‘Shoe Bomber’ Suspect Linked to 2 Other Plots

After he failed in his alleged first attempt to board a Paris-to-Miami flight and blow it out of the sky with explosives packed into his shoes, Richard C. Reid sent an urgent e-mail to his suspected terrorist handler, according to a Western diplomatic official familiar with the case.

Reid was spending the night at an airport hotel here after missing the Dec. 21 flight because of a lengthy interrogation by police. What should he do? The reply, which is believed to have come from his Al Qaeda boss in Pakistan, was swift and clear, according to the official.

“He got a quick response from his handler: Try again,” the official said.

The next day, Reid was cleared to travel, boarded American Airlines Flight 63 and allegedly tried to ignite the explosive devices in his shoes but was overpowered by passengers and crew.

The investigation has centered largely on e-mails Reid exchanged with suspected confederates during long hours hunched over computer terminals in cyber cafes in Brussels and Paris in December.

The e-mails and other emerging evidence have reinforced suspicions that Reid was more than a freelance terrorist loosely affiliated with the Al Qaeda network. In fact, investigators now believe that the alleged “shoe bomber” jailed in the United States had ties to Al Qaeda terrorists in Europe suspected in two other major conspiracies: an aborted plot to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Paris and the assassination of Ahmed Shah Masoud, a renowned anti-Taliban guerrilla leader, in Afghanistan two days before the Sept. 11 attacks.

At least 19 suspects in those plots, both of which allegedly were ordered by Osama bin Laden, have been arrested in recent months in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain.

The three cases at first seemed to be separate and compartmentalized operations in the trademark style of Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network, but investigators have found leads that could link them, according to European law enforcement officials and others familiar with the cases.

“There are elements that are connecting cases that at first did not seem connected,” a French law enforcement official said. “The overall direction of the investigation shows that a French-Belgian axis was involved in the Masoud and [embassy] cases. And we must be prudent, but it seems Reid had contact with at least one of two [terrorist] structures in those cases.”

The detective work has been slow and difficult because the Reid case has strands in the United States, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Moreover, Reid’s wanderings--and suspected activity scouting targets for Al Qaeda--also took him to Israel, Egypt, the Gaza Strip, Turkey, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, where he allegedly trained at an Al Qaeda camp.

The hulking, shaggy-haired 28-year-old remains an enigma in many ways: a drifter who dressed like a bum and traveled as much as an executive. Reid baffles police because his methods seemed alternately slick and clumsy. Despite his allegedly stealthy preparations for the attack, a French intelligence official told The Times, one reason Reid attracted suspicion at his first airport check-in was that he was listening to a tape of the Koran on a Walkman, apparently to psyche himself up.

Reconstructing the virtual and physical trail that Reid left in the gray immigrant neighborhoods of Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam could be key to understanding and prosecuting the networks suspected of assisting him, European and U.S. officials say.

During the crucial days and weeks before his attempted attack, Reid apparently communicated with e-mail addresses in Belgium, France and the Netherlands as well as in Pakistan, where he had spent recent years immersed in Islamic extremism. Reid, the son of a Jamaican father and British mother, made his most recent trip to Pakistan in August.

Among the messages he sent from Europe, according to the Western diplomatic official, police have found an e-mail that reveals a moment of humanity: a farewell note to his mother in Britain.

The message, sent shortly before Dec. 21, alluded to an act that would bring Reid martyrdom and urged his mother one last time to convert to Islam, a longtime obsession of his that had contributed to their estrangement.

“It was very clear that it was a goodbye letter,” the official said. “He said he was going out in a burst of glory for Allah. But it was not specific what he was going to do or why.”

Authorities have not confirmed the locations of Reid’s other correspondents, including his suspected handler, officials say. The investigators are hampered by the large quantity of data confiscated from cyber cafes and by the fragmented, multinational configuration of Internet communications networks, according to law enforcement officials.

Al Qaeda’s networks are similarly fragmented, deployed in cells among many countries to escape detection and compartmentalize vital activities such as supplying fraudulent documents and procuring weapons. Authorities allege that Reid had a great advantage over many terrorists because he used an authentic passport from Britain, a country whose citizens do not trigger the same warning flags as those from the Middle East or North Africa.

Nonetheless, authorities believe that Reid received support--money, shelter, the explosives--from one of two interconnected networks that were dominated by Algerians and Tunisians and spread across France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain.

The first network was dismantled in a wave of at least 13 arrests in September of suspects who allegedly planned to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Paris early this year.

In December, police arrested six suspects in the second network on charges of providing stolen Belgian passports to two Brussels-based Tunisian suicide bombers who assassinated Masoud--a preemptive strike on anti-Taliban forces that apparently was coordinated with the Sept. 11 attacks.

An investigative lead that could link Reid to the networks, according to a European law enforcement official, is evidence that Reid had telephone contact with Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian accused of planning to act as the suicide bomber in the embassy plot.

Trabelsi, a former professional soccer player with a record for drug-dealing in the Netherlands and Germany, was arrested Sept. 13 in an apartment in Brussels during a raid that turned up a list of suspected bomb-making chemicals. The list included the formula for the same mixture of explosives--PETN, or pentaerythritol tetranitrate, and TATP, or triacetone triperoxide--found in Reid’s shoes, according to the Western diplomatic official. Belgian police later found bomb-making chemicals in the basement of an Egyptian snack bar owned by the family of a suspect who was arrested with Trabelsi.

The suspected phone contact between Reid and Trabelsi occurred “well before” the arrests of both men, according to the European law enforcement official, who declined to give further details.

Trabelsi also connects the embassy plot to the Masoud assassination because he associated with Tarek Maaroufi, a Tunisian-born Belgian citizen suspected of aiding Masoud’s attackers and acting as a senior Al Qaeda leader linked to cells across Europe.

Police are pursuing leads indicating that Reid also may have had contact with the “known support cells” involved in the Masoud case, the Western official says.

Despite promising advances, the investigation has by no means established that Reid and the others were part of a monolithic network, the European law enforcement official cautioned.

“It is logical in that world that there would be points of contact,” the official said. “Trabelsi and Reid could easily have met each other in [an Al Qaeda] training camp in Afghanistan. Maaroufi is another potential point of contact for many because of his prominence.”

Reid’s odyssey preceding his alleged attempt to blow up the plane is suggestive because he followed a route that recurs in the other cases. After returning from Pakistan, he stayed in Amsterdam, where he held odd jobs; Trabelsi had spent time in the Netherlands, and two other embassy plot suspects were arrested in Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

Between Dec. 7 and Dec. 16, Reid stayed at the Dar es Salaam Hotel in a largely immigrant neighborhood of Brussels. The hotel is an inexpensive establishment near the snack bar where police had seized the bomb-making chemicals linked to Trabelsi. In addition to obtaining a new British passport at the consulate in Brussels, Reid spent a lot of time on his own in three cyber cafes, officials say.

After traveling by train to Paris, Reid frequented the Goutte d’Or neighborhood north of the Gare du Nord train station. The area is dominated by North African immigrants, but this time Reid wasn’t alone. Three men accompanied him during a visit to the Happy Call cyber cafe, according to the Sri Lankan manager, who told journalists that Reid stood out because he was “big and dirty.”

The sighting of the companions deepens suspicions that Reid had accomplices who may have given him lodging in Paris. A canvass by police has not found any signs that he stayed at a hotel.

The Reid probe could illuminate the workings of the European terror networks, identify new suspects and strengthen the evidence against those in custody. But it will require a lot of basic, grueling investigative work, officials say.

“It could be a dry well,” the Western diplomatic official said. “Or it could be a ‘eureka’ case.”