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Atta tied terror suspects together - The Regist�</A>
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December 30, 2001
Atta tied terror suspects together
By The Associated Press
An al-Qaeda plot to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Rome. Another to set
terrorist commandos loose in Strasbourg, home of the European Parliament. A
third to spirit a suicide bomber into the American embassy in Paris.
Authorities on both sides of the Atlantic have described the plots as the
work of a highly compartmentalized organization whose members often weren't
aware of each others' activities.
Even so, a look reveals that many of those suspected of orchestrating terror
against Americans had direct and frequent connections - a meeting in Spain, a
phone number found in Hamburg, a London cleric who was a religious
inspiration to terrorists in different cells.
And connected to it all, Mohamed Atta - the suicide pilot Osama bin Laden
described as ``in charge of the group'' of Sept. 11 suicide hijackers - seems
to have been the common thread that wove through the lives of many bin Laden
agents.
Atta's travels in the last months of his life brought him in contact with
some of those allegedly behind plots against the U.S. embassies in Rome and
Paris, as well as a cell officials say was plotting to attack the European
Parliament and other targets in Strasbourg, France. He also met an Iraqi
intelligence official in Prague and is suspected of links to a group of North
Africans in Spain that authorities say was planning to attack U.S. interests
in Europe.
While the other al-Qaeda plots in Europe were thwarted, the one Atta
controlled directly - leading a team of suicide hijackers who threw their
lives away in order to take thousands more - succeeded.
U.S. authorities say they have placed Atta at the center of their
investigation and are working backward, retracing his steps in order to reach
other potential terrorists.
What they have found is that in the months leading up to the worst terrorist
attack in history, al-Qaeda suspects were working throughout Europe, often
bumping up against authorities and each other.
In some cases, a suspect under surveillance in one country was not considered
a danger by authorities in another.
The Rome plot
When the U.S. Embassy in Rome went on alert and shut down for three days last
January, there was a suggestion al-Qaeda may have been plotting an attack.
Four months later, Italian police nabbed Essid Ben Khemais, a burly Tunisian
known as ``the Saber.'' Italian prosecutor Stefano Dambruoso has said Ben
Khemais was sent from Afghanistan to supervise bin Laden's terrorist
operations in Europe. He is considered a high-ranking bin Laden associate who
Spanish officials say met with Atta in Spain weeks before his arrest.
Italian investigators have said they've uncovered evidence of cooperation
among al-Qaeda cells in Germany, France, Spain and Belgium.
Under Ben Khemais' direction, the investigators say, an Italian-German cell
plotted to bring down the heavily guarded U.S. Embassy, a 19th century
building on Rome's fashionable Via Veneto. Two members of the cell were
arrested shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, including a Tunisian man picked
up outside a Milan mosque referred to by the State Department as al-Qaeda's
``main station house in Europe.''
Some time between the closing of the Rome embassy and Ben Khemais' arrest in
April he met with Atta in Spain, Spanish police say.
The Hamburg cell
The Dec. 11 U.S. indictment of Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen of
Moroccan descent arrested in Minnesota three weeks before the Sept. 11
attacks, shed more light on the cell Atta operated in Hamburg, Germany.
U.S. authorities allege that Moussaoui, who authorities say would have been
among the hijackers had he not been arrested, followed many of the same
patterns as the 19 hijackers, all of whom were named as unindicted
co-conspirators along with bin Laden.
The indictment also linked Moussaoui to Ramzi Binalshibh, an alleged member
of the German cell who once lived with Atta in a Hamburg apartment where they
are believed to have planned the Sept. 11 attack.
U.S. investigators believe Binalshibh was meant to have been the 20th
hijacker and have suggested that Moussaoui may have been picked as an
alternate when Binalshibh was denied entry into the United States.
Atta's ties to Binalshibh and hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi go back years. The
three worked together between 1997 and 1998 at a company outside Hamburg
called Hay Computing Service GmbH, company officials said.
In October 1999, Atta and Binalshibh both attended the wedding of Said
Bahaji, a 26-year-old German-Moroccan who vanished shortly before Sept. 11
and is thought to have been part of the Hamburg cell.
At Bahaji's wedding, a lavish affair at a local mosque, at least three of the
hijackers and their cohorts bumped shoulders with members of Hamburg's Muslim
community, including a Syrian-born import-exporter named Mamoun Darkazanli.
The Bush administration has accused Darkazanli of operating a front for
al-Qaeda, and Spain has named him in the indictment of Sept. 11 suspect Imad
Yarkas, who comes from Darkazanli's home town of Aleppo, Syria. Atta also
spent time in Aleppo during the mid-1990s while researching his dissertation
on trade development there.
Despite the ties, German authorities have said they don't have enough
evidence to arrest Darkazanli.
In an interview with The Associated Press after Sept. 11, Darkazanli said he
met Atta at Bahaji's wedding and acknowledged a failed business dealing with
a bin Laden cohort but said he was innocent of any wrongdoing.
