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The meeting was supposed to be a kind of commemoration for Sept. 11, 2001, nine years after the terror attacks on the US. Except it wasn't taking place in Hamburg, where several of the 9/11 hijackers had lived for a time, but in the Pakistani town of Mir Ali.
The town, controlled by al-Qaida and Pashtun tribes, is a hotbed of jihadists. Investigators believe that three men from Germany lived directly next to each other in Mir Ali: Ahmad Sidiqi, 36, Shahab Dashti, 27 and Naamen Meziche, 40. They had left Hamburg in March 2009 with the aim of waging jihad.
According to Sidiqi, there was a surprise guest at the meeting, another man from Hamburg who had disappeared from Germany nine years earlier. He was Said Bahaji, 35, one of the last backers of the 9/11 attacks still at large. He had shared an apartment with some of the 9/11 hijackers and, on Sept. 3, 2001, had fled to Karachi. After that he was believed to have found safe haven in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. |