RUTHFULLY YOURS

ADRIAN MORGAN: HAMBURG’S 9/11 MOSQUE….A WARNING FOR AMERICA?

Posted By Ruth King on August 11th, 2010

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.7014/pub_detail.asp

Hamburg’s 9/11 Mosque: A Warning for America?
August 11, 2010 – Adrian Morgan

Mosque with a Preacher of Hate

News comes from Hamburg, Germany that the mosque that was used by some of the 9/11 plotters has been closed. The mosque in recent times has called itself the “Taiba Masjid” (the beautiful mosque) but there was nothing beautiful about the mosque, either aesthetically or in terms of what was preached there.

The building is grubby and dilapidated, situated in a red light district of Hamburg. Der Spiegel claimed that on the morning of Monday this week, around 6 am, the building was raided along with the Arab-German Cultural Society, connected closely to the mosque that lay adjacent to it. After removing computer equipment, armed police guarded the entrance to the mosque after it was closed down.

Lothar Bergmann is head of the Hamburg city anti-terror unit. Mr. Bergmann maintains that one of the mosque’s current prayer leaders, Mamoun Darkazanli, is a preacher of hate. This Syrian-German man is said to have been involved in recruiting for jihad causes. Since 9/11, Darkazanli has been on a “terror watch-list,” but he has not been prosecuted. Darkazanli lives on welfare benefits provided by the German state.

In January this year, the Domestic Affairs Committee of the German Bundestag (parliament) announced that it would investigate claims that the CIA had plotted to assassinate Darkazanli. The claims originally had been made by the co-founder of Blackwater, Erik Prince, who said that Darkazanli was an al-Qaeda financier. In the January 7, 2010 edition of Bild newspaper, Christopher Ahlhaus, Hamburg interior senator, said: “I expect that the federal government will approach the United States and demand a complete elucidation of the facts.” Darkazanli claimed that he was “speechless” at the allegations of a CIA plot.

A New York Times article from June 20, 2002 stated that:

Mr. Darkazanli, 44, has been under suspicion since at least 1998, and the authorities say he has had important business relationships with leading members of Al Qaeda dating from 1995 as well as close knowledge of the Hamburg-based hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks.

His company, the Darkazanli Import-Export Company, was the first private business to have assets frozen by President Bush on suspicion of links to the attacks, and he had contacts with Qaeda cells in Spain and elsewhere, German officials say.

Darkazali stated then that:

”Of course I know that I am being investigated, but, thank God, by German authorities. ”Here the law is still taken seriously, at least I hope so.”

What had drawn suspicion onto Darkazanli in 1998 had been the revelation that he had power of attorney over the German bank of Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, a man who was suspected to be Al-Qaeda’s main financier. Darkazanli claimed he had access to this account as he had planned to set up a TV company in Sudan, but this never came into existence. According to Hamburg authorities, Darazanli had gone to Kosovo in late 2000 on an Al Qaeda mission.

In October 2004, Darkazanli had been arrested with a view to extraditing him to Spain to be investigated in connection with a 2003 indictment that claimed he was linked toImad Eddin Barakat Yarkas (aka Abu Dahdah) a man who in September 2005 was convicted on charges related to cooperating with Al Qaeda. At Spain’s High Court in Madrid, Yarkas was given 12 years for heading a terrorist group, with 15 years added for “conspiracy to commit murder”. In February 2006, Syrian-born Yarkas had his sentence reduced. After an appeal by Yarkas, prosecutors agreed that that it was not proven beyond doubt that he had taken part in organizing the 9/11 attacks against New York and Washington targets. The charge that Yarkas headed a terrorist organization remained, and the 12 year jail sentence for this conviction remained.

Mohamed Atta and the Hamburg Cell

In October 1999, a wedding took place at the mosque. At that time the mosque was called the Al-Qods mosque. It retained this title until about a year ago. The man who was being married was Said Bahaji. A video was taken of the wedding, and celebrating among the guests were Mamoun Darkazanli, and two people who were directly involved in the 9/11 attacks. These were Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehi. These and other individuals would become known as the “Hamburg Cell”.

