| Marwan Al-Shehhi | Marwan Al Shehhi | al-Qaeda | Europe | 20050818 | ||||
| Marwan Al-Shehhi | al-Qaeda | 20040101 |
| Britain |
| London-based oil executive linked to 9/11 hijackers |
| 2012-02-18 |
| A Soddy Arabian accused of associating with several of the September 11 hijackers and who disappeared from his home in the United States a few weeks before the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, is in London working for his country's state oil company. Abdulaziz al-Hijji and his wife Anoud left three cars at their luxurious home in a gated community in Sarasota, Florida one of them new and flew to Soddy Arabia in August 2001. The refrigerator was full of food; furniture and clothing were left behind; and the swimming pool water was still circulating. Security records of cars passing through a checkpoint at the Prestancia gated community indicated that Mr al-Hijjis home, 4224 Escondito Circle, had been visited a number of times by Mohamed Atta, the leader of the 19-strong hijack team, who piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre in 2001. The logs also indicated that Marwan Al-Shehhi, who crashed United Airlines Flight 175 into the South Tower, and Ziad Jarrah, who was at the controls of United Airlines Flight 93 when it crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, had visited the house. All three men had trained to fly at Venice Airport, which is 19 miles from Sarasota. A US counter-terrorist agent told The Daily Telegraph: The registration numbers of vehicles that had passed through the Prestancia communitys north gate in the months before 9/11, coupled with the identification documents shown by incoming drivers on request, showed that Mohamed Atta and several of his fellow hijackers, and another Saudi suspect still on the lam, had visited 4224 Escondito Circle. The suspect was Adnan Shukrijumah, an al-Qaeda operative who is on the FBIs Most Wanted list, with a $5 million bounty on his head.A decade after the worlds worst terrorist attack, which claimed the lives of 3,000 people, Mr al-Hijji is resident in London, working for the European subsidiary of Saudi Aramco, Soddy Arabias state oil company. Described as a career counsellor, he is based in the offices of Aramco Overseas Company UK Limited and lives in an expensive flat in central London. In email correspondence with the Telegraph, Mr al-Hijji strongly denied No, no! Certainly not! any involvement in the plot, writing: I have neither relation nor association with any of those bad people/criminals and the awful crime they did. 9/11 is a crime against the USA and all humankind and Im very saddened and oppressed by these false allegations. I love the USA. My kids were born there, I went to college and university there, I spent a good portion of my life there and I love it. Mr al-Hijjis account is supported by the FBI, which has stated: At no time did the FBI develop evidence that connected the family members to any of the 9/11 hijackers and there was no connection found to the 9/11 plot. Bob Graham, a former US senator who, in addition to co-chairing the congressional inquiry into 9/11, was chairman of the US senate intelligence committee at the time, disputes the FBI denials. He has long believed that there was Saudi support for the 19 terrorists, 15 of whom were subjects of the kingdom. He cites two secret documents to which he has recently had access. The first document, Graham says, is not consistent with the public statements of the FBI that there was no connection between the 9/11 hijackers and the Saudis at the Sarasota home. Both documents indicate that the investigation was not the robust inquiry claimed by the FBI. Mr al-Hijji, 38, moved with his family to Britannia in 2003, setting up home in a rented four-bedroom detached house in the Southampton suburb of Totton. His stay there appears to have been uneventful. The al-Hijjis abrupt departure from Sarasota aroused the suspicion of their next-door neighbour, Patrick Gallagher. He emailed the FBI within two days of 9/11 to report the disappearance of the couple and their young children. Reports released recently by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement refer to the suspicious manner and timing of the familys departure. One document states: In mid-August 2001 the above subjects purchased a new vehicle and renewed the registration on several other vehicles. On Aug 27 2001 a moving truck appeared and moved the subjects out of the house. Left behind were the vehicles and numerous personal belongings, including food, medicine, bills, baby clothing etc. The document goes on to state that Mr al-Hijji and Esam Ghazzawi, his father-in-law and the owner of the Escondito Circle house, had been on the FBI watch list prior to 9/11. Mr al-Hijji described the allegations against him as just cheap talk and denied having abandoned his home in undue haste, explaining: No, no, no. Absolutely not true. We were trying to secure the [Aramco] job. It was a good opportunity. He said his wife and children followed him out to Soddy Arabia a few weeks after he left. She and his American-born mother-in-law had been questioned by the FBI when they returned to the United States to settle the familys affairs. But he was not questioned when he returned to America for a two-month period in 2005. |
