FBI suspicious of British group

Several weeks before September 11, an FBI agent linked several students at Arizona flight schools to a London-based Muslim sheik who had received a letter from Osama bin Laden encouraging the downing of airliners, officials said.

Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammed is the outspoken leader of Al Mahajiroun, an organisation reported to have recruited people in Britain to fight the Russians in Chechnya and support the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Agent Ken Williams’ July 2001 memo raised concerns about the students’ links with Bakri. The sheik had also been involved with a fatwa - an Islamic call to action - that suggested airports as legitimate targets in the US, the officials said.

They said the agent had ascertained that several of the Arab students held anti-American views, and that one had expressed his hatred in extreme terms.

There has never been any evidence connecting the students to the September 11 hijackers. And officials have not identified them or their whereabouts.

Bakri, also known as Omar Bakri Fostok, has been connected by US and British intelligence to bin Laden, and has openly supported bin Laden’s calls for jihad, or holy war, against America, the officials said.

Williams’ memo mentioned one fatwa involving Bakri that identified several possible targets, including airports, the officials said.

Not mentioned in Williams’ memo were several other links between the London sheik, who is of Syrian descent, and bin Laden.

Bakri was one of several Muslim leaders to receive a letter faxed from Afghanistan in the summer of 1998 from bin Laden that laid out four objectives for a jihad against the United States, including downing airliners.

Bakri has issued other fatwas against British leaders and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf - some since September 11, officials said.

In addition, Williams had identified another Muslim figure in Arizona who was not training at aviation schools but was linked by phone calls to one of bin Laden’s top lieutenants, Abu Zubaydah, the officials said.

The agent had suspicions that the man might be communicating with one or more of the flight school students, but he never succeeded in making a connection, officials said.

Abu Zubaydah is believed to be bin Laden’s operational chief, who ran al-Qaida’s terrorist training camps and is suspected of helping organise the September 11 hijackings, US officials have said.

Abu Zubaydah was captured by the FBI and Pakistani officials during a raid in March and remains in US custody.

Officials familiar with Williams’ memo said the counter-terrorism agent from Phoenix had marked his July 10 memo as routine, meaning it did not require urgent action because of an imminent threat.

But they said the five-page document, sent to about 10 FBI officials in Washington and New York, laid out in detail his concerns that students learning piloting, aviation engineering and airport operations in Arizona might be preparing to help bin Laden carry out an attack.

Asked yesterday whether he thought the agent was prophetic, Vice President Dick Cheney answered: ‘‘Well, I think he was.’’

‘‘I will be the last to argue the system worked perfectly. There is a lot we can do to improve it,’’ Cheney said.