People still want to blame US and EU. but the evidence is all there to see.
DAWN.COM | Pakistan | On trail of Al Qaeda operative Said Bahaji
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Seized photos and passports recovered during military operations against Taliban militants are displayed on a table at Sherwangi Tor village in South Waziristan, during a trip organised by the army October 29, 2009. — Reuters**
ISLAMABAD: In November 2001, Pakistan’s prestigious Herald magazine, in an investigative story, had given a detailed account of how Said Bahaji along with two of his accomplices, had arrived and stayed in Karachi shortly before the dastardly 9/11 attack and how they had managed to slip out of the country, with at least two of them crossing into Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden had his base under the Taliban’s protection.
The detailed report in the magazine said that on arrival at the Karachi airport the three had identified themselves as Abdellah Hosayni, a Belgian citizen of Algerian dissent, Ammar Moula of Morrocan origin but travelling on a French passport, and German national Said Bahaji. In a normal hustle bustle at the airport, no one noticed that all three got into the same taxi. They then headed for a hotel which none of them had mentioned in the disembarkation card submitted with the Pakistani immigration authorities.
The three remained as anonymous as any other tourist until all hell broke loose in the US on September 11, 2001. The massive manhunt that followed soon spread to Hamburg and Paris, and with the help of Pakistani security agencies, a connection was established with these three mysterious characters who had arrived in Karachi exactly eight days prior to the attacks in New York and Washington.
No one knows where these men went after they left their hotel on September 5, 2001. But the paper trail followed by Pakistani sleuths at the time led to some startling disclosures about the trio’s earlier activities. Investigators believed they had unearthed the first direct link between Afghanistan — and possibly Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda movement — and the events of September 11.
It all began when authorities in Hamburg, acting on a tip from US investigators, raided a flat which had been frequently visited by one of the main suspected hijackers, Mohammed Atta. Sifting through the few items found in the flat, German investigators were able to determine that someone by the name of Said Bahaji, among others, had been in close contact with Mohammed Atta. Soon they also tracked down a shipment slip which revealed that a packet, ostensibly containing ‘religious literature’, was sent to Bahaji on March 30, 2001 from an address in Karachi.
The German authorities then passed on a list of telephone numbers to their Pakistani counterparts, primarily to confirm whether any calls were made to these numbers from this country. This really set the ball rolling. Within days, Pakistani security agencies were able to pinpoint the location in Karachi from where calls had been placed to one of the suspect numbers 0049-40-76757634. Additional spade work soon linked this telephony to the three mysterious men who arrived in the city on September 4, 2001. Three calls were made to the above number in Germany from a World Call phone booth in PECHS Block 6 in the Nursery area. The first call was made on August 31, another was placed on September 2, and the third on September 4. Investigators believe the first two calls were made by Said Bahaji’s local contact while the third was the work of either Bahaji or his associates after the trio landed in Karachi.
The Herald report said, working on assumption that the person making the calls must have been lodged at a nearby hotel, security operatives found their way to a Hotel Embassy on the main Sharae Faisal. It was here that the investigators hit the jackpot. Pakistani law requires foreign visitors to provide hotels with photocopies of their passports and these documents offered a wealth of information. The hotel record, meanwhile, showed that all three men had stayed in the same room (318) for one night, paid for it in cash and had not used the hotel telephone. A trip to Hotel Embassy by the Herald correspondent left little doubt that the staff had been through ceaseless questioning by more than one security agency.
According to information gleaned by investigators at that time from the hotel record, Said Bahaji was travelling on a genuine German passport (L8642163). Bahaji had Morrocon father and German mother and was married to a Turkish woman called Nezy. Bahaji was clean shaven in his passport photograph but was sporting a beard when he applied for a visa.
Abdellah Hosayni’s Belgian passport was also deemed genuine. However, subsequent investigations in France revealed that the third occupant of room 318 had been travelling on a fake passport. The real ‘Ammar Moula’ had by then been tracked down by French authorities.
Apart from getting information about the possible presence of Al Qaeda supporters in Karachi, investigators said that circumstantial evidence suggested that at least two of the men boarded a PIA flight for Quetta the following day. They did not book into any hotel in Quetta and might have slipped into Afghanistan the same day.
At that time there was a strong suspicion that at least one member of the trio, most likely Said Bahaji, left Pakistan on Sept 5 on a fake passport and under an assumed name. Pakcom internet service record of that period showed that an email in German was sent that day to Hamburg from the Quaid-i-Azam, International Airport’s departure lounge, probably by Said Bahaji to his mother. The airport record showed that two flights took off in this period and investigators were of the view that Bahaji most probably flew to Bahrain.
Although the trail went cold here, senior security officials at that time said their work had earned praise not just from the Germans but also the FBI and other organisations which have been working round the clock to corner the group responsible for the 9/11 attack.
The recovery of Said Bahaji’s passport during the current security operation in South Waziristan suggests that the Al Qaeda operative at some point must have returned to the area. It’s, however, not clear if he was still alive, and was travelling within or outside the country under an assumed name.