When it was frequented by Mohamed Atta (who was at the controls of the first plane to crash into the Twin Towers on 9/11), the Al-Qods Mosque had student visitors among its number. The main Hamburg Cell members were students. Thirty-three-year old Mohamed Atta was an architect, and was studying at Hamburg’s Technical University where he was said to be a “model student.” Atta flew American Airlines Flight 11 into the north tower of the WTC at 8:46 am on 9/11. He was said to have been the main Hamburg Cell ringleader and planner of the 9/11 attacks.

The other two individuals who were on passenger planes turned into weapons on 9/11 were Ziad Jarrah and Marwan al-Shehi. Twenty-three-year old Al-Shehi studied the German language at the University of Bonn, under the name “Marwan Lekrab.” Shehi was one of the hijackers of United Airlines Flight 175, flown into the south tower of the WTC at 9:03 am.

Ziad Jarrah was a student at the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg. At this university, he was studying aeronautical engineering. He was on board United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, apparently after passengers attempted to regain control of the hijacked aircraft. Jarrah was – it is believed – the pilot of the plane at the time of the crash.

There were other members of the “Hamburg Cell”, such as Mounir al-Motassadek. Moroccan-born Motassadek had undergone several trials. On Feb. 20, 2003, a Hamburg court had convicted him of providing material support to the 9/11 attackers, and of being an accessory to the murder of those who died as a result of the 9/11 attacks. He had been given a 15-year jail term, the maximum sentence that German law allowed. Then on appeal to the German Supreme Court, that conviction was rejected in 2004 and he was freed.

In 2004 he returned to court and after a year-long trial, he was given a 7-year jail term in 2005 for being a member of a terrorist group. In February 2006, Germany’s Constitutional Court ordered that Motassadek should be released while he launched an appeal against this sentence. In November 2006, that appeal found that Mounir al-Motassadek had been guilty of being an accessory to more than 3,000 murders. On Monday January 8, 2007, he was finally sentenced to 15 years in jail.

There were other individuals connected with the Hamburg Cell. Yemeni-born Ramzi bin al-Shibh had shared an apartment with Mohamed Atta in Hamburg, but he had been denied a visa to enter the United States. In 2000, his application for a visa had been rejected four times, because the authorities thought he would never leave, once let in. Al-Shibh allegedly made money transfers to individuals who would carry out the 9/11 attacks. Al-Shibh was also said to have wired money to Zacarias Moussaoui, who had been scheduled to be a 9/11 pilot, had he not been arrested for an immigration violation in Minnesota on August 16, 2001.

Ramzi bin al-Shibh was arrested in Karachi, Sindh province, Pakistan, in September 2002. He had allegedly boasted that he had received a phone call on August 29, 2001, in which the date for the attacks upon America would be announced. He said:

“He [Atta] said, “A friend of mine gave me a puzzle and I want you to help me out.” I said to him, “Is this the time for puzzles, Mohammed?” He said, “Yes, I know, but no one else but you could help me.” He said, “Two sticks, a dash and cake with a stick down. What is it?” I said, “Did you wake me up just to tell me this?” As it turns out, two sticks is the number 11. A dash is a dash. And cake with a stick down is the number nine. And that was September 11.”

Ramzi bin al-Shibh is now in Guantanamo.

Zakariya Essabar, like Ramzi bin al-Shibh, had allegedly been scheduled to become a hijacker for 9/11 but had been denied an entry visa to the United States. A U.S. intelligence report that was provided to a German court maintained that at the end of August, he had travelled to Pakistan to carry the simple message “eleven nine”. This was the date that had been set for the attacks (nine eleven).

Moroccan-born Essabar had moved to Germany in 1997 and in 1998 he had located to Hamburg, where he studied medical technology. It was in Hamburg that he met Ramzi bin al-Shibh.

Another Moroccan-born individual,Abdelghani Mzoudiwas a member of the Hamburg Cell. He had been convicted in February 2003 at the same time as Mounir al-Motassadek. In 1999 he was living in Mohamed Atta’s apartment. He had been arrested in Germany at the same time as Motassadek, and had stood trial. The German court wanted the U.S. to release Ramzi bin al-Shibh into their custody to give evidence against Mzoudi, but the American authorities did not take that risk. As a result Mzoudi was released, and in February 2004, he was acquitted. In June 2005, that acquittal was upheld. Eventually, with insufficient evidence to present in a further trial, Mzoudi was deported to Morocco, where he is said to remain.

