Al Qaeda Seeks Ties to Latin Gangs

ntelligence officials said last month that Muslim terrorists are seeking alliances with America's violent immigrant street gangs, and that Chechen terrorists - like those that killed more than 300 people, most of them children, in an attack on a school in Beslan, Russia - may have entered the U.S. through Mexico.

The Chechens, said to be wearing backpacks, secretly traveled to northern Mexico and crossed into the U.S. through Arizona to take advantage of America's unguarded border, according to an unnamed intelligence source quoted by the Washington Times.

Intelligence officials also believe that a top lieutenant of Osama bin Laden has already met with leaders of the notorious El Salvadoran Mara Salvatrucha gang, known in the U.S. as MS-13, which specializes in smuggling gang members from Central America into the United States, and whose gang network among Hispanic immigrants stretches from Los Angeles to Miami and New York.

A spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed to the paper that an intelligence report about possible entry by the Chechen terrorists is being investigated by authorities.

In their bloody and widely publicized attack in Russia, heavily armed Islamic Cechens took over a school building and wired it with explosives. An accidental explosion apparently triggered a battle between Russian security personnel surrounding the school and the terrorists, who shot school children in the back as hundreds tried to flee the burning building.

Recently the U.S. Department of Education issued a warning nationwide to school officials to double-check their security precautions to prevent a possible terrorist operation against schools.

Fears of an attack on American schools were raised by the discovery in Iraq of a computer disk containing data about the layout of six schools in the U.S.

"Officials believed the disk may have been part of a terrorist plot," the Times reported. But FBI officials told the Times there was no direct evidence of any terror threat.

American counter-terror experts have been concerned in recent months that al Qaeda terrorists may be entering the U.S. through the porous Mexican border.

"Intelligence officials said a suspected al Qaeda leader who has been in the United States was spotted recently in Mexico. Officials believe Adnan Shukrijumah, whom the FBI wants for questioning, met with alien smugglers in Mexico and Honduras and was seeking ways to bring al Qaeda members into the United States," said the Times.

Shukrijumah's links to MS-13 may pose a serious security threat for the U.S. Police say that the gang is actively involved in smuggling drugs and weapons as well as human cargo, and is especially violent, having been linked in the U.S. to numerous killings, robberies burglaries, carjackings, extortions, rapes and aggravated assaults.

The group is thought to have "established a major smuggling center in Matamoros, Mexico, just south of Brownsville, Texas, form where it ha aranged to bring illegal aliens form countries other than Mexico into the United States," the Times reported.

Security officials told the paper that al Qaeda's terrorists "hope to take advantage of a lack of detention space with the Department of Homeland Security that has forced immigration officials to release non-Mexican illegal aliens back into the United States, rather than return them to their home countries," said the Times.

Less than 15 percent of released illegals ever appear for their immigration hearings.

Last year, nearly 60,000 illegal aliens designated by overworked Border Patrol agents as "other-than-Mexican" or OTM's, were apprehended along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Shukrijumah, 29, was born in Saudi Arabia but believed to hold Yemen citizenship. Intelligence officials say he was spotted in in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, in July, after crossing the border illegally from Nicaragua after a brief stay in Panama. He a former resident of southern Florida, and reportedly has relatives in Guyana. He was named in a March 2003 material witness arrest warrant issued by federal prosecutors in Norther Virginia who allege he has information about potential terror plots against the U.S. He was among seven suspected al Qaeda operatives identified by Attorney General John Ashcroft as being involved in the planning of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Citing intelligence information, Ashcroft said Shukrijumah poses "a clear and present danger to America." The FBI described him as armed and dangerous, and a major threat to homeland security.

Border officials say there has increased apprehensions of illegal border crossers from Mexico whose countries of origin inlcude Afghanistan, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan, the Phillipines, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, all countries that have produced Muslim terrorists.

The Mara Salvatrucha gang began operations in Los Angeles in the 1980's and quickly established a reputation for being both violent and well-organized. The gang's U.S. organizers came here as a result of generous immigration offers by Congress to El Salavadorans following that country's recent civil war.

Gang experts say MS-13 recruits members primarily from among Hispanic immigrant communities. New recruits may be as young as 13. New members undergo initiation rites that often include being "jumped," which means being beaten by members while others count to 13.