[A-List] Europe/US rivalry: war on terrorism

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

Germany asks US to hand over September 11 suspect
IAN BRUCE
The Herald, 14 June 2002

THE German government has asked the United States to hand over a key
suspect known to have been involved with the al Qaeda cell in Hamburg
which helped organise the September 11 bombings amid claims that he has
been kidnapped by American agents.

Mohammed Heidar Zammar, a Syrian-born immigrant with German nationality,
was under investigation by local police and the German intelligence
services when he vanished during a trip to Morocco last October.

His family have since filed a missing person report. US sources said
yesterday he was not at the terrorist detention centre in Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, nor in the custody of the Moroccan authorities, but declined
to say if he is being held elsewhere.

Zammar is an associate of Mohammed Atta, a September 11 hijacker, and
Mahmoun Darkazanli, who is under investigation for having power of
attorney over an al Qaeda bank account in Hamburg.

He flew from the north German city on October 27 on a valid one-year
passport issued two days earlier for a six-week trip to North Africa.

The Moroccan authorities initially told Berlin's foreign ministry that
he had been arrested. They then said he had arrived from Mauritania and
left for an undisclosed destination. The story subsequently changed to
Mr Zammar being arrested at a police checkpoint and expelled to Spain.

More recently, the Moroccans said he had been sent to another country,
but did not to say which.

Sources in the BND, the German intelligence agency, suspect that he is
being held incognito and is being questioned at a facility controlled by
the US or one of its allies because of his links with all three of the
hijackers known to have operated out of Hamburg.

Some captured terrorists have been interrogated by the Egyptians or
Jordanians under American supervision, a move condemned because of these
countries' traditional methods of extracting information by removing
fingers or toenails.

It is believed Zammar has been kidnapped because the inquiry into his
involvement with the September 11 plot is moving too slowly as far as
the US is concerned under the stringent rules of evidence required by
the German legal system.

A German foreign ministry spokesman said: "There is no clear information
from the Americans. They tell us he is neither in Guantanamo nor
Morocco. They won't say where he is and we don't know.

"His wife and six children are concerned about his welfare and, as a
German citizen, even one under investigation for possible terrorist
offences, he is entitled to consular help and advice."

The BND has also been given only limited intelligence on Khalid Shaikh
Mohammed, the man the CIA says was al Qaeda's link between Afghanistan
and the Hamburg cell and allegedly another key figure in the planning of
the suicide attacks on New York and the Pentagon.