EFL
Iran’s secret service had contacts with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network ahead of the September 11 attacks on the United States, a German court heard on Thursday. Two members of Germany’s Federal Criminal Police told a court in Hamburg a former Iranian spy had informed them of the contacts and had also said he tried to warn Washington about the attacks in mid-2001, but that the CIA had not believed him. The police officers were speaking at the trial of a Moroccan accused of aiding the September 11 attacks... The Iranian said he had been in a department of the Iranian intelligence service that was "responsible for carrying out terrorist attacks globally," one of the officers said. "In 2001, a delegation with Osama bin Laden’s son was in Iran," the officer said, quoting the witness. The police officers told the court the witness had implicated Mzoudi and had said the Iranian secret service had worked with al Qaeda in 1996 in an attack in Saudi Arabia that killed several U.S. citizens.
He had also said it was an Iranian, Saif al Adel, the military head of al Qaeda, who planned the September 11 attacks.
| I didn't know Saif al-Adel was Iranian... |
Prosecutors say Mzoudi, an electrical engineering student based in Hamburg where three of the suicide pilots had lived, handled money for al Qaeda, helped cover for group members’ absence and trained at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan himself... He had told them he had left Iran in mid-2001 and warned the U.S. embassy in Azerbaijan of the impending attacks, informing officials that he had been employed by the CIA since 1992. The new witness also referred to what he said was an al Qaeda message urging that Mzoudi "be eliminated" lest he implicate other al Qaeda members. On the same day, fellow Moroccan Mounir El Motassadeq is also expected to hear whether an appeal against his conviction last February on similar charges has been successful. Motassadeq was sentenced to 15 years, but could win a retrial.
Big news? |