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TANGIER, MOROCCO - A Moroccan preacher imprisoned here for inspiring deadly bombings in Casablanca and implicated in the Madrid, Spain, train bombings last year also had significant contact in Hamburg with leaders of the Sept. 11 attacks, say members of a Muslim congregation in Germany. Mohammed Fizazi frequently gave sermons at Hamburg's Al Quds mosque while three of the hijack pilots were living in the city, attending Al Quds and becoming more deeply involved in radical Islam. Fizazi initiated several private meetings with the future pilots, says Fath Franzmathes, a member of the Al Quds congregation who later assisted German...

HAMBURG, Germany (AP) - Lawyers for the first person convicted in the Sept. 11 plot say they believe new evidence from the U.S. will allow him to beat charges that he helped the Hamburg al-Qaida cell plan the attacks - but fear acquittal here may put Mounir el Motassadeq in U.S. custody. If el Motassadeq is found not guilty after a yearlong retrial that ends this summer, German authorities say they'll send him to his native Morocco - a move defense attorneys say could result in his transfer to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or elsewhere. El Motassadeq's...

A German-based Moroccan fugitive played a more significant role as a messenger in the U.S. terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, than previously thought. According to an intelligence report given to a German court by the United States, Zakariya Essabar allegedly traveled from Germany to Pakistan in August 2001 bearing a simple message for the al-Qaida leadership -- eleven-nine, which is an alternate version of the Sept. 11 date, the Washington Post said Tuesday. Germany named Essabar a fugitive shortly after the attacks as investigators began unraveling the trail left by the Hamburg-based cell to which many of the hijackers...

Editors note: To find out what governments and courts are doing to stop the growing threat of Islamic terrorist groups in Europe, reporter Mark Houser visited Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Spain in March and April on a journalism fellowship from the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Today's stories are the first in a series of reports on what he discovered. Despite the brutal slaying of an Amsterdam filmmaker and tension broiling between Muslims and non-Muslims, Dutch courts continue a string of acquittals in terrorism trials. Europe, the cradle of Western Civilization, also is a hiding place for...

Al Quds Mosque, in a poor section of the German seaport city of Hamburg, is not among the seven wonders of the world. The makeshift place of worship occupies spartan rooms above a bodybuilding emporium. Its main prayer hall cannot hold more than 150 worshippers comfortably, though the demand is sometimes higher than 150. For down-and-out practitioners of Islam far away from their birthplaces, Al Quds is welcoming, no matter its ragged atmosphere. During 1992 a lonely student from Egypt, a 24-year-old man, Mohamed el-Amir, later better known by the adopted name Atta, visited Al Quds to pray. The mosque...

Hundreds of toads have met an unexplained, explosive demise in Germany in recent days, it was reported on Saturday. According to reports from animal welfare workers and veterinarians as many as a thousand of the amphibians have perished after their bodies swelled to bursting point and their entrails were propelled for up to a metre. It is like "a science fiction film", according to Werner Smolnik of a nature protection society in the northern city of Hamburg, where the phenomenon of the exploding toad has been observed. "You see the animals crawling on the ground, swelling and then exploding," he...

The links between Nick Berg and Zacarias Moussaoui, once described as the 20th hijacker of 9/11, opened now room for new speculations, if there are deeper ties between the OKC Bombing'95 and 9/11, than thought before. Apparently Berg knew also Moussaoui's roomates. One of them was Mujahid Menepta, who is connected to both 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1995 OKC bombing. But Menepta wasn't arrested in Summer 2001, when Moussaoui got caught. The FBI waited until after Sep11th.Why?Berg, Moussaoui and the OK bombing tieshttp://inn.globalfreepress.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=269 By Ewing20012004/5/24 On May 18th, 2004, according to Newsmax, Nick Berg's family insisted that...

HAMBURG, Germany, Aug. 10 — A German court today began a retrial of Mounir el-Motassadeq, the only person convicted of involvement in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, with the disclosure that the United States will for the first time share evidence about the plot. Mr. Motassadeq's conviction was thrown out in March by an appeals court, which said that critical evidence had been withheld by American authorities. After having been sentenced to 15 years in prison, Mr. Motassadeq was freed in April. The decision by the United States to offer limited cooperation to the Germans introduces a combustible element to...

DUESSELDORF, Germany -- A Jordanian man who claims he was Osama bin Laden's bodyguard was questioned by U.S. officials who are considering having him testify at the Virginia trial of terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui, the man's attorney said Thursday. Shadi Abdellah, 28, sentenced last November to four years in prison for helping plan terror attacks in Germany, was granted early release last month after serving more than half the time, including in pretrial custody. While in prison, he served as a government witness in several trials, including that of his alleged co-plotters in the German cell of the Tawhid and...