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| Terror Networks | |
| Passport Found in South Wazoo Reveals a Terrorist's Journey | |
| 2009-11-01 | |
| In 2001, a few days before the Sept. 11 attacks, a German engineering student named Said Bahaji unexpectedly announced to his family he had a job waiting for him at a Pakistani computer company and he flew to Karachi, leaving behind his wife and infant son. In the aftermath of the attacks, Mr. Bahaji, the Muslim son of a German mother and Moroccan father, was found to have rented and shared an apartment with two suspected World Trade Center hijackers, including Mohammed Atta, the believed ringleader, and a third Arab man who tried to take flying lessons in the United States. Little had been heard from Mr. Bahaji since then until this week, when a German passport believed to be his was recovered by Pakistani troops in an abandoned militant compound. Pakistani authorities suspect Mr. Bahaji is one of the al Qeada leaders helping the Taliban fight government forces in the rugged South Waziristan region. U.S. and German investigators believe he helped the Hamburg based terrorists with logistics like obtaining travel documents and setting up computers. Even before Sept. 11, 2001, German authorities thought Mr. Bahaji was up to something. Born in Germany, he spent most of his youth on his father's family's large farming estate in northern Morocco. He returned to Germany in 1996 to attend a technical university in Harburg, a working-class suburb of Hamburg. At that time, Mr. Bahaji held moderate beliefs, and even had a love affair with a Catholic woman he met in a year-long preparatory program for foreign students, according to close relatives who spoke to The Wall Street Journal. Heartbroken when it ended, he sought solace in Islam and at al-Quds, a Hamburg mosque frequented by extremists, these relatives said.
What they saw seemed like a normal student. Called for military service, Mr. Bahaji moved out of student dorm and in November 1998 rented an apartment with Mr. Atta and Ramzi Binalshibh, the Yemeni whose efforts to take flying lessons in the U.S. were foiled when he was denied a visa. Mr. Binalshibh was eventually captured and has been held since then at Guantanamo Bay. A part-time resident of the apartment Mr. Bahaji rented was Marwan Al-Shehhi, the suspected pilot of the second plane to hit the World Trade Center. In August 1999 Mr. Bahaji he moved out of the apartment and in October married Nese Kul, an 18-year old he met through her stepfather, Ibrahim Scholz, a German convert to Islam. The wedding at al-Quds was attended by many university friends, including Messrs. Atta, Al-Shehhi, Binalshibh and Darkazanli. A year and a half later, Ms. Bahaji gave birth to a son, Omar, who has the dark eyes and hair of his father, relatives said. Family members said Mr. Bahaji was thrilled to be a father, but three months later he sent an email to his mother saying he would probably have to go away an unexpected "internship" to complete his degree, perhaps as soon as Aug. 20 and perhaps even abroad, "if God wills it." On Sept. 2, 2001, Mr. Bahaji's sister Maryam, Mr. Scholz, and Nese Bahaji's mother Aise gathered at the cramped Bunatwiete apartment to wish him off. The following day, Mr. Scholz drove Mr. Bahaji to the airport and he boarded the plane, investigators now know, with two men traveling with false identities. Within hours after the World Trade Center collapsed, investigators spotted the link between Mr. Atta and Mr. Bahaji. At 2 a.m. on Sept. 12, German police raided into Mr. Bahaji's Harburg apartment. Letters and phone calls from Mr. Bahaji to his mother and other relatives have been intercepted by authorities. He last called his mother, Anneliese Bahaji, in 2007, according to people familiar with the evidence German authorities have gathered. | |
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| Home Front: WoT | |
| The Tale of Two Attas in Transit at Prague Airport | |
| 2005-08-22 | |
An article from The Chicago Tribune, written by John Crewdson.
