Eleven Hijackers Had British Connection

Eleven Hijackers Had British Connection

by Daniel McGrory and Dominic Kennedy
The London Times
September 26, 2001

Eleven of the hijackers who took part in the attacks in America stayed in Britain this year before going on their suicide mission.

Five left London airports in June to fly to America after what intelligence chiefs believe was a vital planning meeting. The FBI has asked Scotland Yard to discover who was sheltering and funding the team in the hope of uncovering a cell of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organisation.

The British connection is especially worrying since Sir John Stevens, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, gave warning that Britain was likely to be the next target. The 11 hijackers left the country between January and June before splitting, living as far apart as Florida and Maryland.

Three were on each of the two aircraft that destroyed the World Trade Centre in New York, three were on the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania and two on the flight that hit the Pentagon.

They were joined in America by eight others, including three from a cell in Germany. The 11 who visited Britain included experienced fighters. At least four are believed to have fought in Chechnya, whose Muslim rebels are trained at bin Laden's training camps. Some hijackers are suspected of making repeated visits to Britain in the months before the attacks, suggesting that a British-based cell played some role in setting up the operation. The FBI has sent details to Scotland Yard of bank accounts, telephone numbers and cloned credit cards believed to have been used by the 11 during their time in Britain.

Investigators are urgently hunting for the support unit that helped the hijackers. Police are checking London hotels and addresses in the Home Counties, trying to establish where the 11 stayed.

Officials hope that the inquiries in Britain will disclose the true identities of the suicide team. Some are known to have arrived in Britain using false passports and fake identities that they kept for the hijack. There are serious question marks over the identities of at least four of the visitors to Britain. The purpose of the visits to Britain is still unclear. Britain has long been seen as a conduit for large sums of money to fund Islamist terrorists abroad.

Investigators believe that the 11 collected funds while in Britain. So far British police have decided not to release names and pictures of the men while they investigate suspect addresses and attempt to trace key figures already on their wanted list. The FBI and others will then use the intelligence to piece together bin Laden's worldwide network.

The authorities cannot be sure when the men arrived in Britain nor where they lived during their stay. The couple arrested last week at their home in Colnbrook, Berkshire -Algerian Lotfi Raissi, 27,and his French-born wife, Sonia, 25, -have been questioned at Paddington Green police station. The FBI had also passed their names to Scotland Yard.

Detectives applied for an extension to hold Mr Raissi, who was studying for a European flying licence, until later today. Mrs Raissi was released without charge last night.

Another suspect, Muhammad Atta, who steered the first aircraft into the World Trade Centre, is known to have visited Spain twice and the Czech Republic once in the past 18 months.

In Prague he is said to have met an Iraqi agent. In Spain his visit coincided with a trip there by a senior Iraqi intelligence official. Investigators want to find out if the 11 were sent to Britain to receive their instructions.

An urgent effort is being made to trace the former girlfriend and companions of Habib Zacarias Moussaoui, a former resident of Brixton, South London, who is regarded as the "twentieth member" of the suicide squads. He began to learn to fly in America in February this year. He was detained in Minnesota in August after raising suspicions by his eagerness to study in a simulator of a passenger jet despite failing to master the basics of flying. Agents believe Moussaoui should have been on the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania. Four hijackers were on board that flight, while the other three were taken over by teams of five.

Moussaoui, a Frenchman of Moroccan extraction, became a zealot only because of the fanatics he met in the UK. His mother Aicha told L'Express that the young man had apparently converted to a strict form of religion through contacts with Islamic organisations while living and studying in Britain in the 1990s.

"To me they had put him through a real brainwashing," she said. Police in Britain are hunting his girlfriend, who is of North African origin and who shared his flat.

At least 500 young British Muslims are suspected of having been trained at terrorist camps in Afghanistan run by al-Qaeda. Officials fear that, armed with terrorist skills they acquired in the camps, many will have returned to Britain where they remain as "sleepers".

One of the most disturbing mysteries surrounds Djamel Begal, a former British resident believed to have been a student at one of the camps. He was arrested in Dubai in July. M Begal, a French-Algerian, has reportedly confessed to planning an attack on the US Embassy in Paris.

Yesterday Scotland Yard anti-terrorist police joined armed officers in Leicestershire, accompanied by MI5, to arrest three men for questioning about the Paris plot. The three were taken from two addresses in Prospect Hills, Leicester, which are still being searched.

In France, meanwhile, Le Monde reported that anti-terrorist police were investigating why an older brother of Osama bin Laden, Yeslam bin Laden, a Swiss resident who heads the Saudi Investment Company, paid to send a French former police officer to the flight training school in Florida at which several of the hijackers trained.

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