Moussaoui Linked to 9/11 Mastermind

apnews ^ | Nov 20, 2002 | JOHN J. LUMPKIN

[honway]

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20021120/D7NDS3100.html

Nov 20, 12:08 PM (ET)

By JOHN J. LUMPKIN

WASHINGTON (AP) - Accused Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui met with the suspected mastermind of the attacks in late 2000 or early 2001 in Afghanistan, a top al-Qaida operative has told his interrogators, U.S. officials said.

Ramzi Binalshibh, a former aide to top al-Qaida operative Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, said Mohammed provided Moussaoui with contacts in the United States, said officials speaking on the condition of anonymity.

But Binalshibh and Mohammed were not confident in Moussaoui's ability to keep a secret, and decided to use him as a backup for the hijacking plot, Binalshibh told the officials, who have never detailed what they believe Moussaoui's precise role was to be in the attacks.

Binalshibh was an associate of Mohammed, Moussaoui, chief hijacker Mohamed Atta and others in the Hamburg, Germany-based cell that led the attacks. He was captured by U.S. and Pakistani authorities during a raid in Karachi on Sept. 11, 2002, and has since been held in U.S. custody at a secret location.

The Moussaoui-Mohammed contacts were first reported Wednesday by the Washington Post.

Moussaoui was arrested in August 2001 after acting suspiciously at a Minnesota flight school. He has acknowledged in court that he is an al-Qaida member but said he had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 plot. He has attempted to call Binalshibh as a defense witness in his conspiracy trial.

Moussaoui traveled from Europe to an al-Qaida training camp Afghanistan in 1998, according to prosecutors. He also went from London to Pakistan in December 2000 and returned in February 2001. It was during this time that U.S. officials believe he met with Mohammed in Afghanistan.

Binalshibh, a Yemeni, lived with Atta and two other hijackers in Germany in the years before the attacks. In 2000, he tried four times to obtain a visa to enter the United States. Authorities claim he wanted to be one of the hijackers.

After his efforts to enter the country failed, he began sending money and other logistical support to the hijackers. He boasted of his role in the attacks during an interview he and Mohammed gave the Arabic television network al-Jazeera earlier in 2002.

Counterterrorism officials say several al-Qaida captives have told them that Mohammed, a Kuwaiti who holds Pakistani citizenship, was the operational mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

[honway]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/669338/posts

Black Muslim Seen with OKC Bombing John Does?

Melvin Lattimore is a black man originally from St Louis. He converted in 1989 to being a Muslim and changed his name to Menepta. Menepta was connected to a mosque in St. Louis that stockpiled large amounts of weapons. He had ties to a Norman, Oklahoma mosque and moved to Norman near OKC at some point.

What caught my attention and prompted me to show Lattimore’s picture to the Travelers Aid witness is the fact that Menepta was Zacharias Moussauoi's roomate in Norman. Moussaoui is now to stand trial for helping the 9/11 attackers.

Then I learned from a New York Times article by Jo Thomas published in November 1995 last year that Menepta's credit card was used in the 1993 WTC attacks. The 1993 WTC attacks were planned at a Hamas sponsored conference in OKC in December 1992 as reported in the video and book, “Jihad in America” by Steve Emerson.

The New York Times article by Thomas also reported that a BATF agent Whitney testified that Menepta had been named in 1995 to the FBI by a government informant as a possible strong suspect in the OKC bombing.

[honway]

http://college4.nytimes.com/guests/articles/2001/11/10/883493.xml

November 10, 2001

No Bail for Friend of Man Suspected of Preparing for Sept. 11 Hijackings

By JO THOMAS

An Oklahoma friend of Zacarias Moussaoui, the man the authorities suspect was meant to be the 20th suicide hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks, has been ordered held without bail on weapons charges by a federal magistrate in Oklahoma City.

The Oklahoma man, Mujahid Abdulqaadir Menepta, 51, who was arrested on Oct. 11 and taken to New York as a material witness in the World Trade Center investigation, is dangerous and poses a flight risk, Jeffrey Whitney, an agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, testified at a hearing on Wednesday. He made no specific reference to Mr. Moussaoui.

Without offering many details, Mr. Whitney told the court that some telephone numbers connected with cellphones seized in a search of Mr. Menepta's home in Norman were associated with continuing criminal investigations in Oklahoma City, St. Louis, Detroit, El Paso and Kansas City, Mo. These involve organized crime, drugs and money laundering, he said.

