HAMBURG, 26 October 2003 — The two suspected Al-Qaeda terrorists believed to have been the architects of the Sept. 11 attacks have given interrogators full confessions, according to a German magazine report.
The report in Der Spiegel news magazine, due to hit newsstands across Germany tomorrow, quotes US and German security experts as saying the confessions came from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his right-hand man, the former Hamburg technical university student Ramzi Binalshibh, both of whom are in custody.
The two men have reportedly told interrogators that plans were drawn up as early as 1996 for flying planes into strategic targets in the United States.
Mohammed’s original plan envisioned loading high explosives aboard light aircraft.
But Osama Bin Laden himself is said to have dismissed that idea with the words, “Why use a hatchet when you can use a bulldozer?”
Thus, the idea of hijacking airliners was born, according to investigators.
Bin Laden personally selected three aspiring terrorists from Hamburg for the mission when the trio visited an Al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in late 1999.
He told them they had been chosen for a “highly confidential mission” and that they were to proceed immediately to undertake pilot training.
In February 2001 the suspected coordinator of the attacks, Binalshibh, was informed by Bin Laden personally what the intended targets were.
In addition to the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, the US Capitol building was also singled out for destruction.
For internal communications, Hamburg terrorist cell ringleader and suicide pilot Mohammed Atta agreed with Binalshibh to use the code word “Porsche 911.”
The Der Spiegel report concurs with testimony before a German court on Friday suggesting that the Sept. 11 attacks were planned by Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, not Hamburg.
The testimony by Heinz Fromm, head of Germany’s federal intelligence agency, the Verfassungsschutzamt, came during the Sept. 11 trial of Moroccan defendant Abdelghani Mzoudi.
Fromm told the court the Hamburg cell members received instructions from Al-Qaeda when they went to an Afghan training camp in December 1999.
Earlier, a prosecution witness testified before a court in Germany on Thursday that Mzoudi was indeed a “fully-fledged member” of the Hamburg terrorist cell which carried out the Sept. 11 attacks.
The witness said Mzoudi was a “good friend” of alleged ringleader Mohammed Atta.
The 29-year-old witness said, “Mzoudi would take part in the regular meetings of the cell, eating with the cell members and praying and drinking tea. And he would read from the Qu’ran.”
Another witness testified he had visited a military training camp in Afghanistan shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks where he saw purported Sept. 11 plotters Ramzi Binalshibh and Said Bahaji. Listening to news reports of the attacks on a shortwave radio, he said jubilation broke out in the camp.
“Everyone there was very ecstatic about the attacks,” the 21-year-old student told the court.
Mzoudi faces more than 3,000 counts of being an accomplice to murder in the deaths of those who died at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in the Pennsylvania plane crash on Sept. 11.
