Al-Quaeda Terrorists Expelled From Romania Last Year

Five members of the terrorist network Al-Quaeda were expelled last year from Romania, the Romanian Counter-Intelligence Office sSRIt confirmed. The head of the terrorist cell trained in Afghanistan; the cell members recruited new followers in Iasi and Bucharest, promoting attacks performed in Afghanistan, Iraq and Chechnya with the aim of performing similar attacks in Romania.

The members of the Al Quaeda cell were on the verge of executing the first step of their plans when they were apprehended by the SRI.
They studied for two years the Romanian society and its Islamic community. Counter intelligence officers told Jurnalul National "the terrorist group was organized along Al Quaeda lines and aimed to promote its ideology with providing foreign help for terrorist attacks in Romania."

According to sources which obviously cannot be named, the leader of the cell was Musaab Ahmed Mohamed Mujalli, a Saudi citizen. He arrived in Romania to study in Iasi, but this was a cover for his real reason to be here, which was to organize a terrorist cell.
He had propaganda materials and conducted "lectures" for the benefit of the other cell-members, in order to turn operational their organization. He had trained previously in Al Quaeda camps, in Afghanistan, and was not shy to show his terrorist cell colleagues tapes of his training there, in 1994.

The Romanian counter-intelligence officers identified the other members of the group as Khaldoon Walid Monir Nabhan, with no citizenship, Yousuf Ali Mohamed Al Balushi, Omani citizen, Aymen Ahmed Fouad Jadkareem, Sudanese citizen, and Asad Abrar Qureshi, Pakistani citizen - all studying in Iasi.
The group first tried its campaigning and propaganda techniques in Iasi, then in Bucharest, to recruit other foreigners of Islamic faith for their cell.
"Their aim was to first brain-wash the recruits," said a Jurnalul National source. Mujalli also tried to influence leaders of the Arab Islamic community in Bucharest, added he.

"When they met together the cell members were extremely cautious and behaved as true espionage operatives. They hailed the terrorist attacks performed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya or Bosnia-Herzegovina, approving the radical ideology of the Al Quaeda network and the suicide terrorist attacks," added another source. Mujalli’s propaganda materials included video tapes of the Jihad movement in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia and Liban, and audio tapes with sermons of radical Saudi religious leaders, told the source.

Mujalli also trained his colleagues the intelligence operations techniques, from an Al Quaeda manual similar to the one discovered in 2002, in Afghanistan, in a secret hiding.
"They trained how to avoid the control of Romanian authorities, tested their close entourage and learned how to use the Internet for stealth communication," one of the counter-intelligence officers working on the case said.
According to him, Mujalli tried to contact structures outside Romania to get funding for his group, for the next stage of operations.

Marius Bercaru, spokesperson for the SRI, confirmed the operation to monitor and expel the five members of the cell indeed took place.
"In order to prevent the covert development of the radical Islamic group to an operational level the anti-terrorist unit of the SRI, in conjunction with the proper judicial authorities and other law enforcement authorities, conducted a series of activities which ended with apprehending the cell-members, interviewing them, and searching their residences," said Bercaru.
He added that the SRI actions succeeded in stopping the group in its tracks and were finalized with expelling its members from Romania, where they may not return for 15 years.