Swiss target terror suspects

Published on Monday 19 January 2004 00:00

SWISS authorities are investigating two people over the Istanbul terror attacks in November which included blasts at the British consulate and offices of a London-based bank.

Hansjuerg Mark Wiedmer, a spokesman for Switzerland’s federal prosecutor’s office, said yesterday that two Swiss-resident foreign citizens were the target of an inquiry, but refused to identify them by name or give further details.

Some 62 people died and about 700 were injured in the lorry bombings in Istanbul. The attackers, suspected of links with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terror network, struck two synagogues on 15 November and the British Consulate and a London-based bank in the Turkish city only five days later.

Mr Wiedmer also declined to comment on a report in the weekly Sonntag Zeitung, which said investigators were focusing on two Geneva companies and an Islamic organisation in Biel, in northern Switzerland, on suspicion that they had telephone contacts with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

Mohammed - the suspected number three al-Qaeda leader and mastermind of the 11 September, 2001, terror attacks in the United States - was captured in Pakistan last March.

Swiss authorities say there is no evidence terrorists have used the Alpine country as an organisational hub or training base, but note that some - including 11 September hijacker Mohamed Atta - passed through Switzerland briefly or had contacts with individuals based there. They have also said senior leaders of al-Qaeda have used Swiss mobile phones to communicate in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

On 8 January, police detained eight purported supporters of al-Qaeda in simultaneous raids in five Swiss cantons, holding them on suspicion of providing logistical support to a criminal organisation because of alleged links to attackers who bombed Western residential compounds in Saudi Arabia last year.

Swiss newspapers said the suspects were from Egypt, Somalia, Yemen, Morocco, Algeria and Bosnia. The sweep was part of a Swiss investigation of the bomb attacks on housing compounds in Riyadh in May.