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Iran initiated 9/11 attacks’
Expatica.com ^ | January 22 2004 | unknown

Posted on 01/22/2004 8:01:22 AM PST by Dog

Iran initiated 9/11 attacks’

22 January 2004

HAMBURG – The Iranian intelligence service was the initiator of the 11 September 2001 suicide-jet attacks on New York and Washington, according to a defector quoted Thursday by German police at the Hamburg terrorist trial.

One Federal Crime Office interrogator said he had taken down a statement in Berlin on Monday from a former Iranian agent who insisted that Iran had employed Saudi radical Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network to carry out the attacks.

The defector could not appear himself in court because he had been promised anonymity, two police officers told the trial of accused plotter Abdel-Ghani Mzoudi, a Moroccan student who lived in Hamburg and was friends with three of the four suicide pilots.

The shock claim emerged on the day when a verdict had been scheduled. The prosecution asked for the delay to hear the new evidence. The end of the trial may be delayed for weeks.

The defector, who stated he had fled Iran in July 2001, two months before the attacks, claimed ultimate responsibility lay with a man named Saif al-Adel, who was an official in Iran of Hezbollah, a radial Shiiite organization with close links to Iranian intelligence.

According to the defector, "Department 43" of Iranian intelligence was created to plan and conduct terror attacks, and mounted joint operations with al-Qaeda. Osama bin Laden's son, Saad bin Laden, had made repeated consultative visits to Iran.

According to the unnamed agent, Mzoudi too had visited Iran for three months, though the agent said he had never seen him, and did not know at what point in time the visit took place.

The claim runs directly counter to the received wisdom about the attacks: that they were conducted by young Sunni Moslems loyal to Osama bin Laden, a radical Saudi with ideas rooted in his country's Wahabi brand of Islam. Iran's Islam is the opposed Shiite variety.

The 28-year-old police witness said the defector claimed to have first received information about Mzoudi by e-mail after his defection and from "other Iranian intelligence sources".

The defector alleged that following the 11 December release of Mzoudi from trial custody, the sources told him they believed Mzoudi had only been released so that he could be tailed by western investigators hoping he would lead them to other terrorists.

"That is why al-Qaeda is going to liquidate Mzoudi," the defector was said to have stated.

The defector also declared that immediately after fleeing Iran, he had approached CIA station officers at the U.S. embassy in Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic adjoining Iran, to warn them attacks were planned.

"He wrote a five-page letter stating that something would happen on 10 or 11 September without precisely delineating what it could be," said the police witness.

The man claimed he had been passing information to the CIA since 1992 and had been promised USD 1.2 million in payment, but had never received the promised money after his defection. He had therefore resolved to sell information to the Germans or French.

"He says he wants to negotiate terms for further cooperation with the federal prosecutor general's office," he said. That prosecutor, assisted by the Federal Crime Office, heads Germany's fight against terrorism.

A second police officer, aged 29, said he found the claims of the defector were "not unrealistic", given what Germany know of the structures of the Iranian intelligence service. But the court was unable to establish more about the credibility of the defector.

The policeman said he did not know why the defector had waited so long to come forward with such explosive information.

Presiding judge Klaus Ruehle pressed both police officers to offer their personal impressions of the man they interrogated.

"It is noticeable that you are both very cautious every time we ask for an assessment of this witness," the judge said to them.

Federal prosecutors suddenly announced Wednesday they had new evidence, more than a week after closing arguments by both sides. The court had been widely expected to pronounce Mzoudi acquitted on Thursday.

Federal prosecutor Walter Hemberger said Thursday that though he had applied for a 30-day extension of the trial, "I don't think we will need the full 30 days." He said a week or two would be enough to weigh the Iranian's credibility.

Mzoudi is accused of assisting in more than 3,000 murders and of being a member of Egyptian student Mohammed Atta's terrorist organization in Hamburg. The state contends Mzoudi must have known what his close friends were planning and was therefore a conspirator.

