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.
OK, this is what you "would like to see", but I had impression that you promote foreing intervention to impose separation of religion and state in Iran. Is it worth the war (since Iran is three times larger it would mean sending there half million troops and spending more than half trillion dollars)?
There are states in Europe which have established churches (like England) and the only reason that secularism prevails there is that churches themselves are in decline. Do you think it would be a good idea to intervene militarily there on behalf of secularism in the earlier times?
I prefer a republic, but the nature of representation ought to be up to them.
Iranians did make the choice when they expelled shah, established the Islamic republic and defended it from militant secularist Iraq in a long war effort. Now they are making choices again by pressuring religious leaders to become more moderate. If you really want those things "to be up to them", you cannot support the foreing intervention.
Pinky, if you want agreement with your lame position, go back to DU. I hate to tell you this, but you won't be missed here.
Semper Disgusted
See this from post #60.
Dream on.
Indeed, we are at war and Iran is harboring our enemies. Because of that fact, intervention is clearly on the table.
Whether the intervention is military or diplomatic is basically up to Iran. If the Iranian government responded like Pakistan (and others) - and handed over all the al Queda and related groups in their borders, cut off their funds and allowed strict monitoring to make sure there were no attempts within their boarders to develop, obtain or export WMD technology, etc. - then the U.S. would have no cause to pursue the military option.
But without the military option on the table, I doubt they would have the motivation to do so.
Would a military intervention be worth it? Absolutely. In fact, I assert saying that it is not worth it takes away the motivation for Iran to cooperate at all.
Moreover, the time to act is not after bodies are stacked up like cordwood. It was a miracle we only lost 3,000 on 9/11/01. If terrorists get their hands on any substantive weapon and delivery mechanism (biological, chemical or nuclear) – which usually only nation/states can afford – then the risk escalates. A mid-range attack on a population center could bring in civilian casualties in 6 or 7 digits which would paralyze the U.S. and world economy for years.
Bush has put all the nations on notice by taking military action in Afghanistan and Iraq. Under his administration they will face the full power of the U.S. military if they continue to harbor terrorists or make any WMD available to them. Pakistan got the message, so did Libya and others. Iran seems to understand this but are trying to avoid the confrontation by diplomacy with France and the U.N. But only complete cooperation - like Pakistan or Libya - will work.
BTW, England et al are not at risk from the U.S. because they are not harboring or sponsoring terrorism and have cooperated in the war on terror. Separation of church and state is as always a non-issue unless the religion itself sponsors terrorism.
This is a convoluted reasoning. You say we need to be resolved to attack Iran, we need to sign blank war check to the government to negotiate Iranian concessions. Of cource the hawks in the government will not be satisfied and we will have to go to the war.
Iran being much larger country with mountains and leadership having much more popular support than in Iraq, lack of the world support (even UK and Poland will not join this time, Spanish government is dismissed by the king) will increase the politcial and financial cost beyong American means. You need more than $500B and 500K troops for a long time. This means Vietnam scale draft of young men and women who will not be willing to fight.
All this for forcing separation of church/mosque and state? If you talk about terrorism - main Iran involvment is with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah is grass root organization based on Shiite population, so outside help is not so critical for it.
I met people who do not know difference between Iraq and Israel!
The German legal system is seriously flawed if some anonymous person is allowed to enter testimony this way. It's not even his words. It's some police officer's words that are total hearsay.
You not only have to believe the policeman is telling the truth completely and accurately, but also some anonymous person.
You can't cross-examine him. You can't impeach his testimony. It's absolutely insane.
Do you really believe that they want to restore the shah like dictatorship? What type of support do they want? I think that my ccomments are "curious" in you eyes because I like to think on my own.
Seriously, I think thay want change in a sense when in two party system people get tired with one party and vote for another hoping to better their lives. Sort of when Serbs gave more votes to Kostunica than to Milosevic (only to become taken over by Djinjic clique) I think that those who want to make a coup or bring foreign rule are a minority.
For example, in Tehran the voting was approx. 12% of potential voters and this in a country where the regime pressures people to vote.
This is not a pressure or oppression when 12% people comply.
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