Disaster Averted

Police foil a terrorist plot

Were it not for the impressive efforts of Swiss and Italian antiterrorist squads last week, the marble and granite U.S. embassy on Rome's Via Veneto could have shared the fate of the American embassy in Beirut last September. The police teams uncovered a cell of Islamic extremists who seemed to be on the verge of executing yet another bomb attack on a symbol of U.S. authority. The plot may have been the one brazenly promised by the shadowy Islamic Jihad group two days before the U.S. presidential election, when the terrorists promised to mount a violent operation that would "surprise" the Americans.

The counterterrorist operation began when Swiss police stopped Hussein Hanih Atat, 21, a Lebanese national, at Zurich International Airport as he was making a connection from Beirut to Rome. Officials found several explosive arming devices in his suitcase. Atat was also carrying 5 Ibs. of highly volatile plastic material in a cloth belt under his shirt. An accomplice escaped detection and took a taxi to Zurich's railway station, where police later found a suitcase containing another 5 Ibs. of explosives. The accomplice is thought to have made his way to Rome.

The Swiss alerted the Italian secret service, which immediately swung into action. In a predawn raid, agents broke into two apartments in the seaside resort of Ladispoli, 24 miles northwest of Rome. There they rounded up seven young Lebanese, all students at the University of Rome. In the apartments the Italian agents found volumes of propaganda for Islamic Jihad, the outfit that claimed responsibility for the Beirut embassy bombing, as well as last year's suicide attack on the U.S. Marine compound in Beirut in which 241 American servicemen died. The agents also discovered a suspiciously accurate plan of the Rome embassy, indicating all surveillance points and noting the frequency with which Marine guard shifts were changed. To prevent them from communicating with anyone else who may have been involved in the plot, the police took the Lebanese to an army compound near Rome.

Although the students have refused to talk, the Italians believe the terrorist cell was organizing a suicide bomb attack, perhaps directed at a garage located below the quarters that house many of the Marine guards. The police assume that since it would take at least 200 Ibs. of plastic explosives to blow up a building the size of the embassy, the gang was still in the process of building up its cache. In fact, according to the police, the gang may have been planning the attack for at least a year.

U.S. officials found out about the plot only after the Ladispoli roundup. In gratitude for the deft police work, Ambassador Maxwell Rabb paid a 40-minute call on Rome's chief of police, Marcello Monarca. Said Rabb: "Your country has again demonstrated that it is in the vanguard of the fight against subversive and terrorist elements that stain the world with blood."