BERLIN, June 18 — A key figure in the Sept. 11 plot who fled Hamburg, Germany, last October has been held in secret detention in Syria after being first arrested in Morocco and expelled to Damascus with U.S. knowledge, according to German and Arab intelligence sources.
The debriefing of Mohammed Haydar Zammar, a German citizen of Syrian origin who has told his interrogators that he recruited key hijacker Mohammed Atta, is an extraordinary example of the way Sept. 11 has redefined U.S. engagement with regimes it once vilified.
Syria remains on a State Department list of regimes that sponsor terrorism. And Syrian officials have begun to complain that the United States is not acknowledging its assistance in the war against terrorism. According to Arab intelligence sources, the Syrian debriefing of Zammar, 41, is providing the United States with critical information on the genesis of the plot to attack New York and Washington as well al Qaeda's structure and possible plans.
It is unclear if U.S. officials have direct access to Zammar or whether the Syrians put questions from the United States to the prisoner and then report back. But an Arab source said Zammar has become another check on information the United States gleans from the interrogation of al Qaeda prisoners worldwide, including the captured senior bin Laden Lieutenant Abu Zubaida.
German intelligence sources said today that they were only informed by U.S. officials Thursday of Zammar's imprisonment in Syria after an article in The Washington Post raised questions about his whereabouts. Zammar is being held by the Syrian authorities on long-standing charges that he was involved in a bombing plot in the country, Arab officials said.
German officials here expressed displeasure that both Morocco and Syria violated their obligations under international law to inform them of their citizen's arrest. They also said the United States, an ally, had shut them out of the operation to detain Zammar.
Zammar has told his interrogators that he and another fugitive from Germany, Said Bahaji, first recruited Mohamed Atta and other Hamburg-based hijackers into al Qaeda, Arab sources said. And he has admitted to playing a key role in linking Atta with the terrorist network's leadership in Afghanistan, sources said.
A U.S. counter-terrorism official said Zammar and Ramzi Binalshibh, another fugitive from Hamburg, are the pivotal figures in understanding the Hamburg cell. A German official recently agreed with that. German authorities have issued an international arrest warrant for Binalshibh.
There is, however, no public warrant for Zammar's arrest and he left Germany freely on Oct. 27. While German officials suspected him of involvement, they said they had no evidence to charge and arrest him. And he was allowed to travel, ostensibly to obtain a divorce from a Moroccan woman. Zammar entered Morocco undetected and was arrested after a manhunt, Arab sources said.
Zammar, a veteran of an al Qaeda terrorist training camp in Afghanistan who claimed to have fought in Bosnia, was a frequent visitor to Atta's now-infamous Marien Street apartment, regularly pulling up in an old car and carrying boxes of material into the second-floor walk-up. And Zammar spoke publicly in a Hamburg mosque of his belief that Muslims had an obligation to fight holy war.
"Zammar is in a lead role," said a U.S. counter-terrorism official. A senior German official agreed that Zammar "played a very significant role."
www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A3955-2002JunE-mail this article