In many cases, those links extended to terrorist cells based in Britain, some nurtured at radical mosques in areas of Britain with large concentrations of Pakistani migrants, who make up the bulk of the approximately 1.5 million Muslims in Britain.
Then the national-security adviser walks into the room, and tells them that an American has just approached a terrorist organization with a cell based in Hamburg and offered something for a hundred million dollars.
Israeli security officials said they thought that two Palestinian terrorists were in the vehicle when it exploded, and that the attack was the work of an Islamic Jihad cell based in or near the West Bank city of Jenin, a few miles east of here.
Meanwhile, the population in major towns and villages is vulnerable because we are off elsewhere chasing the enemy main-force guerrillas, allowing terrorist and insurgent cells based in the populated areas to intimidate people where they live.
It demands the sincere, sustained actions of many nations against a network of terrorist cells and bases and funding.
The hotel, all brown marble and glass with a few sad ferns in the atrium, seems an unlikely base for a terrorist cell, and the supposed terrorists were an unlikely bunch.
Mr. Tlilli is believed to have connections with at least one member of an Algerian group based in Frankfurt that was reportedly planning to attack the Christmas market in Strasbourg in 2001, and with a suspected terrorist cell that was uncovered in Italy last year.
