Germans Arrest Alleged 9/11 Helper

A Moroccan man was arrested Thursday on suspicion that he provided logistical support to the Hamburg cell of Sept. 11 plotters believed to have been led by suicide pilot Mohamed Atta, German federal prosecutors said.

Abdelghani Mzoudi, 29, had close contacts over several years with the members of the cell, which also included two of the other Sept. 11 pilots — Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah — and attended training camps in Afghanistan in the summer of 2000, prosecutors said in a statement. Mzoudi was in arrested in a Hamburg suburb on Thursday.

"He was aware of the aim of the group to commit terrorist attacks and supported it logistically," the statement said.

Mzoudi, only the second person arrested in Germany in the attacks, is accused of supporting a terrorist organization. Prosecutors said that his training in Afghanistan overlapped with fellow Moroccans and suspected Hamburg cell logisticians Mounir el Motassadeq, who faces trial later this month, and Zakariya Essabar, who is at large.

Mzoudi had been under investigation for nearly a year and was questioned in July when Hamburg police raided an Islamic bookstore that investigators believed was a meeting place for a fundamentalist group plotting new attacks.

Police at the time questioned eight men but found insufficient evidence to make any arrests. However, they remained suspicious, saying Mzoudi remained under investigation in connection with the Hamburg cell.

Federal prosecutors said they arrested him following a "complex investigation" that included a witness statement obtained this summer confirming his Afghanistan stay.

After arresting him at an undisclosed location, German federal police took Mzoudi to his own apartment on a quiet street in the Hamburg suburb of Harburg. Mzoudi, in jeans and sneakers, zipped the collar of his jacket over his face as officers led him in and out of the building and did not speak with reporters.

His landlady, who would not give her name, said Mzoudi had lived with roommate Abderrazek Labied in a first floor apartment for about four years.

An elderly man who lives on the top floor of the four-story building said while Labied was often friendly when they passed in the hallway, Mzoudi kept to himself. "He was odd," said the man, who declined to give his name.

Mzoudi once shared a Hamburg apartment with Essabar and Ramzi Binalshibh, both suspected members of the cell. Binalshibh, a Yemeni who German prosecutors say is the key contact person with the al Qaeda network, is now in U.S. custody while Essabar disappeared around the time of the Sept. 11 attacks and is wanted by German authorities on an international arrest warrant.

Atta also lived in the apartment at one time, but had moved out by the time Mzoudi moved in on Sept. 1, 1999, authorities have said.

Mzoudi transferred money to Essabar to finance his planned flight training in the United States at the end of 2000 or beginning of 2001, prosecutors said Thursday.

They also said he helped "cover up al-Shehhi's whereabouts," finding him a room in student housing where he was able to pass his the last weeks in Germany "unnoticed" before departing at the end of May 2000 for flight school in the United States.

The three Hamburg suicide pilots — al-Shehhi, Jarrah and Atta - all began flight training in Florida around the same time, in mid-2000.

Hamburg police have said that a video of suspected cell member Said Bahaji's wedding, cited previously by authorities, showed both Mzoudi and Atta, indicating the men knew one another. Bahaji disappeared days before the attacks and German authorities have issued a warrant for his arrest.

Mzoudi was an electrical engineering student at Hamburg's Technical University, where other cell members studied, from 1995-1997. He has been enrolled in a similar program at Hamburg's School for Applied Sciences since 1998.

His name was one of seven on an FBI list given to Hamburg Technical University officials two days after the Sept. 11 attacks by Hamburg police, which also included Atta, al-Shehhi, Bahaji and el Motassadeq.

El Motassadeq has been indicted on charges of being an accessory to murder in the Sept. 11 attacks and belonging to a terror organization.

By Geir Moulson