From Jail To Freedom, With An Air Ticket Thrown In
Prison was but a brief interruption to the career of the terrorist Tanzania released, writes Mark Riley.
by Mark Riley
The Sydney Morning Herald
September 28, 2001
The Tanzanian Government was enormously proud of itself when it captured Mustafa Mahmoud Said Ahmed in 1998.
It told the FBI that the Egyptian-born terrorist was the vital link it was searching for in its efforts to tie Osama bin Laden to the simultaneous bombings of the US embassies in Dar-es-Salaam and Nairobi in August of that year.
Yet Mustafa Ahmed was freed from jail by the Tanzanian authorities less than a year later in circumstances that still remain unclear. What is clear is that he quickly resumed operations as a banker for bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist organisation. Now he is being sought by US investigators over the devastating terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.
How the mysterious banker was able to check out of jail and walk back onto the front line of bin Laden's bloody campaign against America underscores the enormous failings of the global intelligence and investigative efforts against terrorism.
More than 200 people were killed in the 1998 embassy bombings, most of them in Nairobi. Another 5,000 were injured.
Ahmed was picked up in September 1998, along with a Tanzanian co-conspirator, and charged with 11 counts of murder one count for each of those killed in the Dar-es-Salaam bombing. He was locked away in the Ukonga maximum security prison to await trial.
The Tanzanian Home Affairs Minister, Ali Ameir Mohamed, boasted soon after the arrest that Ahmed had admitted his links with bin Laden the first solid evidence connecting the Islamic extremist to the attacks.
Mustafa [Ahmed] is either the mastermind behind the [Tanzania] bombing or is a key person in the bombing conspiracy,'' Ameir said in 1998.
Investigators claimed Ahmed had organised the transfer of funds from an unnamed Middle Eastern bank to Tanzania to bankroll at least the Dar-es-Salaam bombing and possibly the Nairobi one. The money went to the Saudi-financed Greenland Bank of Tanzania, with branches in Dar-es-Salaam and Nairobi.
Traces of the chemicals used to make the Tanzanian bomb were also in Ahmed's car and in the house he used in Dar-es-Salaam. Investigators said they had evidence suggesting that his temporary home had also been a safe house for two other men then being sought for their involvement in the bombing.
The evidence appeared to be overwhelming. The Tanzanian Government seemed to have ample reason to crow.
Several months later, the authorities would make a decision that still stuns the US investigators who led the inquiries into the embassy bombings.
Without warning and without fully explaining their reasons, the Tanzanian prosecutors dropped all charges against Ahmed, released him from jail and bought him a one-way ticket to Cairo.
It is now clear he re-engaged with al-Qaeda operatives almost immediately and moved to the United Arab Emirates. He is now on the run again, the chief suspect in orchestrating the flow of funds used to bankroll the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
Mohamed Atta, regarded as the central figure among the 19 hijackers responsible for the attacks, mailed a package to Ahmed in the UAE from a Florida computer and photocopy store a week before he flew one of the hijacked jets into the World Trade Centre.
"We don't know for sure what was in the package,'' a government official told Newsweek this week. But Mustafa could be the key to bin Laden's finances. We're taking a hard look at him.''
Several other hijackers wired him money in the days before the attacks. It is suspected that the money was left over from their bankroll after they had paid for their flying lessons, accommodation, hire cars and airline tickets.
Other amounts were wired to the Middle East by Nabil al-Marabh, regarded as a key link in a Boston cell loyal to bin Laden which appears to have figured prominently in arranging accommodation and transport in the final days before the attack.
FBI agents picked up al-Marabh in Chicago last week and interrogated him for four days before he was flown to New York, where he is being held without charge.
US intelligence places Ahmed in a business in the mid-1990s with bin Laden's former secretary, Wadih el-Hage. The pair ran an export business, trading gems in Nairobi. It is suspected that the operation was one of many set up by bin Laden operatives as ways of funnelling funds to and from al-Qaeda through seemingly legitimate business accounts.
El-Hage, a US citizen by marriage, is in maximum security in New York, awaiting sentencing for his role in bin Laden's global terrorism conspiracies, including the 1998 embassy bombings.
Ahmed's exact whereabouts remain unknown.
Copyright 2001
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