Posted on 09/29/2001 4:55:50 PM PDT by Pokey78
A STUDENT in international trade from south London spent up to five years helping to prepare attacks on targets in mainland Europe and the United States designed to paralyse western countries.
Investigators probing Osama Bin Laden's international network are focusing on a British terrorist cell linked to a London mosque, which helped to plan the suicide hijackings in America and provided support for attacks on military and civilian targets in Europe.
Zacarias Moussaoui, a 33- year-old French-Moroccan, is being questioned by the FBI as the 20th hijacker in the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11.
At first it was thought that Moussaoui was a minor figure. But security sources now say that as a "sleeper" in Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network, he had a pivotal role in linking up to 50 members of European cells.
While claiming welfare benefits and studying at public libaries in London, he was training to join the 19 hijackers who seized control of the aircraft. They claim that at the same time he linked up with two brothers suspected of plotting assaults on the American embassy in Paris and Nato's headquarters in Brussels later this year.
Police in Britain and France are still searching for his partner, a north African woman in her thirties, who is said to have been an organiser and recruiter for the planned attacks in European cells. She left the flat she shared with Moussaoui in south London several months ago and has not been seen since.
Members of their terrorist cell boasted that, by creating panic in America and Europe, they could bring the "infidel" - the non-Muslim world - to its knees.
German investigators said that a telephone call was intercepted between Moussaoui and another terrorist suspect who shared an apartment with Mohammed Atta, the leader of the hijackers. The call was made by Moussaoui while he was at a flight school in Oklahoma earlier this year and is the first substantial evidence linking him to the group which carried out the September 11 attacks.
The revelation will increase fears that Britain is being used as a haven by terrorists. Western intelligence agencies are examining more than 40 British banks, companies and other organisations suspected of being used to launder cash for Bin Laden's campaign.
Last week Tony Blair, the prime minister, authorised a £16m "emergency" payment to Britain's intelligence services - MI5 and MI6 - to cover the extra cost of hunting for the terrorists behind the attacks.
Most is being ploughed into MI5 anti-terrorist specialists. Linguists specialising in the Afghan language of Pashto are being recruited as officers pursue hundreds of leads.
Yesterday Kamel Daoudi, another terrorist suspect, was returned to France after being arrested in Leicester on Tuesday. He is suspected of being a bomb expert behind plans to kill hundreds of military and civilian personnel in aircraft and lorry bomb attacks in Paris and Brussels.
Another 10 of the terrorist hijackers passed through Heathrow and Gatwick on their way to the United States. Their flights originated in Dubai, a staging post for Pakistan and Afghanistan.
American authorities have applied for the extradition of a British-based flying instructor who allegedly taught four of the hijackers and made certain they were "capable and trained" to carry out the atrocities.
Lotfi Raissi, who lived in Colnbrook, near Slough, Berkshire, is contesting the extradition, which could take three years and cost £1m of public money.
The government is considering a new extradition bill to speed up procedures. The bill is likely to curtail the right to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
More than 30 suspects have been rounded up in raids across Europe since September 11. The groups were plotting against targets in Strasbourg and Marseilles as well as Paris and Brussels.
Jerome and David Courtellier, two brothers being held in France for suspected terrorist offences, had stayed with Moussaoui and his girlfriend in south London, but had travelled freely between Britain and France.
Moussaoui was arrested in Minnesota for immigration violations on August 17, a month before the attacks.
He had settled in Britain in 1992 and enrolled on a college course in overseas trade, endorsed by the Institute of Export. He lived on the top floor of a housing association block in Streatham, south London. One former neighbour said she saw him entering and leaving the building until last summer: "He spoke very good English, was well-dressed and seemed intelligent. He kept himself to himself."
Abd-Samad Moussaoui said Zacarias, his brother, had travelled to London from southern France with a plan to learn English and work in the City.
He had undergone a personality change after his best friend was killed by Russian soldiers in Chechnya.
"He was like an open, fertile field; unfortunately the crop that was planted was bad," he said. During return visits to France, Zacarias was increasingly bitter and critical of British society. "He said it was unjust, it was a very hard society. People were interested only in money," said Abd-Samad.
"My brother started to say things that I found very shocking. He defended mass murders in Algeria and said it was legitimate to murder civilians and to excommunicate an entire people if they were not following the pure form of Islam. He also told members of my family about his trips to Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. What was he doing there?"
In an earlier comment, Abd-Samad said: "I noticed a change in his attitude when he came back to France. He became a racist and would use the pejorative word 'toubab' to describe white people."
There is concern that Moussaoui lived undisturbed in Britain, even though he was being sought in France by the DST, the French equivalent of MI5. Aicha, his mother, said she was visited by officers of the French security service more than 18 months ago. They asked her to contact them if she heard from her son or learnt where he was living.
She said she last saw him in 1997 when he visited her in Narbonne in the south of France. "He said he was working in various temporary jobs during the day and studying at night.
"He also said he was learning Arabic and thinking about going into business selling halal meat," she said.
"He didn't speak very much and when I questioned him it was hard to get details. Most answers were very vague. Eventually he went back to England."
The Taliban -- like other Pathans in Afghanistan and Pakistan -- may speak Pushtu, but I haven't seen any evidence that any of the terrorists in Europe or North America is a Pathan. They seem largely to be Arabs, who would speak some form of Arabic.
