Said Bahaji
|
|
Said_bahaji_portrait.jpg
Said Bahaji (Arabic: سيد بهيجي, also transliterated as Saeed Bahaji) was an alleged member of the Hamburg cell that provided money to the perpetrators of the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks.
Bahaji, a German citizen, was born to a Moroccan father and a German mother in 1974. The family moved to Morocco when Bahaji was nine years old. Bahaji came to Hamburg in 1995. He enrolled in an electrical engineering program at a technical university in 1996. He spent five months in the German army and then received a medical discharge. Bahaji lived in a student home during the weekdays and he spent weekends with his aunt, Barbara Arens. Both of them loved computers, and he called her his "high-tech aunt". She saw that he was secular until other students introduced him to radical Islam. She later put an end to the weekend visits.
On November 1, 1998, Bahaji moved into an apartment in Germany with future hijackers Mohammed Atta and Ramzi Binalshibh. The Hamburg cell was born at this apartment.[1] (http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/la-012702atta.story)[2] (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/10/national/10PLOT.html?ex=1090987200&en=00e7941222956576&ei=5070) They met three or four times a week to discuss their anti-American feelings and plot possible attacks. Many al-Qaida members lived in this apartment at various times, including hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi, Zakariya Essabar, hijacker Waleed al-Shehri, and others. Bahaji apparently served as the group's Internet expert.
Bahaji had already been under investigation by German Intelligence for his connections with Mohammed Haydar Zammar, a radical Islamic cleric. Through this, German Intelligence was able to learn some of the activities of Atta and others, but the investigation was eventually dropped for lack of evidence.
In October 1999, Bahaji got married at the Al-Quds Mosque in Hamburg. Atta, Ziad Jarrah, al-Shehhi, Zammar, and Binalshibh all attended his wedding.
In late 1999, Atta, al-Shehhi, Jarrah, and Binalshibh decided to travel to Chechnya to fight against the Russians, but were convinced by Khalid al-Masri and Mohamedou Ould Slahi at the last minute to change their plans. They instead traveled to Afghanistan to meet with Osama bin Laden and train for terrorist attacks. There are conflicting reports as to whether Bahaji went with them; some news reports say that he went, but the 9/11 Commission Report says he stayed in Germany and helped cover for them in their absence. When the group returned to Germany, Bahaji was put on a border patrol watch list.
Bahaji told his employer in June 2001 that he was going to an internship for a software company in Pakistan. His aunt, Barbara Arens, says that she was suspicious and that she went to the police and pleaded to them "to do something." She says that police took no action against Bahaji. Al-Qaida leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told Bahaji in August that if he wanted to go to Afghanistan, he should go in the next few weeks, because it would soon become more difficult. Bahaji left Germany on September 4, 2001, just a week before the attacks, and flew to Karachi via Istanbul. For unknown reasons, German authorities failed to notice and prevent his departure.
Bahaji and cohort Ramzi Binalshibh were charged with 5,000 counts of murder by German officials. Binalshibh has since been arrested, but Bahaji is still at large.
External links
- The Final 9/11 Commission Report (http://www.gpoaccess.gov/911/index.html)
- Tracking the Threat.com (http://www.trackingthethreat.com/senDetails/Entities/ent132.htm)