In the weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, Czech and German investigators labored under the misimpression that Atta the hijacker had arrived in Prague on a flight from Germany at the end of May 2000, been sent back to Germany the same day for lack of a Czech visa, and then reappeared early June 2 with his papers in order. It turned out the Atta who arrived on May 31, 2000, was a Pakistani businessman. The one who arrived later was the Sept. 11 hijacker. The mistaken notion that Atta - if he had come twice to Prague - must have had some urgent business there before his June 2000 departure for the United States set the stage for the Czech government's insistence, which proved groundless, that Atta returned to Prague the following year to meet an Iraqi intelligence officer. The story of The Two Attas began within hours of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York City and Washington, when the BKA, the German equivalent of the FBI, asked European airlines to search their records for all previous travel by al-Qaida-linked hijackers and their suspected accomplices. Dozens of such flights were found, many offering important clues to the scope and complexity of the Sept. 11 conspiracy. One, however, was a shocker: a May 31, 2000, booking by Mohammed Atta on Lufthansa from Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, to Prague by way of Frankfurt Airport. BKA agents quickly noticed that, unlike the Jiddah passenger, Atta the hijacker spelled "Mohamed" with a single "m." But airlines frequently misspell the names of passengers, especially those who pay cash for tickets as this Atta did. Moreover, the likelihood of two Mohamed Attas converging on Prague at almost the same moment seemed at best remote. Atta's presence in Saudi Arabia a few days before he made his first entry into the United States represented a potentially crucial piece of the Sept. 11 puzzle. Most of the Sept. 11 hijackers had come from Saudi Arabia, and al-Qaida had long been suspected of receiving much of its funding from that country. In early October 2001, documents show, BKA agents assigned to pursue that lead were dispatched to Prague, where they discovered that information gathered by the Czech anti-terrorist police only deepened the mystery. Atta, it seemed, had visited Prague at least once before, in December 1994, at the beginning of a six-month leave from his job with a city planning firm in Hamburg, Germany, where he was also studying architectural engineering. Co-workers recalled Atta, who had become an ultra-devout Muslim since arriving in Hamburg, telling them he planned to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. But investigators were unable to learn why Atta had instead gone to Prague. .... As the BKA pieced together the timeline, it seemed that Atta had flown from Jiddah to Prague on May 31, 2000, even while knowing that his newly acquired Czech visa would not take effect until the following day, June 1. "He was trying to get into the Czech Republic, but he did not possess all the proper documents he was supposed to have, so he wasn't allowed to enter," then-Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross told the Chicago Tribune a few weeks after Sept. 11. "He didn't leave the transit area of the airport." That scenario, however, raised the question of why Atta would fly nearly 3,000 miles only to spend six hours in Prague's cheerless Ruzyne Airport before being shepherded aboard a Lufthansa jet for the 70-minute flight back to Frankfurt. Had Atta met someone at the airport, investigators wondered, a meeting too important to have been postponed? But airport surveillance cameras provided no clue. According to Czech immigration records, Atta again arrived in Prague on June 2, 2000. His visa had become effective the day before. The following day, he flew non-stop aboard a Czech Airlines flight from Prague to Newark, N.J., giving his destination as New York City's Lexington Hotel. After arriving in Newark on the afternoon of June 3, Atta presumably met up with hijacker Marwan Al-Shehhi, who had arrived in Newark from Brussels on May 29. .... The idea that Atta had a connection to someone or something in Prague laid the foundation for the Oct. 26, 2001, declaration by the Czech Republic's Gross that an informant for the Czech internal security service, the BIS, had witnessed a meeting in Prague between Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer named Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani. That