IN MADRID PROBE, DRUGS SALES SEEN AS A WEAPON OF JIHAD

Extremists Look To Organized Crime

MADRID, Spain -- The odd crew of longtime extremists and radicalized
gangsters accused of committing the March train bombings nourished their
holy war with holy water.

And hashish.

The water came from Mecca. The conspirators drank it during purification
rituals at a barbershop that was an after-hours prayer hall for disciples
of Takfir wal Hijra, a secretive Islamic sect active in the criminal
underworld of Europe and North Africa.

The hashish came from Morocco. The ideologues of the terror cell justified
selling drugs as a weapon of jihad. The Moroccan dealer who financed the
plot traded a load of hashish for the dynamite that slaughtered 191 people
aboard commuter trains on March 11. The drug trafficker led the cell along
with a Tunisian economics student, a duo whose disparity reflects the
evolving nature of Islamic terrorism. Both blew themselves up after a
standoff with police last month.

As European investigators analyze the Madrid bombings and try to prevent
new attacks, the intensity of the drug connection intrigues them. The
predominantly Moroccan cell came together with remarkable speed, teaming a
drug gang with students and shopkeepers and raising the specter of
''narco-terrorism." It also offers a textbook example of the explosive
potential of combining Islamic extremism and organized criminal networks.

''It worries us very much," said a high-ranking Spanish police commander.

''Until now, Islamic terrorism and drugs were two separate areas. Now you
are not sure where to look. You are not sure whom you are dealing with. I
don't know of any previous cases like this in the West."

Madrid's hidden jihad reflects a wider effort by Islamic networks in Europe
and North Africa to tap the violent energy of criminal networks of diverse
ethnicities and specialties, according to anti-terrorist officials.

In Italy, a member of the Camorra, the Neapolitan Mafia, converted to Islam
and recently set up an exchange of arms for drugs between the Camorra and
Islamic terrorists, according to an Italian prosecutor. In the prisons of
Belgium and neighboring countries, recruitment by Islamic groups has
accelerated during a worldwide terror offensive stoked by the war in Iraq,
said Belgian police antiterror commander Alain Grignard.

''The intermingling of terrorist networks with the criminal milieu is
becoming more and more important," said Grignard, an Islamic specialist.

''It's in prisons where political operatives recruit specialists whom they
need to run their networks -- specialists in fraudulent documents, arms
trafficking, etc. They use concepts that justify crime, that transform it
into redemption. . . . The prisons of today are producing the terrorists of
tomorrow."