Posted on 06/30/2002 5:47:27 AM PDT by knighthawk
Madrid, June 30: A leading Spanish newspaper reported on Sunday that Mohamed Atta, suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks, held a "summit" with other alleged conspirators in Spain last summer to plan the suicide flights. El Pais said a second pilot who crashed a plane into the World Trade Center, Marwan al Shehhi, may also have been at the meeting in July last year in the Spanish coastal town of Tarragona. The newspaper said its story was based on a confidential 700-page report which Spanish authorities had handed to the FBI.
"Tracking for 10 months by more than a 100 police officers has verified the identity of the members of the suicide commando who came to Spain to hold a summit before the attack in which details of the terrorist action were finalised," it said. Nineteen men hijacked four aircraft and slammed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field last September, killing about 3,000 people, in attacks Washington blames on Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network. Atta and Shehhi both studied at a Florida flight school before flying two aircraft into the World Trade Center.
El Pais recounted in minute detail the movements of Atta and several others believed to be part of his circle during visits to Spain in July 2001. The account was clearly based on airline, hotel, car rental and credit card records as well as eyewitness recollections. It said Atta arrived in Madrid last July 8 on a flight from Miami. He drove a rented car to Tarragona on July 9, the same day that Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni national who El Pais described as the "coordinator" of the September 11 attacks, took a flight from Hamburg to Tarragona.
Binalshibh, wanted by Germany for allegedly planning and helping to carry out the September attacks, tried to go to the United States several times but was unable to get a visa. The FBI has said he may have wanted to take part in the hijackings. Binalshibh arrived at a hotel in Tarragona, in northeastern Spain, accompanied by another man whose description fitted that of Said Bahaji, also sought by German authorities, El Pais said.
Police believed Binalshibh held a meeting on July 10 with Atta, whose hotel was only 15 minutes away by car, it said.
El Pais said Binalshibh's companion, believed to be Bahaji, and the suspected second pilot, Shehhi, also participated in the "terrorist summit". Police had found no trace of Shehhi in any local hotel but several people -- when shown a photograph of al Shehhi -- had identified him as a man they had seen in the area on July 17, it said. This man was accompanied by two others, leading investigators to believe that as many as six conspirators may have attended the Tarragona meeting, El Pais said. The report quoted no eyewitness or documentary evidence of the meeting and gave no details of what might have been discussed. After spending a first night at a hotel, Binalshibh left no trace until he returned to Germany six days later, indicating that the conspirators had a Spanish collaborator in the area, El Pais said.
Atta didn't take vacations. I'd like to know one day exactly why Atta was in Prague.
The new part is the attendance of both Bahaji and Binalshibh at the summit. That has not been made public prior to now, if I recall correctly.
There has been some speculation that Atta's mission to Spain was about some pressing non-9/11 matter. But the presence of both Bahaji and Binalshibh makes it pretty much certain that the meeting was a final Al-Qaeda signoff on the 9/11 plan. Atta had several meetings with other terrorists on the trip, but the obvious main focus of it was the Tarragona meeeting.
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