Europe Tries to Prevent the Next Attack

Spanish railway workers and police examine the debris of a destroyed train at Madrid's Atocha railway station, in this March 12, 2004, file photo. Powerful explosions rocked three Madrid stations on Thursday, March 11, 2004, killing more than 190 rush-hour commuters and wounding more than 1,240 in Spain's worst terrorist attack ever. Senior security officials across Europe warned in interviews with The Associated Press that the relative ease and low cost of an attack, combined with the anger and isolation felt by Muslim populations, mean more bloodshed is almost inevitable. The officials painted a picture of a diverse group of militants with competing agendas, vastly different social and educational backgrounds and a litany of gripes that makes it difficult to predict their next move. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus/FILE) (Anja Niedringhaus - AP)

In France, authorities have blocked at least a dozen attacks in the past decade, said Louis Caprioli, the former assistant director of the DST, the country's main counterintelligence agency. Tore Bjoergo, a terrorism expert at the Norwegian Police University College, put the number of thwarted attacks throughout Europe at 30 to 40 since 9/11.

Officials and terror experts say the main threat is from homegrown militants, deeply rooted in their adopted countries but still linked to networks in the Muslim world.

Most of the Madrid bombers were North African immigrants. The London attacks were carried out by three British citizens of Pakistani descent and a fourth from Jamaica. And the highly public killing of Dutch film director Theo van Gogh in 2004 was carried out by a Muslim of Moroccan background.

No link to al-Qaida has been established in any of the incidents, though British authorities are still looking into a trip two of the bombers there made to Pakistan in the year before the bombings.

Said Heinz Fromm, Germany's domestic intelligence chief: "One today cannot talk any longer of a central leadership role of al-Qaida." Bin Laden's group has become a "diffuse, amorphous organization" that provides inspiration for attacks, rather than a guiding hand, he said.

Riots in heavily Muslim inner cities of France, and the global Islamic outburst over the publication of Danish cartoons featuring the Prophet Muhammad, have further heated the climate for terrorism.

"We have recorded a significant increase in the number of threats" because of the cartoons, said Lars Findsen, the intelligence chief in Denmark.

The Internet is replacing militant mosques as the main meeting site for potential terrorists, said Sybrand van Hulst, the director of the Netherlands' CIA equivalent, the AIVD. It has also become their manual.

The Spanish intelligence chief said a search of the Madrid plotters' computers found they had often visited Global Islamic Media, the al-Qaida-linked Web site, before the attack and after, when they needed advice on making their getaway.

Authorities believe they learned how to rig their cell-phone bombs on the Web and even used the same brand of phones _ Mitsubishi Trium T110s _ as did the group behind the 2002 attacks in Bali.

The official said similarities between otherwise-unrelated attacks were evidence of the Web's power to spread terror information. The suicide attacks in London and those in Casablanca on May 16, 2003, were both carried out using the same peroxide-based explosives, which are easily made with common materials, but are extremely powerful.

The official said the terrorists don't know each other but chat a lot online, sharing their lessons and tactics. "They have recipes (for how to carry out an attack). It is the classic do-it-yourself handbook," he said.

The cost of an attack has also dropped sharply.

The Sept. 11 attacks were complicated and expensive, involving international bank transfers and months of training. The London attacks, according to British Home Secretary John Reid, cost just $15,000.

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Associated Press writers Mar Roman in Madrid; Dave Rising in Hamburg, Germany; David Stringer in London; Pierre-Antoine Souchard and Verena von Derschau in Paris; Ariel David in Rome; Karl Ritter in Stockholm; Doug Mellgren in Oslo, Norway; and Toby Sterling in Amsterdam contributed to this report.