Posted on 02/02/2003 6:04:54 AM PST by knighthawk
Hamburg: Ahead of the September 11 attacks, German intelligence attempted to recruit an Islamic extremist who was a key link to the Hamburg terrorist cell of hijackers, according to a news report.
The report in Der Spiegel magazine, due to hit newsstands tomorrow, says German intelligence approached Syrian-German terrorist suspect Mohammed Haidar Zammar.
Zammar, currently in detention in Syria, is widely believed to have recruited the suicide pilots who hijacked planes and flew them into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.
As early at 1996, however, German intelligence approached Zammar with a lucrative incitement to provide information on radical Islamic activities in Germany. Zammar refused, telling intelligence agents he was committed to the Jihad against infidels and that he would rather die than work for the West.
He boasted at that time that he had visited a Mujahedin guerrilla combat training camp where he had been trained in the use of arms and explosives.
Zammar was still under intense scrutiny in the weeks and days ahead of September 11 and German intelligence monitored calls between him and the men who later commandeered planes in the attacks.
Zammar was interrogated extensively following his capture in Morocco after fleeing Germany. The transcripts of that interrogation are being sought by the defence in the Hamburg al Qaeda terrorism trial. The judge in the trial on Friday demanded access to the classified transcripts which German intelligence says are too sensitive to be released.
The defence team of the first man to be arraigned for complicity in the September 11 attacks has requested the hand-over of the transcripts, saying they might contain evidence which potentially could prove the innocence of their client, Mounir Al Motassadeq.
Motassadeq is the alleged paymaster for the Hamburg terrorist cell that carried out the attacks in the United States. He faces more than 3,000 counts of accessory to murder in connection with September 11.
NAPLES: Italian police found a photo of Britain’s most senior military man, Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, in an apartment where they arrested 28 Pakistanis suspected of links to al Qaeda, judicial and police sources said yesterday.
The raid on the run-down Naples lodgings on Wednesday night, which also uncovered explosives, false documents and maps, was one of the biggest anti-terrorism operations Italy has seen since the September 11 attacks on the United States.
The photo of Boyce, chief of the defence staff, was in a Pakistani newspaper and was ringed by a pen, the sources said.
If people want on or off this list, please let me know.
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.