Posted on 11/11/2001 12:17:31 PM PST by Brian Mosely
Sunday November 11, 12:04 pm Eastern Time
NEW YORK, Nov. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Federal officials tell Newsweek that Saudi businessman Mustafa Ahmed, whom they suspect was the financial connection for the hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, is Osama bin Laden's ``chief financial officer.'' As federal officials traced bin Laden's worldwide money trail, Ahmed's name kept appearing on documents and bank records, Newsweek reports in the current issue. Investigators have also linked him to a key component of the Al Qaeda operation: seemingly legitimate Saudi charities that secretly funnel millions of dollars to fund bin Laden's operatives, report Washington Bureau Chief Daniel Klaidman and Investigative Correspondent Mark Hosenball, in the November 19 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, November 12).
Soon after the attacks, Irish police raided the Dublin offices of the Islamic Relief Agency, an obscure Saudi charity linked to bin Laden's 1998 bombings of two American embassies in Africa. They found two separate documents referring to Ahmed -- the first clue that he was higher-up in the Al Qaeda network, Newsweek reports. The office was run by Ibrahim Buisir, a Libyan known to be a bin Laden operative.
Investigators tracking Osama bin Laden had long suspected that Ahmed had close connections to bin Laden's Al Qaeda network. In the weeks following the Sept. 11 attacks, federal investigators concluded that Ahmed was the operation's paymaster -- the ``financial guru,'' in the words of one top FBI official, who sent money to the hijackers for living expenses, flight school tuition and plane tickets. Investigators discovered that earlier this year, Ahmed wired large sums of money into the terrorists' accounts at the SunTrust Bank in Florida. He also got them Visa cards, which several hijackers used to buy airline tickets over the Internet, Newsweek reports. A day or two before the attacks, Ahmed received at least $18,260 in wire and bank transfers from the hijackers -- the ``leftover change,'' as one official put it.
Days before Sept. 11, suspected lead hijacker Mohammed Atta and the other hijackers were in constant contact with Ahmed, wiring money to him and placing several calls to him in the United Arab Emirates. The last calls were made just hours before the 19 men boarded their flights. Later that day, Ahmed took a flight to Pakistan and hasn't been seen since.
(Read Newsweek's news releases at
http://www.Newsweek.MSNBC.com. Click "Pressroom.")
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