In Europe, terror trail leads to Algeria

In an Arab butcher's shop, near a mosque that British police recently burst open with battering rams, an Algerian with a goatee cautiously emerges from behind a curtain. "No one here will talk to you," he says. "Not anymore."

Fear is a constant companion in Finsbury Park, a neighborhood teeming with young Muslims, and a mix of Arabic and African markets and shops. As Britain steps up the war on terror, these local Arabs, many of whom have lived in this country for years, fear they could mistakenly end up on a list of suspects and be thrown in jail for months under Britain's new antiterror laws.

Britons worry that such neighborhoods are hiding places for terrorists. A spate of recent arrests, the discovery of a workshop to create the lethal toxin ricin, and the murder of a policeman in Manchester on Jan. 14 are fueling a rise in anti-foreigner sentiment here.

Suspicion is focusing on the Algerian community - some 240,000 refugees who have fled both government repression and the death squads of Algerian Islamic fundamentalists.

Over the past six weeks, European investigators in four countries have arrested more than 50 people with suspected links to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network. Police have uncovered explosives, chemicals, fake passports, and documents, including maps of the London Underground.

Algerians are consistently among those detained - a fact that Western intelligence officials say points to the formation of a North African network of Al Qaeda that is preparing to act.

Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar, referring to the arrests Friday of 15 Algerians and a Moroccan in northeastern Spain, said police had broken up a "major terrorist network" linked to the Algerian Salafist group, a splinter of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), which he said had clear links with Al Qaeda. He said the network also had connections with suspects recently arrested in France and Britain.

Oliver Roy, terrorism expert and research director at the Paris think tank CNRS, says that it would be alarming if the so-called Algerian connection is confirmed. Until now, Al Qaeda has tapped Westernized Arabs in Europe, who have no connections to active terrorist organizations in the Middle East. Should it be proven through the recent arrests that any of the Algerian suspects are linked to Algerian Islamist extremists, it would mean that Al Qaeda has access to infrastructure and a social foundation that it has not had before.

"There's a lot at stake," says Mr. Roy. "All these arrests were only possible because the British government changed its strategy and finally cracked down. Everybody knew that Finsbury Park was full of people connected to Al Qaeda. But it is only now that the British decided to crack down on them and when they did, they turned up evidence that led to all these arrests."

The recent arrests in Britain and on the Continent are raising fears of an imminent attack against targets in Britain.

When a London subway train accidentally derailed over the weekend, injuring dozens, many feared terrorism. Andrew Clubbe, a young bank employee, acknowledges that the news of the past week has left him nervous. "When I arrived at Paddington Station I just hoped there wasn't a bomb," he says.

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