Mr. Whitney told the court that Mr. Menepta, who was born Melvin Lattimore in St. Louis, and changed his name in 1989 after converting to Islam, came to the attention of the authorities the day after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. He testified that an informer told federal agents that Mr. Menepta had belonged to an Islamic group in Norman and St. Louis, whose leaders advocated terrorist acts and killing law enforcement agents.

Mr. Whitney also told the court that Mr. Menepta had said the Secret Service told him that one of the terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 had used his visa number. Mr. Whitney said he could not confirm Mr. Menepta's account.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Menepta, who lives in Norman, gave several interviews in which he defended Mr. Moussaoui, 33, whom he knew through a mosque. Mr. Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent was arrested in Minneapolis on Aug. 17 on immigration charges after he sought lessons on how to fly jets, but expressed no interest in learning how to take off or land.

Mr. Moussaoui lived in Norman last year while a student at the Airman Flight School there. Mr. Menepta told The Daily Oklahoman in an interview on Oct. 2 that he had seen Mr. Moussaoui every day at a local mosque and would be shocked if he were involved in the attacks.

"I think he's a scapegoat," Mr. Menepta told the newspaper in an article published on Oct. 9.

He was arrested as a material witness two days later. Shortly afterward, federal agents said they found a shotgun, a rifle, a semiautomatic pistol and more than 600 rounds of ammunition at Mr. Menepta's home. He told the agents he used the shotgun for hunting.

Mr. Menepta served time in prison for a 1970 robbery in Colorado and was charged with being a felon in possession of firearms.

Susan Otto, Mr. Menepta's lawyer in Oklahoma City, on Wednesday questioned the truthfulness of the government's informer and observed that no one had been charged with a crime back in 1995.

Mr. Menepta's mother, Cynthia Lattimore, 87, said her son collected guns, nothing more. "He just likes guns," she said. "Not to kill nobody."

__________________________________________

Susan Otto was one of McVeigh's first attorneys.

[The Great Satan]

Who is Khalid Sheik Mohammed?

Western counter-terrorism experts believe that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was probably the brain behind September 11. In 1995, he and Ramzi Yousef together plotted from their hideouts in the Philippines a series of terrorist strikes against the US, which did not materialize. Both fled to Pakistan after the Filipino authorities got scent of their plans. Ramzi was arrested by the Pakistani authorities under Benazir Bhutto, and handed over to the US for trial relating to the New York World Trade Center explosion case, but Khalid Sheikh Mohammad managed to evade arrest and emerged as one of the principal aides of Osama bin Laden, when the latter returned to Afghanistan in 1996.

Western media have in recent weeks quoted a senior US intelligence official as saying that if he had to decide between catching Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he might prefer the latter. "Bin Laden is unquestionably the leader, the symbol and the recruiting poster," the official said. "But it's looking more and more like Khalid actually makes things happen." They also quoted French terrorism expert and UN Security Council consultant Roland Jacquard as saying, "He is probably the only man who knows all the pieces of the puzzle."

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed also uses the aliases Abdul Majid, Salim Ali, Ashrai Refaat, Nabith Renin, Khalid Abdul Waddod and Fahd Bin Abdullah Bin Khalid. Police in the Philippines have described him as a Kuwaiti-born and US-educated Pakistani. If he is definitively established to be a Pakistani, this would show that September 11 was masterminded by a Pakistani assisting bin Laden. It may be recalled that Sheikh Omar, who has already been convicted in the Pearl murder case and has appealed against it, was reported to have told Karachi police that during a visit to Afghanistan before September 11 he had come to know of the plans for the terrorist strikes in the US and had immediately informed Lieutenant-General Ehsanul Haq, the present director general of the ISI, who was at that time Corps Commander, Peshawar.

A number of interesting/intriguing questions about Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad remain unanswered. Are they related to each other as some reports claim? Are they Pakistanis (Yemeni-Balochis) as Filipino and Western agencies seem to believe, Kuwaitis (this is denied by the Kuwaiti authorities) or Iraqis (in the past, the Pakistani media have consistently referred to Ramzi Yousef either as a person of Middle Eastern background or as an Iraqi).

Source: Asia Times

More on Mohammed:

9/11 MASTERMIND FROLICKED IN DISCO AND SCUBA SPREE

Al-Jazeera offers accounts of 9/11 planning

What of Khalid's associate, Ramzi Yousef, who organized the original, unsuccessful attempt to topple the World Trade Center, back in 1993? Who is Ramzi Yousef?

