X/11: The Usual Suspects, Respawned

Because of them, telephone taping was carried out a year before the massacre.
Two of the Moroccoan Islamist Fugitives Were the Key to Investigate Jamal Zougham Before 3/11.

LD (Luis del Pino) The surprising flight of nine Islamists from a Moroccan prison last week has taken an unexpected turn, when it was discovered that two of them, the Chatbi brothers, were allegedly linked to the top sentenced for 3/11, Jamal Zougham, and his stepbrother Mohamed Chaoui, arrested like Zougham on March 13th, but released a few weeks after the Madrid attacks. Although that relation between Zougham and the Chatbi brothers was finally never proved, the certain fact is that it was due to this that judge Garzón ordered the taping of Zougham’s and his stepbrother mobile phones a year before 3/11. Image: Kamal Chatbi, judicial summary of 3/11.

Last Monday April 7th appeared the news that 9 Islamist prisoners had carried out a movie flight from the Moroccan prison of Kenitra, excavating from their cells a 25 meters long gallery that took them to the other side prison’s walls.

Although initially there was a lot of confusion regarding the identities of the fugitives and the crimes for which they were condemned, Libertad Digital has been able to know that two of the escaped prisoners had relation, according to the police information, with the top condemned by the attacks of 3/11, Jamal Zougham, as well as with his stepbrother Mohamed Chaoui, arrested like him on March 13th, in the heat of the previous national election's day of reflexion [the day before the elections].

Those two fugitives from the prison of Kenitra would be the brothers Mohamed Chatbi (alias Abu Omaima, alias Al Achaab) and Kamal Chatbi, arrested by the Moroccan authorities in August 2002 and sentenced to 20 years in prison for belonging to the group Salafia Al Jihadia. The entry of Jamal Zougham into the club of the usual suspects took place, indeed, thanks to the supposed relations of his stepbrother Mohamed Chaoui with the brothers Kamal and Mohamed Chatbi. Relations that were finally not demonstrated, as they were never traduced into some type of formal accusation, but that served as justification for the taping of the mobile phones of Jamal Zougham and Mohamed Chaoui, ordered by judge Garzón on January 7th, 2003, within the Previous Diligences 396/02 which the Central Court of Instruction nº 5 of the National High Court was carrying out.

In those Previous Diligences, judge Garzón was investigating the possible members of the Islamic Moroccan Combatant Group. Later, after the attacks of Casablanca in May of 2003 -in which four Spanish citizens died- took place, those Previous Diligences were transformed into Judicial Summary 09/03. [The Casablanca attacks occurred barely a week before the Spanish local and regional elections].

According to the information obtained by the Moroccan and Spanish police, during the year 2000 a group of individuals pertaining to the radical movement Salafia Al Jihadia committed a series of attacks with deaths in several cities of Morocco.

The following year, three of the members of that cell (Karim Mejjati and the brothers Mohamed and Kamal Chatbi) moved to Spain to successfully obtain aid in order to reach Afghanistan, with the purpose of obtaining military training in the fields of Al Qaeda. Once arrived in our country, they contacted people linked to the Spanish cell of the organization of Osama Ben Laden. In particular, Amer Azizi and Abu Dahdah were those who helped them, according to the police information, to travel via Iran to the training field Al Farouk in Afghanistan.

After their stay in the training fields of Al Qaeda, the Chatbi brothers returned to Morocco, where they were arrested in August 2002 and sentenced for their relation with Islamic terrorism. Although the first information after their flight from the prison of Kenitra linked the Chatbi brothers to the attacks of Casablanca, the certain fact is that it is impossible that they had participated in them, since those attacks were committed in May of 2003 and the Chatbi brothers were in prison since nine months before.

The one that could be affirmatively linked to the attacks of Casablanca is another member of the group that travelled to Afghanistan, Karim Mejjati, French citizen of Moroccan origin who at the moment has a warrant for arrest. On 9/4/2003 the Moroccan judicial authorities sent an arrest order against him by illicit association, complicity in several murders, attempted murder, kidnapping, illegal arresting, robbery, document falsification, arson and complicity in an attack against the security of the State.

The information on the present whereabouts of Karim Mejjati are quite confusing, since, whereas some information indicate that he passed away in Saudi Arabia in a confrontation with the security forces of that country, other sources affirm that he was arrested and extradited from Turkey to Morocco.

