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Tracking the financing of Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations has proved a more difficult task for the U.S. and its European and Middle Eastern allies than had been anticipated in the immediate wake of Sept. 11. . .
Public records identify the single employee of Triple-B as its managing director, Abdul-Matin Tatari, a 60-year-old Syrian-born exporter of clothing and other items who has recently fallen under a cloud of suspicion with regard to Sept. 11.
The day before this year's Sept. 11 anniversary, Tatari's home and three warehouses in Schleswig-Holstein were raided by German federal police, who seized box-loads of files and hauled Tatari, his wife and two sons in for questioning. The Tataris were released after several hours but remain under investigation while police comb the seized documents.
According to the office of Germany's federal prosecutor, the 7 a.m. raid occurred because Tatari is suspected of having used another company, Tatex Trading GmbH, to support an "international network" dedicated to fomenting "a violent holy war by Islamic fundamentalists."
A statement by the prosecutor's office also referred to the Tatari family's suspected "contacts with extremist Islamic circles, particularly those involved in Sept. 11."
Tatari, who came to Germany from Syria 40 years ago to study chemical engineering in Dortmund, emphatically denies any links to Al Qaeda or terrorism, and he denounces the events of Sept. 11. "Nobody accepts something like has happened in the U.S.A.," he declared in a recent interview. "This is wrong."
But Tatari also admits that Tatex Trading has employed, at various times in the past 15 years, two Syrian-born German citizens, both from his hometown of Aleppo, who are high on the list of Sept. 11 suspects. . .
Investigators also say Atta himself worked for a time at Tatex, which Tatari vehemently denies. But Tatari admits that one of his sons signed Atta's petition to establish an Islamic "study group" at Hamburg's Technical University that served as a rendezvous for the hijackers and their supporters.
The son, Mohammed Hady Tatari, also is close to another former Hamburg student, Mounir El Motassadeq, who currently is on trial in Hamburg, charged with providing the hijackers material support.
According to Tatari, his son stood as a witness at Motassadeq's wedding. He said the pair also traveled to Denmark for an undisclosed purpose in March 2000, at a time when the hijacking plans were being laid in Hamburg.
Although Motassadeq shared an apartment with one of the Sept. 11 hijackers and admits having been friends with several of the accused conspirators, his lawyers say he has denied advance knowledge of the hijackings.
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Investigators suspect some of the "buyers" were actually Al Qaeda operatives or other Islamic radicals from Syria, Egypt and Jordan. Tatari, while maintaining that all were "good people," conceded that not all had been buyers. "They come to visit, and they come for health," he said. "Some of them come to buy."
The origins of Tatex Trading itself have become of interest to investigators. Although Tatari is that company's managing director, records show that its major shareholder is another wealthy Saudi, a real estate and construction magnate from Mecca named Hamed Al Barakati.
A second Tatex investor is Mohamad Majed Said, a former head of Syria's General Intelligence Directorate. According to Tatari, Said's son, Dr. Ayham Said, a German-trained physician who was employed by Tatex for several months as a salesman of medical equipment, invested about $100,000 of his father's money in the company a few years ago.
Investigators puzzled
Investigators say they are frankly puzzled by their discovery of the Said family's role in Tatex, especially in view of Tatari's reputed membership in the radical Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that for more than 20 years has tried to bring down the secular government of his native Syria.
Although Tatari denies any association with the Muslim Brotherhood, a senior German intelligence official said the Syrian government has identified Tatari as a member.
The Syrian connection to Tatex became crucial early this year, after Mohammed Zammar, whom Tatari acknowledges having referred to as "a friend and a brother" in a conversation overheard by police, was deported from Morocco to Syria at the request of the U.S.
With the German federal police eager to learn what Zammar was telling the Syrians about Sept. 11 and Al Qaeda's operations in Germany, one source said the Germans agreed to allow Tatari to remain free during the Tatex investigation in return for access to Zammar's statements.