[honway]

FBI investigates St. Louis native's alleged ties to terrorism

Reporter: Kara Kaswell, News 4

November 7, 2001 7:44 PM

(KMOV) -- The FBI wants to know more about Mujahid Menepta's alleged ties to terrorism. Menepta is friends with an associate of Osama bin Laden who is considered to be the "20th hijacker" involved in the terrorists attacks. Menepta, who grew up in North St. Louis, was arrested in a federal roundup following the attacks. He is now charged with illegal possession of firearms.

(supposed to be a photo of Menepta here, but a photo of Moussaoui is inserted above Menepta's mame)

Mujahid Menepta (KMOV)

Menepta defends his friend who is accused of having ties to the hijackers and September 11 terrorist attacks. Zacarias Moussaoui was arrested after seeking pilot training to steer but not land jets. Menepta says his friend is no terrorist.

Days after a TV interview, Menepta, a St. Louis native who has a felony arrest record, was arrested for possessing three guns, including a semi-automatic pistol.

"They had a lot of questions, no doubt about that," says Chester Buchanan.

One of the pistols seized from Menepta was registered to Buchanan of St. Louis. He says the gun was stolen in August. Menepta told the FBI he bought the gun on the street in St. Louis for $125. The FBI questioned Buchanan about the gun.

"What they told me is that the gun was found with a man that might be connected to September 11 and the terrorists. I was stunned, I sure was," Buchanan says.

Menepta grew up Melvin Lattimore in a duplex on Maple in North St. Louis. He attended Soldan High School where he played football. In 1989, he converted to Islam and changed his name.

"I think it's unfair that the government has him in jail. It's a conspiracy on the government's part," says Leon Lattimore, Menepta's brother.

Lattimore says Menepta often prayed at a storefront mosque on Geraldine in North St. Louis and he adds that his brother's religion does not advocate violence and that Menepta is definitely no terrorist.

"I think they are jumping to conclusions. My brother is terrorist nothing," Lattimore says.

Wednesday, a federal court denied bond to Menepta. Instead, they want to further investigate his possible ties to terrorists. He roomed with Moussaoui, who has been linked to the hijackers. An FBI agent also said Wednesday in court that North St. Louis mosque where he worshipped did at one time stockpile weapons.

[honway]

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, said Mohammed provided Moussaoui with contacts in the United States.

He (Mujahid Menepta) roomed with Moussaoui, who has been linked to the hijackers.

Mr. Whitney told the court that Mr. Menepta, who was born Melvin Lattimore in St. Louis, and changed his name in 1989 after converting to Islam, came to the attention of the authorities the day after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. He testified that an informer told federal agents that Mr. Menepta had belonged to an Islamic group in Norman and St. Louis, whose leaders advocated terrorist acts and killing law enforcement agents.

_________________________________________________________

Any chance Khalid Shaikh Mohammed introduced Moussaoui to Mujahid Menepta?

[honway]

Please see reply #6

[The Great Satan]

Could be. Also gotta wonder if disco dolly chasing Mohammed hooked up with Terry Nichols during the latter's sexual tourism trip to the Philippines in '93.

[honway]

From #4:

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed also uses the aliases Abdul Majid, Salim Ali, Ashrai Refaat, Nabith Renin, Khalid Abdul Waddod and Fahd Bin Abdullah Bin Khalid. Police in the Philippines have described him as a Kuwaiti-born and US-educated Pakistani.

__----------------------------------------------

This is new information. Wouldn't it be helpful if someone would tell us in what state and city Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was educated?

His alleged old buddy Samir Khalil was educated at the University of Oklahoma, wasn't he?

Samir Khalil was Al-Hussaini Hussain's employeer on the day of the OKC bombing. You can read about them both in the Final Report of The Oklahoma Bombing Investigation Committee.

Anyway to determine if Samir Khalil and Khalid Mohammed are old college buddies? Does the University of Oklahoma release that information?

[honway]

Also gotta wonder if disco dolly chasing Mohammed hooked up with Terry Nichols during the latter's sexual tourism trip to the Philippines in '93.

Excellet question. Stephen Jones had a video deposition from a witness that some say place Terry Nichols in a meeting with Ramzi Yousef and Abdul Murad. Terry Nichols was in the Philippines in January 1995 and when Yousef's and Mohammed's plan to blow up 12 U.S. airliners was uncovered after the apartment fire in Manilla, Yousef and Terry Nichols cut their Philippine vacation short and departed the island paradise.

So did Khalid Mohammed who is Ramzi Yousef’s uncle.

