*dances-off*

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Indictment.html

February 19, 2002

Jordanian Student Testifies in Court
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 6:37 a.m. ET

NEW YORK (AP) --

"..A federal judge has begun weighing claims that FBI agents threatened and abused a Jordanian student charged with lying to a grand jury about his association with two Sept. 11 hijackers.

Osama Awadallah, a 21-year-old student at Grossmont College, in El Cajon, Calif., testified Monday that FBI agents accused him of being one of the Sept. 11 terrorists after saying he failed a lie detector test.

Awadallah said agents told him he would be freed. But after he completed a voluntary polygraph test Sept. 21, they said it proved he'd lied and had advance knowledge of the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

```You did it. You were one of the terrorists,''' Awadallah said he was told by one agent. ```You knew they were going to do it.'''

Awadallah, who is free on $500,000 bail, said he denied being a terrorist.

Awadallah has been charged with twice lying to a New York grand jury about his association with two of the terrorist hijackers.

In the grand jury appearances, Awadallah admitted meeting hijacker Nawaf Al-Hazmi up to 40 times but denied knowing associate Khalid Al-Mihdhar. Confronted with an exam booklet in which he had written the name Khalid, he later admitted he knew both of them.

If convicted, Awadallah could face up to 10 years in prison.

His testimony came at the end of a pre-trial hearing held after U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin wrote in an opinion last month that Awadallah ``may have been the victim of coercion and intimidation.'' The judge suggested Awadallah may be able to prove he was unlawfully arrested, searched and abused by law enforcement officials during nearly three months in jail.

After the four-day hearing, she reserved decision and set a May 20 trial date for Awadallah.

On Saturday, FBI polygrapher J. Antonio Falcon testified that the results of Awadallah's polygraph examination ``appeared to be consistent with deception.''

His testimony provided a glimpse at a largely secret process in which scores of people have been rounded up since Sept. 11.

Awadallah said agents casually confronted him outside his home Sept. 20, saying they needed to question him for about 10 minutes.

Later, he said, they convinced him to sign a piece of paper granting permission to search his car and residence by threatening to ``tear up the home.''

Awadallah also said he was later abused several times by federal guards, including once when a guard cursed his ethnicity and religion and threw shoes at him.

On Friday, FBI Agent Brian Rielly testified that agents followed proper procedures when they drove Awadallah to their office for questioning, eventually detaining him as a material witness. Rielly said Awadallah willingly signed consent forms for searches of his belongings and offered agents his computer password.

FBI agent Frank Teixiera told the court Saturday that during the polygraph test, Awadallah's answers about whether he had any knowledge of people planning to commit acts against the United States, or whether he had any knowledge about anyone planning the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, led agents to believe there were ``inconsistencies and discrepancies'' in his story.

Awadallah's lawyers have said any inconsistencies likely resulted from his difficulties understanding English..."

CONN. TERROR-HIJACK LINK

March 6, 2002 --

"..Four of the Sept. 11 hijackers stayed at a Connecticut motel six months before the terrorist attacks and met with a Bridgeport man charged with providing false identification to at least 50 illegal aliens, it's reported today.
The hijackers, who stayed at the Fairfield Motor Inn, were Hani Hanjour, Nawaf Alhazmi, Ahmed Alghamdi and Majed Moqed, the Connecticut Post said.

The men reportedly met with Eyad Alrababah, 29, a Jordanian national who lived in Bridgeport. Alrababah was arrested Dec. 7, accused of producing and helping others obtain false identification documents.

Federal authorities do not claim that Alrababah provided documents to the terrorists. They say he was part of an enterprise that obtained bogus Virginia drivers' licenses for illegal Arab aliens.

Alrababah told the FBI he met with the four hijackers in both Connecticut and Virginia. But he denied knowing at the time that they were terrorists planning hijackings.

Some 21/2 weeks after the terrorist attacks, Alrababah told authorities in New York that he recognized several of the hijackers from photographs that had appeared in the newspapers, court documents show.

The court records also said Alrababah admitted collecting money to help at least 50 Arabic-speaking immigrants from New Jersey and Connecticut obtain fraudulent Virginia DMV documents.

Joe Macy, owner of the Fairfield Motor Inn, said the FBI had been at the motel and had collected "a lot of information."

New York Post brings different story from german magazine FOCUS

http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/43062.htm

March 10, 2002 --

"..Mohamed Atta, the cold-eyed terrorist ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, boldly showed off a hand-made model of the Pentagon just months before he and his deadly band smashed planes into the military nerve center and the Twin Towers.

The disturbing revelation is just the latest of many missed warning signs that have come to light in the six months since the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history.

Atta and his kamikaze-pilot cousin, Marwan al-Shehhi, displayed the cardboard model last summer at an architectural workshop at Hamburg University in Germany.

"They came with a model and put it on a carpenter's bench," said Thomas Kniephoff, the head of the workshop.

"I recognized [the 30-by-30-inch model of] the Pentagon with the surrounding greenery and buildings," he told the German magazine Focus..."

NOTE:
German magazine FOCUS wrote it different.
Not Atta, but an unknown arab looking student had visited one day both Mohammed Atta and Marwan el-Shehhi and showed this model.
Thomas Kniephoff, the head of the workshop, told this german police BKA, who visited the workshop and couldn't find the model.

Source: http://www.focus.de/G/GN/gn.htm?snr=102449&streamsnr=7

Atta and el-Shehhi officially crashed into both Twin Towers, not the Pentagon. Ziad Jarrah was the official pilot of the Pennsylvannia machine. The official pilot of the Pentagon plane was Hani Hanjour, which official flight teacher Lotfi Raissi was released some weeks ago after he was plead unguilty, because he wasn't the teacher.

Sept. 11 investigators arrest Ontario resident

"...A man from Sarnia, Ont., is custody in the United States, as authorities try to determine if he has any connection to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.

Suhail Sarwer, who also goes by the name of Abdul Hameed, appeared in court in Detroit Wednesday.

Believed to be of Pakistani origin, he has been in Canada for more than a year.

Shortly after Sept. 11, U.S. authorities issued a warrant for his arrest as a "material witness," someone who may have important information.

According to a U.S. warrant, there is a possibility he could face charges that include destruction of aircraft, conspiracy to destroy aircraft, bombing and conspiracy to levy war on the U.S..."

22/03/2002

"..Ali Salem Kahlah Al-Marri has not been charged with any role in the September 11 terrorist attacks, and his attorney, Richard Jasper Jr., questioned the link.
Mr. Al-Marri was arrested Jan. 28 and is being held in New York on a federal charge of unlawful possession of more than 15 credit cards, which were found in his West Peoria home during a Dec. 11 search.

When questioned by federal agents after the search, Mr. Al-Marri denied any knowledge of terrorism, the court papers say.
The basis for the suspicions of investigators is spelled out in an affidavit accompanying an application for a search warrant for his home. Agents were seeking evidence of several crimes, including "material support for terrorism."

The document filed in federal court in Peoria, first obtained by the (Peoria) Journal Star, details how suspected September 11 hijackers used a telephone number in the United Arab Emirates before the attacks.
It also says Mr. Al-Marri, using calling cards, attempted to call the same number three times after September 11 — on Sept. 23, Oct. 24 and Nov. 4.

According to court documents, September 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta sent a Federal Express package from the United States to the UAE on Sept. 4 and gave the phone number as a contact point for the recipient.
According to the affidavit, the number was also used a day earlier by an unidentified individual for a transfer of money to Ramzi Bin Al-Shibh, an unindicted co-conspirator in the federal indictment against Zacarias Moussaoui, the suspected 20th hijacker now in custody in Virginia.

The first of the "attempted calls" on cards traced to Mr. Al-Marri was made on a pay phone in a Peoria store through a calling card issued by Network IP.
The same card was used five days later in a call from Mr. Al-Marri's cellular phone and again on Oct. 24 in a call from his home in West Peoria.

The second call to the UAE number was made from a pay phone in a Springfield service station, using the same card.
The third call was made from the Summit Hotel in Chicago, using a card issued by Qwest Communications. The same day, the card was used to place four calls from the Al-Marri home.

Herbert Hadad, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan, N.Y., declined comment on the case. At a hearing yesterday in federal court on the credit-card charge, Mr. Al-Marri was denied bond.
Mr. Jasper, the defense attorney, said the affidavit said only that his client attempted to make calls.

"Attempted — I don't know what that means, do you?" he said. "It's the thinnest of inferences, actually. If you read the affidavit carefully, there's no direct or indirect evidence he made the calls.

"How do we know there wasn't some kind of mistaken call or some flaw in recovering the numbers?" Mr. Jasper asked.."

Pakistan - FBI /WRD/

"...Ex-ISI chief says American FBI has set up 16 offices in Pakistan
Islamabad, April 7, IRNA --

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) has set up 16 offices in different cities of Pakistan to track
down al-Qaeda remnants, a former head of Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) has claimed.
"FBI was also involved in the recent crackdown on suspected al-
Qaeda members in Lahore and Faisalabad, cities of eastern Punjab
province," Hamid Gul, former ISI chief told South Asian News Agency on
Sunday in an interview.
Police had rounded up more than 50 al-Qaeda suspects in raids in
Lahore and Faisalabad in eastern Punjab, province which media reports
said, were supervised by FBI. However, Pakistani authorities have not
specifically said the US agency was directly involved in the
operations.