A “minor” figure of the cell was Tunisian-born Hedi Ben Youseff Boudhiba aka “Fathi”, who entered Britain in July 2002 on a forged Portugese passport. This passport was found when police were later investigating a plot led by Kamel Bourgass (who had close ties to the Finsbury Park Mosque and hook-handed Abu Hamza al-Masri). In February 2006, permission was given to extradite Boudhiba to Spain where he was wanted for providing money to Al Qaeda. Boudhiba – who has a mental illness – had formerly lived in Bilbao Spain, and on September 3, 2001, he had travelled from Hamburg to Istanbul Turkey with Ahmed Taleb, another suspected Hamburg Cell member. Boudhiba was extradited to Spain in April 2006 and was still in a Spanish jail in 2008.

There was one man who is regarded as the main recruiter of the Hamburg Cell members, Mohammed Haydar Zammar. This man was born in Syria in 1961 and he had fought against the Soviets in the 1980s. He had fought in Bosnia in 1995, where he had been based in Zenica. He was active at the Al-Qods mosque, where he was closely linked to Mamoun Darkazanli . Zammar is thought to have been a key figure in bringing together the men who would plot and meet at Mohamed Atta’s apartment. After the 9/11 attacks, he fled to Morocco, where he was arrested. He was deported to Syria where he apparently remains in custody. Between 1991 and 2000, Zammar had been involved with a Syrian-Spanish radical called Abu Mosab Souri, or Mostafa Abdel Kader Miriam.

Fizazi, the Imam Who Wanted Jews’ Throats Slit

The Al-Qods (Al-Quds) mosque had opened in 1993. In the years leading up to 9/11, the imam of the mosque was a man called Mohamed Fizazi, or Mohammed al-Fizazi. In a videotaped sermon, made before 9/11, Fizazi had declared: “The Jews and crusaders must have their throats slit.” Fizazi had become the imam of the mosque in 1999.

Fizazi was born in Morocco and had gone to Saudi Arabia in 1991 to become trained in Islam. He returned to Morocco conversant with the intolerant Saudi brand of Islam known as Wahhabism. He founded a group called Salafiya Jihadia. In August 2003, Fizazi was sentenced to jail in Morocco for 30 years. He had close links to the 12 suicide attackers who struck at Casablanca on May 16, 2003, killing the assailants and 33 others.

According to Western Resistance, from December 19, 2006:

The group Salafia Jihadia or Salafia Yihadia, which is also known as At-Takfir wal-Hijrah, was formed in the 1990s and is based in Morocco. One of its leaders, Ilamado Yusef Fikri, was sentenced to death on July 12, 2003. 21 members of the group were sentenced to terms ranging from 12 months to life imprisonment. Eight people got life sentences, seven received 20 year terms, five had 10 year jail terms, and one individual was sentenced to a year’s jail.

These individuals had not been accused of the bombings at Casablanca, which had taken place on May 16, 2003. Ilamado Yusef Fikri had written letters to the local newspapers, claiming to have killed people for being “enemies of Allah”. One of those whom Fikri had killed was his own uncle, whom he suspected of being a homosexual.

Though the associates of Fikri were not themselves charged with the Casablancca bombings, the attacks of May 16 2003 killed 45 people, and led to a crackdown on other members of Salafia Jihadia.

As Fikri’s cell was charged, ten members of Salafia Jihadia (including Fikri himself, Mohamed Damir, Saleh Zarli, Abderrazak Faouzi, Kamal Hanuichi, Bouchaib Guermach, Lakbir Kutubi, Buchaib Mghader, Omar Maaruf and Laarbi Daqiq) were sentenced to death for involvement in the plot to carry out the Casablanca bombings.

According to MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base, the goals of Salafia Jihadia are to overthrow “impious” Arab governments and to use violence to force the West to cease supporting such regimes. Salafia Jihadia is linked to GICM (Groupe Islamique Combattant Marocain) which aims to establish an Islamist state in Morocco. GICM had its assets frozen by the US Treasury on November 22, 2002.

It has been argued that Salafia Jihadia, rather than being a coherent entity is in fact a grouping of smaller autonomous cells. In late 2004, the Moroccan Justice Ministry stated that Salafia Jihadia had 699 activists. Some of those who took part in the Casablanca suicide bombings, such as Abdelaziz Beyaich, are known to have been Salafia Jihadia activists. The 14 attackers had come from a bidonville of Casablanca, called Sidi Moumen. In the wake of the Casablanca, many youths from the run-down suburbs of Moroccan cities joined up to Salafia Jihadia.