In the end of 2002, the Central Unit of Foreign Intelligence (UCIE – Spanish National Police) directed a request to judge Garzón demanding authorization to tape the mobile phones of Jamal Zougham and Mohamed Chaoui, that appeared associated to the mobile phone stores they ran: Jawal World Telecom (in the Tribulete street of Lavapiés [Madrilean quarter]) and Meditel (in Almansa street). The request of intervention, granted by Garzón on January 7th, 2003, was produced within the framework of the Previous Diligences 396/02 that the Central Court of Instruction number 5 of the National High Court was carrying out.

The reason alleged to justify the taping of those telephones was that Mohamed Chaoui allegedly welcomed in his house the Chatbi brothers during the months of July and August 2001, and put them in contact with Amer Al Azizi, that would later help them to reach Afghanistan. From then on, the mobile phones of Jamal Zougham and Mohamed Chaoui were tapped continuously for more than a year, until few days before 3/11, moment at which it is ordered that the intervention of those mobile phones stops, being replaced by taping on the telephones of the two stores that those stepbrothers ran.

During the investigations of 3/11 no evidence on those supposed relations of Jamal Zougham and Mohamed Chaoui with the Chatbi brothers, Amer the Azizi or Karim Mejjati has been contributed. The Office of State attorney has not made use of those supposed relations either, that in case of existing, would have constituted a solid indication of the radical attitudes of Chaoui and Zougham.

Mohamed Chaoui himself, that at the present time is free with no indictment against him, affirmed in declarations to Libertad Digital that neither he nor Jamal Zougham knew the Chatbi brothers, and that nobody has ever asked to them, in the police or judicial interrogations, by those two people.

Nevertheless, those supposed relations were the ones that triggered the first tapping of the telephones of Zougham and Chaoui a year before 3/11.

It is also certain that the accusations against Zougham and Chaoui with respect to their relations with the Moroccan radical cells, were not limited the stages previous to 3/11.

In a report elaborated by police inspector Rafael Gómez-Menor for judge Garzón in December of 2004, it was affirmed that "according to data obtained from Friendly Services at intelligence level, Mohamed Chatbi... had relations with Mohamed Chaoui with the purpose of obtaining computers to him, and this last one was put as well in contact for that with Abu Dahdah".

The report continued telling: "In the address of Mohamed Chaoui meetings have been held, where Abu Dahdah and other members or supporters of his cell attended; in the business of Mohamed Chaoui encounters with Abu Dahdah and other members or supporters of their cell have taken place. Mohamed Chaoui seems to have a certain complicity with Abu Dahdah in the issue of possible falsified mobile phone [SIM] cards; his brother Jamal Zougham appears very involved in the activities of the cell of Abu Dahdah and as it is known the fact that the familiar bonds are considered very important at the time of recruiting or catching new elements to be part of the Islamic extremist cells. All this induces to think that Mohamed Chaoui is a follower of Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, alias Abu Dahdah." Those same imputations would be repeated, textually, in a report that the General Information Unit of the [National] Police sent to the judge Del Olmo in August 2005, within the judicial summary on the attacks of March 11th, 2004 in Madrid.

That is, months after 3/11, the police reports continued affirming that a relation between Mohamed Chaoui and Jamal Zougham existed, on the one hand, with the radical groups Al Qaeda (Abu Dahdah) and, on the other hand, to Salafia Al Jihadia (Mohamed Chatbi). The surprising thing is, then, why Mohamed Chaoui was released. If that relation existed, why was he set free without indictment few weeks after 3/11? And, if they did not exist, why it was affirmed that such relation existed?

Whatever the answer is, those Chatbi brothers are now in unknown whereabouts, after the surprising "flight from Kenitra" that came out on the media one week ago. Five guardians of the Moroccan prison have been arrested as a result of the flight.

Last Monday, agencies distributed concise news that nine dangerous Islamists linked to the Casablanca attacks had escaped from a Moroccan jail. The truth is that the issue was quite peculiar, especially by the novelistic aspect of the episode, with the Islamists arduously excavating from their cells during five months a 25 meter long gallery, so in Libertad Digital we tried to investigate something more about the identities of the fugitives.

The first thing we discovered was that certain confusion existed about those identities, since the Moroccan authorities had not provided very precise data. The second thing that attracted our attention is that the information was not very precise either on what were the crimes that had sent them to jail: against what initially was told, of the nine Islamist fugitives, at least four do not have any link to the Casablanca attacks; on other four we still do not have an exact information and there is just one that has, in an indirect way, something that to do with the preparation of those bombs that caused the death to 45 people (including 12 homicide bombers) on May 16th, 2003.

