(Newsweek) Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenbal - German authorities in Hamburg have charged Mounir el-Motassadeq, 28, a Moroccan citizen, with assisting Muhammad Atta and other members of the "Hamburg cell" that organized the 9-11 attacks. A German police official testified that when authorities raided el-Motassadeq's apartment, they found the business card of Muhammad J. Fakihi, chief of Islamic affairs at the Saudi Embassy in Berlin. German police memos, first reported in the weekly Die Zeit, show German officials twice sought to question Saudi officials about Fakihi and whether el-Motassadeq visited him during a trip to Berlin two months after the terrorist attacks. But the Saudis never responded to written questions. The Saudis also demurred when asked to explain phone records showing repeated calls from el-Motassadeq's apartment to the Riyadh office of Sheikh Safar al-Hawali, a radical imam who helped set up a charity that U.S. officials alleged assisted a Qaeda cell that bombed the U.S. Embassy in Kenya.
2002-12-17 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive