Germans: WTC Targeted In 2000

German authorities have evidence the Hamburg al Qaeda cell that included three of the Sept. 11 suicide pilots was planning an attack on the World Trade Center as early as April or May 2000, the country's federal prosecutor said Thursday.

Announcing charges against Mounir El Motassadeq, the only person apprehended in Germany in connection with the attacks, federal Prosecutor Kay Nehm said the Hamburg hijackers were planning an attack on the United States in October 1999 and had chosen their target six months later.

Meanwhile, it's reported the global campaign to separate al Qaeda from its money has stalled, giving Osama bin Laden's network access to a fresh infusion of tens of millions of dollars.

The 43-page draft United Nations report, obtained by The Washington Post, said al Qaeda continues to draw on funds from bin Laden's personal inheritance, as well as from investments and money diverted or embezzled from charitable organizations.

Nehm said hijacker Marwan Al-Shehhi told a librarian there would be an attack on the World Trade Center.

"There will be thousands of dead. You will all think of me," Al-Shehhi told the librarian, according to Nehm.

CBS News Reporter Terry Martin says El Motassadeq, a 28-year-old Moroccan citizen arrested in Hamburg two months after the attacks, has been charged with 3,116 counts of accessory to murder and membership in a terrorist organization, which is outlawed in Germany.

The Hamburg cell included hijackers Mohamed Atta, Al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah. Authorities believe Atta and Al-Shehhi piloted the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center, while Jarrah piloted the plane that crashed in a Pennsylvania field.

In laying out the charges against El Motassadeq, Nehm gave a detailed account of how the Hamburg cell was formed and how the hijackers trained for their suicide mission, including attending camps in Afghanistan, flight schools in the United States, and meetings across Europe.

"All of the members of this cell shared the same religious convictions, an Islamic lifestyle, a feeling of being out of place in unfamiliar cultural surroundings that they weren't used to," Nehm said. "At the center of this stood the hatred of the world Jewry and the United States."

CBS News Reporter Peter Bild says authorities believe El Motassadeq managed bank accounts from which the hijackers paid for their resident permits and their flight training in Florida.

Others in support roles included Ramsi Binalshibh, Said Bahaji, and Zakariya Essabar, for whom German authorities have issued international arrest warrants.

"The accused was just as involved in preparing the attacks up until the end as the others who remained in Hamburg," Nehm said. "He was aware of the commitment to mount a terror attack against the targets chosen by the cell and he supported the planning and preparation for these attacks through multiple activities."

El Motassadeq was an electrical engineering student at Hamburg's Technical University from 1995 until his arrest — the same school where Atta, 33, and Al-Shehhi, 23, studied before leaving Germany last year for the United States.

El Motassadeq's name appeared on a U.S. list of 370 individuals and organizations with suspected links to the Sept. 11 attacks that Finnish financial authorities made public in October. When contacted then by The Associated Press, El Motassadeq angrily denied involvement.

"All of this is false, I have nothing to do with this thing," he said before hanging up.

In an October television interview, he admitted having power of attorney on Al-Shehhi's account but said he never made transfers. He said he knew Atta and some of the other hijackers, and visited the apartment where Atta, Al-Shehhi and others lived.

El Motassadeq said he had signed Atta's will, as did others at the al-Quds mosque in Hamburg, and attended Bahaji's 1999 wedding there in a ceremony that also included Atta, Al-Shehhi, Jarrah and Essabar.

Between 1996 and 1998, El Motassadeq worked as a cleaner at the Hamburg airport and had access to secure areas and aircraft. He passed a routine security check in 1996 before starting the job.

The U.N. Monitoring Group on al Qaeda document was quoted as saying the group's financial backers in North Africa, the Middle East and Asia manage at least $30 million in investments, with some estimates going as high as $300 million.

According to the newspaper, the draft said al Qaeda was also suspected of having bank accounts under the names of unidentified intermediaries in Dubai, Hong Kong, London, Malaysia and Vienna and that private donations to the group are believed to continue, "largely unabated."

"Al Qaeda is by all accounts 'fit and well' and poised to strike again at its leisure," the draft report says, according to the Post.

In the months immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States and other U.N. members froze more than $112 million in assets belonging to suspected al Qaeda members and supporters. But in the past eight months, only $10 million had been frozen, the paper said, citing the U.N. report.