But the most surprising thing appeared when investigating the identities, we ran into (as it is counted in the news that Libertad Digital publishes today in exclusive [translated above]) two individuals who were mentioned in several of the investigations carried out by the Central Court of Instruction nº 5 in the days previous to 3/11: the brothers Kamal and Mohamed Chatbi, two individuals that played, indeed, an essential role in the process of "conversion" of Jamal Zougham into an "usual suspect" before 3/11. It was the alleged relations of those two fugitives (and I say "alleged relations" because we have been unable to find the slightest corroboration of their existence) with Mohamed Chaoui, the stepbrother of Zougham, arrested like him on March 13th, on which it was based the order of taping the mobile phones of Chaoui and Zougham in January 2003.

What does this flight obey now? Because it seems difficult that those flights from Moroccan jails take place, unless somebody allows them. Some recent rumours aimed at that the Islamist fugitives could have entered Spain, which does not but to increase the suspicions that it can be some operation going on. But what type of operation? A new smoke screen before the summer, to face the hearing of the appeals of the 3/11 trial? Or we are before potential candidates to Allekema Lamari? Because this issue of Islamists leaving jail before their time, through either good or bad ways, reminds me something.

Let me one evil remark more: isn’t it a pretty chance that two brothers, Kamal and Mohamed Chatbi, are utilized to establish before 3/11 a continuous telephone monitoring on two stepbrothers, Jamal (Zougham) and Mohamed Chaoui, who have the same first name and display a frankly remarkable similarity on the last name (in the case of Chaoui)? What would it be of the investigations without those so peculiar chances, which so many ambiguities can provide?

Allekhema Lamari was, according to the Police, a perpetrator of 3/11, who spent years moving freely through Spain, with a chauffeur and a best friend that both worked for the Spanish Secret Service.

We must recall that those usual suspects choose to attack preferably on day 11 and/or just before any kind of Spanish Elections, which simply represents a barefaced adaptation of the Strategy of Tension to the needs of some Spanish and foreign personalities.

Therefore, a warning should be issued for not only Spain, but also all the unofficial but quite real French Western African Colonial Empire, which also includes Morocco and Algeria: an attack is likely, preceded or followed by the usual disinformation spread by, among others, those think tanks and security consultants that so often guess correctly.

I am afraid Zapatero government is pretty secure. No matter what he did in the last term, a lot of people kept voting him -although not the majority- in regular areas of Spain, he was the most voted in the nationalist Basque region and Catalonia, and in the heavily subsidized region of Andalucia, granting him a slim but enough victory.

Moreover, a new operation inside the Strategy of Tension was carried out, killing a Socialist former councilman in order to make the leftists that otherwise would have not vote -those that were unhappy with Zapatero but never would have chosen a right wing candidate- felt attacked. Again, on reflection day, during the funeral, the daughter of the assassinated councilman asked publicly to "go to vote", which sounds pretty neutral but had clearly a concrete audience. Just the same manipulation through violence again.

Therefore, the Strategy is on and now rather than Zapatero, who is a puppet in most issues, but the puppetteers above him, may feel secure to increase the weak evidence against Zougham, and produce another attack with some/many characteristics similar to 3/11 in order to reinforce in the public opinion the Official Version.

Because, compared to other Black Operations, the worst of 3/11 for the conspirers was not that many people did not swallow the story about Al Qaeda, which was already planned, but that they did not swallow the story about ETA either, failing one of the primary objectives that was to shed confussion on who was behind it, which is no longer a mistery.

Unfortunately, we don't know a lot of details of how, but we know who and we know why, and that is a problem for them.

Therefore, one of the answer could be to shed more confussion in a new major incident, linked in some way -there are already reports like Gómez-Menor's- with 3/11. The Spanish media, controlled by the allies of Zapatero, would come along, selling any version no matter the details do not fit, although full control of the Spanish security forces could lead toward a far better constructed plot.

Moreover, tension could be the answer now that the economy is nearing recession and many of the five million immigrants the oligarchs -who are the ones that really pull the strings- let enter in Spain to keep salaries at the 1998 level, do not have anything to do.

Nevertheless, the operation may not occur in Spain. In Algeria, for instance, it has been working a similar scheme, although the goverment there has not been toppled yet.

I am afraid manufactured incidents are the rule around here.

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