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Copyright 2003 Chicago Tribune Company

Chicago Tribune

October 5, 2003 Sunday, CHICAGO FINAL EDITION

SECTION: News; Pg. 1; ZONE: C

LENGTH: 4437 words

HEADLINE: Suspect offers insight on Al Qaeda finances;

Charged in Spain with 9/11 link, man is free in Germany

BYLINE: By John Crewdson, Tribune senior correspondent.; John Crewdson reported from Germany, and Tribune
staff reporter Cam Simpson contributed from Saudi Arabia. Tribune special correspondents Viola Gienger reported
from Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania, and Altin Raxhimi from Albania. Reporting and research assistance was
provided by Lilian-Astrid Geese in Berlin and Drew Crosby in Madrid.

DATELINE: HAMBURG, Germany

BODY:
On a leafy street with a charming name—Uhlenhorsterweg, the way to the owl's lair-unseen cameras focus on a
well-kept building where a Syrian-born businessman lives quietly with his German wife.
The building's other residents are of no interest to the unblinking cameras. But Mamoun Darkazanli's comings and
goings are carefully noted by investigators who want to make sure he stays close to home.
The scrutiny intensified Sept. 17, the day a Spanish judge charged Darkazanli and 34 others with belonging to, or
supporting, a cell of Al Qaeda in Madrid that, according to the judge, assisted the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers in their
preparations.
Darkazanli, whose name appears 177 times in the 690-page indictment, is specifically accused of acting as Osama
bin Laden's "financier in Europe," an assessment with which German police and intelligence officials and their
American counterparts agree.
The list of those with whom Darkazanli has done business or otherwise exchanged money reads like a Who's Who
of Al Qaeda: Wadih El-Hage, bin Laden's one-time personal secretary; Seedi al-Tayyib, the husband of bin Laden's
niece and, before Sept. 11, Al Qaeda's chief financial officer; and Mustafa Setmariam Nasr, the head of a training camp
for Al Qaeda in Afghanistan who journeyed to Hamburg to visit Darkazanli in 1996.
Whether Darkazanli eventually is extradited to Spain, prosecuted here in Germany or neither, investigators say his
case has significantly advanced their understanding of how Al Qaeda moved money in the years leading up to the Sept.
11 attacks.
Andreas Beurskens, Darkazanli's lawyer, said he was awaiting a translation of the Spanish indictment but that his
client would not respond to any of the accusations it contained.
"Why should he?" Beurskens said. "It's not in his interest."
Darkazanli's admitted contacts with the Sept. 11 hijackers, his access to large sums of money and his apparent long-
standing ties to Al Qaeda made him an early focus for investigators seeking the origins of history's most devastating act
of terrorism-and, especially, the financial and organizational structure that helped the hijackers on their way.
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Copyright 2003 Chicago Tribune Company

Chicago Tribune

October 19, 2003 Sunday, CHICAGO FINAL EDITION

SECTION: News; Pg. 4; ZONE: C

LENGTH: 2596 words

HEADLINE: Spain links Syrian cabal to Sept. 11 plot;

Prosecutors follow the money trail

BYLINE: By John Crewdson, Tribune senior correspondent. Reporting and research assistance was provided by Drew
Crosby in Madrid.

DATELINE: MADRID

BODY:
The most sweeping criminal indictment to arise thus far from the Sept. 11 attacks reflects a quiet but dramatic
change in understanding by investigators here and across Europe of the terrorist organization known as Al Qaeda, and
c!
the international Islamic radical-terrorist network of which, they now agree, it is merely a part.
As laid out in the indictment, the defendants' alleged activities-from arranging travel and providing introductions
to procuring false documents and, especially, moving money—provide the first detailed look at one of Al Qaeda's most
potent weapons: the ability to call on networks of sympathizers whose collective numbers are far greater than Al
Qaeda's few hundred card-carrying members.
Not one of the dozen key defendants named here last month as members or supporters of an alleged Madrid-based
cell accused of working for Al Qaeda and helping advance the Sept. 11 plot is a native of Spain, or even nearby Muslim
North Africa.
Instead, all migrated to Spain from Syria, where-according to the Spanish indictment-most became affiliated with
an ultramilitant Islamic group called the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.
Virtually from the moment of the Sept. 11 attacks, investigators in Europe and the U.S. were perplexed by what
appeared to be a Syrian connection to the hijackings, both here and in Hamburg, Germany, whose university campuses
produced three of the four Sept. 11 pilots and several accused or convicted accomplices.
At first, some questioned whether the Syrian government had perhaps known of the plot, or even whether Syrian
intelligence had somehow been involved. Neither now appears to be true, investigators say, citing Syria's limited but
useful cooperation with Western intelligence agencies attempting to unravel the connection between Sept. 11, Al Qaeda
and the Muslim Brotherhood.
One senior German intelligence official described the Muslim Brotherhood as "one part of the intelligence network
of the mujahedeen." The Brothers, the official said, are not an extension of Al Qaeda but affiliated with it in the same
way as Indonesia's Jemaah Islamiyah, which reportedly financed last year's Bali nightclub bombings with $30,000
provided by Al Qaeda, or a Salafist group in Morocco that allegedly used $50,000 in Al Qaeda money to pay for five
suicide bombings in Casablanca earlier this year.