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The FBI agent who led the post 9/11 investigation of Saudis who moved out of their Sarasota-area home under suspicious circumstances two weeks before the 2001 al Qaeda attacks urged the FBI to seek information from the CIA about whether they assisted the terrorist hijackers. That’s among the final disclosures the FBI made recently to conclude a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit brought by Florida Bulldog in 2012 seeking records of a bureau investigation that was once so secret its existence was withheld from both Congress and the 9/11 Commission. News that the FBI agent who led the probe...

A Syrian-born German national accused of helping to plan the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States has been detained by Kurdish forces in Syria, a senior Kurdish commander told AFP on Wednesday. “Mohammed Haydar Zammar has been arrested by Kurdish security forces in northern Syria and is now being interrogated,” the top official said, but did not provide further details. Zammar, who is in his mid-fifties, has been accused of recruiting some of the September 11 hijackers. He was detained in Morocco in December 2001 in an operation involving CIA agents, and was handed over to the Syrian...

Press Release Source: Newsweek NEWSWEEK: Case Closed Against Syrian-Owned Business in Germany to Avoid Antagonizing Syrian Government, Officials Suggest Sunday January 18, 10:11 am ET Police Reports Show Employees Had Al Qaeda Connections; One Believed to Have Recruited Muhammad Atta in Hamburg # NEW YORK, Jan. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- After a September 2002 raid near Hamburg, Germany, of a Syrian-owned textile business called Tatex that was suspected of terrorist ties, German prosecutors began preparing their case and the U.S. considered freezing Tatex's bank accounts, as it had done in dozens of other companies suspected of financing terrorism. Then last summer,...

Mohammed Zammar, the al Qaeda operative responsible for recruiting the suicide-hijack pilots for the 9/11 attacks, has reportedly been freed inside Syria. Zammar's freedom was reported by Zaid Benjamin, the Washington correspondent for Radio Sawa, on his Twitter feed on Mar. 2. Writing for Al-Monitor, John Rosenthal cited multiple sources confirming Zammar's freedom in an account published on Mar. 10. Zammar was captured in Morocco in late 2001. Unlike most of the 9/11 co-conspirators who were captured, however, Zammar was not transferred to US custody. Instead, he was sent to Syria, where he was imprisoned by Bashar al Assad's regime....

"9/11 plotter released in Syria prisoner exchange" SNIPPET: "The al-Qaeda recruiter reputed to have assembled the so-called Hamburg Cell, which planned and largely carried out the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, has been set free in a prisoner exchange between rebel and regime forces in Syria. Islamist rebel group Ahrar al-Sham has secured the release of 9/11 plotter and alleged al-Qaeda core member Mohammed Haydar Zammar, adding to concerns about the composition of the Islamic Front. A naturalized German citizen of Syrian origin, Mohammed Haydar Zammar left Germany shortly after the attacks and traveled to Morocco, where he was reportedly...

By John Crewdson, Tribune senior correspondent. Reporting and research assistance was provided by Drew Crosby in Madrid MADRID -- The most sweeping criminal indictment to arise thus far from the Sept. 11 attacks reflects a quiet but dramatic change in understanding by investigators here and across Europe of the terrorist organization known as Al Qaeda, and the international Islamic radical-terrorist network of which, they now agree, it is merely a part. As laid out in the indictment, the defendants' alleged activities--from arranging travel and providing introductions to procuring false documents and, especially, moving money--provide the first detailed look at one...

BERLIN- A Syrian-born businessman who knew Sept. 11 ringleader Mohamed Atta and has been accused of operating an al-Qaida front lashed out at President Bush on Thursday and denied any connection to terrorism. Mamoun Darkazanli, described by the FBI as a well-connected agent of Osama bin Laden, was questioned by German police shortly after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But he was freed for lack of evidence and continues to live in Hamburg, Germany, where Atta and two other hijackers had lived. Speaking to The Associated Press in a telephone interview, Darkazanli bristled when...

<p>C.I.A. Was Given Data on Hijacker Long Before 9/11 By JAMES RISEN and ERIC LICHTBLAU WASHINGTON, Feb. 23 — American investigators were given the first name and telephone number of one of the Sept. 11 hijackers two and a half years before the attacks on New York and Washington, but the United States appears to have failed to pursue the lead aggressively, American and German officials say.</p>

MADRID, Spain - Spanish police have arrested two Algerian men with alleged ties to the al-Qaida terror network, police said Monday. The men were identified as Khaleb Madani and Moussa Laouar. They were arrested in the southeastern cities of Torrevieja and Murcia on warrants issued by National Court Judge Guillermo Ruiz Polanco, a police spokesman said on customary condition of anonymity. Both are said to have worked for al-Qaida and are accused of falsifying documents, including passports, the spokesman said. The Web site of Madrid daily El Mundo said the two men have links to Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni who...

