STILL IN CONTACT
The bin Laden family disowned Osama bin Laden after his alleged role in planning and funding terrorist attacks became known, but sources in the United States tell NBC News that Al-Kalifa bin Laden has remained on contact with her adopted outlaw son. She is believed to have attended the wedding of bin Laden’s son earlier this year in Afghanistan, the sources said.
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| Meanwhile, U.S. investigators reportedly have uncovered documentation that cements a financial relationship between several of the hijackers involved in the Sept. 11 attacks and an Egyptian who law enforcement officials say acts as the “paymaster” of bin Laden’s far-flung al-Qaida terrorist network. Time magazine and The New York Times both reported Monday that who investigators say was a leader of the alleged hijackers, received wire transfers of cash in the days before the attacks from Ahmed, who was then in the United Arab Emirates. Time said the transfers occurred on Sept. 8 and Sept. 9 via a money service in Florida. The Times said two other suspected hijackers, whom it did not identify, wired more than $10,000 to Ahmed hours before the hijackings. The newspaper quoted investigative reports as stating that Ahmed left the United Arab Emirates for Pakistan later that day. MYSTERIOUSLY FREED FROM JAIL Ahmed has been identified as a suspect in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, another operation that law enforcement officials believe was funded by bin Laden and his al-Qaida network. Ahmed was arrested by Tanzanian authorities in September of that year, but released in 1999 when, under mysterious circumstances, all charges were dropped. |
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| In addition to unearthing evidence of ties between the suspected hijackers and a suspected bin Laden lieutenant, investigators have been following a paper trail that winds through Europe and the Middle East. Sources told NBC News over the weekend that the hijacking plot appears to have been planned in England, Germany and the Middle East. Working backward from bank accounts used by the alleged hijackers in the United States, investigators have found that the money to finance the plot flowed into Germany from the United Arab Emirates and was then distributed to other countries. Some suspects in the attacks also traveled into and out of the United Arab Emirates, according to the sources. In recent days, the FBI sent more agents to Germany in the search for the masterminds of the plot, which The Washington Post reported on Sunday was financed with a $500,000 bankroll. HIJACKING STRATEGY REVEALED New details on the hijacking strategy reveal a well-orchestrated plot devised overseas and carried out in the United States by 19 men who died on board the planes that slammed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. |
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According to a report Sunday in The Post, the group was led by a team of six leaders, all of whom had taken flying lessons in the United States within the past several years. Four of them are believed to have piloted the doomed planes. Supporting these leaders was a group of 13 mostly younger Saudi Arabian men who had arrived in the United States during the last few few months, The Post reported. Atta, considered to be the group’s ringleader, and two of the other suspected pilots, and , belonged to a radical Islamic student group in Hamburg, Germany, that investigators believe may have been a birthplace of the plot. Despite their religious extremism and hatred of the United States, records show the group often indulged in Western culture, from fast food and doughnuts to beer and hard liquor.   WashPost: New details on hijacking plot The New York Times reported Saturday that within hours of the attacks, German intelligence agents intercepted a celebratory phone call between followers of bin Laden. The callers referred to “the 30 people traveling for the operation,” the Times reported. This prompted the FBI to search frantically for two more teams of potential hijackers, the newspaper said. TERROR CELLS INVESTIGATED In addition to the 19 alleged hijackers, U.S. and European authorities are zeroing in on a small group of men overseas who are believed to have plotted the attack and provided assistance to the suspected hijackers, government officials told The Associated Press last week. Among the groups are various cells of the Algerian-based Armed Islamic Group that joined forces with bin Laden, the officials said, speaking only on condition of anonymity. |
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Two men said to be at the center of that plot — Djamel Beghal and Kamel Daoudi — have been extradited to France in recent days, judicial sources said Monday. Beghal’s arrest in the United Arab Emirates in early September as he returned from a trip to Afghanistan allowed investigators to unravel the plot. Around a dozen alleged co-conspirators have been picked up since then in several European countries, including the Netherlands, Britain and France. The Netherlands arrests averted an attack with explosives on a military site in Brussels, Belgium, law enforcement officials there have said. Police in Britain also arrested was an Algerian pilot whom British prosecutors identified Friday as the primary flight instructor for some of the hijackers who carried out the attacks in the United States. The FBI found his name on a document in a car left by the hijackers at Dulles Airport outside Washington, a U.S. official said. PILOT ACCUSED OF TRAINING HIJACKERS , 27, made several trips to the United States this summer and flew with one of the suspected hijackers on June 23 from Las Vegas to Arizona. Records show Raissi lived in Arizona in the late 1990s. Former employees at the Sawyer Aviation flight school in Phoenix remember Raissi using a flight simulator as recently as 1999 to instruct others, including at least one other person identified as a terrorist by the FBI. Richard Egan, Raissi’s defense lawyer, said his client “adamantly denies any involvement in the recent appalling tragedies.” No charges directly linked to the attacks have yet been filed in Britain to support the U.S. warrant seeking his extradition, but a British prosecutor told a London magistrate Friday that charges — including conspiracy to murder — were expected. If filed, such charges would be the first alleging direct participation in the terrorist plot to be filed against any of the hundreds of potential suspects rounded up in the United States and abroad. |
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MSNBC.com’s Mike Brunker, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Pete Williams and Robert Windrem, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. |
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America on Alert