Author: Lorenzo Vidino
Publication: FrontPageMagazine.com
Date: August 1, 2003
URL: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=9189
On August 12, a second member of
the infamous al-Qaeda Hamburg cell will stand trial in Germany. Abdelghani
Mzoudi, a Moroccan student who moved to Germany in 1995, is accused of
having willingly provided assistance to the 9/11 hijackers and of being
a member of a terrorist organization. His case closely resembles that of
Mounir Motassadeq, another Moroccan student sentenced to fifteen years
in prison by a German court this February. German prosecutors have collected
several pieces of evidence linking Mzoudi, like Motassadeq, to the men
who carried out the 9/11 attacks. But even if prosecutors' case against
Mzoudi proves successful, German authorities will be far from completely
dismantling the network that helped make 9/11 possible.
According to prosecutors, Mzoudi's
Hamburg apartment served as the meeting place of a group of Islamic radicals
who, bound by a common hatred for the United States and Jews, planned an
attack that would shock the world. The apartment was referred to by the
men as Dar al Ansar, or "House of the Followers." Tellingly, this name
was also given to the Peshawar office used by Osama Bin Laden as a safe
house for fighters who were traveling to Afghanistan during the 1980's
to wage jihad against the Soviet Union.
After countless meetings at Mzoudi's
apartment, some members of the Hamburg cell went to the United States to
attend flight schools and carry out the lethal 9/11 plan; others remained
in Hamburg providing logistical help. Prosecutors assert that while the
men who worked from Germany may not have known every detail of the plot,
they were well-aware of the fatal intentions of their U.S.-based cohorts.
For instance, Mounir Motassadeq allegedly told a friend, "[The 9/11 hijackers]
want to do something big. The Jews will burn and we will dance on their
graves."
Mzoudi helped facilitate this murderous
scheme by allowing Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, pilots of the planes
that hit the Word Trade Center, to use his Hamburg apartment address. This
arrangement enabled Atta and al- Shehhi to conceal their real whereabouts
while they traveled to Afghanistan and applied to flight schools in the
U.S. Al-Shehhi also used Mzoudi's address on a new passport issued him
by his native United Arab Emirates after he claimed to have lost his original
one. This tactic is used frequently by terrorists to conceal visits to
Afghanistan.
Mzoudi played a substantial role
in the financial structure of the Hamburg cell, sending money, for example,
to al-Shehhi while al-Shehhi attended flight schools in the United States.
In addition, Mzoudi managed the finances of Hamburg cell member Zakariya
Essabar as Essabar trained in an Al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan (Mzoudi himself
attended an al-Qaeda training camp near Kandahar in 2000). Incredibly,
even as Mzoudi managed the accounts of men responsible for the largest
terrorist attack in U.S. history, he received funding from the University
of Hamburg's Student Center.
The difficulty faced by German prosecutors
in the case of both Mzoudi and Motassadeq lies in the fact that two were
facilitators, sending money and providing apartments to terrorists but
not actually carrying out terrorist acts themselves. Indeed, the lawyers
for both men have argued that their clients believed they were simply helping
fellow Muslims. When asked why he wired money to al-Shehhi, Motassadeq
explained: "I'm a nice person, that's the way I am." Mzoudi claims he knew
members of the Hamburg cell only casually and had no knowledge of their
violent intentions.
According to Mzoudi's indictment,
the Hamburg cell was composed of eight men: the three pilots (Atta, al-Shehhi
and Jarrah); a would-be pilot (Ramzi Binalshibh) who later bragged of having
masterminded the operation in an interview with Al-Jazeera television;
and four facilitators (Bahaji, Essabar, Motassadeq and Mzoudi). But recent
arrests prove that others who had close contacts to the cell were involved
in terrorist activities as well.
In March, Italian police arrested
several men accused of forming a cell that provided material support to
Ansar al-Islam, an Iraqi-based group linked to Al-Qaeda. One of the men,
a Moroccan named Mohammed Daki, was interrogated by German authorities
in the aftermath of 9/11 for his ties to several of the hijackers. Daki,
who attended the same university as Motassadeq and Bahaji, worshipped at
the al Quds mosque, a site frequented by members of the Hamburg cell. Daki
also allowed Ramzi Binalshibh to use his address in papers filed with the
German government in 1997. Although Daki's role closely resembles that
of Motassadeq and Mzoudi, for reasons yet to be explained German authorities
have decided not to indict him. Still, suspicions over Daki's role in the
Hamburg cell remain. In 1999, as members of the Hamburg cell were applying
for visas, Daki was granted a student visa of his own at the U.S. Embassy
in Berlin. Needless to say, American authorities are eager to learn the
real purpose of Daki's visa.
Daki was just one of several men
living in Hamburg during the late 1990's who crossed paths with the 9/11
hijackers. Some, like Binashibh and Mohammed Zammar, the Syrian believed
to have recruited the hijackers, have been caught. Others like Essabar
and Bahaji, both wanted by German authorities after fleeing to Pakistan
a few days before the 9/11 attacks, are still at large. Disturbingly enough,
some are still living as free men in Germany. An example is Mamoun Darkazanli,
whose al-Qaeda ties date back to the mid- 90's. Despite Darkazanli's business
dealings with several al-Qaeda operatives, authorities have never been
able to make a case against him.
Considering the recently published
Congressional Report on the 9/11 attacks, which states that "legal barriers
restricted Germany's ability to target Islamic fundamentalists," German
prosecutors' failure to indict Darkazanli comes as no surprise. But American
efforts to infiltrate the Hamburg cell were equally disjointed. The Congressional
Report shows that on several occasions the F.B.I. and C.I.A. unknowingly
operated against the same targets. Shockingly, the F.B.I. legal attaché
in Germany did not recall getting information about Darkazanli and Zammar
from either the German government or the C.I.A. before 9/11. He was also
unaware that both men had been the subjects of investigations before the
attacks. Another opportunity to expose the plot was missed in March of
1999, when the C.I.A. received intelligence about a student living in Germany
named Marwan who had been in contact with both Zammar and Darkazanli. Closer
communication with other U.S. agencies as well as German authorities may
have helped the C.I.A. to understand that "Marwan" was actually 9/11 hijacker
Marwan al-Shehhi. While the Patriot Act has enabled the U.S. to greatly
expand its intelligence capabilities and begin rectifying past mistakes
like the al-Shehhi fiasco, partial changes to Germany's counterterrorism
laws have had little effect. This legislative failure, combined with systematic
political correctness, ensures that Germany will remain a safe haven for
Islamic radicals.