Prosecutors have demanded he go to jail for 15 years, like Mounir al-Motassadeq, another Moroccan, who was convicted in Hamburg in February last year. But judges freed Mzoudi on December 11 after earlier hearsay evidence relayed by the Federal Crime Office.

In that instance, a person thought to be self-confessed plotter Ramzi bin al-Shibh said Mzoudi had not been privy to the conspiracy.

German trial procedure allows such hearsay evidence, which would be prohibited under the Anglo-American legal tradition. Judges said the second-hand statement they attributed to bin al-Shibh created reasonable doubt about Mzoudi's guilt.

Hezbollah is a militant Shiite movement with Iranian and Lebanese branches.

After the 11 September attacks, US diplomats are alleged to have put out feelers to the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah, offering a truce with the anti-US group in exchange for all the Shiite group knew about the activities of rival Sunni terrorists.

Hezbollah's spiritual leadership claimed in late 2001 they had received such approaches, but denounced them as an attempt to drive a deeper wedge between the two main denominations of Islam.

The US government has accused Iran of harbouring al-Qaeda operatives, but has not alleged that Iran was behind the attacks.


TOPICS: Extended News; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: 2001; 200107; 200302; 200312; 20031211; 911; 911hijackers; abdelghani; abdelghanimzoudi; aladel; alqaeda; alqaedagermany; binalshibh; defector; hamberg; hamburgcell; hezbollah; hizbollah; identified; iran; iranandaq; iranianagent; iranianintelligence; iranianspies; irgc; jihadineurope; moroccan; mzoudi; ramzibinalshibh; saadbinladen; saifaladel; sept11; southwestasia; spies; spooks; tehran; terrortrials; zakeri
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To: sinkspur
Sounds like you're ready to send our boys to Ruwanda....lots of nastiness there as well.
21 posted on 01/22/2004 8:39:43 AM PST by mr.pink
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To: mr.pink
Don't believe everything you read in the newspapers.
22 posted on 01/22/2004 8:41:34 AM PST by jpl
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To: jpl
I don't, but it's not too difficult to watch predictable people shill for predictable cuases using predictable alarmism and predictable BS manuevers......and then reach unavoidable conclusions.
23 posted on 01/22/2004 8:45:17 AM PST by mr.pink
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Osama Bin Laden has been captured

In Iran?

24 posted on 01/22/2004 8:51:17 AM PST by txhurl
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To: Dog
According to FOX NEWS Middle Eastern Correspondent, Monsoor Ijhaz, the Iranian Ayatollahs are up to their unwashed necks in collaborating with the Iraqi insurgents and Al Quaida in Afghanistan. They are probably behind the Shiite demonstrations in southern Iraq.

The U.S. should engineer a popular revolution against the Ayatollahs from inside Iran. There is enough dissention and enough dissidents there to do it. I think the Iranian people are tired enough of being ruled by Islamic Cromwellians by now. We can provide weapons, ammo and technical expertise as well as air support and surveillance assistance to the dissidents there.

If we pull ouot of Iraq and Afghanistan and the Ayatollahs are still standing, we will have lost. Destroying the Ayatollahs will also eviscerate the Hezbollah nutcases in Palestine and may expedite a peace settlement there.

We should act A.S.A.P.
25 posted on 01/22/2004 8:59:43 AM PST by ZULU (Remember the Alamo!!!!!)
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To: mr.pink
Sounds like you're ready to send our boys to Ruwanda....lots of nastiness there as well.

Too late. Clinton and the UN blew that one.

26 posted on 01/22/2004 9:01:52 AM PST by sinkspur (Adopt a shelter dog or cat! You'll save one life, and maybe two!)
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To: ZULU
Have no fear my friend, we're not pulling out.
27 posted on 01/22/2004 9:04:19 AM PST by jpl
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To: You Dirty Rats
Very possible. Could also be fame and fortune. He supposedly asked for over a million $ when he first started talking a while back.
28 posted on 01/22/2004 9:05:38 AM PST by nuconvert ( "It had only one fault. It was kind of lousy.")
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To: sinkspur
Too late. Clinton and the UN blew that one.

