German investigators say they have found evidence that Mohamed Atta, the suspected leader of the September 11 attacks, and two of his accomplices trained at al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan in 1999 and 2000, The New York Times reported on Saturday.
The paper said there have been previous reports that Atta and other conspirators trained in Afghanistan, and US Federal Bureau of Investigation officials have said that all 19 hijackers are believed to have spent time there.
But Klaus Ulrich Kersten, director of Germany’s federal
anti-crime agency, the BKA, provided the first official
confirmation that the three pilots had been in Afghanistan and the first dates of the training, according to the report.
Kersten said in an interview that Atta was in Afghanistan from late 1999 until early 2000, The Times reported.
He said four other Arabs from Hamburg attended camps there about the same time.
Two of them, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad al-Jarrah, also allegedly flew hijacked planes on September 11. The two others, Said Bahaji and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, disappeared shortly before the attacks and have been charged in Germany as accomplices.
”According to our knowledge, Atta travelled to Afghanistan for some months in 1999 until early 2000,” Kersten is quoted by The Times as saying. ”Whether he had been there before, we do not know.
We know that Jarrah, Shehhi, bin al-Shibh and Bahaji were also in Afghanistan in the same time period, but we do not know if they were together.”
Atta, Shehhi and Jarrah came to the United States in June 2000 and enrolled in flight schools in Florida.
Atta and Shehhi are both suspected of having been the pilots of the two jets that slammed into the World Trade Center towers, while Jarrah is alleged of having been at the controls of the plane that went down in the Pennsylvania countryside. – Sapa-AFP