Sept. 11 Attack Planned in '99, Germans Learn
New York Times August 30, 2002
By Douglas Frantz with Desmond Butler
nytimes.com
KARLSRUHE, Germany, Aug. 29 - German authorities said today that the Qaeda cell in Hamburg identified the World Trade Center as a target more than a year before two hijacked airliners were flown into the New York City landmarks.
The country's top prosecutor, Kay Nehm, said investigators had learned that plans for the attacks were well under way in November 1999 when four members of the Hamburg group went to Afghanistan. They apparently settled on the trade center in 2000 and when they returned, immediately approached flight schools in the United States, he said.
"Thirty-one flight schools were written to by e-mail with a request that documents be sent to a group of Arab students who were interested in flight training," Mr. Nehm said. "And to our knowledge, that was the first instance of a concrete plan."
The evidence from the prosecutor and other German authorities offered the most thorough account yet of the planning and execution of the Sept. 11 plot.
Mr. Nehm described a conversation, which he said was recounted by a witness in the course of the investigation, in which Marwan al-Shehhi, who is suspected of being the pilot of one of the planes, mentioned the twin towers to the witness, a Hamburg librarian, in April or May 2000 and boasted: "There will be thousands of dead. You will all think of me."
"You will see," Mr. Nehm quoted Mr. Shehhi as saying. "In America something is going to happen. There will be many people killed."
The prosecutor offered details of the new evidence in an interview tonight on the German television program Panorama on ARD and at a news conference called here to discuss charges brought Wednesday against Mounir el-Motassadeq, 28.
The charges against Mr. Motassadeq, the prosecutor said, include more than 3,000 counts of murder in connection with the deaths at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in rural Pennsylvania. He was also charged with being a member of a terrorist group.
"The accused was just as involved in preparing the attacks up until the end as the others who remained in Hamburg," Mr. Nehm said at the news conference. "He was aware of the commitment to mount a terror attack against the targets chosen by the cell and he supported the planning and preparation for these attacks through multiple activities."
Mr. Motassadeq (pronounced mo-tah-SAW-duhk) is the only person in custody in Germany in connection with the attacks and only the second person formally charged worldwide. The other, Zacarias Moussaoui, has been indicted in the United States on six charges related to the attacks and faces the death penalty.
Mr. Motassadeq, a Moroccan, was arrested last November and had been held since then pending formal charges. He denied any involvement in the plot in interviews with news organizations before his arrest last year and the German authorities said today that he had not cooperated with them and had continued to deny any knowledge of the plot.
Mr. Nehm said today that in November 1999, the suspected ringleader of the Hamburg cell, Mohamed Atta and three other men - Mr. Shehhi, Ziad Jarrah and Ramzi bin al-Shibh - left Hamburg for a Qaeda camp near Kandahar, Afghanistan. He said they lived in a Taliban guest house and received instructions and support for their plan.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation believes that Mr. Atta was the pilot of one of the planes that struck the World Trade Center, and Mr. Shehhi is believed to have flown the other one. Mr. Jarrah is presumed to have been the pilot of the aircraft that crashed in Pennsylvania.
"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," Mr. Nehm said.
Mr. Motassadeq lived near Mr. Atta and the other suspects in Hamburg and was, like them, a student. Mr. Nehm said he and another Hamburg suspect, Zakariya Essabar, went to Afghanistan themselves in early 2000. Mr. Motassadeq was seen in May 2000 living at a Taliban guest house and training in a Qaeda camp near Kandahar, Mr. Nehm said.
Back in Hamburg, Mr. Motassadeq covered for members of the cell who had left for the United States, according to Mr. Nehm, even terminating the lease of an apartment for Mr. Shehhi and managing Mr. Shehhi's bank account in Hamburg after he went to the United States for flight training in June 2000.
"Motassadeq signed the lease termination in the name of others, he signed Motassadeq in Arabic script in such a way that one would assume that al-Shehhi himself had terminated the lease," Mr. Nehm said in the interview. "There were these small mosaic stones, designed to prevent someone from coming to the question, `Where are they exactly?' "
At the news conference, Mr. Nehm gave a detailed account of how the Hamburg cell was formed and how the hijackers trained for their suicide mission.
"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," Mr. Nehm said. "At the center of this stood the hatred of the world Jewry and the United States."
He said Mr. Atta, 33, was the leader of the group because of his age, proficiency at German and leadership skills and because he had been in Germany since 1992. American authorities have suspected Mr. Atta was the ringleader in part because most of the funds for the group's flight training and living expenses were funneled to his bank account in Florida.
Mr. Nehm said in the Panorama interview that the prosecutors also had evidence that Mr. Jarrah referred to Mr. Atta as "the boss" in a telephone conversation two days before the attacks in the United States.
"The word `boss' was used in a telephone conversation with Jarrah two days before the attacks were carried out," Mr. Nehm said on Panorama. "That he used the word `boss' only confirms" Mr. Atta's role.
The prosecutor did not elaborate on the nature of the call involving Mr. Jarrah, but Frauke-Katrin Scheuten, a spokeswoman in his office, said it was described by a witness, not intercepted.
In outlining the origins of the plot, Mr. Nehm said November 1998 was a decisive moment because that was when Mr. Atta, Mr. Shibh and another suspected conspirator, Said Bahaji, moved into an apartment at 54 Marienstrasse in Hamburg.
"This is when there were intensive discussions concentrating on the question of what can be done," Mr. Nehm said in the television interview. "The hate was there, the hate against the United States, the hate against world Jewry. Those were the discussion topics."
German authorities have said that the radicalism of the Hamburg group was fueled by sermons at Al Quds, a Hamburg mosque.
At some point after the initial discussions, Mr. Nehm said, the conspirators decided that they had to take action against the United States.
"By October 1999 at the latest, the members of the group under Atta's leadership had decided to participate in a jihad through a terrorist attack on America and kill as many people as possible," the prosecutor said.
Mr. Atta, Mr. Shehhi and Mr. Jarrah were accepted into flight schools and received visas to go to the United States, German and American authorities say. Mr. Shibh was refused visas five times and he stayed behind with Mr. Motassadeq and Mr. Bahaji, serving as a courier and sending money to the hijackers, they say.
Mr. Shibh and two other suspected members of the group, Mr. Bahaji and Mr. Essabar, have been charged with participation in the plot by the Germans. Their locations are not known, but they are believed to have fled to Afghanistan before Sept. 11.
In the Panorama interview, Mr. Nehm said he had been taken aback in the course of his investigation by the magnitude of evidence that had allowed German investigators to piece together the Hamburg cell's actions before the attacks.
"It surprised me how many clues the perpetrators left behind from their daily lives concerning the planning of this act," he said. "We always speak of `sleepers,' but the activities that we have listed in the indictment are incredible - we have 90 pages - which include a picture of their movements without gaps. That this was possible is incredible." |
