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Prosecutors reveal details of hijacker link to 9/11 defendant
From Phil Hirschkorn
SOMERSET COUNTY, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- Federal prosecutors handling the case against alleged September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui have revealed new details linking the defendant to the pilot-hijacker of United Flight 93, which crashed in a rural field here during last year's terrorist attack. Prosecutors, in court papers filed Monday, shed more light on a charred business card that allegedly belonged to Ziad Jarrah and was found among the crash debris in an abandoned coal strip mine field in Shanksville. Prosecutors said the name printed on the card, which they did not identify, was Jarrah's uncle and the phone number "scrawled" on the back was connected to a German address: Billsteder Haupst 14, 22111 Hamburg.
Jarrah, from Lebanon, lived in Hamburg, as did the hijacking ringleader, Mohamed Atta, of Egypt, who piloted the first plane that crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, and Marwan Alshehi, of Saudi Arabia, who piloted the plane that crashed into the second tower. A fourth hijacked plane crashed into the Pentagon in northern Virginia. The phone number on the back of the business card found in Shanksville was called by Moussaoui, prosecutors said, and also used by another Hamburg cell member, Ramzi Binalshibh. Binalshibh, a Yemeni, tried and failed four times to obtain entry visas to the United States. Some officials have speculated that Moussaoui, who underwent flight training in the United States last year, may have been tapped to replace Binalshibh on Flight 93, the sole commandeered plane with four, instead of five hijackers. Prosecutors said the Hamburg phone number was also listed in Moussaoui's personal address book with him when he was arrested in Minnesota August 15, 2001, under the name of "Ahad Sabet," an alias for Alshibh, according to the government. Binalshibh, using that alias, allegedly wired Moussaoui $14,000 for expenses last August. "Ahed Sabet" is an identity stolen from an Arizona doctor who was robbed of his passport in Spain a few years ago, CNN has previously reported. Binalshibh is now in U.S. custody after his capture in Pakistan earlier this month. Prosecutors first raised the Moussaoui-Jarrah connection in their motion justifying their playing the Flight 93 cockpit voice recorder for the trial jury. The recording preserves parts of the struggle between passengers, informed of the other September 11 hijackings, who fought to regain control of the plane, thereby preventing it from reaching its target in Washington. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema had asked prosecutors to explain the recorder's relevance after ruling it seemed to have "marginal evidentiary value" in Moussaoui's trial and agreed with defense lawyers that the recording might pose "unfair prejudice to the defendant," who is not accused of killing any of the 3,000 people killed September 11. Attorneys assisting Moussaoui had called the alleged connection between the defendant and the Jarrah a "thin reed." "The connection between defendant Moussaoui and Jarrah is far more than a 'thin reed,'" prosecutors responded Monday. "The connection is bin Alshibh." Still, prosecutors did not disclose the phone number or how many times Moussaoui called it. Moussaoui, 34, a French national of Moroccan descent, is representing himself, but Brinkema has kept a team of five court-appointed attorneys on standby to help him navigate the U.S. legal system. Brinkema, citing the volume of evidence and requests from both sides Monday, postponed jury selection in Moussaoui's trial from December to next May, and opening statements from next January to next June. Moussaoui faces six conspiracy counts, and a possible death penalty, for his admitted involvement with al Qaeda, the Islamic terrorist group behind the September 11 attacks executed by Jarrah and 18 other men. A delegation of trade center victims' families and the agency overseeing the design process for the memorial to be built in Lower Manhattan will visit the The temporary memorial and crash site in Shanksville Tuesday.
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