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Sept 11 hijackers were trained in Afghanistan: Germany

Official believes one Tunisia synagogue bomber in Pakistan

WASHINGTON: A top German investigator said a suicide bomber who blew up a historic synagogue in Tunisia last April was in touch with a key Al Qaeda operative who is believed to have played a role in planning the September 11 attacks, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

Klaus Ulrich Kersten, director of Germany’s federal anticrime agency, the Bundeskriminalamt, said Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, identified by US authorities as a key Al Qaeda planner of the September 11 attacks was called by telephone by the bomber three hours before the bomber set off a blast outside a synagogue in Djerba, Tunisia, in April that killed 21 people, the paper said.

According to Kersten, the bomber, Nizar Nawar, called the Kuwaiti, who is believed to be now hiding in Pakistan, shortly before Nawar pulled up outside the synagogue in a truck, the daily reported. The vehicle was filled with liquid propane, and its explosion killed 14 German tourists, six Tunisians and a Frenchman. “There are indications that this attack in Djerba was perpetrated with the blessing or approval of Al Qaeda,” the German investigator is quoted by The Times as saying. “We can say September 11 and Djerba with certainty were Qaeda.”

Kersten told The Times in an interview that Mohammed, a 37-year-old Kuwaiti national, was identified by the US authorities in June as having played an important operational role in the September 11 attacks. According to the report, German investigators insist they have uncovered evidence that Mohamed Atta, the suspected leader of the September 11 hijackers, and two of his accomplices trained at Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan from late 1999 to early 2000.

There have been previous reports that Atta and other conspirators trained in Afghanistan, and US Federal Bureau of Investigation officials have said that all 19 hijackers are believed to have spent time there. But Kersten provided the first official confirmation that the three pilots had been in Afghanistan and the first dates of the training, according to The Times. Kersten said Atta was in Afghanistan from late 1999 until early 2000, The Times reported.

He said four other Arabs from Hamburg attended camps there about the same time. Two of them, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad al-Jarrah, also flew hijacked planes on September 11. The two others, Said Bahaji and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, disappeared shortly before the attacks and have been charged in Germany as accomplices.

“According to our knowledge, Atta travelled to Afghanistan for some months in 1999 until early 2000,” Kersten is quoted as saying. “Whether he had been there before, we do not know. We know that Jarrah, Shehhi, bin al Shibh and Bahaji were also in Afghanistan in the same time period, but we do not know if they were together.”

Atta, Shehhi and Jarrah came to the United States in June 2000 and enrolled in flight schools in Florida. —AFP

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