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Is he a dangerous international terrorist who planned large-scale and bloody attacks across Europe or a poor illegal immigrant living in a shack with the help of neighbours and charitable organizations?

That is the question the answer of which the Greek police is trying to find in connection with the capture of the 32-year-old Palestinian Galeb Taleb last Saturday, following the publication in the newspaper Corriere della Sera. According to the author of the publication in the Italian daily edition, referring to information submitted by officers from Italian and U.S. services, Galeb Taleb is 23-year-old nicknamed "The Boy", preparing a series of armed attacks in Greece and throughout Europe.

The article also presents him as a senior member of the organization Fatah al-Islam considered a branch of Al-Qaida who avails large sums of money and constantly changes his residence in downtown Athens. According to the article in the Italian edition, "the terrorist shaved his beard after the special permission of an Imam and does whatever he can to relate "the terrorist occupation" with an easy and pelasant lifestyle."

According to a report in the Greek newspaper Vima, however, the conditions under which the captured Palestinian lived were quite different from those described in the article of the Italian newspaper.

Galeb Taleb lived in a shack in the camp of the Kurds in the metropolitan suburb of Pendeli, located at the foot of the eponymous mountain. Some of the Kurds who knew the Palestinian said that he had arrived in the camp early in 2009. "He was with two other people. They were the only Palestinians who lived in our camp."

Taleb told the Kurds that he had no money to rent a house in Athens and a friend of his housed him in his shack, one of the first in the camp. "After the summer of 2009, when many of the shacks burned in a forest fire he started making his own little shack with building materials and plywood. He lived there until Saturday evening. Then we saw about ten armed police officers to enter the camp from a nearby dirt road and go to his house. It seems that he tried to escape but they caught him at once."

The "easy and pleasant lifestyle" described by the officers of the western secret services perhaps does not reflect reality, according to Vima newspaper.
 
A Kurd, friend of Taleb, said that "Galeb earned 3-4 wages per month by working on construction sites. He had no money and we often gave him food. Also, he often happened to take food and clothes from charitable organizations that visited our camp. He was always dressed poorly and did not speak with anyone else, only with his compatriots. One of them was earning money by selling phone cards. Taleb used to go to a small house where Muslims from the camp pray and then he returned to his shack. He told us upon arrival that he prepared to go to Europe. But he was here all the time and apparently he had no financial and other opportunity to leave and go to another country."

The descriptions and the pictures of the western secret services published in Corriere della Sera present Galeb Taleb as a big young man with glasses, short hair, well-shaved "with the permission of the Imam". According to the residents of the Kurds camp, Taleb is of medium height with long black hair and short beard.

The same sources said that in the days after his capture the camp was watched by plainclothes police officers who were interested in the little house in which the Palestinian had lived.

The mystery surrounding the case of Taleb is compounded by the statements a senior officer of the Greek Ministry for Citizens Protection made for Vima. According to him, "actually, the conditions in which Galeb Taleb lived were bad. But he may have chosen this lifestyle in order not to be suspected by security forces. This is a tactic we know from similar cases abroad."
 
One thing is clear: The observations did not indicate that he prepared to commit any suspicious activity. But the publication compelled us to catch him before we can finish our investigations on the existence of "asleep enclave" of an Arab organization, as our colleagues from abroad pointed out. Now we may not ever learn the truth."

A computer was found in the shed of Galeb Taleb that is currently subject to criminal checks in laboratories.