Al-Qaeda Financier Remains a Free Man in Germany
Last month, the Domestic Affairs Committee of the German Bundestag announced that it will hold inquiries into an alleged CIA plan to kill Mamoun Darkazanli, a German-Syrian resident of Hamburg. The German federal prosecutor’s office is reportedly likewise considering opening an investigation into the matter.
The moves were prompted by a Vanity Fair profile of Erik Prince, the founder and chairman of the private military contractor Blackwater. It is mentioned in passing in the article that the company, at one point, received a commission from the CIA to track Darkazanli and possibly to kill him. The supposed plan, however, was never carried out due to a “lack of political will.” “Frankly, I’m speechless,” Darkazanli told the popular German tabloid Bild. “That’s a contract for murder.”
There are numerous reasons to treat the report with caution: among others, the fact that the only source given for it is anonymous. Nonetheless, when the story first began making the rounds in early January, politicians from all of Germany’s major political parties reacted with outrage. Since, however, there is nothing to discuss but an unsubstantiated claim, the Bundestag’s inquiries can be expected to end quickly and without any notable result.
What might prove more fruitful would be to devote hearings to the supposedly intended “victim” in the affair. For, as the Chicago Tribune put it in an October 5, 2003, report, the list of those with whom the Hamburg-based businessman has had financial ties reads like a veritable “Who’s Who of al-Qaeda.”
According to the report, Darkazanli first came to the attention of American intelligence services in 1998 at the latest. At the time, he was an associate of Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, the jihadist financier and alleged al-Qaeda co-founder. Salim has been charged as a co-conspirator in the 1998 bombing of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. He is presently serving a 32-year prison sentence in a Colorado maximum security prison for a vicious attack on a New York prison guard that cost the victim an eye and left him brain-damaged.
Salim had Darkazanli’s phone number saved in his cell phone and he is supposed to have visited him frequently in Germany. Starting in 1995, moreover, Darkazanli had power of attorney over Salim’s bank account at a branch of the Deutsche Bank in Hamburg. As reported by the German weekly Focus in October 2001, Darkazanli claims that the account was set up to purchase antennas for a radio station in the Sudan, but that the business never got off the ground. As reported in the British press, Darkazanli’s personal details were also found in a diary connected to Rangzieb Ahmed, a UK-based Qaeda-operative who in December 2008 was sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in planning terror attacks.
As noted in a December 27, 2001, article in the New York Times, in the 1990s Darkazanli and the since convicted Qaeda co-conspirator Wadih El-Hage purchased a ship on behalf of Osama bin Laden. Is it a mere coincidence that the ship in question docked in the Saudi harbor of Jidda in late October 1995 and then set sail again merely one day before the November 13, 1995, attack on an American-operated military training center in the Saudi capital of Riyadh? Five Americans were killed in the attack.
In October 1999, Said Bahaji got married at the Al-Quds mosque in Hamburg. Bahaji was a roommate of Mohammed Atta and he is suspected of having provided logistical support to the Hamburg terror cell. The entire Hamburg al-Qaeda scene appears to have turned out for the wedding, including Mohamed Atta, Ramzi Binalshibh, and Mounir al-Motassadeq. Darkazanli was Bahaji’s best man. Mohammed Fizazi was an imam at the mosque, where he preached, among other things, about how “the Jews and crusaders must have their throats slit” (source: Washington Post, September 11, 2002). Fizazi is reported to have had contacts with the perpetrators of both the Madrid and Casablanca bombings, as well as the 9/11 hijackers (source: Los Angeles Times, July 6, 2005).
Modern German leadership has a sordid history of playing a double edged game, pretending to be democratic and western, yet shielding fascists and terrorists. This report is just one more case in point.
I would no sooner trust the German powers that be than I would trust the Iranians.
Oh, the humanity! The United States actually hunting down its enemies and killing them? I’m horrified…..NOT.
There is no difference at all, none whatsoever, between killing al-Qaeda with a Hellfire in Pakistan, and killing al-Qaeda with a .45 in Germany.
If he is still alive and walking, that’s our fault. You get what you elect. And who was the idiot who said that war is just peaceful civil society rule of law by other means? Wasn’t he a German?
In memory of my late father, his words at the inauguration of a new synagogue in a small town in Germany in 1953:
Wie zu erwarten sehe ich bei dieser einweihung die selben Frevler die es in der ersten Instanz zerstoert haben.
He was subsequently hounded out of town. The more things seem to change, the more they remain the same.
these evil cockroaches seem immune to sprays of any sort. they have become as bold as their soulmates who creep out of the woodwork and won’t be distressed even when the light shines on them or we stamp our feet.
this is their time everywhere on the planet. if there is g-d though, we know how the loathsome will spend their eternity, forever creeping forever met with disgust, ahorrent to mankind.
During WWI, besides the main Axis powers, Germany had an alliance with the Ottoman Empire and during WWI there was an alliance with Iraq. I’m not into conspiracy theories, but it does make you wonder; why got to so much to protect a known terrorist? Oops, I mean, benefactor of terrorists, but not “to the degree that he was active on behalf of al-Qaeda” so he’s not a criminal. Talk about splitting hairs.
Conspiracies require competance to pull off. Something I wouldn’t use to describe governments.
Although it was not a good book, Tom Clancy’s last book is correct, in that it will take outsider’s to truelly come to terms with terrorists. Government’s are too feckless. Contractors are what will have to be used. Now, the question is how to finance this thing. Perhaps like minded Americans will have to come together to hire “rough men” to stand at the door and guard us while we sleep.
7. Peter
True, it does take compentence but as I said it wouldn’t be the first time Germany was involved in an unholy alliance. Haven’t read Clancy’s book but I have thought the same thing. We may have to find a way to take care of ourselves.
So called honor killings and such are already happening within our boarders and in other countries muslim women have had acid thrown in their faces because they weren’t covered. These too are acts of terrorism. The other day as I was headed into the post office a muslim man gave me a look of disgust and hatred that made my blood run cold. I’ve lived in 3rd world countries and big cities frought with all kinds of dangers. I was prudently cautious, but never scared. But that day, here in this little town where not much ever happens, I was unnerved to put it mildly. Women especially need to get their heads out of the sand, and realize that before long it won’t be just ‘them’ it happens to.
How to finance it indeed. Apply for some of that stimulus money that hasn’t been doled out yet. We can claim it’s to create jobs that will protect women from domestic violence.
But wanna comment on few general things, The website design is perfect, the subject matter is real fantastic : D.