Fears Of Iraq Becoming A Terrorist Incubator Seem Overblown, French Say

PARIS — After the Paris police smashed a cell suspected of sending insurgents to Iraq early in 2005, French authorities predicted a new and dangerous threat: young Muslims lured to the Iraqi battlefields who would return, radicalized, to use their newfound battlefield skills in terrorist acts inside France.

One of the defendants accused of being a member of a terrorist cell was led from a Paris courtroom during the trial in March. Two of the seven defendants had joined insurgents in Iraq.

Dominique de Villepin, then the interior minister, singled out the cell in a speech two months later as proof of a risk that Iraqi-trained jihadists would “come back to France, armed with their experience, to carry out attacks.”

Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, France’s senior counterterrorism magistrate at the time, later warned that Iraq was a “black hole sucking up all the elements located in Europe.” Some of them were coming back to Europe, he added, and some of those were armed with chemical and biological weapons training.

Now, as members of the cell are awaiting a verdict in their case, French and other European intelligence and law enforcement officials are saying those fears appear to be overblown. The logistical challenges and expense of reaching Iraq has been one deterrent, they said, particularly with Syria’s making episodic efforts to halt the use of its territory as a transit route. Compared with the thousands of European Muslims who joined the fight in Afghanistan in the 1990s through organized networks in Britain, the number of fighters going to Iraq has been extremely small, according to senior French intelligence officials.

Another factor, the officials say, is that Iraqi insurgents currently neither need nor welcome European Muslims who lack military training and good Arabic-language skills — except if they are willing to conduct suicide missions.

The nature of the battle has also changed, making Iraq an alien destination for many would-be insurgents. The fight in Iraq is no longer just a jihad against foreign occupiers, but also a confusing civil war pitting Muslim against Muslim. Many young people have family and ethnic ties to Pakistan or North Africa, making those places more attractive destinations, and further advancing those regions’ potential for recruiting and radicalizing young Muslims.

“At the moment, the major threat to Europe is coming from elsewhere — Pakistan, Afghanistan and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” a terrorist organization based in North Africa, said Judge Bruguière, who now works for the European Union investigating terrorist financing.

He and other law enforcement authorities, particularly in countries like France, Italy and Spain, say they are convinced that their sweeping legal authority to eavesdrop, make arrests, hold suspects for long periods of time and win convictions on the vague charge of association with a terrorist enterprise has made it easier to take preventive action.

“It’s impossible to give numbers, but fewer young people are leaving Italy and other European countries to wage jihad in Iraq,” said Armando Spataro, Italy’s senior counterterrorism magistrate. “I’m convinced part of the reason is that we’ve been successful in arresting and prosecuting people, even before they go to Iraq.”

Even France’s domestic intelligence service, known as the D.S.T., has altered its analysis.

“It’s not easy to get to Iraq, it’s expensive and they have no family there,” said a French intelligence official. “We haven’t seen the waves we expected.”

By contrast, the D.S.T. took a more alarmist line when it first authorized the undercover judicial investigation of the Paris group, nicknamed the “19th Arrondissement cell” after the working-class Paris neighborhood where most of the suspects grew up and lived.

“The return to national territory of jihadists, strongly indoctrinated and trained in the handling of arms and explosives, obviously constitutes a grave threat for the national territory” of France, the D.S.T. wrote in a sealed document in July 2004, which was made available to The New York Times.

The intelligence service argued that the investigation of the 19th Arrondissement cell would provide important evidence of people going to Iraq and “presenting a threat after their return.”

Judges Bruguière and Spataro and other European law enforcement and intelligence officials emphasized that the Iraq war continued to fuel hatred, extremism and terrorism, and that the danger remained that an individual or group returning from Iraq could carry out a terrorist act inside Europe. In addition, they say, the flow of would-be insurgents to Iraq from several countries throughout the Arab world continues.

Intelligence and other law enforcement officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

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