U.S. investigators provided fresh evidence yesterday of Canadian ties to Sept. 11 terrorism, identifying a former Montrealer as a key al-Qaeda recruiter and a second man as a prospective pilot for a second wave of attacks.
A report prepared for the U.S. commission probing the events of Sept. 11, 2001, said Mohamedou Ould Slahi persuaded four Arab militants in Germany to travel to al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan in 1999. Three of them later piloted hijacked airliners in the attacks, which killed more than 3,000.Mr. Slahi later ended up in Montreal. He was accepted as a permanent Canadian resident despite security officials' concerns.
The U.S. report also said Al Rauf bin al Habib bin Yousef al-Jiddi, a Tunisian-born Canadian citizen, was selected by al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden to fly a hijacked airliner in a wave of attacks planned to come after Sept. 11.
It is the first time Mr. al-Jiddi has been identified as a suicide-hijacking candidate.
The allegations are contained in an exhaustive account of al-Qaeda planning that led to the hijacking of four jetliners, the destruction of New York's World Trade Center and damage to the Pentagon.
Authorities in Canada and elsewhere have previously identified Mr. Slahi, 33, and Mr. al-Jiddi, 39, as suspected al-Qaeda militants, but the report released yesterday provides new details of their alleged roles.
Mr. Slahi, who was born in Mauritania, is a prisoner at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Mr. al-Jiddi's whereabouts are unknown.
The report includes information said to be gleaned from the interrogation of two captured al-Qaeda militants: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, regarded as the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and Ramzi Binalshibh, who had planned to take part in them but failed to obtain a visa to enter the United States.
It said Mr. Slahi was living in Hamburg in 1999 when he was approached by several young Arabs who wanted to go to the breakaway Russian republic of Chechnya to fight alongside Muslim militants.
"He advised them that it was difficult to get to Chechnya and that they should go to Afghanistan first," the report says.
It says the men -- Mr. Binalshibh, Mohamed Atta, Ziad Jarrah and Marwan al-Shehhi -- went to Afghanistan separately late in 1999. Mr. Atta, Mr. Jarrah and Mr. al-Shehhi flew three of the four planes hijacked on Sept. 11 two years later.
Some time after directing the militants to Afghanistan, Mr. Slahi took up residence in Montreal, where he lived in a mosque as an Islamic spiritual leader.
The Globe and Mail's Estanislao Oziewicz reported in 2000 that Canadian immigration authorities had approved Mr. Slahi as a permanent resident even though he was suspected having links to terrorism. At the time, he was said to have entered Canada in 1998.
He left Canada early in 2000. Authorities later said he might be connected to Ahmed Ressam, an al-Qaeda-linked Montreal resident whose plot to bomb the Los Angeles international airport failed in 1999.
Mr. al-Jiddi, the prospective "second-wave" pilot, has twice been featured by the Federal Bureau of Investigation among key al-Qaeda suspects allegedly plotting another strike.
Along with Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested weeks before Sept. 11 after FBI agents were alerted to his efforts to learn to fly planes but not to land or take off, Mr. al-Jiddi and a third man were identified in the report as candidate pilots.
The "second wave" never materialized, but Mr. al-Jiddi taped a martyrdom video and wrote a will. It remains unclear whether he actually took flight training.
The report says Mr. bin Laden was first presented with the idea of the hijackings in 1996 and approved it three years later. The original plan was for 10 aircraft to be hijacked on both coasts.
Mr. Mohammed wanted to fly one of the airliners, kill all male passengers, land at an airport and, using the remaining passengers as hostages, make a speech denouncing U.S. policy in the Middle East. That plan was scaled back by Mr. bin Laden, the report says.
The report also says Mr. bin Laden pushed for the attacks to be made well before September, debunking the persistent suggestion that the date was chosen to mark the anniversary of the 1922 British mandate in Palestine.
It says Mr. Atta chose Sept. 11 because the U.S. Congress was back in session and multiple flights were available that day from East Coast airports.
The bipartisan commission, which is to deliver its final report by July 26, also seems to have rejected claims by U.S. President George W. Bush that ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was helping al-Qaeda.
"So far we have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaeda co-operated on attacks against the United States," the report says.
