2 firms linked to Al Qaeda, Saudi intelligence agency
By John Crewdson, Tribune senior correspondent. John
Crewdson reported from Germany, and Viola Gienger
contributed from Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania
March 31, 2004
HAMBURG, Germany -- Two private Saudi companies linked
with suspected Al Qaeda cells here and in Indonesia
also have connections to the Saudi Arabian
intelligence agency and its longtime chief, Prince
Turki bin Faisal, according to information assembled
by German intelligence analysts.
The Twaik Group and Rawasin Media Productions, both
based in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, have served as
fronts for the Saudi General Intelligence Directorate,
according to an inquiry by Germany's foreign
intelligence service, the BND.
Twaik, a $100 million-a-year conglomerate, has diverse
holdings inside and outside Saudi Arabia. Rawasin
reports earnings of about $4 million a year from
producing and selling audio and videotapes promoting
the Wahhabi version of Islam that is Saudi Arabia's
dominant religion.
The conclusions reached by the BND inquiry were
presented to the office of German Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder late last year and subsequently circulated
within the German intelligence community.
The inquiry determined that Twaik, like Rawasin, was
what one source described as "an organ of Saudi Arabia
intelligence."
In the late 1990s both Twaik and Rawasin employed Reda
Seyam, a 44-year-old Egyptian suspected by Indonesian
authorities of having helped finance the Bali
nightclub bombing. Germany's federal prosecutor is
investigating Seyam on suspicion of supporting a
foreign terrorist organization, namely Al Qaeda.
The German inquiry also discovered that, during 1999
and 2000, Seyam took several flights from Saudi Arabia
to destinations in Europe on aircraft operated by the
Saudi General Intelligence Directorate, or GID.
The Tribune reported last year that between 1995 and
1998, Twaik deposited more than $250,000 in bank
accounts controlled by Mamoun Darkazanli, a
Syrian-born Hamburg businessman and longtime Al Qaeda
associate with close ties to the Sept. 11 hijackers
during their years in the northern port city of
Hamburg.
Abdulrahman Al-Fahhad, then the Twaik executive
responsible for the company's rental-car operations in
the Balkans, acknowledged hiring Darkazanli in 1995 to
supply cars from Germany for Twaik's branch office in
Albania. The money, Al-Fahhad said, had been for
Darkazanli's use in purchasing those cars.
Rental-car job
Al-Fahhad also acknowledged hiring Seyam to manage
Twaik's rental-car office in nearby
Bosnia-Herzegovina. In telephone interviews last year
and earlier this month, Al-Fahhad continued to
maintain that he could not remember how he met either
Darkazanli or Seyam.
Twaik's founder and owner of record, Saudi businessman
Saleh Abdulaziz Al-Fahhad, did not respond to several
written requests for comment on his company's
purported connections with Saudi intelligence, Rawasin
and Seyam.
Rawasin did not respond to e-mailed requests for
information beyond stating, "You can find our products
in Islamic cassette shops."
The BND inquiry has concluded that Seyam, one of whose
specialties was videotaping Muslim fighters in action
around the world, was sent to Indonesia by Rawasin a
year before the October 2002 Bali bombing that killed
202 people and wounded more than 300.
It is not clear whether Seyam was working on his own
or on behalf of Rawasin while he was distributing what
Indonesian investigators said was tens of thousands of
dollars to militant Islamists in Indonesia, including
the convicted mastermind of the Bali bombings.
Neither Seyam nor Darkazanli, both of whom emigrated
to Germany in the early 1980s and subsequently became
naturalized German citizens, has been charged with any
crime in Germany. Darkazanli is the target of a
separate investigation by the federal prosecutor into
the suspected laundering of Al Qaeda funds.
In 2002 and 2003 Seyam served a 10-month jail sentence
in Indonesia for violating that country's immigration
laws. Darkazanli was accused in a Spanish indictment
last year of having served as Osama bin Laden's
"financier in Europe."
Link established
According to information gathered by the BND, the
relationships between Twaik, Rawasin and the Saudi
General Intelligence Directorate were established
while the GID was headed by Prince Turki bin Faisal al
Saud, the eighth and last son of the late Saudi King
Faisal and currently the Saudi ambassador in London.
