Edition: U.S. / Global

Terror Suspect Is Rearrested In Africa at U.S. Request

Published: January 29, 2000

A leading suspect in an aborted terrorist plot, who the authorities believe is linked to the Osama bin Laden terror network, has been arrested in Mauritania, after he was briefly detained and released in Senegal, law enforcement officials said today.

The suspect, Mohambedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritania native, was held by the Mauritanian security service in Nouakchott, the capital of the West African nation, after he was released in neighboring Senegal. He was detained in Mauritania, as he was in Senegal, at the request of the American authorities.

Today federal law enforcement officials said they were eager to interview Mr. Ould Slahi, but so far prosecutors have yet to charge him with a crime. It was not clear whether prosecutors were ready to accuse him in the plot, a step that would provide a legal basis for bringing him to the United States for trial.

Until last week, Mr. Ould Slahi had been living in Montreal, where he met with several people suspected in the bombing plot, and before that he resided in Germany. Interviews in those places suggested that Mr. Ould Slahi did not seem to be a militant firebrand. Associates said he was a devout Muslim who attended mosque every day and kept his political beliefs to himself.

The New Year's bomb plot was uncovered last month when an Algerian, Ahmed Ressam, was arrested at Port Angeles, Wash., as he tried to enter the United States on a ferry from Canada driving a car carrying explosives and four timing devices.

American officials suspect that Mr. Ould Slahi may have been an organizer of the plot and theorize that he may have been a conduit for the bin Laden organization. Last fall Mr. Ould Slahi traveled to Montreal, where he met frequently with Mokhtar Haouri, another Algerian charged with directing Mr. Ressam in the plan.

Bahaa Elbatal, the secretary at the mosque in Montreal where Mr. Ould Slahi lived for about a month before he left for Africa, said Mr. Ould Slahi was a prayer leader. He said Mr. Ould Slahi had taken refuge in the mosque in part because of the intense investigation of his associates by the Canadian authorities.

Mr. Elbatal said Mr. Ould Slahi knew the Koran ''by heart,'' having learned the holy text from his grandmother in Mauritania as a child along with the complex rules for the many different forms in which the Islamic canon is recited.

Mr. Elbatal said Mr. Ould Slahi seemed unfazed even as members of the mosque were interviewed by the authorities and realized that they were under surveillance by two cars continuously parked outside the mosque. But Canadian security officials never tried to interview Mr. Ould Slahi in that period.

In the German industrial city of Duisburg, where Mr. Ould Slahi previously resided, police officials said, the authorities became interested in him shortly after the bombings of American Embassies in East Africa in 1998. The German authorities learned that Mr. Ould Slahi might have ties to Islamic extremists in Europe, the officials said.

But a cousin of Mr. Ould Slahi, who declined to be identified, said Mr. Ould Slahi, who had a degree in electrical engineering, lived quietly and kept his political views private. Nevertheless, he said Mr. Ould Slahi, like other Mauritanians in Germany, was sympathetic to Mr. bin Laden.

So far only four Algerians have been charged with complicity in a still murky plan that appeared to be directed at targets inside the United States. But the authorities remain uncertain of the timing of any attacks and do not know where the bombings were to have taken place.

Today another man, Youssef Karroum, whose nationality was not known, was placed into custody as a material witness in the case in Seattle after he was stopped at a Canadian border crossing in a car in which traces of explosive chemicals were found, law enforcement officials said. It was not clear how Mr. Karroum was connected to the plot.

Mr. Ould Slahi's brother-in-law is a close associate of Mr. bin Laden, who has been charged in an indictment as the leader of Al Qaeda, the Islamic terror group responsible for the embassy bombing attacks in 1998.

Moreover, Mr. Ould Slahi was in continuous contact with representatives of a construction company in Sudan that was owned by Mr. bin Laden and operated clandestinely to support Al Qaeda's terror objectives.

Law enforcement officials have cautioned that so far they have obtained little evidence that Mr. bin Laden was behind the unsuccessful bombing plot. Though the exact plan remains unclear, some officials suspect that the Algerians were targeting up to four sites with small bombs intended to show the terrorists' ability to penetrate the vast counterterrorism operation mounted in advance of the New Year.

Today, it was unclear what efforts were under way to bring Mr. Ould Slahi to the United States. Federal agents were sent to Africa to question him, but it was not clear whether the American authorities would try to negotiate his surrender to be charged in a United States court.