Terrorist behind September 11 strike was trained by Saddam
By Con Coughlin
(Filed: 12/14/2003)


Iraq's coalition government claims that it has uncovered documentary proof
that Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks
against the US, was trained in Baghdad by Abu Nidal, the notorious
Palestinian terrorist.

Details of Atta's visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just
weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in US
history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the
then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of
the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

The handwritten memo, a copy of which has been obtained exclusively by the
Telegraph, is dated July 1, 2001 and provides a short resume of a three-day
"work programme" Atta had undertaken at Abu Nidal's base in Baghdad.

In the memo, Habbush reports that Atta "displayed extraordinary effort" and
demonstrated his ability to lead the team that would be "responsible for
attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy".

The second part of the memo, which is headed "Niger Shipment", contains a
report about an unspecified shipment - believed to be uranium - that it says
has been transported to Iraq via Libya and Syria.

Although Iraqi officials refused to disclose how and where they had obtained
the document, Dr Ayad Allawi, a member of Iraq's ruling seven-man
Presidential Committee, said the document was genuine.

"We are uncovering evidence all the time of Saddam's involvement with
al-Qaeda," he said. "But this is the most compelling piece of evidence that
we have found so far. It shows that not only did Saddam have contacts with
al-Qaeda, he had contact with those responsible for the September 11
attacks."

Although Atta is believed to have been resident in Florida in the summer of
2001, he is known to have used more than a dozen aliases, and intelligence
experts believe he could easily have slipped out of the US to visit Iraq.

Abu Nidal, who was responsible for the failed assassination of the Israeli
ambassador to London in 1982, was based in Baghdad for more than two
decades.



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