Prince Turki served as the chief of Saudi intelligence
from 1978 until 2001. The Twaik Group was formed in
1985, and Rawasin in 1998, according to business
records on file in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. In a
March 18 letter faxed to the Tribune, Prince Turki
stated only that "I have not developed any
relationship with either group."
Less than two weeks before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks
on the United States, the prince surprised observers
by resigning after 23 years as head of Saudi
intelligence. The official Saudi news agency said the
resignation had been the prince's decision.
In a February 2002 speech to an alumni reunion at
Georgetown University, his alma mater, Turki recalled
having met with Osama bin Laden on five occasions in
the late 1980s, at a time when both the Saudis and the
U.S. were supporting bin Laden and other Muslims
battling the Soviet army in Afghanistan.
Turki described bin Laden, whom he met in Saudi Arabia
and Pakistan, as "a relatively pleasant man, very shy,
softspoken."
If the BND's conclusions are correct, the linkage of
Twaik to Saudi intelligence may resolve a question
that has puzzled criminal investigators: Why would a
conglomerate that then ranked 67th among all Saudi
corporations choose a Muslim ideologue with no
apparent business experience to manage its struggling
rental-car operation in Bosnia-Herzegovina?
Those conclusions may also explain why a company whose
operations within Saudi Arabia range from waste
removal to the management of government hospitals
undertook not one but two risky business ventures in
the strife-torn Balkans, where several Saudi-based
Muslim charities were spending tens of millions of
dollars to aid the Muslim population.
Frayed relations
Relations between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have been
frayed by the Bush administration's contention that
wealthy individuals, companies and Islamic charities
in that country may have contributed, consciously or
otherwise, to the support of Islamic terrorist
organizations, including Al Qaeda.
There has been no indication thus far that any agency
of the Saudi government or member of the Saudi royal
family played a conscious role in supporting terrorist
activities. A source familiar with the BND
investigation said Saudi government officials outside
the GID "probably" had no idea of the relationship
among Rawasin, Twaik and the GID.
The BND's conclusions might also raise questions about
whether at least some of the Saudi government's
acknowledged support for armed struggles by Muslims in
Afghanistan and elsewhere may have been diverted to
attacks on Western interests.
No direct link
No direct connection between Saudi money and the Sept.
11 plotters in Hamburg has been found, though
investigators here and in the U.S. continue to search
for one. A senior FBI official acknowledged recently
that the agency still did not know the "ultimate
source" of the estimated $500,000 that financed the
Sept. 11 hijackings.
Though both men are free, Seyam and Darkazanli are
being kept under surveillance while the federal
prosecutor's investigation of their activities
proceeds.
The investigation of Seyam has been hampered by the
fact that, until two years ago, supporting a foreign
terrorist organization like Al Qaeda was not illegal
in Germany.
That loophole, which also has caused problems for the
prosecutions of two accused Sept. 11 conspirators in
Hamburg, has since been closed. The loophole is not an
issue in the Darkazanli investigation, which is
focused on ordinary criminal statutes that prohibit
money laundering.
The new anti-terrorism statute, forbidding support for
any organization foreign or domestic, is not
retroactive. A decision on whether to arrest Seyam and
to indict him on terrorism charges will depend on what
prosecutors learn about his activities after the law
was changed in August 2002.
Under German law, intelligence information like that
collected about Seyam by the BND cannot be used to
build a criminal case, something a source familiar
with the BND's investigation of Seyam described as
"very frustrating."
Seyam still could be charged with an ordinary crime
not related to terrorism if the evidence to support
such a charge exists. His ex-wife, a German woman
named Regina Kreis, has emerged as a leading witness
in the criminal investigation, which is being
conducted by the German federal police, the BKA.
A ride to Germany
One BKA official, cautioning that his agency was not
entirely convinced of Kreis' credibility, said she had
recalled for investigators riding in a car from
Bosnia-Herzegovina to Germany with her husband and
another man sometime in 1996.
>From photographs Kreis identified the mystery
passenger as Ramzi Binalshibh, who moved to Germany
from Yemen the previous year and would later become
the self-described "coordinator" of the Sept. 11
hijacking plot. Binalshibh is now in U.S. custody at
an undisclosed location.
The journey with Binalshibh was first disclosed by the
German magazine Der Spiegel, which reported last week
that German authorities now consider Seyam "to be one
of the most important Al Qaeda agents in Europe."
