The Terror Front: Saudi PR Efforts

The possibility of a Saudi link to 9-11 is growing

by Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenbal
Newsweek
December 9, 2002

First came comments from Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef describing "Zionists" as the "protagonists" of the 9-11 attacks. Bush administration officials made no secret of their displeasure and, NEWSWEEK has learned, were planning a formal rebuke. Even more potentially awkward for the Saudis is intriguing new evidence that surfaced in a Hamburg courtroom. German authorities have charged Mounir el-Motassadeq, a 28-year-old Moroccan citizen, with assisting Muhammad Atta and other members of the "Hamburg cell" that organized the 9-11 attacks. El-Motassadeq has denied knowing of the 9-11 plot.

Last week a German police official testified that when authorities raided el-Motassadeq's apartment, they found the business card of Muhammad J. Fakihi, chief of Islamic affairs at the Saudi Embassy in Berlin. German police memos, first reported in the weekly Die Zeit, show German officials twice sought to question Saudi officials about Fakihi and whether el-Motassadeq visited him during a trip to Berlin two months after the terrorist attacks. But the Saudis never responded to written questions. (A Saudi official in Washington says "the Islamic Affairs Branch gets phone calls from a lot of people.") The Saudis also demurred when asked to explain phone records showing repeated calls from el-Motassadeq's apartment to the Riyadh office of Sheikh Safar al-Hawali, a radical imam who helped set up a charity that U.S. officials alleged assisted a Qaeda cell that bombed the U.S. Embassy in Kenya. Al-Hawali was jailed by Saudi authorities in the early 1990s for inciting violence, but was released in 2000 on Prince Nayef's orders. El-Motassadeq's phone records show he began calling the office of al-Hawali and other radical Saudi clerics in December 2000-about the time Atta and two other Hamburg cell members were finishing flight training in the United States. That was also when, officials suspect, most of the 15 Saudis who served as "muscle" in the attacks were first recruited.

Another potential problem for the Saudis emerged when federal agents searched the Quincy, Mass., office of Ptech, a computer-software firm. The agents were looking for evidence linking the company to Yassin al-Qadi, a Saudi businessman who U.S. officials charge has helped finance Islamic terrorist groups. The National Security Council ordered U.S. Customs to investigate the firm after discovering that Ptech has software contracts with government agencies including the FBI and the Pentagon. A lawyer for al-Qadi confirmed to NEWSWEEK that al-Qadi had arranged initial financing for Ptech but had sold his stake in the firm in 1999. The lawyer denied al-Qadi has any connection to Osama bin Laden or terrorism, and U.S. officials say they have found no evidence that national-security information has been compromised as a result of the company's dealings with U.S. agencies. Still, the probe is continuing.

Copyright 2002

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