been orchestrated by another Gamaa member from Milan, Hassan al-Sharif Mahmud Saad, a favorite of Anwar Shaaban. Like Shaaban, Saad traveled often between Italy and Bosnia. It was Saad’s Fiat Mirafiori that Fawzan had used, Saad having upgraded to a Mercedes from which he watched the bombing. Investigators also learned that the device Fawzan used to blow himself up was similar to ones with which Ramzi Yousef had meant to blow up airliners over the Pacific—another sign, perhaps, of the internationalization of the Milanese network.
After Fawzan’s bombing, Shaaban and Saad aspired to another attack, probably against NATO peacekeepers, who were arriving in Bosnia because the war was at last drawing to a close. NATO’s calls for the Islamic Brigade to disband, just when it was finding its fighting form, infuriated Shaaban, who would no longer be able to train terrorists in Bosnia with impunity. As NATO moved in, some of the Brigade’s fighters left for the next great holy war in Chechnya, while some, like Karim Atmani and Fateh Kamel, settled in Western countries and others, like Shaaban, stayed in Bosnia to continue the fight. Those who remained prepared a truck bomb, apparently for NATO, but it discharged prematurely outside the Brigade’s headquarters, and other plans were made to strike NATO. Before they could be realized, however, Shaaban and other high commanders of the Brigade made a fateful road trip in December of 1995. After passing through two Croat roadblocks without incident, they were stopped at a third, ordered out of their trucks, and machine-gunned into their reward. It was the last day of the war, and the decapitated Brigade collapsed. Some Islamists speculated that the United States or another Western power had urged the Croats to execute the Brigadiers in order to obviate the hassle of arrests and trials, but it was just as likely that the Croats had retaliated on their own for the Rijeka bombing.
Hassan Saad, the tactician of the bombing, was not among the executed. He remained at large until 2001, when the Bosnian government finally arrested him and extradited him to Egypt. He too was never seen again.
MAHMOUD ABDELKADER ES SAYED, familiarly Abu Saleh, arrived in Milan after, it seems, forging documents for al-Qaeda in Yemen, leading a cell of Jihad in Sudan, playing a supporting role in the slaughter of tourists at Luxor, and running guns in Syria for use against Israel. He once claimed the Syrian minister of defense helped him with the gun-running. (The minister, a man of culture, was the author of a book that explained how Jews used the blood of gentiles to make matzoh.) Abu Saleh was entrusted with expanding al-Qaeda’s operations in Milan. His entruster, by one account, was Ayman al-Zawahiri; by a different account, Abu Zabaydah, another al-Qaeda chief. On arriving in 1999, Abu Saleh asked the Italians’ protection from his native Egypt.
“I told them,” he said to a friend within hearing of an Italian bug, “that my three brothers were in prison, that my wife had had a road accident—an act of fate really, but I told them it was orchestrated by Egyptian intelligence.”
“That’s beautiful,” the friend said.
“The whole thing corresponded to their idea of persecution, and consequently I was granted asylum. . . . Now there is a law in Italy that requires asylum claims, even those that have already been approved, to be reviewed every three months to see if the initial conditions are still in place.”
“This is a form of terrorism,” his friend condoled.
“Of course it is terrorism. Italy is a terrorist country. . . . The intent of the government is to take advantage of the Muslims living in this country.”
In the three or four years between the departure of Anwar Shaaban and the arrival of Abu Saleh, Milan’s terrorists had thrived. Operation Sphinx had merely slowed, not stopped, them. New cells had formed, some of which were also broken up but were succeeded in
After Fawzan’s bombing, Shaaban and Saad aspired to another attack, probably against NATO peacekeepers, who were arriving in Bosnia because the war was at last drawing to a close. NATO’s calls for the Islamic Brigade to disband, just when it was finding its fighting form, infuriated Shaaban, who would no longer be able to train terrorists in Bosnia with impunity. As NATO moved in, some of the Brigade’s fighters left for the next great holy war in Chechnya, while some, like Karim Atmani and Fateh Kamel, settled in Western countries and others, like Shaaban, stayed in Bosnia to continue the fight. Those who remained prepared a truck bomb, apparently for NATO, but it discharged prematurely outside the Brigade’s headquarters, and other plans were made to strike NATO. Before they could be realized, however, Shaaban and other high commanders of the Brigade made a fateful road trip in December of 1995. After passing through two Croat roadblocks without incident, they were stopped at a third, ordered out of their trucks, and machine-gunned into their reward. It was the last day of the war, and the decapitated Brigade collapsed. Some Islamists speculated that the United States or another Western power had urged the Croats to execute the Brigadiers in order to obviate the hassle of arrests and trials, but it was just as likely that the Croats had retaliated on their own for the Rijeka bombing.
Hassan Saad, the tactician of the bombing, was not among the executed. He remained at large until 2001, when the Bosnian government finally arrested him and extradited him to Egypt. He too was never seen again.
MAHMOUD ABDELKADER ES SAYED, familiarly Abu Saleh, arrived in Milan after, it seems, forging documents for al-Qaeda in Yemen, leading a cell of Jihad in Sudan, playing a supporting role in the slaughter of tourists at Luxor, and running guns in Syria for use against Israel. He once claimed the Syrian minister of defense helped him with the gun-running. (The minister, a man of culture, was the author of a book that explained how Jews used the blood of gentiles to make matzoh.) Abu Saleh was entrusted with expanding al-Qaeda’s operations in Milan. His entruster, by one account, was Ayman al-Zawahiri; by a different account, Abu Zabaydah, another al-Qaeda chief. On arriving in 1999, Abu Saleh asked the Italians’ protection from his native Egypt.
“I told them,” he said to a friend within hearing of an Italian bug, “that my three brothers were in prison, that my wife had had a road accident—an act of fate really, but I told them it was orchestrated by Egyptian intelligence.”
“That’s beautiful,” the friend said.
“The whole thing corresponded to their idea of persecution, and consequently I was granted asylum. . . . Now there is a law in Italy that requires asylum claims, even those that have already been approved, to be reviewed every three months to see if the initial conditions are still in place.”
“This is a form of terrorism,” his friend condoled.
“Of course it is terrorism. Italy is a terrorist country. . . . The intent of the government is to take advantage of the Muslims living in this country.”
In the three or four years between the departure of Anwar Shaaban and the arrival of Abu Saleh, Milan’s terrorists had thrived. Operation Sphinx had merely slowed, not stopped, them. New cells had formed, some of which were also broken up but were succeeded in
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