On the second anniversary of 9/11, a leading Jewish Moroccan, Albert Ribido, was killed by Salafia Jihadia. The Casablanca bombings had attacked three Jewish targets, including a Jewish cemetery and a Jewish-owned restaurant.

The “spiritual leader” of Salafia Jihadia, Mohamed Fizazi is currently serving a 30-year jail term, imposed on him in August 2003. Originally from Tangier, but [he] moved to Sidi Moumen, Casablanca. He claimed Osama bin Laden to be a “companion of the prophet”, and said that “Christians and Jews should have their throats slit.”

He preached at the Al-Qods mosque in Hamburg, Germany, where his audience included members of the “Hamburg Cell” which spawned the 9/11 attacks. Mohamed Atta attended this mosque. Fizazi left Germany before the attacks on the United States.

Fizazi is said to have had communications with Jamal Zougam, Mohamed Chaoui, and Abelaziz Benyaich from northern Morocco, three of the individuals who are charged with involvement in the Madrid train bombings of March 11, 2004.

Fizazi maintains his innocence. In July last year, he wrote a letter to his daughter in which he declared that he had changed his opinions about certain things. Extracts from that letter can be read here, but I will only quote this:

As for those in the streets of Hamburg who think about jihad in the path of God, they should think about life, because this is the true jihad in the path of God. The mere fact that there are 46 prayer rooms in Hamburg is in and of itself evidence of the tolerance showed by the German state towards Muslims. There is no comparably large number of churches in a city in any Islamic country. I know quite a bit about the fragmentations between the founders of those mosques and even within particular mosque communities. It has gone so far that this fragmentation has become one of the outstanding characteristics of the Muslims. This sorrowful state weakens the Muslim’s power. (…) Even when they want to engage in dialogue with the German state over certain issues, they confuse the state with all these conflicts.

It is unknown if the intentions mentioned in Fizazi’s letter are sincere or not, or a ploy to gain a reduction in his jail term. He makes plain his belief that he has been unjustly imprisoned. The Salafia Jihadia was not only full of hate – it spawned murders. For this, Fizazi should remain in jail.

Fizazi’s divisive and hate-filled sermons remain on the internet. It is certain that in the Al-Qods mosque, he found an environment to preach hate and had an influence upon the young men who would carry out the attacks of 9/11.

Lessons for New York

When the authorities turn a blind eye to provocations by mosques, all manner of problems arise. The members of the Al-Qods mosque who went on to become suicide attackers had been active in the mosque for at least two years before 9/11, in close association with Fizazi. The mosque in Hamburg, even under a new name, continued to be full of hate.

In London, Finsbury Park Mosque gained notoriety when it was taken over around 1997 by Abu Hamaza al-Masri, the hook handed preacher who had lost his arms and one eye when he had been in an Al Qaeda training camp, at Darunta near Jalalabad in Afghanistan. He had been mixing explosives and his recipe had blown up. The preacher later claimed that he had lost his arms and eye while clearing mines in Bosnia. Hamza’s mosque encouraged terrorism. He himself was recorded on a satellite phone talking with Yemeni terrorists who had kidnapped 16 tourists. Four of those tourists died when an operation to rescue them went wrong. Even this apparent direct involvement did not lead to a prosecution, as the recording had been made without a court order, and could not be used in court. Hamza was briefly arrested, and a book entitled “The Encyclopedia of Afghani Jihad” was taken away, examined, but returned to him.

Abu Hamza was eventually jailed on February 7, 2006 for soliciting murder and other offenses. It was only at the close of his trial that certain details were revealed. The Finsbury Park Mosque had been raided in 2003. Inside the mosque were found:

..blank firing pistols which could easily have been converted to fire live rounds, a stun gun, knives, CS gas and chemical and nuclear warfare protection suits. Dozens of forged documents, driving licences and passports had been hidden behind ceiling tiles. In the basement was a dormitory for followers to sleep overnight.

Kamel Bourgass, mentioned above as an associate of Hedi Ben Youseff Boudhiba aka “Fathi” had slept in the mosque, and had used the mosque photocopier to reproduce recipes for ricin and botulinum toxins, substances that he hoped to use in a terror attack.

