Clinton FBI Rejected Would-Be 9/11 Hijacker's Confession Before Attack

A FORMER waiter in a Manchester curry house was recruited by Al-Qaeda and trained as a hijacker in preparation for the September 11 attacks.

The British Muslim was enlisted at a mosque in Oldham and attended terrorist training school in Pakistan. But he had second thoughts about his suicide mission as he flew to America and surrendered to the police after gambling away thousands of pounds given to him by Al-Qaeda.

The FBI’s counter-terrorism taskforce questioned the 29-year-old man for three weeks at Newark, New Jersey, in the spring of 2000. There, agents refused to believe his claim that terrorists were planning to fly passenger jets into buildings, even though he passed lie detector tests.

THE disastrous journey that led a waiter at a curry house in Manchester to the United States to hijack a plane for Al-Qaeda began not in a mosque but at a roulette table.

“Every night when we closed up at the Sher Khan, we would drive around the casinos,” he said.

“One night I thought I would go in with the others to see what it was like.”

His decision that rainy Manchester night seven years ago was one that he believes he will always regret. Soon he was gambling almost every night and ran up debts that allowed Al-Qaeda to recruit him with an offer to pay them off.

He now believes that had he not given himself up to the FBI in 2000, he would have become the only British hijacker among those who crashed planes in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001, killing nearly 2,800 people.

He was approached at his local mosque by a recruiter who offered him money in return for carrying out “a job”. He accepted, even when he realised what was involved.

“If your life has no colour and a mullah says you can be a hero by dying, why not?” he said. “I think there are a lot of frustrated Muslim youths in Britain who feel the same way.”

He travelled to Lahore, where he was taught how to carry out a hijacking and familiarised with the inside of a Boeing cockpit. “I knew they wanted me to do some kind of operation in which I would die but my life was such a mess that in my mind I was already dead,” he said.

“At that time if they had told me to strap a bomb to my body and blow myself up I would have done it as easily as taking a glass of water to drink,” he added.

On his return to Britain, he was given a further £5,000 and sent to New York, where he was told he would be met at the airport.

But he had got married and during the flight thoughts of his wife and baby helped to change his mind. He gave his contact the slip and instead of going through with his mission, he took a bus to Atlantic City, where he lost his money in casinos and then gave himself up.

It also gives a fascinating insight into how Al-Qaeda recruits its members in Britain. Far from searching out the religious fanatics who might be known to the authorities, the terrorists’ talent-spotters frequent mosques to seek out those involved in petty crime or those who are in such trouble that they might feel their lives are not worth living. Al-Qaeda preys on these weaknesses.

The young man who had dreamt of becoming a cricketer but instead found himself drowning in debt was in many ways an ideal candidate. Short and mild-mannered, he has handsome, almost pretty, features and a British passport that allowed him to enter the United States with no visa.

Born in Burnley, Lancashire, the third of four children, he was still a baby when his family moved back to their home village near Attock in Pakistan. Not far away across the Indus River is the Haqqania madrasah, the religious school where many of the Taliban leadership studied.

His father, who described him as a quiet, well-behaved child, earned a living transporting goods and sent him to a secular school.

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Although he had never been religious, he often attended Friday prayers at Werneth mosque in Oldham. It had a radical new imam, Shafiq ur Rehman, and for the first time the unemployed waiter found himself listening.

He still has the tapes he recorded of diatribes against the “sex-craving pig” Bill Clinton and calls for Muslims to go to fight jihad in Kashmir or Afghanistan. “Afterwards the mullah asked for money for the Taliban and everyone used to give money — £2, £5, £10 — which was sent to Karachi,” he said. “It used to be very open.”

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“We were taught all about the cockpit of a 767 plane, shown a model with all the switches and what they did. We were given some physical training about the best way to attack someone, and also some religious instruction about the situation in Afghanistan and other places.”

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He was not considered dangerous and was never handcuffed. The agents even played cricket with him. “We always felt he was a nice guy who got caught up in all of this,” said the retired agent.

“Had this been after September 11 it would have been very different. We would have put him in a maximum security prison.”

His father was horrified when he received a phone call from the FBI to say they were holding his son. To this day, he says, he does not know who his son was mixed up with. “They are very hard people, not like him,” he added.

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On September 11, 2001 he switched on the television to see two planes flying into the World Trade Center. “I felt terrible,” he said. “I was crying, watching it over and over again.

“I am sure in my mind that was what I was supposed to be part of. What else could it be? I was perfect, I had a British passport so could fly straight to America, no questions asked.”

He telephoned the FBI agents who had questioned him, using the numbers on their business cards: “I left messages on their answerphones, saying how sorry I was.”

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His wife, whose English is poor, still does not know about his involvement with Al-Qaeda. Last year their first son was born and the family lives in a shabby two-bedroom flat.

A pile of post includes overdue bills and summonses for court appearances about an irregularly sold van that was used in a hit-and-run accident. Last week he was arrested for allegedly stealing a car.

He insists that he is trying to make an innocent living. “My missus says it doesn’t matter, even if I only make £1 a week she doesn’t care.

“But if I was not married I think I could do very bad things. I guess I have had an escape, but I will never stop being scared they will come back for me.”

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