Posted on 11/05/2001 5:12:49 AM PST by freedomnews
Afghans make up largest group of asylum-seekers in Europe this year – UNHCR
2 November – With a 14 per cent jump in asylum applications in Europe this year compared to the same period in 2000, most asylum-seekers come from Afghanistan and Iraq, a spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said today in Geneva.
Briefing the press, Ron Redmond said the total number of asylum applications submitted in Europe during the third quarter increased by 20 per cent over the previous quarter, including 27,418 from Afghans and 26,892 from Iraqis. The number of Afghan applications rose by 12 per cent over the previous quarter, and the number of Iraqi requests by even more - 34 per cent.
Germany remained the country receiving the most asylum applications with a total of 66,017 during the first three quarters of 2001, Mr. Redmond said.
The German federal prosecutor said Saturday that a third suspect, identified in the US suicide attacks, lived for a while in Bochum in western Germany. In a statement, the federal prosecutor said the man, identified as Ziad Samir Jarrah, was the third of three suspects in the US attacks who had lived in an apartment in Hamburg in northern Germany.
It said that he had also lived for a while in Bochum and that he was aboard the plane which crashed in Pennsylvania on Tuesday.
His girlfriend in Bochum had reported his disappearance the day after the terrorist attacks in the United States, the statement said, adding that federal police had searched two apartments in Bochum on Friday evening.
They found evidence which was being analyzed for leads to other people possibly involved in the attacks, it said.
Ziad Samir Jarrah had left Germany in June 2000 to attend two different flight schools in Florida in the United States, it said.
According to the daily Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper, Ziad Samir Jarrah belonged to an Islamic association with 20 members at Hamburg's technical university led by Mohamed Atta, one of the suspected hijackers who had lived in Hamburg. Prosecutors have said they believe the three Arab men who had lived in Hamburg and had been aboard the hijacked flights were involved in the planning and execution of history's worst terrorist attack on US soil.
Der Spiegel news weekly reported Friday that the FBI had sent German authorities information on 18 suspects which showed that the men in Hamburg had had contact with other alleged hijackers on the ill-fated flights. One, 33-year-old Atta, had given the same telephone number as four other Arabs on planes from Boston to Los Angeles that crashed into the World Trade Center.
Atta's associate Marwan Al-Shehhi, 23, who was in a second plane to Los Angeles, reported the same addresses as a third suspect, according to the report. All three had reserved one-way tickets at the end of August, like most of the other suspected hijackers.
Al-Shehhi received a US visa on January 18, 2000, Spiegel said.
Hamburg authorities had said Thursday that Atta was registered on American Airlines Flight 11 and Al-Shehhi was on the passenger list of United Airlines Flight 175. Flight 11 was steered to crash into the one of the twin towers at the World Trade Center minutes before flight 175 slammed into the second tower. Two other hijacked planes crashed into the Pentagon and in western Pennsylvania several minutes later.
The head of the German federal prosecutors office, Kay Nehm, said Thursday he believed the suspects were part of a terrorist cell in Hamburg with "fundamentalist Islamic beliefs" aimed at cooperating with foreign terrorist networks in "destroying symbolically important buildings in a spectacular fashion".
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