Hydrablog

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/world/asia/31plotter.html
October 31, 2009
After 2 Years, a Sign of a 9/11 Suspect
By SOUAD MEKHENNET and SABRINA TAVERNISE [Pakistan] [al Qaeda] [Pakistan as central hub in AfPak wheel] [AfPak] [Pakistan’s robust role in transnational war, villany, complications?] [followup] [more on Pakistan’s planned offensive] [infrequent word from Paksitan about al Qaeda’s doings] [global-jihadis hydra] [use psci469-1] [followup] [*]
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A suspect in the 9/11 plot whose German passport was found in a mud hut in western Pakistan this week has not been in touch with his family for two years, [that they discovered his passport reported yesterday] [*] his mother said in a telephone interview on Friday.
The suspect, Said Bahaji, a German citizen whose father is Moroccan, was the main logistics supporter of the 9/11 attackers, [why did he leave a 1.5 weeks before the attacks?] [so did Binalshibh suggesting operational cog?] [*] paying their rent and telephone bills, according to the authorities. The Pakistani military said it found his German passport five days ago in the village of Sherwangai in South Waziristan, during a search operation.
Mr. Bahaji was part of the Hamburg cell of Al Qaeda, a tightly knit group of young Arab men who met in Germany in the mid- to late 1990s under the leadership of Mohamed Atta, [Atta was the Egyptian civil engineer who got angry at his humiliation when he could not use his education to be useful in Egypt] [*] who eventually became the central planner of the 9/11 attacks.
A Pakistani military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, said that Mr. Bahaji was not in custody, and that the military did not know whether he was dead or alive. He said the passport stamp for Mr. Bahaji’s entry into Pakistan — Sept. 4, 2001 — was too old to shed any light on his current whereabouts. [from stopover country, yesterday, identified as Turkey?] [*]
The Pakistani military is in the second week of a major military operation against militants in their South Waziristan stronghold, and General Abbas said one aim was to flush out foreigners.
German intelligence officials have said they believe that Mr. Bahaji, who is still on the German authorities’ wanted list, has been in Pakistan’s tribal areas since Sept. 11, 2001. The discovery of the passport this week was the first concrete evidence.
Many top Qaeda members are believed to have taken refuge in the area. A Pakistani intelligence official interviewed on Friday said the discovery “proves that our militants have had close associations with Al Qaeda.” [that’s it in all these years?] [how did the al Qaeda America’s IC reported disappear?] [it’s left=created a hole in time-space continuum] [it doesn’t make any sense] [they said there were 10s of thousands in nearly 70 nation-states] [did they all simply go to “sleep” for later operation?] [how?] [how could not one top person turn up over these years dead or whatever?] [**]
American drone attacks have killed a number of senior Qaeda members in the tribal areas, including Usama al-Kini, a Kenyan, who was the group’s operations chief in Pakistan, as well as http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/08/world/asia/08pstan.html Baitullah Mehsud, who led the Pakistani Taliban. [they name two, one of whom was TPakistan or Pakistan Taliban, perhaps al Qaeda perhaps not!] [*]
German officials reached by telephone on Friday did not give details about Mr. Bahaji’s last known contact, but said they did not dispute the time frame given by his mother, Anneliese Bahaji.
Mrs. Bahaji, 76, a German citizen, said her son also had a Moroccan passport, so it was possible that he was traveling with that. [mother hasn’t heard from him for 2 years] [presumes he’s traveling on Moroccan passport] [*]
Mr. Bahaji, who was born in June 1975, had never been to Pakistan before setting off in September 2001, his mother said. She said he had told her and his wife, Nese Kul, a German citizen of Turkish descent, from whom he is now divorced, that he was going to Pakistan for an internship at a computer company there. [*]
Mrs. Bahaji last heard from him in 2007, when he telephoned her. “He said he just wanted to call and say he’s still alive,” she said by telephone from northern Germany, where she lives. [*]
In many ways, the passport raised more questions than it answered. “I don’t know what to think that they’ve found his passport now,” Mrs. Bahaji said, sounding sad. “I don’t know what it means.”
The Hamburg cell seemed to be the one place where Mr. Bahaji felt truly accepted. He tried to enter a military academy in Morocco, his mother said, but was turned down because he had asthma. When he moved to Germany, she added, he was required to attend additional classes before his Moroccan high school degree would be accepted, [*]deepening his sense that he was a stranger there.
In late 1998, according to evidence introduced in a German court in the trial of another Hamburg cell member, Mounir el-Motassadeq, Mr. Bahaji and Mr. Atta moved into an apartment near the university where they had been studying in Hamburg. The young men grew increasingly radical, with the help of a German of Syrian origin, Mohamed Heidar Zammar, [*]who had fought in Bosnia and was believed to be a Qaeda operative.
Mr. Bahaji grew close to Mr. Atta and the other members of the cell. They attended Mr. Bahaji’s wedding in October 1999, at Al Quds mosque in Hamburg, feasting on Moroccan tagine stew with plums and sweets, his wife, Ms. Kul, said in an interview in 2002.
A video of the event was introduced as evidence in the German court. Men sat separately from the women, Ms. Kul said, and Marwan al-Shehhi, who piloted the second plane that struck the World Trade Center, sang songs about jihad. [*]
Relatives were reportedly shocked at the change in Mr. Bahaji, who had grown a long beard, much to his mother’s chagrin. “The beard has to go,” Mrs. Bahaji told him, and he replied, “No, the beard stays,” she said in an interview two years ago.
The last time Ms. Kul saw Mr. Bahaji was on Sept. 3, 2001. Before departing he went to the mosque where they had gotten married. When he returned, his hair was cut short, [*] she said.
Ismail Khan and Pir Zubair Shah contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company