"Too Late"?.....that's a silly response. You mean "too late" as in they have nukes or WMDs?

Saddam had gassed his own people prior to Gulf War 1, yet rectifying that atrocity was one "rallying point" regularly employed by the Gulf War 2 pro-war-sters.
29 posted on 01/22/2004 9:07:39 AM PST by mr.pink
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To: txflake; Dog
CNBC talking about the rumor again!

Someone connected one dot to many. Gas and oil are down too! Friday's are getting kind of crazy on the Stock Market!

30 posted on 01/22/2004 9:08:52 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach (The terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States - and war is what they got!!!!)
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To: mr.pink
Saddam had gassed his own people prior to Gulf War 1, yet rectifying that atrocity was one "rallying point" regularly employed by the Gulf War 2 pro-war-sters.

Yes it was. Deservedly so. We had no idea he wouldn't do it again. He shelled Israel during Gulf War I.

31 posted on 01/22/2004 9:13:35 AM PST by sinkspur (Adopt a shelter dog or cat! You'll save one life, and maybe two!)
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To: Lurker
Syria. We owe the House of Assad some bigtime payback.

Yes, before Iran is blamed we need first to point at Syria. Iran is the biggest (3 times larger than Iraq, with government having more popular support, high mountains etc) and should be dealt with at the end.

32 posted on 01/22/2004 9:13:41 AM PST by A. Pole (pay no attention to the man behind the curtain , the hand of free market must be invisible)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Huh. Thanks. Wow. Maybe that's who the Paks had when they got what they called 'biggies' the other day.
33 posted on 01/22/2004 9:17:48 AM PST by txhurl
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Comment #34 Removed by Moderator

To: sinkspur
Yes it was. Deservedly so.

So why can't the Ruwandan situation be rectified via a second go around?

We had no idea he wouldn't do it again.

Well it's 100% certain that the carnage in Ruwanda will surely continue.

I think you are being inconsistent and selective with which you take moral offense with.
35 posted on 01/22/2004 9:23:05 AM PST by mr.pink
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To: Arviragus
The USA is not afraid of anyone. The will of our current president and his people will make the USA the envy of all the world. We have come to a point where things will change. As one deomocrat said why Iraq, there are soo many bad regimes in the world.

My comment to the TV was, "Geez lady one step at a time. You cant climb a ladder using all the steps at once. You take each step carefully or you fall."

36 posted on 01/22/2004 9:23:28 AM PST by Baseballguy
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
The rumor hasn't transubstaniated into a FR thread yet...
37 posted on 01/22/2004 9:23:58 AM PST by txhurl
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To: mr.pink
I think you are being inconsistent and selective with which you take moral offense with.

If the UN wants to prove its usefulness, let the UN go save Rwanda. We have a war on terror to fight.

38 posted on 01/22/2004 9:34:32 AM PST by sinkspur (Adopt a shelter dog or cat! You'll save one life, and maybe two!)
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To: sinkspur
We have a war on terror to fight.

That's odd, you started your defense of the lies that got this "pre-emptive" war going by reaching for the "shredder machine" as opposed to the "terrorist" card.

Which one are you playing, or do you play it like Sean Hannity...flip flopping between "preventing a WMD attack", "human rights abuses" and "liberation" without pausing to enjoy the ironies?

I'll galdy argue either side once you tell which one your taking. ;o)
39 posted on 01/22/2004 9:43:12 AM PST by mr.pink
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To: Dog
Join Us At Today's Iranian Alert Thread – The Most Underreported Story Of The Year!

Click on the link above!

"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail DoctorZin”


40 posted on 01/22/2004 9:51:17 AM PST by DoctorZIn (Until they are free, we shall all be Iranians!)
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