[Lion's Cub]

I believe it was Laurie Mallory (sp?) who put forth the theory that Yousef was working for the Iraqis--and may have assumed an identity that was taken from/or placed in (can't remember which) Kuwaiti files while Iraq occupied Kuwait. If so, his would not likely be the only record they altered.

[honway]

Nuclear Plants First Option for Sept 11

Reuters – September 9, 2002

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Sunday Times quoted two leading members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network as saying the initial plan for the September 11 hijackers had been to crash planes into nuclear power plants in the United States.

This had been rejected for fear "it would get out of control," but future nuclear targets were not ruled out.

The newspaper was quoting from a documentary by Yosri Fouda, chief investigative reporter for the Arab television station al-Jazeera, who interviewed Ramzi bin al-Shaibah and Khaled al-Sheikh Mohammad in Pakistan's port city of Karachi. The date of the interview was not given.

Qatar-based Jazeera television showed the first part of the documentary last Thursday. It plans to air the second part next Thursday, which it said would include confessions by the two men that al Qaeda was responsible for the September 11 attacks.

More than 3,000 people were killed when hijacked airliners devastated the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center and smashed into U.S. military headquarters at the Pentagon near Washington.

The Sunday Times quoted the men as saying in the "recent" interview that the fourth target had been Capitol Hill in Washington. But the airliner crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.

An official at Jazeera told Reuters the station had not been aware that the Sunday Times was going to run an article with details from the documentary, nor was he aware Fouda was going to write a by-lined item about how he got the story.

"We were not planning to release anything before Thursday (Sept 12)," the official said.

The newspaper identified Sheikh Mohammad, 38, as head of the al-Qaeda military committee, and Shaibah, 30, as coordinator of the operation from his base in Germany. It said Sheikh Mohammad had devised the idea of targeting "prominent" buildings in the United States.

"DEPARTMENT OF MARTYRS" RECRUITS

The hijackers who died in the crashes were recruited from al Qaeda's "so-called Department of Martyrs."

"The attacks were designed to cause as many deaths as possible and to be a big slap for America on American soil," Sheikh Mohammad was quoted as saying.

The Sunday Times said Shaibah had also written a 112-page justification for the attacks, entitled 'The Reality of the New Crusaders War', which he wanted translated into English and lodged with the Library of Congress in Washington.

"In case that the events which took place in America were the doing of Muslims, then it is legal because those operations were against an enemy state.

"It is permissible for Muslims to kill infidels under a principle of reciprocity, because if those infidels are targeting Muslim women, children and the elderly, then the Muslims can do the same," the Sunday Times quoted the document as saying.

The newspaper said the opening page included pictures of the World Trade Center as it collapsed, on a day described by Shaibah as "that glorious Tuesday."

It said the decision to launch a massive suicide attack on the United States was taken with bin Laden's approval by the al Qaeda Military Committee in early 1999.

It said Mohammed Atta, the leader of the suicide mission had been a network "sleeper" in Germany since 1992 and was called to a meeting of the military council in the summer of 1999. It said Yemen-born Shaibah had shared an apartment with Atta in Hamburg.

The Sunday Times said "one of their agents also claimed that bin Laden was "alive and well," although he provided no evidence."

Jazeera told Reuters last Thursday the interview was arranged by an al Qaeda liaison officer identified by the channel as Abu Bakr and contained "confessions."

The Sunday Times said Sheikh Mohammad was an uncle of Ramzi Yousef, now serving a life sentence in the United States for the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.

[honway]

believe it was Laurie Mallory (sp?) who put forth the theory that Yousef was working for the Iraqis

That's right. It's time for me to go get her book, since Khalid Mohammed is Ramzi Yousef’s uncle . I believe former CIA Diretor Admiral Woolsey was very impressed with her investigation.

Abdual Murad was prosecuted along with Yousef and they are both in a U.S. federal prison. Murad was reportedly in the meeting discussing terrorism with Yousef and Nichols. Murad also revealed in 1995 after 50 plus days of tactical interrogation in the Philippines a plot to fly bomb-laden planes into the CIA and the Pentagon.

On the day of the OKC bombing he told his prison guard the terrorist network he participated in was responsible for the explosion at the Murrah Building.

Does anyone else believe we might should have paid more attention to what Murad had to say?

[honway]

A Washington Post Expert's Pick on Terrorism and the Middle East

THE WAR AGAINST AMERICA
Saddam Hussein and the World Trade Center Attacks: A Study of Revenge
(Previously Published as Study of Revenge)

By Laurie Mylroie
COAUTHOR OF THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf
With a foreword by former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, and newly revised introduction and conclusion by the author.

