Expert: al-Qaida, world's largest terror movement

Al-Qaida is a secretive network of many thousands of agents spread across the globe – each one capable of bringing mass death and destruction, a terrorism expert warned tonight.

It is also the largest terrorist movement the world has ever seen, infiltrating nearly 100 countries, with up to 10,000 members. Its terrorists can get enough information from the internet to launch a biological attack.

Professor Paul Wilkinson said although the find of ricin in north London has not yet been linked to al-Qaida it is a, “very worrying development.”

He said, “The ricin is rather an extraordinary thing to find.

“We don’t have enough information yet to say this is al-Qaida but al-Qaida will be one of the suspects.

“This underlines the truth of the statements made by the Prime Minister. We do face a very dangerous enemy in al-Qaida and modern international terrorism, it is a very serious problem, it is not a scare story from the Prime Minister, it is facing up to realities.”

Prof Wilkinson said al-Qaida has a unique set-up with the largest and most widespread network of terrorists the world has ever faced.

“It is a movement with sympathisers and supporters and also with hard core cells and separate networks put in place by the leadership,” he said.

“This complicates the matters of counter-terrorism, intelligence gathering and law enforcement because if you have ‘free-lancers’ they can pick up enough information off the internet to do damage.

“They don’t have to go to a training camp in the Middle East or far east or go to a mosque to become fundamentalist converts or to acquire knowledge of how to launch an attack – they can take it from the internet.”

Prof Wilkinson said traditional terrorist organisations have top-down, vertical command and ‘cell’ structures, each operating separately.

This way if one cell is compromised or infiltrated by security forces only one cell is captured and the damage to the terrorist network is contained.

But al-Qaida operates on two levels, he said.

There is a leadership level, including Osama Bin Laden, with a high level Islamic Law committee and also specialists in organising and coordinating activities and weaponry.

“The thing that makes al-Qaida so different is the other level. They have this very diffuse network spread all over the world.

“It is the largest and most widespread network of terrorism we have ever encountered.”

Al-Qaida communicates throughout the network, person to person, not through insecure electronic methods – which could be intercepted by the security services.

“They are very good at hiding themselves, falsifying names, moving across borders undetected, moving funds about and keeping the network going,” he said.

“It makes it an extremely difficult and elusive terrorist foe to discover and bring to justice.”

The intelligence community estimates al-Qaida has infiltrated at least 50 countries, while the US security services estimates 98 countries have an al-Qaida presence.

The organisation was born during the Afghanistan War of the 1980s when recruits flocked to defend the Islamic country from invading Soviet forces.

It quickly made links to other Islamic terror groups in Egypt, Algeria and elsewhere.

The numbers of al-Qaida operatives involved is difficult to gauge. US President George Bush said there were “100,000 ticking time bombs.”

Prof Wilkinson said: “Perhaps a figure of five to ten thousand would be nearer the mark.

“In terrorism terms that’s a very large organisation. Only a few people are needed to make up a cell and only a single cell is needed to wreak terrifying destruction and large scale death on civilians – as we saw on 9/11.”

Their avowed aims is to clear the Middle East, and all Islamic countries of US and western interests, to unseat governments in Muslim countries they regard as betraying the cause of Islam – as defined by Osama Bin Laden and ultimately create a pan-Islamist caliphate across the Muslim world.