 A co-defendant told police that a key al Qaida suspect — who earlier this week called himself a peace-loving moderate Muslim — is a radical who recruited men for "holy war" training in Afghanistan, according to testimony read to a Madrid court today.
| Y'mean he lied to us? Wow! That's never happened before, has it? |
A police statement said Ghasoub al-Abrash Ghalyoun told officers in April 2002 that Imad Yarkas, the accused leader of a Spanish al Qaida cell, spoke often jihad, or holy war. "He was a radical person. He was always talking about the mujahedeen," the police statement said, quoting Ghalyoun. It was read aloud by a court clerk at the request of lead prosecutor Pedro Rubira. However, Ghalyoun denied it today.
| "I never said that!... It's taken out of context!... Those aren't my words!... That's not me on the tape!... It's not me in the video!... That's not my DNA!..." |
Ghalyoun and Yarkas are standing trial on charges they helped plot the September 11 attacks on the US. Ghalyoun, 39, is accused of taking detailed video footage of the World Trade Centre that a Spanish judge says served as the first blueprints for the September 11 plots. A third defendant faces similar charges, and 21 others are accused of belonging to a terrorist organisation, weapons possession and other offences, but not September 11 planning.
In the police statement read to the court today, Ghalyoun told officers Yarkas engaged in recruiting at a Madrid mosque, and that people who prayed there knew that if they wanted to be sent off for terror training in camps in Afghanistan, Bosnia or Chechnya, Yarkas was the man to see. Yarkas "considered atheists all those who did not share his way of thinking," Ghalyoun told police after his arrest in 2002. Asked if Yarkas, also known as Abu Dahdah, sent men from Spain to terrorist camps in Afghanistan, Ghalyoun said he had heard Abu Dahdah "sent mujahedeen to wage jihad" but he could not name the people or say how many they were, the police statement said. But Ghalyoun testified today he did not remember saying this about Yarkas, and that Yarkas never asked him personally to wage holy war or contribute money for others to do it.
Ghalyoun, 39, took video of the twin towers in New York and other landmarks during a visit to the US in 1997, court documents say. The videotapes eventually were passed on to "operative members of al Qaida and would become the preliminary information on the attacks against the twin towers," Judge Baltasar Garzon wrote in a September 2003 indictment against the Syrian-born Ghalyoun and other alleged members of a Spanish al Qaida cell. Yarkas, the alleged leader of the cell, testified this week that he had nothing to do with the attacks. He also denied setting up a meeting in Spain in July 2001 at which one of the suspected suicide pilots and an alleged co-ordinator of the attacks planned last-minute details of the massacre. |