Pubdate: Fri, 02 Nov 2001 Source: Hamilton Spectator (CN ON) Copyright: The Hamilton Spectator 2001 Contact: http://www.hamiltonspectator.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/181 Author: Joan Walters CRIMINALS SUPPORT TERRORISTS Crime and security experts are not surprised that Russian mobsters may have ordered from Hamilton forged identity documents that may have been used by a terrorist hijacker. Police forces around the world have focused on possible links between organized criminals and al-Qaeda terrorists since the Sept. 11 attacks. "Certainly these groups have mutually beneficial agendas," says David Griffin of the Canadian Police Association. "We are not surprised to find that on certain issues, some of these people are working together." Canada's anti-terrorism task force is probing a Hamilton forgery operation that may have produced fake ID used by a hijacker on United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania. Officers investigating Hamilton paralegal Gideon Glen McGuire Augier have refused to comment on the U.S. links. Augier, who was detained for 20 hours and whose business has been searched twice since Sept. 11, is alleged to have provided fake ID documents to Russian organized crime figures since 1998. The Hamilton suspect says police have told him they are interested in possible links between Russian mobsters and Osama bin Laden's group. Augier says police believe one of his regular Russian contacts may have acted as an agent for the terrorist group. Police suspect a fake identity produced in Hamilton was used by Saeed Ahmed Alghamdi, one of the terrorists on Flight 93. "You can see a convergence of needs here," Senator Colin Kenny, chair of the Senate's standing committee on defence and security, said yesterday. "It is clear that terrorists need things that tend to be only available from organized crime -- expertly forged passports, arms, weapons and other things that petty criminals and small-time hoods are unlikely to know how to get." Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of fake documents were obtained by the al-Qaeda terrorists so they could enter the U.S. and live normally until the attacks. The FBI says the 19 suspects behind the carnage all used aliases, had varied documents with different birth dates and switched identities regularly. Augier says Canadian task force officers have pointed to documents produced in Hamilton in the name of Samen Singh as being used by Alghamdi -- who used six other aliases. Production of fake documents for the terrorists would have been been spread around, police say. Experts believe a connection with organized criminals makes perfect sense. "Criminals need services, they need to buy them," said Margaret Beare, director of the Nathanson Centre for the Study of Organized Crime and Corruption at York University in Toronto. "Under the best of conditions, they might buy from somebody inside the family, who speaks the same language," Beare said. "But the best product is not always available internally. So you go where you get the best product at the cheapest prices for the lowest risk." Security forces are also watching for trading in biological and nuclear material by Russian black marketeers. For years, chilling rumours have circulated of small, portable "briefcase bombs" gone astray from the nuclear arsenal of the former Soviet Union. There are allegations that bin Laden paid millions to stockpile some of the weapons at a hideout near Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. Each backpack-size device could kill 100,000 people. Queries about how close a relationship exists between terrorism and organized crime arose at a parliamentary committee yesterday during a briefing by the police association, Griffin said. "There is a considerable presence of eastern European organized crime in Canada," the association director said. "But the reality in Canada is every organized crime group in the world has established themselves here and there is increased interest in whether terrorists and these groups are working together." Organized crime produces unimaginable revenue -- from drugs, prostitution, the smuggling of illegal aliens, fraud, arms dealing and other pursuits. That kind of financial clout has attracted high levels of interest from terrorist groups in the past 10 to 20 years, especially in the international drug trade. Organized crime groups often run the trafficking organizations while terrorist and insurgent groups control the territory where the drugs are cultivated and transported. But the once clear lines between the drug trade, terrorism and organized crime have blurred and mutated sharply in the past few years as high-profile terrorism has increased. "We have not yet had a lot of direct testimony on the subject," says Kenny, the Senate's security expert who also sits on the committee for organized crime. "You can that this convergence is logical, and we're going to see more evidence of it as information comes forward." - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart