Spain Arrests Three With WTC Videos
MADRID, Spain –– Three al-Qaida suspects were taken into custody Tuesday, including one who had videotaped several American landmarks including the Golden Gate Bridge, the Sears Tower, the Statue of Liberty and the World Trade Center.
Police said they were convinced the footage, taken during a 1997 visit to the United States by one of the detainees, was much more than "tourist curiosity."
At least one suspect was recruited by a man whom Spanish authorities say helped prepare the Sept. 11 attacks and was linked to the al-Qaida cell that included hijacker Mohamed Atta.
It was a further indication that Spain, with a growing Arab immigrant population, may have been used by al-Qaida as the setting for crucial logistic support in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Spain has been a focal point of the overseas investigation launched after the terrorist attacks on the United States. An FBI task force is working with law enforcement authorities in Spain to locate and capture suspected terrorists, including men with terrorist links who have traveled to the United States in recent years.
Investigators have already gathered ample evidence that Atta visited Spain twice in 2001 including a weeklong trip in July where he may have attended a series of meetings with other al-Qaida operatives.
In November, authorities arrested Imad Yarkas on charges he led an al-Qaida cell with links to Atta's cohorts in Hamburg, Germany. Authorities have said they recorded phone conversations in which Yarkas allegedly spoke in code about the suicide attacks.
The men detained Tuesday were Ghasoub Al-Abrash Ghalyoun – who shot the videos in the United States – as well as Abdalrahman Alarnaot Abu-Aljer and Mohamen Khair Al Saqq. They were all from Syria, although Ghalyoun and Abu-Aljer, detained in Madrid, were naturalized Spanish citizens. Al Saqq was arrested in the eastern city of Castellon.
Ghalyoun was previously arrested in April on charges of forming part of a network of businesses that sent profits to al-Qaida organizations.
He was initially let go due to insufficient evidence to support the charges. A police statement released Tuesday indicated the incriminating videos were seized during the earlier arrest.
According to the interior ministry, Ghalyoun shot five of the tapes during a 1997 visit, recording images of buildings, installations and monuments "that have been or are al-Qaida targets."
"The style and duration of the recordings far exceed tourist curiosity," it said. "For example, two of the tapes are like a documentary study, with innumerable takes from all distances and angles of the Twin Towers in New York."
The five tapes also contain plenty of images of the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge, "whose suspension pillar is given substantial attention."
Shots show interior and exterior areas of "a New York airport" as well as the Sears Tower, Disneyland and Universal Studios in southern California, police said. They did not identify the airport.
Another two videotapes with "extremely violent content" show terrorist training exercises and combat in Chechnya, as well as unnamed suicide attackers and donations for radical Islamic causes, they said.
Abu-Aljer was allegedly recruited by Yarkas and sent to an al-Qaida training camp in Bosnia that provided radical Islamic fighters in the 1992-95 Bosnian war. The suspect was also linked to Mohamed Setmarian Nasar, a key al-Qaida operative who ran another training camp in Afghanistan, the statement said.
Al Saqq, the third man arrested Tuesday, was involved in al-Qaida financing operations and received a visit from Mohamed Bahaiah, who has been described as Osama bin Laden's courier between Afghanistan and Europe.
Police said Ghalyoun and Al Saqq are members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamic organization whose Syrian branch was brutally crushed by that country's late President Hafez Assad in a 1982 armed assault that killed tens of thousands of civilians.
Several key suspects arrested in Spain and under investigation in Germany hail from Aleppo, Syria, the port town that was the subject of Atta's university thesis.
Indonesian linked to al Qaeda cell
JAKARTA, Indonesia (CNN) -- An Indonesian man is being linked to the top echelons of the al Qaeda terrorist network with officials saying he allegedly helped bring hundreds of operatives from Europe to a training camp he set up in Indonesia.
Agus Dwikarna was arrested in March in the Philippines and sentenced last week to up to ten years in prison for possession of explosives.
Intelligence officials tell CNN that the Dwikarna also used the training camp to help fuel sectarian violence in Indonesia in which thousands died.
Though Dwikarna claims he was set up, intelligence officials in the region tell CNN that he is connected to the al Qaeda cell in Spain whose leader, Imad Eddin Barakat Yarbas, was in frequent contact with Mohammed Atta, the suspected leader of the September 11 hijackers. (Al Qaeda suspects due in Madrid court)
Yarbas has been in Spanish custody since last November, charged with recruiting and fund-raising for al Qaeda.
After Barakat's arrest, Spanish police began looking for the Indonesian who worked with him: Parlindungan Siregar.
Siregar worked as the go-between man for Dwikarna and arranged for several hundred al Qaeda operatives from Europe to travel to Indonesia for training, Spanish authorities say.
Training camps
A Spanish court document released last November says that Siregar, "recruited mujahideens in Spain to be sent to terrorist-military training camps in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Indonesia."
The document called Siregar, "the leader of one of the existing camps in [Indonesia] at the service of Osama bin Laden."
Intelligence officials tell CNN that the camp in Indonesia was set up by Dwikarna, who commanded Laskar Jundullah, an extremist militant group based in Poso, on Sulawesi east of Jakarta.
Intelligence documents obtained by CNN say the camp helped fuel Muslim-Christian violence in Poso and nearby Ambon in Indonesia's Maluku Islands where nearly 10,000 people have died there since 1999 because of sectarian violence.
After September 11, officials in the region say Ambon became the new Afghanistan for Muslim fighters around the world.
"They were initially inspired by the war in Afghanistan. Now without Afghanistan, they use Ambon in the Malukus as the new battleground," Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's senior minister, said.
Highest levels
But Dwikarna's connections with al Qaeda in Europe went much further and reached to the highest levels.
Intelligence officials say that in June 2000, Dwikarna acted as a guide for al Qaeda leaders who visited Indonesia: Osama bin Laden's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri and Mohammed Atef, al Qaeda's former military chief.
"This visit was part of a wider strategy of shifting the base of Osama Bin Laden's terrorist operations from the Subcontinent to South East Asia," an intelligence document obtained by CNN explains.
(Bin Laden sought Indonesian base)
Though that move didn't happen, intelligence officials say that it is becoming clear that Osama bin Laden exploited Muslim discontent around the world to create potent, homegrown terrorist networks.
These networks may have worked together to plan the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, officials say.
U.S. sources and Asian intelligence officials now tell CNN they believe the planning for September 11 started in Malaysia and ended in Spain and may have been helped by men like Dwikarna.
A lot of Australian football players, their fans, and others that lost their lives in Indonesia a couple of months later.