Five members of the terrorist network Al-Quaeda were expelled last year from Romania, the Romanian Counter-Intelligence Office sSRIt confirmed. The head of the terrorist cell trained in Afghanistan; the cell members recruited new followers in Iasi and Bucharest, promoting attacks performed in Afghanistan, Iraq and Chechnya with the aim of performing similar attacks in Romania.
The members of the Al Quaeda cell were on the verge of executing the first step of their plans when they were apprehended by the SRI.
They studied for two years the Romanian society and its Islamic community. Counter intelligence officers told Jurnalul National "the terrorist group was organized along Al Quaeda lines and aimed to promote its ideology with providing foreign help for terrorist attacks in Romania."
According to sources which obviously cannot be named, the leader of the cell was Musaab Ahmed Mohamed Mujalli, a Saudi citizen. He arrived in Romania to study in Iasi, but this was a cover for his real reason to be here, which was to organize a terrorist cell.
He had propaganda materials and conducted "lectures" for the benefit of the other cell-members, in order to turn operational their organization. He had trained previously in Al Quaeda camps, in Afghanistan, and was not shy to show his terrorist cell colleagues tapes of his training there, in 1994.
The Romanian counter-intelligence officers identified the other members of the group as Khaldoon Walid Monir Nabhan, with no citizenship, Yousuf Ali Mohamed Al Balushi, Omani citizen, Aymen Ahmed Fouad Jadkareem, Sudanese citizen, and Asad Abrar Qureshi, Pakistani citizen - all studying in Iasi.
The group first tried its campaigning and propaganda techniques in Iasi, then in Bucharest, to recruit other foreigners of Islamic faith for their cell.
"Their aim was to first brain-wash the recruits," s