Hijack leader 'met bin Laden in Afghanistan'

The CIA believes September 11 hijacking ringleader Mohamed Atta met Osama bin Laden’s top commander in 1999, it has emerged.

Atta, believed to have been the leader of the 19 men who hijacked airliners for the kamikaze attacks allegedly orchestrated by bin Laden’s al Qaida network, apparently travelled to Afghanistan in 1999 to meet the terror group’s commanders.

Other members of the suicide group may also have gone to the terror training camps, in the first firm link between the terrorists and al Qaida.

The CIA has found travel and financial records that place Atta in the camps in 1999.

There he met several of its senior leaders, including Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad and believed to be suspected terrorist mastermind bin Laden’s deputy and commander of operations.

To cover his tracks, Atta reported his passport stolen shortly afterwards.

Two other members of the hijack group, Ziad Jarrah and Marwan al-Shehhi, also reported their passports missing at the same time, leading to speculation they may have been involved in the trip to the terror headquarters.

The discovery came as investigators said they had found no firm links between the 19 men and other known al Qaida supporters in the US, or between the group and the 1,000 to 2,000 other terrorist supporters known to live in the country.

In a secret briefing to politicians, the FBI said they believed the 19 worked as a closed ‘‘cell’’ - and warned other cells could exist undetected by law enforcement.

The probe into the attack has found that there was little significant help from outside the cell.

The groups operated under the leadership of four men: Atta, al-Shehhi, Jarrah, and Hani Hanjour.

Each of the men had undertaken pilot training and are thought to have been the pilots on each hijacked plane, with better English and more understanding of life in America than their younger accomplices.

Atta, the oldest of the group at 31, is thought to have been the ultimate ringleader, because of his better education and connections with al Quaida.

The four men spent thousands of dollars and travelled extensively, while the other 15 seemed to have kept a much lower profile, it was reported.

Investigators believe the plan was first hatched more than two years ago in Hamburg, where a small group of Muslim extremists, including Atta, had been studying.

They were overseen by a close associate of bin Laden, and the prevailing theory is that the plan was put into action by around $500,000 (£357,000) from Afghanistan, laundered through fronts in Europe and then transferred to a bank in Florida in a series of movements.

The first of the two hijackers to arrive in America were believed to be Khalid Almihdar and Nawaf Alhazmi, who are believed to be Saudi Arabians, and came in November 1999.

Almihdar was seen in Malaysia early in 2000, meeting with a man implicated in the bombing of American navy ship the USS Cole in Yemen in October of that year, one of the few firm links between the hijackers and other terror strikes.

But there is evidence that the group cooperated within itself and was not broken down into four smaller cells.

Among the examples are Waleed Alshehri, who was on the first plane crashed into the World Trade Centre, and who rented a Florida apartment and passed it on to Saeed Alghamdi, who was on the flight which crashed in Pennsylvania.

The possibility of other members of the cell who were planning a fifth hijacking being at large is still being investigated and has not been ruled out.

Ayub Ali Khan and Mohammed Azmath, who were arrested in Texas with boxcutters, hair dye and $20,000 (£14,000) in cash remain in custody.

They boarded a cross-country flight from Newark Airport just as the other hijacked planes took off but it landed in St Louis, Missouri, because of the order to end all flights after the strikes.

The men are not co-operating with the investigation, which is also looking at how they sent thousands of dollars to relatives in India despite holding menial jobs in Jersey City, where a number of the dead hijackers lived.

And Zacarias Moussaoui, the French Algerian held since August 17 after a flight school instructor became suspicious that he was not interested in learning about take-offs and landings, continues to refuse to co-operated with the FBI.

The probe rapidly became the biggest in criminal history, with more than 7,000 FBI agents, thousands of analysts and technicians and local detectives joining the hunt.