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"He was never properly investigated by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation despite repeated warnings from French intelligence that he was
a member of al-Qa'ida...."
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The '20th hijacker' had been a suspect for years - but he was ignored by
intelligence agencies
By Ian Burrell, Andrew Gumbel and Kim Sengupta
11 December 2001
British and American intelligence agents trying to destroy the al-Qa'ida
network worldwide have been forced to reassess the role of a London-based
French Islamic radical who, according to the latest evidence, could have led
them straight to the heart of the suicide hijacking conspiracy.
The man in question, Zacarias Moussaoui, was arrested in Minnesota on an
immigration violation nearly three weeks before the attacks on America
after raising suspicions at a local flying school. Previously, he lived in
south London on and off for nine years, where he was a follower of the
radical Islamic cleric Abu Qatada, recently named as the head of Osama bin
Laden's network in Europe.
Mr Moussaoui's case has been a source of official embarrassment from the
start. After slipping through the hands of British intelligence, he was
never properly investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation despite
repeated warnings from French intelligence that he was a member of
al-Qa'ida.
It has now emerged that Mr Moussaoui made numerous telephone calls to known
associates of the 11 September hijack gang who were then living in Hamburg
and received $15,000 (£10,500) in bank transfers from them shortly before
setting off to Minnesota for flight simulation training.
That would suggest that he was himself earmarked to be one of the hijackers.
French investigators believe he was asked to replace Ramsi Bin Al-Shibh, a
Yemeni citizen who lived with Mohamed Atta and some of the other hijackers
in Hamburg but failed on three occasions to obtain a US visa.
The FBI is convinced there was supposed to have been five hijackers on each
of the four planes seized and crashed on 11 September. On one of them,
United Airlines Flight 93 from Newark to San Francisco, there were just four
leading investigators to presume the existence of a "20th man" who never
made it.
The FBI says Mr Bin Al-Shibh, now on the run, was that 20th man. But the
French information suggests that Mr Moussaoui was Mr Bin Al-Shibh's
understudy.
Mr Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan origin, raised suspicions at the
Pan Am International flight school in Eagan, Minnesota, because he wanted to
learn how to fly a passenger jet at cruising altitude, but not how to take
off or land. He was jailed for visa irregularities but not considered worthy
of investigation under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act despite the
French warnings.
FBI agents decided they did not have enough evidence to argue before a judge
that he posed an imminent threat. Had agents searched his computer drive, as
they later did, they would have found copious information on crop-dusting
planes a possible method for disseminating biological or chemical agents.
Had they followed up on his phone records, they would have found evidence of
conversations with Mr Bin Al-Shibh and also with Mr Atta's landlord at the
Hamburg flat.
That information, along with the money transfers, might have been enough to
expose the Hamburg cell, which investigators believe was the key planning
unit for 11 September. The $15,000 appears to part of a war chest of more
than $200,000 wired to the hijacking team in the weeks leading up to the
attack, most of it sent from an account in the United Arab Emirates,
according to US investigators.
The missed opportunities go back further, to the time Mr Moussaoui spent in
Britain, starting in 1992. As early as 1994, a French investigating
magistrate, Roger Leloire, was in London digging up leads on the
assassination of three French consular officials in Algeria and trying to
find a match for an individual identified only as "Zacarias". Mr Moussaoui
was doing a masters degree in business at South Bank University at the time.
In 1999, French intelligence learned that Mr Moussaoui had gone to
Afghanistan and was suspected of having attended one of Mr bin Laden's
training camps. The French warned their British counterparts, who appear to
have done nothing with the information. A senior intelligence source denied
last night that Britain's spy agencies were ever told by France that Mr
Moussaoui was a suspect in a specific case. He said Mr Moussaoui's name had
been mentioned in routine information traffic between Paris and London, but
no specific requests had ever been made by the French.
The Spanish authorities have also released details of phone conversations
between the alleged head of an al-Qa'ida cell in Madrid, Imad Eddin Barakat
Yarkas, and an interlocutor in London identified only as "Shakur".
Since 11 September, US officials have sought to minimise Mr Moussaoui's
role. They are holding him as a material witness, but have yet to file
charges in part because he has refused to co-operate with their
investigation. Some officials have also told US newspapers they do not
believe he played more than a marginal part in the 11 September plot.
The French, meanwhile, have leaked their own information to the media to
play up the fact that they were on to Mr Moussaoui but that their warnings
were ignored. French intelligence informed the Americans about his al-Qa'ida
links on 1 September, and again in a bilateral meeting of intelligence
agents in Paris on 5-6 September. According to an account of that meeting in
Le Monde, US participants said Mr Moussaoui's case was in the hands of the
immigration authorities and was not a matter for the FBI.
MI5 has recently held a series of meetings with officials from South Bank
University in south London, discussing Mr Moussaoui, who studied there for
two years. A spokesman for South Bank University said: "There has been a
series of discussions which have gone on relating to Mr Moussaoui concerning
the security services. There have been three subsequent meetings relating to
a series of matters relating to 11 September, with which we have been
co-operating with the authorities."
The French intelligence service, DST, took an increasing interest in the
Londoner and during 1999 he was observed making trips to Pakistan and
Afghanistan. French investigators claim MI5 was alerted and asked for Mr
Moussaoui to be placed under surveillance. The request appears to have been
ignored.
After arriving in Britain in 1992, he become attracted to events at the
Fourth Feathers Centre, where an Islamic cleric, Abu Qatada addressed an
eager audience of young radicals. Others attending the meetings included
Djamel Beghal, a 36-year-old Algerian who moved to London from France in
1997 and was arrested in Dubai in July this year for allegedly being part of
a plot to blow up the American embassy in Paris.
Mr Moussaoui lived on the top floor of a housing association block in
Streatham and later in a ground-floor flat in Brixton, with a north African
girlfriend who has been sought by police since 11 September.
Neighbours remember Mr Moussaoui as speaking good English and being
"well-dressed and intelligent".
A similar favourable impression was gained by Colin Knapp, Mr Moussaoui's
course director at South Bank, from where he graduated in 1995. Mr Knapp
said Mr Moussaoui did not express political views and chose to wear Western
clothing.
Mr Moussaoui's family had noticed something amiss. His brother, Abd-Samad
Moussaoui, said: "He began to change when he went to Britain. It was there
that he got drawn into an extremist group."
In America Mr Moussaoui behaved suspiciously from the start. He would not
divulge his real name, but went by the pseudonym Zuluman Tango Tango. He did
not obtain his licence and abandoned his course in May, Then, in August,
things changed after telephone conversations between Mr Moussaoui and the
Hamburg apartment where Atta lived with other associates linked to the 11
September atrocities.
After his arrest he was found with a French passport, with an outdated
American visa obtained in Islamabad, and a fake Algerian passport. Nothing
was done until after the attacks, when Mr Moussaoui was seen cheering as he
watched television pictures of the destruction from his secure unit. The
Minneapolis FBI then checked his computer and found information on
crop-spraying from the air, prompting fears that chemical and biological
attacks were being prepared. Mr Al-Attas was rearrested and pumped for more
information. Neither he nor Mr Moussaoui seems to have been willing to talk.
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