Another German magazine, Focus, previously quoted
Kreis as saying Seyam had been "in touch with Al Qaeda
leaders" while the couple was living in
Bosnia-Herzegovina and had taken part in a firing
squad that executed a Serb in the summer of 1995.
Herbert Gude, a Focus reporter who interviewed Kreis
while she was in the BKA's witness protection program
earlier this year, said she had been kept in the dark
about her husband's business affairs and could not
explain how and why Seyam had been hired by Twaik.
Kreis, who converted to Islam after her 1988 marriage
to Seyam and was divorced by her husband in 2001, was
not living with Seyam in Jakarta when he was arrested
there in September 2002.
Evidence of financing
Muchyar Yara, the spokesman for the Indonesian State
Intelligence Bureau, or BIN, at the time of Seyam's
arrest, said investigators uncovered evidence
indicating that Seyam was financing several suspected
terrorists in Southeast Asia.
Yara said that when agents searched Seyam's rented
$4,000-a-month house, they recovered documents that
included the names of suspected terrorists on Seyam's
payroll.
One of those names was Omar al-Farouq, believed by the
U.S. to be a senior Al Qaeda representative in
Southeast Asia. It was al-Farouq's capture in
Indonesia in June 2002, Yara said, that led BIN to
Seyam.
Seyam's "salary list," Yara said, also included the
name of Imam Samudra, a Balinese Islamic cleric
sentenced to death last year after his conviction for
masterminding the Bali attacks.
Samudra has admitted his role in the nightclub
bombings. At his trial, Samudra reportedly declared
that he was "grateful" for the deaths of more than
3,000 people in the Sept. 11 attacks.
In all, Yara said, Seyam apparently handed out many
thousands of dollars during his Indonesian sojourn,
including one particularly suspicious expenditure of
$74,000 for a "speedboat."
The BIN never found the speedboat, Yara said, noting
that speedboats were "not such a common thing" in
Indonesia. But he added that "we can't say directly
that the money was used for the Bali bomb."
Despite the BIN's conclusion that Seyam was "a very
high-ranking officer of the international terrorism
network," Yara said, he was convicted only of working
as a journalist while holding a tourist visa.
Seyam was not prosecuted on terrorism charges, Yara
said, partly because of loopholes in the Indonesian
anti-terrorism laws, and partly because of his German
nationality. "We decided that his case would be better
handled by Germany," Yara said.
When Seyam's jail sentence ran out in July 2003, he
was handed over to the BKA, who returned him to
Germany for questioning.
Interviewed by Der Spiegel in the small town near
Stuttgart where he now lives, Seyam said he was being
"persecuted" because of his reporting of injustices to
Muslims while working as a correspondent for Al
Jazeera, the Arab-owned satellite TV channel.
Al Jazeera's Jakarta bureau chief, Othman al-Battiri,
said in a telephone interview that Seyam had never
been an Al Jazeera correspondent, and that his
application for a job as a cameraman had been
rejected. Editors at Al Jazeera headquarters in Qatar
confirmed that the organization had never employed
Seyam.
Naturalized German
A heavily bearded man with what acquaintances describe
as a brooding manner, Seyam arrived in Germany in the
early 1980s to study mathematics in Freiberg. He
became a naturalized German citizen after marrying
Kreis.
"He was an ordinary Muslim who became a fanatic," a
senior BKA official said.
According to Abdulrahman Al-Fahhad, when Seyam took
over the management of Twaik Rent-a-Car's office in
the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo in October 1997, his
instructions were to liquidate Twaik's operation.
"We hired him to close the business," Al-Fahhad said.
But Twaik's deputy manager in Sarajevo, Haytham
Elshazli, remembers Seyam struggling to make Twaik
Rent-a-Car a going concern, albeit one with a radical
Islamic face.
Soon after taking over Twaik, Elshazli said, Seyam
fired the company's only two female employees. He also
brought a copy of the Koran to the office and began
playing religious tapes during working hours.
When Seyam discovered that Twaik had rented a car to a
woman with dual Israeli and American citizenship,
Elshazli recalled, "He said, `Why are you renting to
Israeli people, to Jews, to people like that ...? You
don't have to be in contact with Jews, with such
people.'"
