Al Qaeda Leaders Seen in Control

"The rather well-formed structure that they had prior to 9/11 does seem to be degraded," said a senior British counterterrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "But there is still a fairly potent, if diffuse network out there that still aspires to make decisions. We should be very wary about writing them off."

Saudi officials said the interrogation of terrorism suspects in that country, as well as intercepted electronic communications, show that bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, dispatched cell organizers to Saudi Arabia in 2002 and weighed in on basic strategic decisions made by the local al Qaeda affiliate. The al Qaeda leadership also gave direct orders to attack specific targets in the kingdom, Saudi officials said.

The local al Qaeda network carried out its first attack on May 12, 2003, driving explosive-laden cars into the gates of Western residential compounds in Riyadh, killing 35 people, including nine Americans. The explosion stunned Saudi government leaders, who only a few months before had said publicly that there were no terrorist groups operating inside the kingdom.

Less than one week after the Riyadh bombing, explosions hit Morocco, which has a long history of close relations with the United States and little history of terrorism. On May 16, 2003, suicide bombers launched multiple attacks on hotels, restaurants and other civilian targets in Casablanca, killing 45 people.

At first, counterterrorism officials in Saudi Arabia and Morocco saw no connection between the two attacks other than the fact that they occurred four days apart. They assumed that the timing was coincidental, or that the Moroccan bombings were prompted in part by the publicity generated by what happened in Riyadh.

Today, however, counterterrorism officials in both countries say there were connections between the two groups that carried out the attacks. Two Moroccan al Qaeda operatives suspected of helping to organize the Casablanca bombings, Karim Mejjati and Hussein Mohammed Haski, surfaced as leaders of the local al Qaeda network in Saudi Arabia and were named to the kingdom's list of most wanted terrorist suspects.

Mejjati was killed in a shootout with anti-terrorism police in a small Saudi town in April. Haski was arrested in July 2004 in Belgium, where he faces charges of helping to organize another sleeper cell with al Qaeda connections, according to Belgian officials and court documents. Both Haski and Mejjati were veterans of al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, documents show.

A similar connection has emerged between the Casablanca bombings and the March 11, 2004, train explosions that killed 191 people in Madrid. Spanish investigators have identified a suspected ringleader of the Madrid attacks as a Moroccan al Qaeda operative named Amer Azizi, who is also wanted by authorities in Morocco on charges of involvement in the network that organized the Casablanca attacks.

Like Mejjati and Haski, Azizi spent time at al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan before 2001 and is believed to be a conduit to the al Qaeda leadership, intelligence officials said.

Counterterrorism investigators and analysts said it was highly unlikely that the people who organized the July 7 London bombings were directly involved in the Sharm el-Sheikh attacks. But they predicted that both plots would eventually be traced directly to al Qaeda.

Ranstorp, the terrorism expert in Scotland, predicted that Egyptian investigators would pursue possible links to Zawahiri, an Egyptian-born physician who has served as bin Laden's top deputy and al Qaeda's leading ideologue since the early 1990s. "I doubt very much that this was done by the same group of Pakistanis who were apparently responsible for what happened in London," Ranstorp said. "But this very well could have been directed by Zawahiri, in terms of activating the Egyptian front."

U.S. and European intelligence officials said they believe bin Laden and Zawahiri remain in hiding along the rugged border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where access and communications with the outside world remain difficult. But many other al Qaeda leaders have found refuge in Pakistan's urban areas, where they are freer to move around and make contact with operatives visiting from other countries.

Pakistani officials have confirmed that three of the four suicide bombers involved in the London attacks this month visited Pakistan for extended periods over the past two years, spending time in Karachi and Lahore, Pakistan's largest cities. Investigators suspect they may have met with al Qaeda operatives who gave them instructions for carrying out the bombings.

British officials and counterterrorism analysts said the trail of the investigation was clearly leading to Pakistan, which has faced renewed criticism for giving haven to al Qaeda sympathizers and other Islamic radical groups. Several highly wanted al Qaeda leaders who have been captured in recent years by the FBI and CIA were caught not in the remote terrain along the Pakistani border, but in major cities such as Karachi, Rawalpindi and Lahore.

"Why is it that all the roads keep going back to Pakistan?" said M. J. Gohel, a terrorism analyst and chief executive of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a London-based think tank. "Is it a coincidence, or is there something more? The linkages there are just too strong and consistent. The whole backbone of the jihadi infrastructure is not being dismantled. It is still functioning."

The Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, pledged this week to renew his crackdown on "extremists" and Islamic radicals in the country and said officials were doing everything they could to cooperate with the investigation into the London bombings. But he bristled at the idea that Pakistan has remained a haven for al Qaeda.

Staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.