He said the role of US intelligence agencies have increased in
Pakistan in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks in America.
To a question about Afghanistan he said guerrilla war might
re-start in the war battered country within three to five years.
"US will have to bring more troops to the region to control the
situation and probably the troops may be stationed in Pakistan,
Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan," Hamid Gul speculated.
He said there was a possibility that America may doubt Pakistan
for nuclear proliferation and deprive it of its nuclear capability.
"US is likely to interfere in the northern areas, which includes,
Gilgit and Skardu" the general added..."

The FBI tracked Arab-Americans whom they suspected of having terrorist connections from NY to the Memphis (TN) drivers license fraud ring -- the men drove down from NY (Feb, 2002) and were arrested while attempting to obtain fraudulent ID's. Katherine Smith, the clerk involved, was murdered the day before she was set to testify (Feb 11).

When arrested, one of the men, Sakher "Rocky" Hammad, was carrying a WTC pass for Sept 5. He told police that he had been working on the sprinkler system. He showed them his business card: Magic Plumbing and Heating. The address listed was his residence in Brooklyn, the phone number was an answering machine: "Rocky's voice mail is full".

In a Memphis court on 3/28, Rocky's father, a NY City engineer, Mr. Peter Hansen (immigrated 15 years ago from Jordan), presented the court with a letter from Denko Mechanical, Ltd, signed by a Mr. Sergei Denko, stating that Rocky and Rocky's cousin had been doing work for his company in the basement and garage of the WTC on Sept 5 and 6. Rocky was released on $250,000 bail. The nature of the work was not specified. The Port Authority of New York claimed no knowledge of hiring a Denko Mechanical and said Denko must have been hired by a tenant?? Mr. Hansen admitted to reporters that he had not had much contact with his son in recent years -- his son had closer ties to his mother, apparently still in Jordan/Gaza.

My own questions/confusion:

Now -- go back to Rocky's initial statement to police: working on sprinkler systems.

Denko Mechanical Ltd's address and phone is the residential Manhattan apartment and phone of Mr. Sergei Davidenko. Mr. Davidenko obtained a business license in Feb, 2000. Denko is not listed in any yellow pages or in any type of NY contractor list I could find. Denko simply could not be the sprinkler system contractor for the WTC. Not only would the Port Authority have had records, but companies that install and maintain sprinkler systems for large buildings are heavily regulated major operations with civil engineers, inspectors, warehouses full of delicate equipment and highly trained specialty crews. It is strictly against regulations for any person other than these trained crews from a building's licensed sprinkler contractor to touch a building's sprinkler system -- the contractor can't subcontract out to anyone else.

I have been unable to find out what Mr. Hammad and his cousin were ostensibly doing in the basement and garage of the WTC on 9/5 and 9/6 -- other than Mr. Hammad's initial comment about working on the sprinkler system. It's apparently never been investigated further. Anyone have any more info on this??

Rebecky

The story of Mohamed Heidar Zammar

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/13/international/13GERM.html

German Officials Deny Knowing Location of an Important Figure in the Hamburg Plot
By STEVEN ERLANGER

HAMBURG, Germany, June 12 —

"...Senior German officials said today that they did not know the whereabouts of an important figure in the Hamburg plot that led to the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, and they speculated that he was being held in a third country at the request of the United States.

While the United States denies having the man, Mohamed Heidar Zammar, in its custody, a senior German intelligence official said, "I would be glad if the Americans would tell us if they have Zammar under their control or not in some other country."

Mr. Zammar, 41, a Syrian-born German citizen, is under investigation for his ties to Al Qaeda. He was not arrested after Sept. 11, but was allowed to go to Morocco on Oct. 27 with American knowledge, German officials say. He then disappeared.

Friends at a Hamburg mosque Mr. Zammar attended said that his family last heard from him in December and believes that he has been kidnapped or arrested. Even his brother does not know where he is, they said.

Mr. Zammar's role in the terrorist plot has been underestimated, German officials say. An imposing man of over 300 pounds, Mr. Zammar was a vocal advocate of holy war in Hamburg mosques and gave young Muslims advice on how to go to Afghanistan for military training.

He befriended Mohamed Atta and some of the Hamburg-based hijackers, German officials and residents said, and he was a witness at the wedding of a cell member, Said Bahaji.

Mr. Zammar was also a known associate of Mahmoun Darkazanli, also Syrian-born, who came to investigators' notice in 1998, when he had power of attorney over a Hamburg bank account opened by Osama bin Laden's suspected European finance chief, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, now in jail in the United States for a role in the bombings of two American embassies in Africa.

