French Claim Prisoner is Full of bin Laden Info

Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit

AFP via Yahoo, Singapore - Monday February 11, 12:39 AM


Algerian radical spills beans on bin Laden "terror network"

An Algerian Islamic radical arrested in France has proved a goldmine
for investigators probing Osama bin Laden's militant network in
Europe in the wake of the September 11 attacks, magistrates told AFP.

French investigators now believe that after key testimonies from a
handful of well placed members of bin Laden's al-Qaeda network the
exiled Saudi extremist's secret organisation in Europe is unravelling
fast.

Since his arrest in Paris last Monday 27-year-old Yacine Aknouche has
revealed his links with several al-Qaeda suspects including
"shoe-bomber" Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged "20th
hijacker" arrested ahead of September 11, the lawyers said.

And his address book has been revealed as a virtual Who's Who of
hardline Islamic radicals and terror attack suspects, the astonished
investigators claimed, making Aknouche a vital link in a series of
interlinked investigations.

"Such a testimony is extraordinary," an investigator told AFP.

Officers of the French domestic intelligence agency, the DST,
arrested Aknouche and two other suspects based in a Paris-region flat
as part of an inquiry into a thwarted attack on Strasbourg in
December 2000.

An Islamic commando based in Frankfurt, western Germany, was said to
have planned a spectacular bomb attack on the city centre while a
Christmas market was being held in front of the cathedral in the
eastern French city.

But when officers began questioning the suspect they found he had
information on many more figures in the violent Islamist underground.

Sources told AFP that Aknouche recounted to officers how he had met
both Reid and Moussaoui in 2000 at an al-Qaeda training camp in
Afghanistan.

Reid, a 28-year-old Briton who converted to bin Laden's hardline
brand of Islam while serving a jail term for petty crime, was
arrested in December after apparently trying to destroy a Paris to
Miami flight with explosives hidden in his shoe.

Moussaoui, a 33-year-old Frenchman, is the first suspect to have been
charged with involvement in the attacks on September 11 last year in
which four airliners were hijacked and crashed into New York,
Washington and the state of Pennsylvania, killing more than 3,000
people.

He was arrested before the attack on an immigration charge when he
was already in the United States taking flying lessons. US officials
claim that if he had been free he would have been one of the
hijackers.

Aknouche also claimed to have met Ahmed Ressam in Afghanistan, this
time in 1998. 

Ressam was arrested on the US-Canadian border in December 1999 with
50 kilos (120 pounds) of explosives in his car. He is awaiting trial
for plotting to carry out an attack timed to coincide with the
millennium celebrations.

According to the French weekly Le Journal du Dimanche, the type of
explosives carried by Ressam matched the type found in Reid's shoe on
the Miami flight and a batch held by a group who planned to attack
the US embassy in Paris.
 
=================================================================
  NY Transfer News Collective   *   A Service of Blythe Systems 
           Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us          
              339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012             
  http://www.blythe.org                  e-mail: nyt@blythe.org 
=================================================================
 
nytcov-02.14.02-08:04:42-25937