ARIS, May 29 — Italian and German investigators have disclosed fresh information suggesting that hints of an attack involving aircraft and the United States were more widespread among European law enforcement agencies before Sept. 11 than previously suspected.The disclosures come after weeks in which the Bush administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which announced a shake-up today, have come under sharp criticism that they did not pay sufficient heed to signs of Al Qaeda plots in the United States that may have alerted them to the Sept. 11 attacks.A Central Intelligence Agency spokesman said today that before Sept....

I was watching HBO and noticed that they have made what appears to be a movie portraying the 9/11 terrorists as heroic: "The Hamburg CEll". The ad made them look like WW2 movie heros in certain respects..it is like they tried to get the "other" side of the story. Anyone else think this is sick?

Some 70,000 people received weapons training and religious instruction in al-Qaeda camps, German police says. The claim came at the retrial of Mounir al-Motassadek, a Moroccan man accused of involvement in the 9/11 attacks, which were partly planned in Germany. A German police officer told the court recruits at the camps were taught they had a duty to kill US citizens. Mr Motassadek says he received training in Afghanistan and knew some of the 9/11 hijackers - but not of their plot. Although initially convicted of involvement in the attacks, he is now facing a retrial. The case against him...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

HAMBURG, Germany -- The Hamburg Sea Devils joined NFL Europe on Wednesday, meaning five of the league's six teams are in Germany. The only team outside Germany is the Amsterdam Admirals. Hamburg replaces the Scottish Claymores. "We believe that placing a team in Hamburg gives us a great opportunity to build our league and improve our business," NFL managing director Jim Connelly said. Hamburg is Germany's main seaport and second-largest city with a population of 1.7 million. The Sea Devils will play in the 55,000-seat AOL Arena, home of the Hamburger SV soccer team. The league began in 1991 as...

HAMBURG/MADRID, 27 October 2004 — A witness at the retrial of a Moroccan charged with involvement in the Sept.11, 2001 attacks in the United States said yesterday he heard him discussing the plans and had alerted German police and intelligence services. The court in Hamburg in northern Germany heard the testimony of the man, a 42-year-old restaurant owner, over the objections of the defendant, Mounir El-Motassadeq. In February 2003 Motassadeq became the first and only person to be found guilty in connection with the Sept. 11 plane bombings in New York and Washington. He was given a 15-year-prison term for...

WASHINGTON -- Mamoun Darkazanli, one of the most elusive and mysterious figures associated with Al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 hijackers, was arrested Friday in the German port city of Hamburg. He faces extradition to Spain to stand trial in a Sept. 11-related prosecution expected to begin early next year in Madrid.

HAMBURG, Germany (Reuters) - The balding young man with the black beard raised his hands to cover his face as three visitors entered the room. Abdelghani Mzoudi is no stranger to the world's front pages and television screens after a six-month trial that saw him acquitted this year of aiding and abetting the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. But he does not like to be recognized, still less to speak to the press. In a drab canteen at Hamburg's Al Quds mosque, housed in an anonymous grey-tiled building with a fitness club on the ground floor, the 31-year-old...

On Thursday at 9pm, Britain’s Channel 4 will air a docu-drama retelling the story of 9/11 through the view of one of the hijackers. In the previews for this movie, a hijacker is shown to be torn between his love and his love for jihad. I think this is a horrible idea as it will end up portraying the hijacker in a sympathetic light. At some point, the viewer will show some compassion towards the hijacker who helped murder 3000 innocent people. Would anyone recommend a docu-drama to show the relationship with Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun during the final...

Focus: the road to 9/11Inside the mind of a terrorist On the eve of the third anniversary of 9/11, a compelling new film goes inside al-Qaeda's Hamburg cell, the group of Islamic radicals who changed the world with their ruthless suicide attacks. Ronan Bennett, who wrote the film, explains what drove them to martyrdom Ronan Bennett Sunday August 22, 2004 The Observer On the morning of 11 September 2001, a young man travelling from Newark, New Jersey, to San Francisco called his girlfriend in Germany. She was in hospital, recuperating from a minor operation. He had, however, phoned her almost...

BERLIN - Two suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks will be deported to their native Morocco, authorities said Tuesday, including one who is awaiting a new trial after being sentenced to 15 years for helping the al-Qaida suicide pilots. Both Abdelghani Mzoudi and Mounir el Motassadeq were served with the notice Monday, said ministry spokesman Marco Haase, the first step in what is expected to be a lengthy process that will take place only after all the appeals in their cases go through. Mzoudi, 31, was acquitted in February on more than 3,000 counts of accessory to murder and membership...