meeting, variously reported as having taken place on a Prague street or in a hotel restaurant, was said by the BIS informant to have occurred on April 8, 2001 - 10 months after Atta's June 2000 visit to Prague, and five months before the Sept. 11 hijackings. .... In its final report last month, however, the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission concluded that "the available evidence does not support the original Czech report of an Atta-al-Ani meeting." All that remained was the mystery of The Two Attas. The first clues were found in Atta's Egyptian passport, recovered by the FBI from one of his suitcases, which failed to make the hijacked flight. The passport bore no evidence of an attempt to enter the Czech Republic on May 31, 2000. The passport did, however, contain a Czech visa, valid June 1 through June 20, that Atta had obtained in Bonn on May 26 of that year. It also contained a Czech entry stamp dated June 2, the day Atta arrived in Prague by bus from Germany, and an exit stamp dated June 3, placed in his passport as he departed Prague for Newark. He used another Egyptian passport, issued in Germany, to board his Sept. 11 flight. Intent on nailing down whatever connection might have existed between Atta and the Saudis, in December 2001 the CIA concluded that the Mohammed Atta who had flown from Jiddah to Prague on May 31 and been refused entry wasn't Atta the hijacker after all, but a Pakistani businessman with an almost-identical name. Not only had Atta the hijacker not been in Saudi Arabia, he hadn't made more than one visit to Prague, which now appeared to be only a transit point on his journey to the United States. .... | |
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| Europe |
| Hamburg cell status report |
| 2005-08-20 |
| A German court will rule Friday in the retrial of the only man ever convicted of involvement in the plot behind the September 11 attacks. Moroccan national Mounir El Motassadeq, 31, was the first person worldwide to be convicted over the attacks but a federal tribunal ordered a new trial in March 2004 on the grounds that key witnesses in US custody were not allowed to testify. Following are brief detailsâaccording to prosecutors in Germany and US investigatorsâof those believed to have been most involved in the so-called Hamburg cell in the northern German port city where three of the attackers lived. Mohammed Atta: seen as the suicide hijackersâ ringleader, he died piloting the American Airlines plane that crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Born September 1, 1968 in Cairo, he came to Germany in 1992 and studied at university in Hamburg. A strict Muslim, Atta built up the Hamburg cell and provided its spiritual backbone. He attended training camp in Afghanistan in late 1999, then enrolled for flight lessons in the United States. Marwan Al Shehhi: born May 9, 1978 in the United Arab Emirates, he died flying the United Airlines plane which crashed into the southern tower of the World Trade Center. He came to Germany in 1996, met Atta at language school. Attended Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan before learning to fly in United States. Ziad Jarrah: born May 11, 1975 in Lebanon, he died on the United Airlines jet that crashed in rural Pennsylvania when passengers tackled the hijackers. Arrived in Germany in 1996. Attended training in Afghanistan before joining a US flying school. Abdelghani Mzoudi: the third person worldwide to be charged and the second from the Hamburg cell. The Moroccan national was arrested in Hamburg in October 2002 and acquitted in February 2003 of 3,066 counts of accessory to murder and membership in a terrorist organization. Left Germany in June 2005 under threat of deportation. Had close ties to most of cell, particularly Zakariya Essabarâwhom he allegedly supplied money for planned flight lessons in Floridaâand Al Shehhi, for whom he provided accommodation. Spotted at a training camp in Afghanistan in mid-2000. Ramzi Binalshibh: also known as Ramzi bin Al Shaiba. Born in Yemen on May 1, 1972, he was arrested in Karachi exactly a year after the attacks. During trial he emerged as a leading figure in the Hamburg group. Binalshibh arrived in Germany in 1995 and applied for asylum. He met Atta at a mosque, and shared a flat with him for a while. Binalshibh boasted in an interview with satellite TV network Al Jazeera that he was an active Al Qaeda planner in the September 11 