Top 9/11 suspect 'was granted US visa'

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind behind the September 11 plot, was granted a visa to enter the US just six weeks before the terrorist attacks in Washington and New York, according to new revelations from the federal commission studying the attacks.

Mr Mohammed, who had previously been indicted in the US for his alleged role in an earlier terrorist plot, was granted a visa through a US consulate in Saudi Arabia after applying under a false Saudi passport using the alias Abdulrahman al Ghamdi, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States said on Monday.

Mr Mohammed, who was captured in Pakistan last April, did not appear to have used the visa to enter the US, the commission said.

The revelations will raise new questions about lapses in US border controls that may have contributed to the September 11 attacks. While the US has taken numerous steps to tighten its scrutiny of travellers, the administration is still facing criticism from Democrats that border security remains too lax.

In its most pointed conclusions to date, the commission, headed by Thomas Kean, a former New Jersey governor, said its investigation had revealed that many of the hijackers had violated US immigration laws, lied on visa applications and showed other suspicious behaviours that could have been detected.

Three of the 19 hijackers, for instance, made false statements in their visa applications that could have been detected, according to the commission, which is preparing to submit a final report to President George W. Bush and Congress in late May.

Two of four hijackers' passports recovered from the crashes had been doctored in a way that hinted at their association with al-Qaeda. Two others had "suspicious indicators" on their passports.

"These circumstances offered opportunities to intelligence and law enforcement officials," said the commission, "but our government did not fully exploit al-Qaeda's travel vulnerabilities."

The conclusions may re-open the question of whether intelligence and law enforcement officials could have done more to stop the plot, in spite of previous claims that most of the hijackers had no record of association with terrorists and thus were unlikely to be identified.

"The director of Central Intelligence described 17 of the 19 hijackers as 'clean'. We believe the information we have provided today gives the commission the opportunity to re-evaluate those statements," the commission's staff said.

At a hearing on Capitol Hill on Monday, the commission also heard testimony from José Melendez-Perez, an immigration official who refused US entry to Mohamed al-Kahtani, an al-Qaeda operative that the commission suspects was supposed to be the 20th hijacker.

Mr al-Kahtani, a Saudi, was refused entry at Orlando airport on August 4 2001, at the exact time that Mohammed Atta, the plot's ringleader, is known to have been at that airport.

I would suspect that this was a backup.

I was in Spain for a few weeks that summer. I was staying in Valencia on the Mediterranean coast, and went to Alicante, south of Valencia, on the train a couple of times, and also made a few excursions north of Valencia. I am very familiar with Spain, and particularly with that part of it, because I had a good friend who was living in that area and had opened an art gallery around there at the time.

I have always had a terrible feeling that I saw Atta on a train once. I got on the train - I believe I was heading south towards Alicante, but it may have been on the return to Valencia from one of my trips northwards - and saw a tall African sitting on one of the side-facing seats. Many Spaniards will not sit next to Africans, because they often smell bad (I can attest to this), but there was a seat on one of the seats at a right angle to the African's seat, so I sat down there.

I thought he was Senegalese, because he was carrying an attache case, and like any New Yorker, I assumed that a tall, dark African with an attache case was selling fake Rolexes.

About two stops later, another man got on and came over immediately to that seat and greeted the Senegalese in English. The second man was not African, but was dark, and I thought he might have been Moroccan. They started talking, but I had no reason for listening (this was July 2001), so I continued reading my local Spanish newspaper and I ignored them. There were no other seats on the train, and I didn't want to stand.

At the next stop, two light skinned (well, by comparison) men got on and went over to the Senegalese and his friend. They had short,dark hair and I thought they looked somehow "classier" than the others, a little better dressed or something. One had a rather heavy face that for some reason stuck in my mind, and he was obviously also the important person.

The newest people began speaking to the others, and whatever they said made the Senegalese laugh, and he looked around to the side (towards me and another woman sitting on the other row of seats) and began to laugh and fling his hands out. After one of his hands grazed my paper, I got the hint and moved to another part of the train.

The group had been talking about "papers." I assumed they were talking about Spanish immigration papers, and they were very difficult to understand in any case, so I went back to my newspaper and ignored them. The only thing I did notice is that they got off at separate stops.

I have always thought that one of these guys was Atta.

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