The recruiters
Spanish authorities would like to know why Yarkas' Madrid phone number
appeared in an address book found in Atta's Hamburg apartment after the
attacks.
Did Atta meet the man suspected of recruiting and fund-raising for al-Qaeda
during one of his Spanish trips? Investigators can't say.
What the Spanish Interior Ministry has said is that Yarkas, who used the
alias Abu Dahdah, was the ``representative of the organization run by Osama
bin Laden in Spain,'' and spent years hiring holy warriors and raising an
undetermined amount of cash to pay for their operations.
On Nov. 18, Yarkas and seven others were charged in a Madrid court with
belonging to al-Qaeda. Baltasar Garzon, Spain's top anti-terrorism judge,
said they ``were directly linked to the preparation and carrying out of the
attacks perpetrated by suicide pilots on Sept. 11, 2001.''
While Yarkas may not have known all the details about the attacks, he knew
the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were targets, according to Spain's
national police chief, Juan Cotino.
And like Atta, Yarkas seems to have been connected to other suspects named in
the Sept. 11 investigation, including Mohamed Bensakhria, who is believed to
have been bin Laden's top aide in Europe, as well as Mohamed Boualem Khnouni,
the leader of the Algerian cell now in Spanish custody.
According to the indictment, Yarkas traveled 20 times to Britain and visited
Turkey, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Indonesia, Malaysia and Jordan as part of
his recruitment drive.
As early as 1997, he began sending fighters first for training in al-Qaeda
camps and then to the front lines in Bosnia and Afghanistan. The indictment
lists a dozen fighters under his tutelage and connections to operatives
around the globe - chiefly Omar Mahmoud Othman, a London-based preacher
better known as Abu Qutadah.
The London connection
A Spanish indictment describes Abu Qutadah as ``the supreme leader at the
European level of the mujahedeen,'' or Islamic fighters.
Jordanian authorities call Abu Qutadah a senior associate of bin Laden, and
last year a military court there found him guilty of conspiracy to carry out
terrorist attacks on U.S. and Israeli targets. He is living in London where
he has refugee status.
Abu Qutadah, a Jordanian of Palestinian descent, denies all the charges and
says his mosque on London's Baker Street is nothing more than a sanctuary for
worshippers.
``I am just a cleric for Islam. People talk to me from all over the world,''
he said.
Authorities suspect otherwise. U.S. intelligence officials have been saying
since October that some of the suspects were recruited at his mosque.
Zacarias Moussaoui's brother has said Moussaoui was radicalized at the Baker
street mosque.
Moussaoui also worshipped at a London mosque frequented by Richard C. Reid,
the man who allegedly tried to blow up a Dec. 22 trans-Atlantic flight with
explosives hidden in his shoes, said Abdul Haqq Baker, the mosque's chairman.
London was also home to Lotfi Raissi, a 27-year-old Algerian pilot who lived
near Heathrow airport and was arrested on a U.S. warrant there on Sept. 21.
British prosecutor Arvinda Sambir has said Raissi trained several hijackers
who flew the plane that crashed into the Pentagon, including Hani Hanjour,
whom Raissi allegedly flew with on June 23 from Las Vegas to Arizona.
U.S. investigators say Atta was also in Las Vegas then with Hanjour, who
would later crash American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon, and three
other hijackers.
The Paris embassy
Djamel Beghal, a 35-year-old French-Algerian, sat in a Dubai prison for two
months before Sept. 11.
But after the attacks, Beghal's story about a suicide plot to blow up the
U.S. Embassy in Paris caught the attention of France's top anti-terrorism
judge who quickly secured his extradition.
French investigators have said that during interrogations in Dubai, Beghal
said he discussed the Paris embassy plot inside bin Laden's home in
Afghanistan. He later gave authorities the names of several accomplices,
including Nizar Trabelsi, the alleged would-be suicide bomber.
Trabelsi, a Tunisian who once played professional soccer in Germany, was
arrested in Belgium on Sept. 13. Cotino, the Spanish police chief, said it
was ``very possible'' Trabelsi and Atta met in Spain where they both were at
the same time earlier this year.
Spanish authorities have also tied Trabelsi to Algerians in their custody and
to a Frenchman named Jerome Courtailler who once lived with Moussaoui and is
now in Dutch custody.
The Dutch prosecutor's office said recently their suspects ``tried to falsify
documents that could be used to commit an assault, possibly on the U.S.
Embassy in Paris.''
The Iraqi agent
Atta also met last spring at a Prague hotel with an Iraqi spy who was
allegedly plotting an attack on a U.S. financed radio station.
Czech authorities have said they do not know what the two discussed during
the meetings but the Iraqi, Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir Al-Ani, was expelled
in April for ``activities that are incompatible with his status as a
diplomat.''
Following the Sept. 11 attacks, the Czech government deployed armored
vehicles around the offices of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Prague
headquarters.
On Oct. 10, the Czechs announced that they were in discussions with
Washington about moving the headquarters out of the capital altogether
because of security concerns.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright � 2001 The Register-Guard
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