Muslim Recruiter's War Of Hate

Richard Roth Reports On Man Who's Recruiting Terrorists To Kill Americans

(CBS)  For more than a decade, an Algerian man we'll call Mustafa has been living in France outside the law: an illegal immigrant and a disciple of hate.

"One day we will take Jerusalem and there won't be a single Jew left on Earth," he says through a translator.

As CBS News Correspondent Richard Roth reports, war in Iraq has given him a new calling. As a follower of the Islamic movement called the Tabligh, he's been urging young Muslim men to leave France and fight.

"We inform them that in a Muslim country there is an invasion, hence it is a cause," he says. "You have to go and combat the enemy and throw them out," .

Asked if that means teaching them to kill Americans among other things, he says, "Yes, of course, as the American's were taught to torture the Iraqi's in Abu Ghraib."

The Tabligh began as a peaceful Islamic missionary movement, but intelligence experts say it's been hijacked by militants. Authorities in Europe worry there's now a growing network of men like Mustafa finding natural cover in large Muslim communities and recruiting militants to fight in Iraq.

In France, chief anti-terror judge Jean Louis Brugiere has opened a criminal investigation. There's evidence French citizens are among the new recruits, but he says Iraq is fueling the ambition of militants all across the continent.

"This looks like a black hole, which is sucking up all militants," says Brugiere.

Mustafa's kept his address secret from CBS News and to avoid arrest here, he agreed to be photographed only if he couldn't be identified. CBS News interviewed him through an intermediary, but he claims an underground network keeps terrorists in the pipeline: a military-style operation teaching the skills he learned in a camp in Afghanistan in the 1990s.

Months before the war started, Mustafa says he moved to Iraq with other foreigners, getting ready for the invasion. He handled logistics, supplying false passports and arranging travel for newcomers arriving through Algeria and Syria. He came back to France to enlist others.

Asked if some of the people he brought to Iraq have committed suicide missions, Mustafa says, "Excuse me, I cannot answer that question."

When pressed if that would be partially admitting it, he says, "You understand that."

His claims about the Iraqi insurgency and some of its foreign support fits what Jeffrey White, a former analyst for the defense intelligence agency, says is well established.

"I think over time, especially since the fall, our understanding of the resistance and all its elements, including the jihadist elements, is increasingly well organized," says White. "They are probably capable of sending people in and out."

Mustafa doesn't claim that Iraqi resistance depends exclusively on foreigners, only that militants from as far away as Western Europe are still joining the insurgency.

"All roads lead to Baghdad," says Mustafa. "You can get to Baghdad from anywhere."

As long as Americans stay in Iraq, he warns, he'll find men to fight them.