The mosque was transferred to new ownership with the assistance of the Metropolitan Police, and the group went into the care of the Muslim Association of Britain. One of the five trustees of the new mosque administration was a man called Mohammed Sawalha. Sawalha has recently been involved in the flotilla that went with IHH to Gaza and was intercepted on May 31, 2010. Sawalha had been in Britain for some time, but he had previously been a Hamas fundraiser, known on the West Bank by a code name – Abu Abadah. The Muslim Association of Britain is widely viewed as a front group for the Muslim Brotherhood. It was founded in 1996 by Kamel el-Helbawy, a senior figure in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

When Hamza had been head of the mosque, it was frequented by people who would go on to be convicted of terrorist offenses, such as three of the 7/7 bombers, the shoe-bomber Richard Reid, Zacarias Moussaoui (mentioned above in connection with the Hamburg cell and his planned role as a terror pilot), Nizar Trabelsi, who attempted to blow up a suicide truck at a NATO base in Belgium, James Ujamaa from Seattle, and two Algerians called Osman Larussi and Yacine Benalia who would later go on to occupy the school in Beslan where 300 people, half of them children, would die in 2004.

The new mosque leadership is less blatant in its support for Islamist terror, but it is Islamist nonetheless.

Mainstream Mosques Can Still Hold the Same Views as Al Qaeda

The lessons that were not learned in Europe seem finally to be sinking in. The Al-Qods or Taiba Masjid mosque in Hamburg has been closed because it has become a center of hate and dissension, actively undermining democracy. It was common in Finsbury Park mosque and other radical European mosques such as the Al-Qods to have preachers who complained about democracy and urged their followers to have contempt for the society. The irony was that these extremist preachers often lived on welfare benefits provided by the same democratic societies they taught their followers to hate.

The Al-Qods mosque in Hamburg still had prayer leaders such as Mamoun Darkazanli preaching and living off benefits, even though he was associated with the leadership of the mosque when the Hamburg Cell were attending.

While America is currently witnessing a growth of mosque construction, and the administration is even funding a shady character such as Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, it seems that the USA is going down the same route that was taken in Europe.

Rauf may not be a supporter of terror, but his refusal to sign the Freedom Pledge shows that he is not against Sharia law. In a democracy, there should only be one form of law – democratic law. When an administration sponsors such an individual, or sends a representative of CAIR to Mali, it is making all the same mistakes that were made in Europe.

In Britain, an organization called Quilliam, founded by former Islamists, has just released a report, that states that even mainstream Islamic organizations in Britain still share the same ideology as Ala Qaeda.

A report by the Times from September 7, 2007 claimed that in Britain 600 out of the country’s mosques have Deobandi leadership. The Deobandi gave rise to the Taliban – almost all of the leadership of the Taliban who took over Afghanistan in 1997 were trained in the Haqqania madrassa in Pakistan. There, Sami ul-Haq had taught them according to the principles of Deobandism.

There is nothing to be gained by allowing mosques to be set up without examining their funding and their objectives, and pretending one is furthering multiculturalism. Too many mosque leaders and heads of Islamist organizations connected to the Muslim Brotherhood were patronized by European governments. These same Muslim leaders – being connected to Islamist movements – cared little for the democratic considerations of the nation, nor for the Muslims who wanted to live as citizens of a secular democracy.

America is now doing the same. Why deal with CAIR, when it was an unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorism funding trial? Why give money to Imam Rauf to travel abroad as an “emissary” of America? Or send CAIR official Dawud Walid to Mali?

Having Islamists as advisers drowns out and marginalizes genuine moderate Muslims. Theodore Roosevelt often spoke of how he hated the concept of hyphenated Americans. He claimed that every American, no matter where they came from, should be an American first. This administration is creeping towards socialism and the failed models of political patronage that have brought nothing good to Europe.

If Muslims are citizens, they should be treated only as citizens, and there should be no special needs provisions or dispensations made for them. Everyone is equal under the law as it stands. Pandering to those who support Sharia law will only disenfranchise normal Muslim civilians and Muslim women who – as American citizens – should be able to enjoy all the freedoms that are there for any other American citizen.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Adrian Morgan is a British based writer and artist. He has previously contributed to various publications, including the Guardian and New Scientist and is a former Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Society.

Comments are closed.