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5 in Germany believed linked to hijackers http://www.miami.com/herald/content/news/national/digdocs/109999 .htm Country's law doesn't allow for detention BY DANIEL RUBIN Herald World Staff BERLIN -- German investigators suspect at least five men still living in Hamburg are Al Qaeda members who helped plan the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings in the United States, a senior German law enforcement official said. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Hamburg residents have not been arrested because German law does not allow the detention of material witnesses as American law does. But the five, who are under surveillance, have been linked by telephone records to the hijackers, and some lived in the same Hamburg apartment as three of the hijackers and three other men accused of helping them. U.S. investigators discovered the phone records, the official said. German authorities suspect the five of ``having been more than personal acquaintances, [people] who also were involved in the planning'' of the terror attacks, the official said. About 600 members of the German Federal Criminal Agency, the country's equivalent of the FBI, have been involved in the investigation, which began Sept. 12 when it was discovered that three of the hijackers had lived in Germany for several years as students. DEVELOPING LEADS One hundred investigators started combing through the community of foreign students in Hamburg's technical colleges and are still developing leads, the official said. For example, only recently, investigators were told of a student at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg who attended the same mosque as the hijackers and was seen disposing of several boxes of documents two days before the terror attacks. He is not one of the five under surveillance. For now, German authorities are watching the five men, whom they believe helped with logistics and finances, and looking for patterns similar to those discovered among the three pilots -- Mohamed Atta, 33, Marwan Al-Shehhi, 23, and Ziad Jarrah, 26 -- and those accused of helping them. In the two months since Germany discovered it had unwittingly played host to an Al Qaeda cell, investigators have checked out 6,000 of 17,000 tips about Bin Laden-related terrorism, probing 448 people, 19 companies and six associations, according to Ulrich Kersten, president of Germany's federal criminal agency, the BKA. Federal police, he said at a symposium on Islamic terrorism this week, had combed through 450 bank accounts and records of 45 credit card holders. Authorities suspect 258 instances of terrorism funding, Kersten said. MOHAMMED ATTA German officials also believe that Mohammed Atta, the leader of the Hamburg cell and pilot of the first plane to hit the World Trade Center in New York, trained in Afghanistan, the senior law enforcement official said. The investigators have developed concrete evidence showing Atta traveled to Pakistan, and they believe the purpose of the trip was to slip into Afghanistan. Based on Atta's travel -- at least to Spain, the Czech Republic and Switzerland in the months before the attack -- and the fact that Atta and fellow hijacker Al-Shehhi received nearly $150,000 from a United Arab Emirates bank while taking flying lessons in Florida, the official said there is strong suspicion that the Hamburg cell was part of a ``super organization.'' The Hamburg group, he said, ``was not autonomous.'' German authorities are also working with FBI agents in an effort to develop a computer model that will better profile terrorists. Michael Rolince, the head of the FBI's counter-terrorism unit, met with German colleagues Thursday to sharpen a computer model that tries to match characteristics of the hijackers with those of others. The FBI has sent 14 agents to work with the Germans, Rolince said. PROFILES The profiles include what is known about three men for whom Germany has issued international arrest warrants as accomplices to the hijackers. Said Bahaji, 26, a German who grew up in Morocco, is believed to be a key logistics man. Fluent in four languages and gifted with computers, Bahaji studied electrical engineering at the Technical University and signed the original lease on the apartment in October 1998. Another roommate -- Zakariya Essabar -- is a 24-year-old Moroccan who studied at the Hamburg College of Applied Sciences, the same school attended by Jarrah with whom he had sold cars. The third suspected accomplice and former roommate, Ramzi Binalshibh, was described this week as the 20th hijacker by FBI director Robert Mueller. Binalshibh, a 29-year-old from Yemen, had paid for flight lessons in Florida, but four times failed to obtain a U.S. entry visa. The German official said he is not yet convinced Binalshibh would have been the fifth hijacker on the plane that crashed in western Pennsylvania Sept. 11, saying he still has suspicions about others. Investigators have found that the terror network stretches throughout Europe and North America, the official said. ``There are people in Germany, Great Britain France, Spain, the United States, Canada, Scandinavia, and the Benelux countries who have committed themselves to Jihad,'' he said. ``Almost all the people have Afghanistan experience, whether from the war or the training camps. It's not a question of one or two people.'' ------- End of forwarded message ------- -- Best wishes Before the [Salman Rushdie] fatwa and the Muslim solidarity it generated, the race industry that arrogates to itself the leadership of immigrant opinion had assumed that, with a few concessions, and with some exotic and welcome additions to British cuisine, the new immigrant communities would be assimilated into British life with hiccups but not convulsions. The fatwa affair - when the entire Islamic community united behind the condemnation - should have put an end to the idea. This was one bridge that Muslim immigrants were not willing to cross. ~~ Farrukh Dhondy, "Our Islamic Fifth Column", http://www.city-journal.org/html/11_4_our_islamic.html <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! 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