Terrorists' Twin Tower Images, Secret Porn Messages

ABC News ^ | 5/8/03

[areafiftyone]

ROME, May 8 — Investigators analyzing computers seized from an Italian mosque say they have uncovered images of the twin towers that were downloaded just days before the 9/11 attacks, as well as a trove of pornographic photos they believe were used to conceal coded messages.

On Sept. 4, 2001, according to investigators, pictures of the World Trade Center were saved as temporary files on one of the computers at the Via Quaranta mosque in Milan — the mosque frequented by Abdelkader Mahmoud Es Sayed, also known as Abu Saleh, an Egyptian currently on trial in absentia in Milan on charges of international terrorism.

Court documents from the ongoing Milan trial, cited by the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, say that police discovered images of the World Trade Center along with numerous files that contained images downloaded from the Internet of political leaders such as President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, as well as large quantities of pornographic material, also taken from the Internet.

The images, investigators said, had been manipulated — their colors modified — before being sent back onto the Web.

Police believe this was one of the ways that al Qaeda cell members communicated, encoding, in many instances, pornographic images that were were traded back and forth, an investigative source confirmed.

The practice is known as steganography. Read a Brian Ross report to find out more.

Police confiscated 11 computers from the Via Quaranta mosque in November 2001, according to court documents, after issuing an arrest warrant for its founder, Es Sayed, during an investigation into an Islamic terrorist cell headquartered in Milan that provided logistical support to the al Qaeda network.

Several key members of the cell have been convicted in the Italian courts, and five others are on trial in Milan, charged with association to international terrorist groups, falsification of documents and aiding illegal immigration.

Milan prosecutors believe that Es Sayed was an al Qaeda lieutenant sent to Italy to recruit new members to send to the terrorist network.

During an investigation that lasted more than two years, police recorded conversations between Es Sayed and a Yemeni man who referred to "studying airplanes."

During one wiretapped conversation in August of 2000, the Yemeni tells Es Sayed that "God willing, I hope that I can bring you a window or piece of airplane the next time we meet."

Italian investigators have never determined a direct link between the Milan cell and the Sept. 11 attacks, but the images of the twin towers that investigators say the discovered on the computer hard drive suggest that perhaps at least one of the Milan cell members had knowledge of the attacks before they occurred.

The digital evidence is still being analyzed.

Police say they found material that they describe as "interesting" on several of the confiscated computers. The hard drives of all the computers had all been erased but were reconstructed in part by computer experts collaborating with the Milan courts, the investigative source said.

In conversations recorded during more than two years of investigation, cell members often referred to computers and Web sites, and made frequent use of Internet cafes to exchange information, the source confirmed.

Although the investigators were able to determine how the images were manipulated, they have not yet been able to decode the messages that might have been conveyed by those manipulations.

According to a report in the Corriere della Sera, the Italian investigators have asked for help from experts in the United States.

[areafiftyone]

LOL - I am a female! But I have a few muslim women that live in my apartment building and they are very attractive but they seem always so sad!!! They always give me a sad smile when I say hello to them!!

[mabelkitty]

It's okay.

As long as they weren't gambling.

[twigs]

Oh, my! So sad, isn't it?

[Ralph the Hun]

Note to Mrs. Hun:

All of the porn my computer is in fact secret work documents encoded using steganography and NOT for 'other' use.

[lurky]

Code indeed. It reads like this: terrorists enjoy masturbating.

Nice one.

[LayoutGuru2]

The was a lot of talk right after 911 about the use of steganography by the terrorists. I haven't heard much about it since then. Here is a pre-911 warning:

Bin Laden: Steganography Master?
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,41658,00.html

[kcvl]

Thanks!

[Pikachu_Dad]

Might explain the large quantity of porn being downloaded by the previous white house

[Publicus]

Solve it?!?! What do you mean solve it, his immoral behavior and weakening of our defense/intelligence capabilities are the main reasons why the attacks took place!

[Publicus]

That's really something. But how did they actually embed the message behind an image of music file?

[I'm ALL Right!]

This picture is off a bit...the legs are too thin...uh, the everything is too thin...and willy is looking as if he cares... of course the control thing is right on.

[Genesis defender]

Aaaaaaaaggghh!! My eyes! It BURNS! BURRRRNS!!!!

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

What a shocker, they downloaded porm from a mosque.

"Porno in my bar? I'm shocked. Shocked!"

[Criminal Number 18F]

I can honestly say that none of the 600 books that I read about Afghanistan, Islam, etc. prepared me for the, er, sexual mores of the Afghans.

We had a guy come in with a neighbour girl. He had raped her and she was pregnant. He wanted our docs to abort. We told him to get lost, and within two weeks we heard that the girl had been stoned by the men in her family when they learnt she was knocked up.

The guy lit out for Pakistan and abandoned his wife and kids. Because his stigma was on them, no one in the village would help them or even give them food.

Women are treated absolutely horribly there. Girls are half the size of their kid brothers because they aren't "worth" feeding. Meanwhile, the guys are committed to... buggery. They thought that we were weird for wanting to have sex with women. "Women are OK for reproduction," one told me, "ah, but a nice young boy! That is where you find pleasure." Sick, sick, sick. They said a lot of other stuff that's inappropriate for repeating here.

Our docs treated unspeakable combinations of venereal diseases, and we had a kid (maybe 11 years old) brought in... he had been gang raped by some quantity of men, and he was a wreck both physically and psychologically.

I don't know why the Afghans are so perverted a race, or why there seem to be similar problems in other Middle Eastern nations, but I have to suspect their degradation of women, and stark terror of female sexuality, is involved.

600 books in four languages, all the articles I could find, and the reams of government documents and studies I read before going over. And I swear that not a one of them mentioned, "Oh, by the way, the Afghans are all butt pirates." It would have been nice to know.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[Tamzee]

"That's really something. But how did they actually embed the message behind an image of music file?"

There are always amounts of "empty space" in the groups of 1's and 0's that make up any file. Steganography just squeezes the hidden file information into those scattered empty spaces. The larger the container file, the less degraded the container appears. The software to set this up has become increasingly sophisticated and easy-to-use in the last few years.

[El Gato]

Code indeed. It reads like this: terrorists enjoy masturbating.

Well you know it's hard to find a goat or even a sheep in Milan. the Italian prostitutes probably wouldn't have anything to do with these guys and they were too busy to go to France, where the French whores aren't so discriminating.

[El Gato]

600 books in four languages, all the articles I could find, and the reams of government documents and studies I read before going over. And I swear that not a one of them mentioned, "Oh, by the way, the Afghans are all butt pirates." It would have been nice to know.

You didn't ask, so they didn't tell.

[goldstategop]

Its funny in a way; back home viewing porn would get them executed but in the libertine West the devout of Allah see nothing wrong with using Satan's worship of the body to spread along their puritanical messages. Along with instructions to incinerate building full of living and breathing people. Even the Religion Of Peace can't resist a Jimmy Swaggart shtick: we just can't help it if we use a passel of nude beauties to do the Almighty's work even though we think women should be hidden behind burqas and be men's obedient chattels. The infidels don't really appreciate the irony behind our transparent hypocrisy.

[Erasmus]

All of the porn my computer is in fact secret work documents encoded using steganography and NOT for 'other' use.

Well, Mr Hun, the idea is to encode the porn in the work documents and not the other way around.

[MD_Willington_1976]

I met a Persian girl at a local mall, olive skin, dark waist length hair and green eyes, she was drop dead gorgeous... We also have several muslims where I live, I have only seen a few that wear the whole get up, most just cover there heads with a shawl around here.