Interesting that this article says Moussaoui was learning Arabic in England. Moussaoui's family is Moroccan, even though he was born in France. It might be that the Arabic he was learning was standard Arabic, or the Classical Arabic of the Koran, since he may only have known the form of Arabic spoken in Northwest Africa. Or he might be a Berber, whose language is different from Arabic. Or maybe, growing up in France, he just never learned Arabic.
In any case, there is an informative article about Moussaoui in today's Washington Post, Between Two Worlds. The printed story has a photo of Moussaoui, indicating he is quite dark-skinned, which perhaps supports the theory that he is a Berber.
I don't know about it taking THAT long for them to turn him over to us.
I'll bet they're working on his nuts right now. Look for a bunch more arrests in the next couple days.
Thanks for the heads-up, Mike.
This is yet another example of why, with advances in technology (which, unfortunately, make the world a 'smaller' place, and provide madmen with (1) the means to wreak havoc on others with much more impunity, and (2) the ability to ensure that their havoc affects multitudes more people than would have been possible during previous eras in human history), 'open societies' such as ours serve as easy prey for those with black hearts.
If the assertions in this article hold water, Moussaoui represents just another 'bad seed' who has so far been able to slip through the (ever-widening) cracks.
Yes, the holocaust of 9/11 was a wake-up call. Yes, we need to finally recognize that the dismantling, or emasculating, of our human intelligence networks after the (premature) declaration of the end of the Cold War marked the beginning of the era of heightened vulnerability. No satellite reconnaissance/aircraft reconnaissance, or any other modern intelligence machinery/technology, can ever replace the infiltration of hostile organizations by well-trained, duty-bound human intelligence agents.
It's time to perform CPR on our intelligence-gathering institutions. And, while we're at it, it's time to take a good look at the 'C' portion of our resuscitation efforts. The 'hearts' of the CIA/FBI have become so perverted as to render their originally-intended functions virtually unrecognizable. Just as is so often the case in the history of most (all?) federal agencies or programs of any duration, in the building of bureaucratic, or agenda-driven, kingdoms, the original purpose of the agency/program has been lost in the shuffle.
The CIA's original definitive mission was to collect, evaluate, and disseminate foreign intelligence to assist the President and senior policymakers in making decisions relating to our national security. The FBI's mission was to investigate violations of federal criminal law, to protect us from foreign terrorist activities, and to provide law enforcement assistance to federal, state, local, and international agencies. The definitions of both of those agencies have been so perverted, and their original intent so constrained by the infiltration of leftist ideology, that not only has our national security been potentially fatally compromised, but the very freedoms that these agencies were designed to defend have been placed in jeopardy, on occasion, by the Constitutional overstepping of the agencies themselves.
As regards terrorist threats from outside of our borders, even CIA Director Tenet said to his people, the day after the terrorist attack, 'The fight against those who use the weapon of terror to menace and murder is necessarily hard. The shield of fanaticism -- wielded by those ready to forfeit their lives to achieve their twisted dreams -- is not easily pierced.' Even the man whose charge it is to pierce the shield of fanaticism exhibits a tone of fatalism in his remarks.
That does not mean that we should throw up our arms in surrender to the black-hearted madmen. It simply means that we must do all that is within our power to shackle them, but we must lace our efforts with the necessary realization that such attempts to confine the madmen, within the necessary parameters of a free and open society, will not always be successful. The Catch-22 is that it is precisely the freedom and openness that we so prize that demands a degree of vulnerability from us in the process.
So be it.
You had better explain to these beasts what a peaceful religion islam is. They don't get it.
And none of his family went to the police.
Yes indeed, "moderate moslems" are ideal citizens.
An enemy that hides among his "moderate" coreligionists in the West in order to commit mass murder from hiding must not be surprised if the entire group is interned or expelled.
Self defense is a natural human right. If a mass murdring enemy hides perfectly among his group, the entire group must be rendered harmless.
If moslem arabs in the West are feeling put upon, tough s#!+. This is WAR! We must not permit the terrorists a "sanctuary" behind our lines.
There were supposed to be 5 hijackers on each plane. That would be 20. However, there were only 19. Moussaoui was the 20th hijacker. He was taken into custody by American authorities a month before the hijacking and they had reason to suspect he was part of a plot to hijack an airliner. He probably knew about the whole operation but they could never get anything out of him.
If the FBI could have questioned him the way the Israelis would have questioned him, there would be 7000 people alive today.
Perhaps, but Moussaoui's information would have been a lot more specific.
More mindless hypocrisy.
One of the initial articles on this fella said that upon our inquiry with the French (post 9/11, I believe) they said that he was a "lieutenant" for Bin Laden. Doesn't sound too minor too me. I know hindsight is 20/20, but it seems like something could have been done here.
There's certainly some logic to what you say, but if we're going to enlist the cooperation of Arab and Muslim governments, we can't do it at the same time we're expelling people because of Arab or Muslim origin.
For what you say to work, we'd have to come to a decision that we're going it alone in the fight against terrorism. We may be able to, I think Europe is more compromised.
I do favor the immediate development of synthetic, non-polluting fuels/energy sources to reduce or eliminate dependence on oil supply disruptions.
At that point in the war, trade and travel between the West and the middle east will be finished, inluding oil.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.