<p>December 1, 2003 -- WONDER why Muslim terrorists have targeted Muslim nations such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia? Try reading the rants of Zacarias Moussaoui, the bored al Qaeda jihadist sitting in a U.S. jail.</p> <p>Moussaoui, the Osama bin Laden loyalist charged as the "20th hijacker," has scrawled hundreds of motions from his Alexandria, Va., cell, offering a glimpse into the twisted mind of a terrorist.</p>

Al Qaeda Recruiter Reportedly Tortured (Ex-Inmate in Syria Cites Others' Accounts) CASABLANCA, Morocco -- In January 2002, Driss bin Lakoul, a 38-year-old Moroccan committed to jihad, was arrested in Syria after unsuccessfully attempting to reach Afghanistan, where he wanted to fight against U.S. forces. For three months, the soft-spoken, bearded man with glasses recounted in an interview here, he was held in Damascus at the Far' Falastin detention center run by Syrian military intelligence. In the prison, inmates spoke of a German citizen held in the rat-infested basement, a warren of lightless cells each barely three feet long, three feet...

A wedding video shot in a Hamburg mosque has been broadcast for the first time and shows grainy scenes of Sept. 11 al-Qaida suicide pilots celebrating with other alleged plotters, possibly including suspects still not formally identified. The video of the October 1999 wedding of Said Bahaji being celebrated in a large room at the al Quds mosque suspected as a recruiting center for al-Qaida operatives has been in the hands of investigators since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington. In the immediate aftermath of the terror attacks, the Bahaji wedding video provided investigators critical...

Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion. Report: Suspect's Passport Found Associated Press Online INTERNATIONAL NEWS August 17, 2002 Saturday 11:59 AM Eastern Time BERLIN The passport of a Syrian-born man suspected of recruiting some of the Hamburg-based Sept. 11 hijackers was found at the house of a top al-Qaida official in Afghanistan, according to a report Saturday. Zammar was in Hamburg with hijackers Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah. The German passport of Mohammed Haydar Zammar was found in the ruins of the home of Mohammed Atef, bin...

TARRAGONA, Spain -- On the morning of July 9, 2001, Mohamed Atta drove a silver Hyundai rental car east out of Madrid toward this Mediterranean beach area, a ribbon of resorts crowded with vacationers. The attacks on New York and the Pentagon were just weeks away and Atta was headed to a secret meeting to complete the planning, according to U.S. officials and a Spanish police investigation of the lead hijacker's movements.As Atta drove 300 miles across the country, his old roommate in Germany, Ramzi Binalshibh, was boarding a budget flight from Hamburg to Reus, the small airport that serves...

Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion. SYRIA CONFIRMS GERMAN CITIZEN SUSPECTED OF SUPPORTING AL-QA'IDAH IN CUSTODY BBC Monitoring International Reports Source: Der Spiegel, Hamburg, in German 29 Jul 02 p 21 July 29, 2002 The decision by Prosecutor General Kay Nehm not to prosecute two suspected Syrian agents, who were arrested in Germany, has It is striking that death pilot Mohammed Atta spent an extended period in Zammar's home town of Aleppo promoted German-Syrian cooperation in combating terrorism. For the first time the Syrian government has now officially confirmed...

WASHINGTON AND CAIRO - In the war on terror, the US is careful to show how fairly it's treating the hundreds of orange-suited Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters locked behind the razor-wire of the US base at Guantanamo, Cuba. But what the US isn't trumpeting is a quiet practice of shipping key Al Qaeda suspects to the Middle East for interrogation. One reason for this new approach, US officials privately say, is that in some cases these militants' home countries have a better understanding of Islamist groups, their contacts, customs, and language. But there's another reason, say US sources. These...

BERLIN, June 18 – A key figure in the Sept. 11 plot who fled Hamburg, Germany, last October has been held in secret detention in Syria after being first arrested in Morocco and expelled to Damascus with U.S. knowledge, according to German and Arab intelligence sources. ...