Still, the Germans say they have never had enough hard evidence under their strict laws to arrest either Mr. Darkazanli, still at liberty in Hamburg, or Mr. Zammar, who was allowed to leave Germany for Morocco, ostensibly to divorce his second wife, a Moroccan. Both men had been questioned and released, and both are still under investigation, German police officials said.

But a senior German intelligence official said the Germans had no evidence to support a report in The Washington Post today that says investigators have identified Mr. Zammar as the person who first recruited Mr. Atta into Al Qaeda and played a key role in connecting him with the Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan.

"Zammar was an elder statesman of the mujahedeen movement, who fought in Afghanistan and the Balkans," a senior German intelligence official said today. "He knows all the people involved in Hamburg. But that's not enough to bring someone into a special structure. It is pure speculation to argue that he recruited Atta."

But the officials supported a strong suggestion in the Post article that Mr. Zammar might be in custody, and said that American officials have given the Germans only limited information about him or about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who the Americans say orchestrated much of the planning behind the Sept. 11 plot. Mr. Mohammed also visited Germany and is said to be a key connection between Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and the Hamburg cell.

"There is no clear information from the American side," the German intelligence official said of Mr. Zammar. "They've said he's not a detainee of ours, he's not in Guantαnamo. And the Americans say he is not in detention in Morocco. But if he's under detention in some other country, we don't know and they don't answer."

An American counterterrorism official told The Post, "Zammar is not walking the streets."

If he is being detained, Germany should be informed, because he is a German citizen and would have a right to consular access. Mr. Zammar is not currently the subject of a German arrest warrant.

Mr. Zammar, Der Spiegel magazine reported in mid-April, left Hamburg on Oct. 27 for Morocco on a valid, one-year German passport issued two days earlier on what was supposed to be a six-week trip.

After not hearing from Mr. Zammar, his family here — another wife and six children — issued a missing-persons report and asked the Foreign Ministry to help.

First, the Moroccans told German authorities that Mr. Zammar had been arrested. Then they said he had arrived from Mauritania and then left for an unknown destination. Later, the Germans were told that a man who identified himself as Mr. Zammar was stopped at a police checkpoint and expelled to Spain. Still later, the Moroccan officials said that the country was not Spain, but that they could not say which country it was.

The Moroccan Embassy in Berlin will not comment.

Mr. Zammar came to Germany, where his father lived, in 1971 and became a citizen in 1982. He was a regular at the al-Quds mosque here and at the smaller Muhabjerein mosque, its worshipers say. "Brother Heidar" was often seen at the side of the room, in a Palestinian scarf, with two younger men, they say, and he urged worshipers to do more than talk about jihad, but to practice it.

It was well known that he had fought in Afghanistan, and he said he had fought in Bosnia, too. He had been under suspicion of being an associate of Al Qaeda since 1996.

After Sept. 11, in the apartment of Mr. Bahaji, the cell member, German investigators found books on holy war in which Mr. Zammar had written dedications. There were 94 copies of Mr. bin Laden's call for war against the infidels, also seized, which had been photocopied by Mr. Zammar, he told friends.

When German officials searched Mr. Zammar's apartment in mid-November, they found documents from Pakistan and two cartridges from a Kalashnikov combat rifle. In addition, according to Der Spiegel, two of his young recruits on their way from Germany to Afghanistan, a 27-year-old German from Kosovo and a 22-year-old from Lebanon, were arrested in Pakistan on Sept. 10.."

The FBI has detained 31 people suspected of entering the US with visas illegally obtained at the embassy, US State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said.

He said that investigators were still looking for 29 more people who had received suspect visas.

Six others are believed to have left the US and five others believed to have entered the US illegally are spouses or children of a visa holder, Mr Reeker said.

Other officials, quoted by the AFP news agency, said that the investigation dubbed "Operation Eagle Strike" had identified 39 Jordanians, 28 Pakistanis, three Bangladeshis and one Syrian who had received visas from the embassy in Doha between July 2000 and May 2001.

The officials said those who had been detained since 24 June were 25 Jordanians, five Pakistanis and one Syrian.

Three are believed to have links with the 19 hijackers who took part in the 11 September attacks, the officials said.

Hijackers' room-mate

The three include Ramsi Al-Shannaq, a Jordanian who has admitted being a room-mate of two of the hijackers.

He was arrested in Baltimore on 24 June and charged with illegally obtaining a US visa.

At a court hearing in Baltimore on Wednesday, Assistant US Attorney Harvey Eisenberg said that Al-Shannaq, 27, had been denied visas four times before paying $13,000 for an illegal one.

Mr Eisenberg said Al-Shannaq was part of a bribery ring that involved pay-offs of more than $13,000 per person.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_2121000/2121480.stm