Ramzi Yusef, architect of first World Trade Center bombing, carried plans for airliner suicide crashes
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Special to World Tribune.com
MIDDLE EAST NEWSLINE
Saturday, September 15, 2001
Ramzi Ahmed Yusef has long been behind bars. But he
might provide the key for federal investigators examining the suicide
attacks in New York and Washington.
U.S. officials said the destruction of the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon bear the imprint of Yusef, the 41-year-old Pakistani who was
convicted for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. Yusef was arrested
and found with plans for a coordinated series of hijackings and suicide
crashes of several U.S. commercial airliners.
The plan was never carried out, the officials said, because of the
limitations of the poorly-trained squad. Most of Yusef's plans, including
the 1993 World Trade Center attack, failed to succeed.
"What we saw was the completion of Yusef's plans," an official said.
"The resemblance is too strong to ignore."
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said each of the hijacked planes
were commandeered by three to six attackers. Several of the attackers were
pilots trained in the United States, Ashcroft said.
Federal investigation sources said one of the suspects is Mohammed Ata.
Ata was identified as a Palestinian wanted for a 1996 bus bombing in Israel.
One prospect is that Saudi billionaire fugitive Osama Bin Laden,
together with a Middle East government, revised Yusef's plans and launched
preparation as early as 1998. A senior German government official said the
intelligence services of Britain, France, Germany, and Israel have
fingered Bin Laden as the prime suspect.
"The way it was carried out, the choice of targets, the military
approach, the highly professional preparation and the presumably large
financial resources mean there are many points that indicate we should look
for the perpetrators among those around Osama Bin Laden," Frank-Walter
Steinmeier, the chief of staff of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, said.
The officials said Yusef, sentenced in 1998 to 240 years in prison, will
probably undergo additional interrogation. In addition, they said, the huge
pile of documents found in his possession
as well as intercepts of his conversations will be reviewed.
One U.S. counterterrorism source acknowledged that the first FBI
investigation of Yusef was incomplete and much of the material from the
first World Trade Center bombing was either ignored or did not undergo
proper analysis. The source said even the translation of the Yusef material
was an extremely slow process.
Yusef was regarded by U.S. counterterrorism officials as a key
contractor for Islamic terrorist attacks. They said he worked for such
governments as Iran, Iraq and Pakistan.
Born in Pakistan Abdul Karim Rind, Yusef grew up in Kuwait and began to
work with the Palestinian Hamas movement. Yusef was said to have built a
network that included Islamic militants in the United States, Europe and the
Philippines.
Initial support came from Pakistani intelligence and Saudi businessmen
in Karachi. But much of the financing was said to have stemmed from Saudi
and Arab Gulf nationals in such countries as Bahrain, Oman and the United
Arab Emirates.
Later, Yusef obtained independent financing through arms trafficking and
selling his services to Middle East governments and Islamic movements. Yusef
based many of his agents along the Iranian-Afghan border.
The Bush administration has pledged to pursue the investigation of the
kamikaze bombings whatever the cost. U.S. officials said Pakistani leaders
have been urged to cooperate in the investigation.
"We're facing a different enemy than we've every faced," U.S. President
George Bush said. "This is an enemy that thinks its harbors are safe. But
its harbors won't be safe forever."
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