The report by Britain’s Home Office–submitted as part of a recent court case and obtained by NEWSWEEK–underscores the resiliency of Western-based Islamic terrorist movements even when their leaders are arrested, prosecuted and sentenced to years in prison.

More importantly, it also suggests that some U.S. officials may misunderstand the fundamental nature of the enemy they are dealing with in the war on terror. Whatever the current state of Al Qaeda, the report says, an even more dangerous threat may come from “nonaligned mujahedin” groups who are only loosely affiliated with Osama bin Laden’s organization but cooperate with it on a case-by-case basis across international boundaries in the furtherance of common goals.

A case in point is the North African terrorist network of Ahmed Ressam, the operative who first came to U.S. attention in December 1999 when he was arrested in Port Angeles, Wash., attempting to enter the country on a ferry boat from Canada driving a rental car packed with homemade explosives. The bomb-making material, Ressam later confessed, was intended for use in plots to disrupt Millennium-eve celebrations in the United States, including blowing up Los Angeles International Airport.

Ressam’s arrest was viewed by some U.S. counterterrorism officials at the time as a turning point–the first hard evidence that bin Laden’s organization might actually be plotting attacks on the U.S. homeland rather than U.S. and Western interests overseas. The FBI–working with allied law enforcement agencies–followed up aggressively and over the next two years arrested more than a dozen members of Ressam’s network, including the February 2001 apprehension at London’s Heathrow Airport of 36-year-old -leader Abu Doha, the alleged leader of the group whose alias was “The Doctor.”

But according to the new British Home Office report, the North African network of Ressam and Abu Doha hasn’t fallen apart at all. In fact, the report states, the network has “continued as an active terrorist network.” In what is likely to come as an even greater jolt to U.S. officials, the British document says the very same group appears to have been responsible for a much more recent and ominous terrorist operation–a plan to spread havoc and destruction in a number of European cities with the dispersal of homemade batches of the poison ricin.

A half dozen Algerian militants were first arrested in London last January and traces of ricin were found in their apartment. Other suspects were also arrested in France and Spain. Some authorities believe the plotters were intending, among other operations, to poison British troops by lacing the food supply at a British military base with ricin.

Yet another example of the resiliency of the Ressam network has come in the past few days in the case of Adil Charkoui, a 29-year-old Moroccan who was arrested last week in Montreal. In court documents released Wednesday, the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) describes Charkoui–who ran a pizzeria–as a “sleeper agent” who had contacts with Ressam’s former roommate and other members of his network. One of Charkoui’s contacts was a Tunisian suspect who was close to Abu Zubaydah, the former chief of Al Qaeda’s training camps. After threatening a libel suit against a Canadian newspaper, the Tunisian left Canada and is now on the loose.

The British Home Office report is dated May 9, 2003, and is based on information provided by MI-5, Britain’s domestic counterintelligence agency. It was submitted to a special immigration panel in an effort to justify the continued detention without trial of three Algerian militants who have been linked to the Abu Doha-Ressam organization.

Although there are clearly overlaps, British authorities say the Abu Doha group is not formally a part of Al Qaeda. It is more closely identified with the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria (more commonly known by its French acronym GIA), a radical Islamic group whose principal goal is to overthrow the military government in Algiers. But many of its operatives have strong links to bin Laden and, like Ressam and Abu Doha, spent time training in Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.

Despite the arrests of many of its leaders, “the North African network of which Abu Doha was a member continues to pose a significant threat to the security of the U.K.,” the British Home Office report states.

The fact that the network remains active, the document adds, is a “current example of the phenomenon of motivated individuals whose history is of allegiance to particular terrorist groups, but who cooperate with people based overseas of different nationalities and historical terrorist allegiances, in pursuit of Al Qaeda’s terrorist agenda, without necessarily acting explicitly on behalf of any individual terrorist group.”

Many U.S. and European counterterrorism investigators say the scheming of “nonaligned mujahedin” cells and even lone-wolf, nonaligned jihad fighters (like would-be airplane shoe-bomber Richard Reid) worries them more than the possibility of another centrally planned, extremely complex Al Qaeda operation similar to the September 11 attacks.

In fact, both appear to be major threats at the moment. The highly coordinated bombings of residential compounds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, earlier this month has all the earmarks of a classic Al Qaeda operation that, U.S. officials now believe, was actually ordered by high-level leaders of the group in Iran. (A U.S. official confirmed to NEWSWEEK that the Saudis have confronted the Iranian government with a list of a half dozen Al Qaeda suspects in Iran who they believe were behind the operation.)

On the other hand, a subsequent series of attacks in Morocco appear to much more clearly fit the Home Office model of a “nonaligned” jihadi operation–especially as investigations so far indicate that the Casablanca suicide bombers were not known suspects with Al Qaeda backgrounds.

A SAUDI CRACKDOWN?

In the wake of this month’s bombings in Riyadh, the Saudi government–the U.S. government’s supposed ally in the war on terror–is unquestionably cracking down hard.

But the government’s latest victim isn’t a terrorist.

It’s a courageous newspaper editor who had challenged the country’s powerful religious clerics and criticized them for giving aid and comfort to the terrorists.

The editor is Jamal Khashoggi, 45, a widely respected journalist, who learned this week that his services as editor of Al Watan, Saudi Arabia’s largest daily, were no longer deemed to be “in the public interest.”

NEWSWEEK has learned that action came after Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz, Saudi Arabia’s powerful interior minister, convened a meeting of all the country’s leading newspaper editors last Sunday and warned them against fomenting “dissent” within the kingdom.

Saudi sources tell NEWSWEEK that it was Nayef–who often seeks to appease the clerics even while he pledges “cooperation” with U.S. authorities–who ordered Khashoggi’s dismissal. Nor was there much doubt that Nayef had Khashoggi in mind when he warned the newspaper editors about the dangers of dissent.

Ever since the Riyadh bombing, Khashoggi had been on a virtual crusade against the clerics, blaming them for fomenting an atmosphere of religious intolerance and extremism that has helped fuel bin Laden’s terrorist movement.

Under Khashoggi’s leadership, Al Watan even ran cartoons ridiculing the clerics and the mutawan, the country’s much-feared religious police. One such cartoon showed bearded figures resembling the clerics who were shown wearing suicide vests and sticks of dynamite labeled FATWAS.

“I do feel defeated,” Khashoggi told NEWSWEEK in a telephone interview. While reluctant to speak about any details, Khashoggi emphasized that he is still heartened by the recent words of Crown Prince Abdullah when he promised to crackdown on the terrorists–and their supporters inside the kingdom. But of the religious clerics, he said only: “Maybe I underestimated their influence and power.”