Sept. 11 probe: Wiretaps in Italy hear pair talk of `terrifying' plan by a `madman'

MILAN, Italy - Analyses of wiretapped conversations between a sheik from Yemen and the leader of a Milan mosque have turned up what police now believe are chilling predictions of the Sept. 11 attacks, including a boast of a terrifying operation by a "madman," apparently a reference to Osama bin-Laden.

Milan daily Corriere della Sera Tuesday ran excerpts of transcripts of the conversations, which took place in 2000 and 2001 before the attacks.

The conversations were between Abdulsalam Abdulrahman, the sheik, who had traveled to Italy, and Abdelkader Mahmoud Es Sayed, who fled from Italy two months before the attacks and is considered by the United States to be the organizer of al-Qaida's cell, bin Laden's network, in Milan.

Es Sayed, an Egyptian national, was convicted of the 1997 massacre at Luxor in which 58 foreign tourists were killed.

The chief of the Milan office of DIGOS, Italy's anti-terrorism police, confirmed that the transcripts were accurate. Massimo Mazza told The Associated Press that the transcripts were turned over a few days ago to Prosecutor Stefano Dambruoso, who is leading Italy's probe into Italian-based al-Qaida operatives.

In one conversation, in summer 2000, the sheik tells the imam: "In the future, listen to the news and remember these words: `above the head.'"

The sheik says the action will be "one of those strikes that you never forget." He added that it will be a "terrifying thing, it will move from south to north, from east to west. He who made this plan is a madman, but a genius. It will turn you to ice."

The sheik also says: "Ah, yes, there are big clouds in the sky, there in that country, the fire is already lit and it's just waiting for the wing....All the newspapers in the world will write about it."

Mazza told The Ap that investigators had a hard time understanding, before Sept. 11, what the men were talking about.

"After what happened, it's now easy to draw conclusions ... but before, it was difficult to understand."

The taps were made from bugging places where the two men were, not taps of telephone lines, meaning it took a long time to remove extraneous noise from the taps and translate them.

Corriere della Sera reported that the FBI (news - web sites) helped Italian experts in deciphering the bugged conversations.

According to a transcript of a January 2001 conversation between the imam and a Tunisian who was later arrested in Milan by Italy's anti-terrorist police, there is discussion of false documents.

The Tunisian asks: "Are they needed for our brothers who will go in the United States?"

I still don't know for sure, but maybe because he was convicted in absentia in Egypt, where convictions in absentia had been going on for some time. Many defendents in the Luxor murders were evidently convicted in absentia in trials like the one below during the 1990s, which I found on a search from Egyptian trial data. These trials were later ended due to complaints and pressure from human rights groups (no doubt many of them now known to finance terrorism as well as the more legitimate international groups) :

"The last major military trial of this kind was held between February and April 1999, involving 107 defendants, 60 in absentia. Most were charged with membership of an illegal organization (al-Gihad), as well as other charges including conspiracy to commit murder, weapons possession, and forging official documents. Several had been arrested the previous year in Albania, reportedly in connection with a planned attack on U.S. interests there. Several other defendants had been extradited from Bulgaria, Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Libya. The Supreme Military Court sentenced nine to death, among them Ayman al-Zawahiri in absentia. Seventy-eight were sent to prison and twenty were acquitted. As in previous cases, a number of defendants stated in court that they had been tortured. In July 1997 five members of al-Gama'a al-Islamiyyas leadership issued a statement from Tora Prison, where they are currently serving prison terms, calling for a halt to violence. With the exception of the killings at Luxor, this directive has been largely adhered to and has been reiterated on several occasions since. As a result, several thousand Islamist detainees have been released since 1998, most of whom had been held without trial."

Italian authorities arrest 2 in suspected terrorist cell

Mosques raided
11/29/2001
Associated Press

MILAN, Italy — Authorities raided several Islamic centers overnight in northern Italy and arrested two people accused of recruiting fighters for Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, police said Thursday.

Police said a third man already detained in Milan, Abdelhalim Hafed Remadna of Algeria, had spoken directly with top bin Laden operatives in Afghanistan by satellite phone about sending new recruits to al-Qaeda camps.

Remadna and Yassine Chekkouri of Morocco, arrested early Thursday, both worked at Milan's Islamic Cultural Center and mosque, which U.S. officials say served as the base of bin Laden's operations in Europe.

Police raided the center along with another Milan mosque and several Islamic centers in northern Italy, said Bruno Megale, a deputy chief of Italy's anti-terrorism police.

In recent months, police have arrested a dozen people in and around Milan as part of the investigation, but Remadna and Chekkouri were the first directly affiliated with the center to have been detained.

In Remadna's office at the center, police seized a false Yemeni passport, a false Italian driver's license and faxes of a map showing how to cross into Afghanistan from Iran, Megale told a news conference.

The faxes, as well as wiretaps of telephone conversations between Remadna and bin Laden operatives in Afghanistan, showed that new recruits were advised in recent months to enter Afghanistan from Iran because it was easier than crossing from Pakistan, he said.

The wiretaps also revealed codes bin Laden's operatives used to indicate they needed new fighters, saying they were opening a new "gymnasium" and needed new gym instructors, Megale said.

Police initially said Remadna and the two other men arrested, as well as an Egyptian who remained at large, were suspected of criminal association aimed at possessing explosives and dangerous chemicals and producing false documents.

But at the news conference, Megale said the key charges were criminal association, producing false documents, arranging clandestine immigration and recruiting combatants to fight in Afghanistan. He was vague when pressed for details on the chemical charge.

Megale said an Italian chemist who converted to Islam had been questioned as part of the investigation and had his home searched but had not been charged.

Remadna was arrested Nov. 14 while boarding a train with allegedly false Italian residency documents, and police said he had intended to leave the country. He had been a secretary at the Milan center, a converted garage that the U.S. government recently described as "the main al-Qaeda station house in Europe."

Chekkouri was a librarian at the center and was arrested during the overnight raid. The other detainee, Nabil Benattia of Tunisia, was arrested Wednesday, Megele said. The Egyptian suspected of being a key bin Laden operative, Abdelkadir Es Sayed, 39, remained at large, police said.

The Islamic center's president, Abdel Hamid Shaari, said it "intends to defend its honor and its legal status. After all, it wasn't the center that was searched, but only the offices and workplaces of certain people who work at the center."

The arrests were part of a probe that led to the April arrest of Essid Sami Ben Khemais, a Tunisian who police in Europe now believe was sent from Afghanistan to supervise bin Laden's terrorist operations in Europe.

Spanish investigators say Ben Khemais may have met in Spain earlier this year with Mohamed Atta, one of the hijackers who attacked the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, and with members of an Algerian group in Spanish custody.

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