Top 9/11 suspect 'was granted US visa'

FT.com ^

[Stew Padasso]

Thanks for the info. This stuff is unbeleivable. You may have seen this already:


http://www.officer.com/article/article.jsp?siteSection=1&id=9041

[aristeides]

He seems like such a big fish to do this himself, too high profile to risk capture...unless the his purpose was so very sensitive.

But you'd think any sensitive instructions could have been given to Atta while he was in Spain. Unless plans had changed for some reason.

[livius]

I would suspect that this was a backup.

I was in Spain for a few weeks that summer. I was staying in Valencia on the Mediterranean coast, and went to Alicante, south of Valencia, on the train a couple of times, and also made a few excursions north of Valencia. I am very familiar with Spain, and particularly with that part of it, because I had a good friend who was living in that area and had opened an art gallery around there at the time.

I have always had a terrible feeling that I saw Atta on a train once. I got on the train - I believe I was heading south towards Alicante, but it may have been on the return to Valencia from one of my trips northwards - and saw a tall African sitting on one of the side-facing seats. Many Spaniards will not sit next to Africans, because they often smell bad (I can attest to this), but there was a seat on one of the seats at a right angle to the African's seat, so I sat down there.

I thought he was Senegalese, because he was carrying an attache case, and like any New Yorker, I assumed that a tall, dark African with an attache case was selling fake Rolexes.

About two stops later, another man got on and came over immediately to that seat and greeted the Senegalese in English. The second man was not African, but was dark, and I thought he might have been Moroccan. They started talking, but I had no reason for listening (this was July 2001), so I continued reading my local Spanish newspaper and I ignored them. There were no other seats on the train, and I didn't want to stand.

At the next stop, two light skinned (well, by comparison) men got on and went over to the Senegalese and his friend. They had short,dark hair and I thought they looked somehow "classier" than the others, a little better dressed or something. One had a rather heavy face that for some reason stuck in my mind, and he was obviously also the important person.

The newest people began speaking to the others, and whatever they said made the Senegalese laugh, and he looked around to the side (towards me and another woman sitting on the other row of seats) and began to laugh and fling his hands out. After one of his hands grazed my paper, I got the hint and moved to another part of the train.

The group had been talking about "papers." I assumed they were talking about Spanish immigration papers, and they were very difficult to understand in any case, so I went back to my newspaper and ignored them. The only thing I did notice is that they got off at separate stops.

I have always thought that one of these guys was Atta.