U.S. concerned Algerian insurgents exporting terror

WASHINGTON -- Officials are exploring whether the Islamic insurgency in Algeria has been exported to the United States.

Law enforcement sources said an aim of counterterrorism and intelligence agencies is to determine whether Algerian native Ahmed Ressam, arrested on Dec. 14 with explosives on the Canadian border, was part of an Islamic terrorism network linked to Algerian insurgents.

Five days later, a Canadian woman, identified as Lucia Garofalo, with ties to Algerian terrorists was arrested in Vermont. U.S. intelligence has connected Ms. Garofalo to the Algerian Islamic League, the Vermont state attorney's office said.

The concern is that Algerian terrorists and their supporters left France to Quebec and renewed their networks. The sources said these networks are largely inactive, but ready to launch attacks if ordered.

The question is whether Saudi billionaire fugitive Osama Bin Laden used his connections with the Algerians to order attacks in the United States. Many of the Algerians and their supporters fought in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union in the 1980s and are believed to have expertise in weapons and explosives.

The London-based A-Sharq Al Awsat daily reported on Saturday that about 100 people in the United States are under surveillance for suspected terrorist activities. The newspaper said once every two weeks a panel that includes seven judges from around the country updates the list of those under surveillance.

New information has arrived from Canada that raises Ressman's connection with Bin Laden. Sources said Ressam was trained in the early 1990s in Afghanistan and was probably connected to Bin Laden.

French sources involved in the Ressam investigation have linked him to Fateh Kamel, an Algerian imprisoned in Paris since April. Kamel, who once lived in Canada, is suspected of being a leader of Islamic militants in northern France that robbed banks to finance fundamentalist activities. The gang was believed to have been disbanded in 1996 after four of its members were killed in a shootout with police.

For his part, Ressam has pleaded innocent to all charges in a federal court in Seattle.

A key suspect in the U.S. investigation into any GIA link to Ressam is Said Atmani. He is thought to be connected to the former French criminal gang and in 1998 was expelled from Canada to Bosnia.

So far, U.S. officials have not determined what, if any, facilities were targetted by Ressam and other Islamic militants. But the Energy Department was taking extra security precautions at its nuclear weapons facilities and other sites.