attacks. Enrolled in a flying school but refused entry to United States four times. Binalshibh reportedly told US investigators that Motassadeq and Mzoudi had nothing to do with plot. Said Bahaji: born July 15, 1975 in Haseluenne, northern Germany, to a German mother and Moroccan father. Introduced to Atta by Motassadeq, Bahaji became a close friend, paying the rent on a flat he shared with Atta and Binalshibh. Described as responsible for logistics, he went to Afghan training camp in early 2000. Bahaji fled Germany shortly before the attacks, and is still at large. He is reportedly in close contact with his wife in Germany via e-mail and telephone. Zakariya Essabar: born April 3, 1977 in Morocco. Arrived in Germany in 1997, studied in Hamburg from 1998 and introduced to Atta by Motassadeq. Attended training in Afghanistan in early 2000. He also lived for a while in Attaâs flat along with Binalshibh, and studied and worked with Jarrah. Wanted to fly in early 2001 to Florida where Atta and Al Shehhi were then staying, but twice refused a visa. He is also still at large. |
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| Europe |
| The Hamburg Al Qaeda cell: dead, caught or at large |
| 2005-08-18 |
| HAMBURG, Germany - A German court will rule Friday in the retrial of the only man ever convicted of involvement in the plot behind the September 11 attacks. Moroccan national Mounir El Motassadeq, 31, was the first person worldwide to be convicted over the attacks but a federal tribunal ordered a new trial in March 2004 on the grounds that key witnesses in US custody were not allowed to testify. Following are brief detailsâaccording to prosecutors in Germany and US investigatorsâof those believed to have been most involved in the so-called Hamburg cell in the northern German port city where three of the attackers lived. Mohammed Atta: seen as the suicide hijackersâ ringleader, he died piloting the American Airlines plane that crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Born September 1, 1968 in Cairo, he came to Germany in 1992 and studied at university in Hamburg. A strict Muslim, Atta built up the Hamburg cell and provided its spiritual backbone. He attended training camp in Afghanistan in late 1999, then enrolled for flight lessons in the United States. Marwan Al Shehhi: born May 9, 1978 in the United Arab Emirates, he died flying the United Airlines plane which crashed into the southern tower of the World Trade Center. He came to Germany in 1996, met Atta at language school. Attended Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan before learning to fly in United States. Ziad Jarrah: born May 11, 1975 in Lebanon, he died on the United Airlines jet that crashed in rural Pennsylvania when passengers tackled the hijackers. Arrived in Germany in 1996. Attended training in Afghanistan before joining a US flying school. Abdelghani Mzoudi: the third person worldwide to be charged and the second from the Hamburg cell. The Moroccan national was arrested in Hamburg in October 2002 and acquitted in February 2003 of 3,066 counts of accessory to murder and membership in a terrorist organization. Left Germany in June 2005 under threat of deportation. Had close ties to most of cell, particularly Zakariya Essabarâwhom he allegedly supplied money for planned flight lessons in Floridaâand Al Shehhi, for whom he provided accommodation. Spotted at a training camp in Afghanistan in mid-2000. Ramzi Binalshibh: also known as Ramzi bin Al Shaiba. Born in Yemen on May 1, 1972, he was arrested in Karachi exactly a year after the attacks. During trial he emerged as a leading figure in the Hamburg group. Binalshibh arrived in Germany in 1995 and applied for asylum. He met Atta at a mosque, and shared a flat with him for a while. Binalshibh boasted in an interview with satellite TV network Al Jazeera that he was an active Al Qaeda planner in the September 11 attacks. Enrolled in a flying school but refused entry to United States four times. Binalshibh reportedly told US investigators that Motassadeq and Mzoudi had nothing to do with plot. Said Bahaji: born July 15, 1975 in Haseluenne, northern Germany, to a German mother and Moroccan father. Introduced to Atta by Motassadeq, Bahaji became a close friend, paying the rent on a flat he shared with Atta and Binalshibh. Described as responsible for logistics, he went to Afghan training camp in early 2000. Bahaji fled Germany shortly before the attacks, and is still at large. He is reportedly in close contact with his wife in Germany via e-mail and telephone. Zakariya Essabar: born April 3, 1977 in Morocco. Arrived in Germany in 1997, studied in Hamburg from 1998 and introduced to Atta by Motassadeq. Attended training in Afghanistan in early 2000. He also lived for a while in Attaâs flat along with Binalshibh, and studied and worked with Jarrah. Wanted to fly in early 2001 to Florida where Atta and Al Shehhi were then staying, but twice refused a visa. He is also still at large. |
