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| Terror Networks |
| 9/11 hijackers called Syria, Saudi Arabia |
| 2006-03-08 |
| The Sept. 11 hijackers made dozens of telephone calls to Saudi Arabia and Syria in the months before the attacks, according to a classified report from the office of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. According to the report, 206 international telephone calls were known to have been made by the leaders of the hijacking plot after they arrived in the United States - including 29 to Germany, 32 to Saudi Arabia and 66 to Syria. The calls to Germany are not especially surprising because the plot's organizers, Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah, who moved to Florida to learn to fly passenger jets, had been university students in the northern German city of Hamburg when they were recruited by al-Qaida. More than four years later, however, the hijackers' connections to Saudi Arabia and Syria are far from fully explained. The German report contains no information about the timing or recipients of the calls, except that the majority of them were made from a cell phone registered to al-Shehhi, a native of the United Arab Emirates. It said the telephone records were obtained by German intelligence agencies from the FBI. Within hours of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, German agencies learned that, during their student days, Atta and his co-conspirators had been in close touch with al-Qaida's principal representatives in Hamburg, Mamoun Darkazanli and Mohammed Zammar, both Syrian expatriates who became German citizens. Spanish authorities later prosecuted several other expatriate Syrians in Madrid with links to Darkazanli and Zammar, most of them members of the Syrian wing of the radical Muslim Brotherhood. One, Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, was sentenced last year to 27 years in a Spanish prison for providing the hijackers logistical assistance. The German report submitted last week notes that in the days after Sept. 11, Syria and its intelligence service offered their cooperation to the United States and West European nations, "comprehensively and without any reservation." A senior U.S. diplomat serving in the American Embassy in Damascus on Sept. 11 recalled that, before the Syrian commitment began to wane, the Syrians provided the Americans intelligence that led to the breakup of a terrorist plot against the United States that was being assembled in Canada. Later, when the CIA arranged for Mohammed Zammar to be arrested by Moroccan authorities during a visit to Casablanca, the Syrians agreed to take custody of Zammar and locked him in a Damascus prison, where he is believed to remain today. The report's disclosure that senior officials in the government of former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder traveled to Syria to participate in the questioning of Zammar is likely to raise further questions within the parliament over Germany's involvement in the CIA's forced relocation of terrorist suspects to countries like Syria, where many say they have been tortured. The complicity of European governments in the practice the CIA terms "rendition" also has become a political live wire in several other European countries, with opposition parties demanding inquiries into whether their governments were aware that CIA aircraft used their airports and airspace to transport suspects to Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #11 ... you can't take the jihad out of the Wahabi. Nothing that 50 caliber swift onset lead poisoning can't cure. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2006-03-08 20:54 |
| #10 In December 2001, US Defense released a captured video of bin Laden with Saudi Sheik al-Barak, who presented himself as an emissary and informed terrorist#1 of 2 fatwahs in support of Taliban/al-Qaeda that named Saudi clerics had issued. Shortly after, the Saudis announced that over "900" sheiks had taken "re-education." Subsequent rhetoric suggests they learned to direct their jihad-hate at Israel, in face of the fait accompli in Afghanistan. You can take the Wahabi out of jihad, but you can't take the jihad out of the Wahabi. |
| Posted by: Listen To Dogs 2006-03-08 18:36 |
| #9 Just going for historical authenticity, tw. I'll go lay down by my dish now. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2006-03-08 17:28 |
| #8 Eeewwww! No they don't, Zenster! |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-03-08 17:25 |
| #7 drawing and quartering With or without extracting the entrails through the anus and burning them in a heap in front of the still conscious criminal whilst reading the excommunication liturgy in preparation of goading the four horses to whom his various appendages are attached? Inquiring minds want to know! |
| Posted by: Zenster 2006-03-08 17:19 |
| #6 They are modern deniable PIRATES. Thugs with letters of marque! Treat them and their sponsers as such. I believe keelhauling, walking the plank, the yardarm and drawing and quartering were method that worked with the last bunch of pirates. For the nations supporting pirates other techniques worked quite well. Yar, and some Captain Morgan Rum to celebrate the taking of the port? Oh and Captain it only takes three years out of view before we make you our vice governer of Jamacia. |
| Posted by: mumbles 2006-03-08 10:20 |
| #5 Okay, so who in Syria and Saudi Arabia did they call? Obviously there is a precise answer to this question. |
| Posted by: Captain America 2006-03-08 08:08 |
| #4 9/11 hijackers called Syria, Saudi Arabia Internal Deutschland & EU stuck on stupid parlor games. ****************** The real story is the obvious. repeating the obvious: Saudis, Syrians and the Mad Mullahs use terrorism and terrorists proxies. Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Hezbollah, Al Quds, Fatah, Syrian-Palestinian Sai'qa, Al Q, etc. An Example: This Frontline Link puts a face on real people victimized by Syria and Saudi supported Al Q in Mesopotamia [Iraq]. [skim off any pbs romanticism as needed] Sec Def, Don Rumsfeld and Gen. Pace: Al Quds Division of Iran's Revolutionary Guards are infiltrating Iraq. Click Rumsfeld and Pace window at left. |
| Posted by: RD 2006-03-08 04:30 |
| #3 "No anchovies? I spell my name Danger!" |
| Posted by: .com 2006-03-08 01:54 |
| #2 So I was calling my sick Auntie. So what? |
| Posted by: Danking70 2006-03-08 01:53 |
| #1 "a classified report" Great. This reminds me of the Cold War. The Euro fascination on rendition demonstrates, rather pointedly, why they are well and truly fucked. They'll still be holding hearings 10 years from now. Under Shari'a. |
| Posted by: .com 2006-03-08 01:46 |