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Hijacker boasted { August 30 2002 }

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   http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13682-2002Aug29.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13682-2002Aug29.html

9/11 Hijacker Boasted Thousands Would Die
German Prosecutor Details Planning

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, August 30, 2002; Page A01


BERLIN, Aug. 29 -- One of the Sept. 11 hijackers boasted a year and a half before the attacks that the World Trade Center would be hit and "there will be thousands of dead," Germany's chief prosecutor said today in providing one of the most detailed public reconstructions of the terror planning that took place in Germany.

The hijackers began to coalesce as a cell in Hamburg in 1996 and by October 1999 had committed themselves to striking the United States and killing large numbers of people, said the prosecutor, Kay Nehm. Cell members traveled to Afghanistan in 1999 and 2000 to receive training and specific instruction about the attacks, he said.

The boast about the attack offers a rare glimpse into the timing of the secret planning and selection of targets, and was apparently a rare breach of security among the tight-knit conspirators.

Cell member Marwan Al-Shehhi, who investigators believe piloted the second airliner to strike the trade center, had a conversation in April or May 2000 with a female librarian in which he mentioned the trade center as a target, Nehm said.

"There will be thousands of dead," Al-Shehhi, originally from the United Arab Emirates, told the librarian, according to Nehm. "You will all think of me." The librarian later came forward as a witness, according to the federal prosecutor's office, which declined to identify her or say when she provided the information.

The Hamburg cell, recruited into al Qaeda by a German of Syrian origin, Mohammed Haydar Zammar, slowly united around an Egyptian, Mohammed Atta, starting in 1996, Nehm said. He said Atta was a natural choice for leadership because of his organizational skills and because he was slightly older and had been in Germany longer than the others.

"At the latest in October 1999, the members of the group decided . . . to actively participate in jihad through terrorist attacks on America to kill a large number of people," Nehm said.

"All of the members of this cell shared the same religious convictions, an Islamic lifestyle, a feeling of being out of place in unfamiliar cultural surroundings. At the center of this stood the hatred of the world Jewry and the United States."

In November 1999, Atta, Al-Shehhi and Ziad Samir Jarrah, a Lebanese citizen who piloted the plane that crashed in western Pennsylvania, traveled to an al Qaeda camp near Kandahar, Afghanistan, where Jarrah lived in a guest house run by the country's ruling Taliban movement, Nehm said.

They were accompanied by Ramzi Binalshibh, a native of Yemen, who is now being sought on an international arrest warrant issued by German authorities. Other members of the Hamburg cell, including Said Bahaji, a German citizen of Moroccan origin, and Zakariya Essabar, a Moroccan, followed the four others to Afghanistan in early 2000.

After the men returned to Germany, three members departed for the United States with newly acquired passports.

Once in flight school in the United States, the hijackers coordinated their activities through meetings in Spain, which Atta attended in January and July 2001, Nehm said. Binalshibh attended planning meetings in Malaysia in January 2000 and July 2001, according to Nehm and other sources. Atta also maintained a post office box in Hamburg that was emptied regularly until August 2001, Nehm said.

"Besides sharing ideological and military training, the members of the cell coordinated with the international network on the details of the attack and the logistical support," the prosecutor said.

Nehm outlined his understanding of the plot at a news conference in the city of Karlsruhe, where he also discussed charges filed against Mounir El Motassadeq, 28, a Moroccan citizen who is the only person connected with the attacks in German custody. He is being held in the high-security wing of the Wuppertal prison, near Cologne.

"The accused was, like the other members in Hamburg, involved in the plans for the attacks until the end," Nehm said. "He knew of the group's goals and supported the plans and preparations for the attack."

El Motassadeq, a signatory to Atta's will who also held power of attorney for Al-Shehhi's bank account, was arrested in Hamburg two months after the attacks. He was charged Wednesday with more than 3,000 counts of accessory to murder and membership in a terrorist organization. Prosecutors, who prepared a 90-page indictment that has not been released, said they expect El Motassadeq's trial to begin in Hamburg later this year.

Josef Grassle-Munscher, a lawyer representing El Motassadeq, said there was little basis to the allegations against his client and that "cultural confusion" may have played a role in the charges. He said that in Arab society, it is common for people to give control of bank accounts to friends.

El Motassadeq went to Afghanistan in May 2000 and stayed until that August, Nehm said.

The prosecutor said the original plan was to train either Binalshibh or Essabar as a pilot, but their visas for the United States were rejected. El Motassadeq and Bahaji were designated to offer logistical support, he said.

Binalshibh, Essabar and Bahaji fled Germany shortly before the attacks. Investigators suspect they entered Afghanistan through Pakistan in early September 2001.

There are indications that at least one of them is still alive. On June 26, at around 7 p.m., Bahaji's German mother, Anneliese, said that she received a phone call at her husband, Abdallah's, home in Meknes, Morocco.

"Is that the house of Abdallah Bahaji?" a young man asked in broken German, Anneliese Bahaji said in a recent interview at her home in Germany. The 69-year-old said she replied: "Yes, this is the house of Abdallah Bahaji."

"I am supposed to send you many greetings," the caller said. The man, who the woman said sounded like a Moroccan, then hung up.

"I know that my son is still alive," said Anneliese Bahaji, who denied that her son was involved in the plot but said he may now be afraid to return to Germany because of the charges against him. "Messages like this call give me courage."

She said her son called her himself in October 2001, but got an answering machine.

Moroccan intelligence sources said they were aware of the communication, but could not assess its credibility.

Like those in the Bahaji family, members of El Motassadeq's family say their son is innocent.

"Mounir was never interested in politics," said his father, Ibrahim, in an interview in Hamburg, where he moved last February after traveling four days on a bus from Marrakesh, Morocco, with his wife and daughter to help with his son's defense and the care of two grandchildren. "He prayed and believed."

Asked about his son's alleged journey to an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, Ibrahim Motassadeq said his son went only to Pakistan. "I sent him to Pakistan," said the father. "And, anyhow, what is so bad about his being in Pakistan? Is that a crime? Pakistan is an Islamic country; Muslims can learn many things there about the religion. Mounir was supposed to visit mosques there, pray and learn about Islamic life."

Nehm described El Motassadeq as a "substantial cog" in the preparation of the attacks. He said El Motassadeq brought Bahaji and Essabar into the group. And Nehm alleged that El Motassadeq controlled the financial "pot" for the Hamburg cell from which some of the costs of their terrorist activity was paid.

Nehm said that without El Motassadeq, the Sept. 11 attacks "would probably not have succeeded."

Special correspondent Souad Mekhennet in Karlsruhe contributed to this report.



© 2002 The Washington Post Company


German recruited { June 12 2002 }
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Hijacker boasted { August 30 2002 }
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