Europe targets violent cast of Islamic radicals

MADRID, Spain — European intelligence networks have thrown a blanket of surveillance over a small but fiercely violent cast of Islamic radicals, many homegrown with no direct links to al-Qaida, whose fingerprints they expect to find on the Continent's next big terrorist attack.

Security officials across Europe warned that the relative ease and low cost of an attack, combined with the anger and isolation felt by Muslim populations, mean more bloodshed is almost inevitable.

The officials painted a picture of a diverse group of extremists with competing agendas, vastly different social and educational backgrounds and a litany of gripes that makes it difficult to predict their next move. While they may be motivated by Osama bin Laden's call for worldwide jihad, they mostly operate independently of al-Qaida's leadership, the officials said.

"There is no profile; they come from everywhere," said Manfred Murck, deputy director of the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which tracks extremist activity in the northern city of Hamburg, home to three of the four Sept. 11 suicide pilots. The two deadliest recent attacks in Europe — the London bombings of July 7 and the Madrid blasts of March 11, 2004 — dramatically illustrate the problem.

Two of the London bombers had shown up on the periphery of another terror investigation, but authorities did not deem them dangerous enough to merit closer surveillance.

Spanish authorities say they also were monitoring several of the bombers in the months before the Madrid attack — and actually stopped a car carrying the group's military planner in late February, unaware he was leading a caravan of other terrorists transporting explosives.

With those attacks in mind, intelligence services throughout Europe are boosting surveillance, even at the risk of provoking protests from civil-liberties groups.

• In Spain, authorities have tripled the number of agents concentrating on terrorism and are watching some 250 suspected radicals, according to a senior intelligence chief.

• In London, senior police officers say they are concerned about 40 to 60 people living in Britain who received training at camps in Pakistan or Afghanistan and are believed intent on carrying out attacks.

• In Italy, authorities are watching 74 people on suspicion of financing terrorism, said Gen. Pasquale Debidda of the financial police. Germany's Murck said about 170 potentially violent radicals are under surveillance in Hamburg. The numbers look small, but the threat isn't.

• In France, authorities have blocked at least a dozen attacks in the past decade, said Louis Caprioli, the former assistant director of the DST, the country's main counterintelligence agency. Tore Bjoergo, a terrorism expert at the Norwegian Police University College, put the number of thwarted attacks throughout Europe at 30 to 40 since 9/11.