Terrorist experts gather for conference

Tuesday, April 18th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- Government and law enforcement agencies have in recent years worked to better identify fringe religious movements that could turn violent, but last month's discovery of a massacre in Africa proved that more work is needed.

Jean F. Mayer, a scholar of alternative religions from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, said some agencies scrambled to predict which groups might pose trouble as the year 2000 approached.

But the known groups remained quiet. It was a lesser-known group whose violent eruption last month took analysts by surprise.

At least 530 members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments died in a March 17 fire in a makeshift church. Authorities discovered mass graves of 394 people in nearby villages.

"That was a group which probably no law enforcement agencies, outside of the Ugandan one, would have seen as a potential threat," Mayer said Monday. "We were looking for a millennial (or) an apocalyptic threat. But in just assessing whether this movement or that ideology might be a threat, we didn't see it coming where it actually came."

Mayer was among those gathered to discuss growing threats of violence at a conference on 21st century terrorism sponsored by the Oklahoma City National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism.

Mayer said there is little analysis available about what actually happened with that sect because its discovery was so recent.

But in participating in the investigation of the Order of the Solar Temple killings in Switzerland and Canada, Mayer said a possible indicator of violence outside the group is violence toward group members.

"The violence could have also been directed at outsiders. It was probably a matter of opportunity and the ideology of that group," he said.

Mayer said studying the actions of similar groups, such as the Jonestown killings in the 1970s, the 1995 sarin gas attack in Tokyo and the Heaven's Gate suicides in 1997 are important in understanding what happens when such groups take drastic, violent action.

Mayer emphasized that most of cases of fringe religious group violence are not terrorist acts. He also said not all these kinds of groups are violent.

Mayer said efforts by law enforcement agencies and governments to learn more about the groups should contribute to improving predictive capabilities.

The conference was to continue today, just blocks from where the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building occurred. The 168 deaths resulting from the explosion will be remembered in a memorial being dedicated Wednesday.