A HANDFUL of scribbled addresses and a telephone number found during a raid in a Paris suburb last month led to a series of arrests across Europe, including those of the 16 al-Qaeda suspects in Spain yesterday.

Investigating judges in France, Italy and Spain have long maintained that there was evidence of a terrorist network operating across the Continent. The past six weeks of police operations, with more than 50 arrests across four countries, appear to bear out those fears.

The first indication of the North African network came when three men and a woman were arrested in an apartment of La Courneuve district in Paris in the week before Christmas.

The police found vials of liquid chemicals, a suit for biological and chemical warfare, and documents pointing to a British connection.

French detectives alerted a Scotland Yard officer based in Paris that they had discovered a link between this group and an Algerian man arrested in London in November.

British security chiefs wanted the link kept secret but Nicolas Sarkozy, the French Interior Minister, revealed that the operation involved a possible chemical attack on a European city. “When you are dealing with suspects like this, it is better to arrest them before, not after,” he said.

Some of the 25 people picked up in Paris, and in subsequent raids in Lyons, had trained in Chechnya and Afghanistan. Though many were asylum-seekers, they appear to have had little problem in moving between each other’s countries. Many were travelling on fake passports.

The seized documents led to the January 5 raid on a Wood Green flat where Special Branch officers found a kitchen laboratory manufacturing ricin. Some of those questioned after the raids on Wood Green had only just arrived back in London from Paris.

Nine days later police raided a Manchester flat being used by Algerian asylum-seekers. Detective Constable Stephen Oake was stabbed to death as police questioned three men.

The next step came this week when armed police smashed their way into the Finsbury Park Mosque in the early hours of Monday and arrested seven men. Many of the suspects being questioned here and in France were visitors to this mosque and its controversial cleric, Abu Hamza al-Masri.

His name had been long been known to European and US investigators, who expressed dismay that Britain continued to ignore demands for his arrest and extradition.

Computer disks from the mosque are believed to have yielded further clues as to the extent of the network. Information was passed to the Spanish police, prompting the raids in Catalonia yesterday and more evidence that Islamic terrorists are experimenting with chemical weapons.

What also links these European cells is a thriving business in producing fake documents, making it harder for the authorities to trace the suspects’ true identities. Each of these raids has found fake passports, piles of cash in different currencies, bogus credit cards and pay-as-you-go mobile telephones. Some of the numbers point to links between the various European cells.

The Italian authorities widened the net yesterday by revealing that names found in a squat near Verona used by five North Africans were of men living in London.

Anti-terrorist squad officers say that the various strands of investigation point to a “Terror Incorporated” working throughout Europe.

Investigators in Italy and France insist that they were alerting their European colleagues to the menace of Islamic terrorism long before the September 11 attacks.

Police in Rome and Milan were bugging the phones, homes and cars of gangs of young North Africans who were overheard discussing how to hide a chemical poison in a can of tomatoes. They talked of poisoning water supplies and of releasing gas in a city’s underground system.

The gangs were also recorded as they mused on how best to get from their safe houses in Italy to training camps in Afghanistan. Several names were mentioned of people who could help, including Abu Hamza. Some of the men had visited him at Finsbury Park.

The cleric insists that many young men from across the globe seek his advice on spiritual matters and he has nothing to do with terrorism.

Judge Stephano Dambruoso, an Italian investigator, said last year: “Abu Hamza is a leader who played a role linking the Milan cell with Afghanistan. He was the person who confirmed the link between this cell and Afghanistan.”

He also named another radical London-based cleric, Abu Qatada, who is being held at Belmarsh Prison under anti-terrorism laws.

The judge was joined by investigators in Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and France in describing Abu Qatada as “al-Qaeda’s spiritual ambassador in Europe”.

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