[honway]

http://www.fbi.gov/mostwant/terrorists/terkmohammed.htm

CONSPIRACY TO KILL NATIONALS OF THE UNITED STATES
KHALID SHAIKH MOHAMMED

[aristeides]

Menepta's first name is Mujahid? "Mujahid" means "jihad-maker".

[honway]

http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2002/07-01-2002/vo18no13_terrortrail.htm

Terror Trail: WTC, OKC, 9-11

According to the signed statement of confessed Abu Sayyaf terrorist Edwin Angeles, he met in Davao City on the Philippine island of Mindanao in 1991 with Nichols, Yousef and other co-conspirators in the 1993 WTC bombing. Angeles, aka Ibrahim Yakub, a co-founder and second-in-command of the Abu Sayyaf Group, said in his handwritten statement:

I certify that Terry Nichols was known to me personally during our meeting with Abdul Hakim Murad, Wali-Khan and Ahmed Youssef [Ramzi Yousef] in [unintelligible] Davao City on Nov. 1991; Aim to establish a group and organize a Muslim and non-Muslim youth for a cause; we will also to [sic] plan for following: bombing activities; providing firearms and ammo; training in bomb making and handling....

Abdul Hakin Murad and Wali-Khan Amin Shah were convicted along with Yousef on September 5, 1996 in the so-called Bojinka Plot, and presently reside in American prisons. Bojinka (Serbo-Croatian for "loud bang") was Yousef’s code name for his terror scheme to blow up 11 U.S. jetliners in a single day. A variation of the plan called for crashing or "dive-bombing" planes into U.S. buildings, as Yousef’s al-Qaeda comrades did last September 11th. The plot was foiled when the Manila apartment Yousef and Murad shared caught on fire from chemical bomb components they were mixing.

Murad was captured in the Philippines following the apartment fire, but Yousef escaped, as he did following the 1993 WTC bombing. With cooperation from Murad and Shah, Yousef was later tracked down and captured in Pakistan, where he was hiding in a guest house rented by a bin Laden company.

Murad’s statements to Philippine police and to U.S. officials have been largely ignored, but have huge significance for the OKC and 9-11 attacks, as well as potential future attacks. Important information in Murad’s file statements include:

Suicide hijackings. A January 20, 1995 Philippines police report tells of the Yousef/Murad plot presaging the 9-11 attack, in which Murad said he had planned to "hijack said aircraft, control its cockpit and dive it at the CIA headquarters. There will be no bomb or any explosive that he will use in its execution. It is simply a suicidal mission that he is very much willing to execute." Another hijacker was to fly a second plane into the Pentagon or the World Trade Center.

Hijacker pilot training. Murad detailed his pilot training instruction at several flight academies in the United States. The importance of this could not have been lost on federal authorities. In 2001, in the months preceding the 9-11 attacks, U.S. prosecutors focused on al-Qaeda use of U.S. flight schools in their high-profile trial of four men charged in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Essam al-Ridi, an Egyptian trained at a Texas flight school, was one of their star witnesses. Ihab Ali Nawawi, identified by prosecutors as a member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad and a bin Laden confederate, had received pilot training at the same school in Norman, Oklahoma, near Oklahoma City, where some of al-Qaeda’s 9-11 hijackers were trained.

[honway]

"Mujahid" means "jihad-maker".

We can't blame his mother on this one. She named him Melvin. He chose "jihad-maker".

[Lion's Cub]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/733759/posts?q=1&&page=101#145

When Murad was arrested, the police also got Yousef's computer and 4 diskettes. I don't know how much of that info may have been shared with our intelligence services, but I'm betting the Philippine authorities got more than just information on Bojinka.

[honway]

From The Politics of Terror

56-year-old Palestinian, Khalid was born Samir Abdul-Ghani Sharif Khalid, and emigrated to the U.S. from Kuwait in 1968.(646)† He received his M.A. from Oklahoma City University in 1975, his Ph.D. in psychology from O.U. in 1979, and went on to teach at public schools and at nearby Tinker Air Force base. He also did a brief stint in the Oklahoma Department of Human Services.(647)

Khalid claims to have relatives in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq, who provided the money for his education and real-estate investments. In 1982, Khalid quit teaching and devoted himself full-time to his burgeoning real-estate business. By 1995 he had acquired over 500 properties, mostly through HUD, the federal agency besieged with corruption in the late '70s and early '80s.(648)