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| Hijackerâs Girlfriend Testifies at Moroccanâs Trial | ||||||
| 2003-08-16 | ||||||
The girlfriend of one of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers told a German court yesterday of their doomed love story as the trial of a Moroccan student allegedly linked to the plot resumed. Aysel Sengun, a 29-year-old doctor, said Ziad Jarrah was not a devout Muslim when they first met, but he changed after moving to the northern German city of Hamburg in 1997. That circle was led by Mohammed Atta, presumed ringleader of the hijackers who on Sept. 11, 2001, plowed two planes into the World Trade Center in New York and one into the Pentagon. Jarrah was on board a fourth plane that crashed in rural Pennsylvania after passengers fought back. He is believed to have been at the controls, as he was the only hijacker on board with flight training. Sengun was testifying on day two of the trial here of Abdelghani Mzoudi, a 30-year-old Moroccan accused of playing a key logistical role in preparations for the attacks. Mzoudi faces up to 15 years in jail if convicted of the charges of being an accessory to the murder of 3,066 people â based on the estimated death tolls of the attacks â and membership of a âterrorist organizationâ.
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| Europe |
| ''It was just religious duty, Mike...'' |
| 2002-10-23 |
| A Moroccan man accused of providing logistical support to the Sept. 11 hijackers told a court yesterday that he and other members of the alleged Hamburg terror cell trained in al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan, but he said the training was for religious purposes. Being infidels, it's beyond our comprehension how training with explosives serves religious purposes... Mounir Motassadeq is the first person accused of direct involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to go on trial anywhere. He is charged with aiding and abetting in the killing of more than 3,000 people, but he said he knew nothing of plans for the attacks. "Nope. Nope. Not me. I'm pure as the driven snow, innocent as a babe... Hey! Get away from my detonator!" Motassadeq, a 28-year-old electrical engineering student, testified for four hours on the opening day of his trial. Motassadeq's attorneys had previously denied that he had attended al-Qaida camps, but Motassadeq said in court that he had spent a month in a camp outside Kandahar in July 2000. "Nope. Nope. Wudn't there. I was... ummm... someplace else..." "We have your credit card receipts. We have your used airline tickets. We have your stamped passport. We have pictures..." "Oh! You mean there!... Well, yeah, I was there, but I dint do nuttin'..." He said Mohamed Atta gave him detailed instructions on how to reach Afghanistan. He acknowledged that many of the other men accused of belonging to the cell - alleged pilots Marwan Al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah and supporters Ramzi Bin al-shibh and Zakariya Essabar - went to camps in Afghanistan. He said he met Essabar outside the Kandahar camp nearly every day for prayers. They say he could pray a bullet through a man-size target at 600 yards... Motassadeq said he did not learn the camp was financed by Osama bin Laden until after he arrived there. He said he never saw bin Laden but was told by others that bin Laden visited regularly, sometimes staying overnight nearby. Motassadeq said the men from Hamburg never discussed becoming suicide bombers, which he said would be a violation of his faith. He said training in the camps was an end in itself, a fulfillment of religious duty. "No, no! It's against my religion for me to blow up. There are other guys who do that..." Motassadeq stressed several times that he was not asked by anybody to join the jihad when he left the camp after a month. "Nobody gave me any orders," he said. Yeah. Guess he was a reject. Let him sit in jug for about 40 years feeling rejected. That'll make the rest of the world a safer place... |