Seyam's exhortations drove away another Twaik
employee, a non-observant Bosnian Muslim who spoke to
the Tribune on condition that he not be identified.
"He said, `This is not good, you must have a wife, not
a girlfriend, you mustn't drink, you must go to
mosque,'" the former employee recalled.
When the former employee told Seyam he intended to
submit his resignation to Abdulrahman Al-Fahhad, he
said Seyam replied that that wouldn't be necessary,
because "I'm the owner of Twaik now."
Once Seyam took charge, Elshazli said, Abdulrahman
Al-Fahhad's inspection visits to Bosnia-Herzegovina
ceased. At one point, Seyam brought in a dozen or so
Arabs, men Elshazli described as hard-line Islamists,
explaining that they were "accountants."
The men copied every document in the Twaik files,
Elshazli said, including the names and addresses of
clients from the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo.
Within a few months of Seyam's taking over, Elshazli
was also out the door. "He said, `The company is ours
now, and we are not satisfied with you anymore,'"
Elshazli recalled. "Six months of nightmare."
Whether despite Seyam's efforts or because of them,
Twaik's enterprise in Bosnia-Herzegovina failed, and
in 1998 Seyam disappeared from Bosnia-Herzegovina
along with Twaik.
According to the BND investigation, he turned up the
next year in Saudi Arabia, working for Rawasin Media
Productions.
In early 2001 Seyam began shuttling between Saudi
Arabia and Indonesia, where he reportedly videotaped
fighting between the Muslim majority and the Christian
minority in Indonesia's remote Moluccas Islands. That
little-publicized struggle is believed to have claimed
thousands of lives over the past four years.
While Seyam was in Riyadh, according to Der Spiegel,
"high-ranking Al Qaeda members" were seen visiting his
house.
Among Seyam's alleged visitors, the magazine said, was
Osama bin Laden.
- - -
Men investigated for links to terror, Saudi
intelligence
Two German citizens of Arab ancestry are suspected of
links to the Sept. 11 hijackers and worked for
companies believed to be affiliated with the Saudi
Arabian intelligence agency.
Profile: A 44-year-old German citizen originally from
Egypt. Specialized in videotaping Muslim fighters in
the Balkans and elsewhere.
Terror ties: Under investigation in Germany for
suspicion of
supporting Al Qaeda. Indonesian authorities suspect
him of helping finance the Bali bombing that killed
more than 200 in October 2002.
Served 10 months in an Indonesian jail on a visa
violation
before being deported to Germany in July 2003.
TERROR SUSPECT
Ramzi Binalshibh
The self-described "coordinator" of Sept. 11. Held by
U.S. authorities since his arrest in September 2002.
- LINK TO SEYAM
Seyam's ex-wife, Regina Kreis, identifies Binalshibh
as the man who shared a car ride from
Bosnia-Herzegovina to Germany with
her and her husband in 1996.
Mamoun Darkazanli
Profile: Syrian-born Hamburg businessman
Terror ties: Suspected of handling money, procuring
equipment and other activities on behalf of Al Qaeda.
He was called Osama bin Laden's "financier in Europe"
in a 2003 Spanish indictment.
TERRORISTS
9/11 hijackers
Hijackers used Hamburg as a base to plan the attacks;
three of the four pilots attended university there.
LINK TO DARKAZANLI
Darkazanli allegedly helped recruit the hijackers. He
is a former associate of Mohamed Atta while the latter
was in college in Hamburg.
COMPANIES
Rawasin Media Productions
Saudi Arabian company sells audio and videotapes
promoting
Wahhabism, a form of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia.
Allegedly affiliated with the Saudi equivalent of the
CIA.
- Link to Seyam
The company sent him to Indonesia in 2001, according
to the German foreign intelligence service.
The Twaik Group
German intelligence officials call Riyadh-based
conglomerate "an organ of Saudi Arabia intelligence."
- LINK TO SEYAM
He ran the Saudi company's rental car business in
Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1997-98.
- LINK TO DARKAZANLI
>From 1995-98, the company wired more than $250,000 to
German bank accounts controlled by Darkazanli, who was
hired to supply cars for Twaik's office in Albania.
Sources: Police and intelligence reports, public
documents Chicago Tribune
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