investigation.

Reid spent the night before Saturday’s flight at a four-star airport hotel courtesy of American Airlines, which picked up the bill for the room, a French police official said Wednesday.

The only job Reid is known to have held was peddling incense outside the Brixton subway station with a company that employs local Muslims. He told French airport police that he had worked maintenance and kitchen jobs at hotels in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Yet he paid for his Paris-Miami-Antigua-Miami-Paris round-trip ticket in cash at a Paris travel agency, the French police official said. French investigators are trying to trace the source of the cash and reconstruct Reid’s movements.

“His stay in France was very fast, and the investigation is looking into people who may have given him a place to stay while he was here,” the French police official said.

In Brussels, where Reid obtained a passport from the British Embassy Dec. 7, he stayed at a cheap hotel, the European police investigator said. Reid had also spent time in Amsterdam, the investigator said.

Asked what could have turned the petty criminal into an alleged terrorist, Baker said: “He wanted to do something about the crimes against Muslims by the West. He would say: ‘What good is it sitting and talking and learning Arabic? It’s not enough.’ Once the extremists see this in people, they’re ready to roll on them.”

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Meyer reported from Washington, Rotella from Paris and Miller from London.