MAY 2001 : (MILAN CELL, ABU SALEH INVOLVED IN PLOTS TARGETTING US CITIZENS OR DIPLOMATS IN FRANCE) Less than four months before Sept. 11, the Italian police, in what one report terms "a context of international collaboration," received information about Abu Saleh's involvement "in an unspecified 'criminal project' that had U.S. citizens or diplomats as its objectives." Abu Saleh's role in the project, which investigators think was unrelated to Sept. 11 but may have included an alleged plot to bomb targets in France, involved supplying false identity documents.
------- "Milan cell linked to al-Qaida operatives, " By John Crewdson and Tom Hundley, Chicago Tribune via Seattle Times June 30, 2002
JULY 2001 : (MILAN CELL'S ESSID BEN KHEMAIS TRAVELS TO SPAIN ) Italian anti-terrorist police have mentioned that Ben Khemais, from the terrorist cell in Milan, Italy, travels to Spain at about the same time ATTA was there. ATTA+taxi+Hamburg&hl=en”> Link
JULY 2001 : (ITALY : IRAQI INTELLIGENCE AGENT AL-MAMOURI DISAPPEARS FROM HIS JOB, SHORTLY AFTER HE MET 9/11 HIJACKER MOHAMMAD ATTA; BOTH HAD BEEN SEEN TOGETHER IN HAMBURG GERMANY & PRAGUE, CZECHOSLAVAKIA BEFORE) One of Saddam’s intelligence agents, Habib Faris Abdullah al-Mamouri, was sent to be the new headmaster of a school for Iraqi diplomats in Italy. The bogus headmaster has not been seen in Rome since July, shortly after he also met Atta. The pair are also said to have been together in Hamburg and Prague.
There is no proof the men were in direct contact, but as one intelligence source in Madrid said [later in the year] : “They chose a strange time and place to take a holiday.” The Rome daily Il Messaggero, quoting Western intelligence sources, said of Mr al-Mamouri that “he spent more time pursuing contacts helpful to the Iraqi regime among fundamentalist Islamic groups than he had on his supposed teaching duties”.
Italian officials say that Mr al-Mamouri held the rank of general in the Iraqi secret service, and from 1982 to 1990 worked in the Special Operations Branch forging Baghdad’s links with Islamic fundamentalist groups in Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Gulf and Sudan. He was transferred to his “teaching duties” in 1998, although all the Iraqi Embassy will say of his sudden departure is that “he had money problems”. - "Hijacker 'given anthrax flask by Iraqi agent'," by DANIEL MCGRORY, The London Times, SATURDAY OCTOBER 27 2001