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| Europe |
| Germans charge man with connection to 9/11 attacks |
| 2002-08-28 |
| Federal prosecutors filed charges Wednesday against Mounir El Motassadeq, the only Sept. 11 suspect in custody in Germany, where several of the key hijackers were based. The federal prosecutor's office in Karlsruhe said El Motassadeq was charged in a Hamburg superior court in "connection with his connection to the terror attacks on the United States," but did not announce specific charges. El Motassadeq, 28, was picked up Nov. 28 at his Hamburg apartment on suspicions he had "intensive contacts" with the Sept. 11 hijackers who had been living in Hamburg, including alleged ringleader Mohamed Atta, Marwan Al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah. Prosecutors in the past accused him of running Al-Shehhi's bank account, using it to finance the hijacker's stay in the United States and his flight training school in Florida. El Motassadeq's name appeared on a U.S. list of 370 individuals and organizations with suspected links to the Sept. 11 attacks that Finnish financial authorities made public in October. When contacted at that time by The Associated Press, El Motassadeq angrily denied any involvement. "All of this is false, I have nothing to do with this thing," he said before hanging up. "Nope. Wudn't me. Musta been somebody that looked like me. Sa-a-a-a-a-y! I bet it was them Jews, set me up!" |
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| Terror Networks |
| Following the 9-11 money trail |
| 2001-10-20 |
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- A probe of the financial backing of the Sept. 11 suicide attacks on the United States has led to bank accounts held by two suspected terrorists and a gleaming silver-and-granite exchange house in a grimy neighborhood of this freewheeling Persian Gulf commercial center. The investigation of the money trail leading to the United Arab Emirates focuses on Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi, two of the suspected plot leaders. Both held bank accounts here before they came to the United States, and they were among three suspected hijackers who wired about $15,000 in cash to the currency exchange on the eve of the attacks. Less than seven hours before the first doomed jetliner was commandeered, the cash transfers were claimed by a man widely suspected of being the conspiracy's paymaster, who then left for Pakistan. The most intriguing financial records uncovered here belong to Atta, the man suspected of coordinating the Sept. 11 attacks. Atta, an Egyptian, maintained an account at a local Citibank branch, according to senior Emirates officials. Al-Shehhi, a native of the Emirates, had an account at a local branch of London-based HSBC Holdings. Though declining to release details, Sultan bin Nasser al Suweidi, head of the central bank here, said Atta's account was "busier" than normal, with frequent transfers of $10,000 to $15,000. He also said the traffic in the account would provide investigators with a money trail. "It is easy in our system to know exactly where the transfers are coming from," Al Suweidi said. "The investigators and the FBI, they have everything." Al-Shehhi's account, in contrast, never held much money, according to the banking officials. Of course, the Saudis say there's no evidence linking Atta, al-Shehhi, et al., to the WTC attacks and all of this is coincidence. |
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| Home Front |
| INS approves crazed killers for flight school |
| 2002-03-12 |
Six months to the day after Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi flew planes into the World Trade Center, the Immigration and Naturalization Service notified a Venice, Florida, flight school that the two men had been approved for student visas. "I think it is certainly embarrassing that the letters show up at this late date," said INS spokesman Russ Bergeron. "It does serve to illustrate what we have been saying since 1995 -- that the current system for collecting information and tracking foreign students is antiquated, outdated, inaccurate and untimely." It does serve to illustrate that Parksinson is snickering in his grave. I make my usual suggestion: Raze the INS, sow the ground with salt, and expunge their names from the phone book. It appears we'd be better off without them. |
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