9/11 - '20th hijacker' held

2004-06-21 16:33

New York - The mysterious "20th hijacker" believed to be missing from the group of terrorists that took control of US passenger airplanes on September 11, 2001 is being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the New York Times reported on Monday.

Saudi national Mohamed al-Kahtani, 26, was captured in Afghanistan in December 2001. Like many detainees he refused to give his name or collaborate with interrogators.

It was only in July 2002, officials told the Times, that FBI agents matched his fingerprints with those of a man turned back after flying to Orlando, Florida from London in August 2001 without no return ticket or hotel reservation.

Records showed calls from an airport pay phone that day to Mustafa al-Hawsawi, an al-Qaeda member in the United Arab Emirates identified as a logistical co-ordinator for the attacks, officials told the Times.

And airport surveillance cameras that day showed a rental car used by the hijacker leader Mohamed Atta entering an airport parking lot just before Kahtani's flight arrived, officials told the newspaper.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations sent an experienced counterterrorism agent fluent in Arabic to Guantanamo to interview Kahtani, and over months of conversations he eventually got him to admit that he was going to join the hijackers.

Kahtani however gave little or no information about other al-Qaeda plans - which FBI agents believed because Kahtani had been recruited to subdue passengers rather than fly a plane, and such low-level operatives normally get minimum information, officials told the Times.

The US military however was unconvinced, and took over the interrogations in late November 2002. Soon they were authorised to use special new interrogation techniques approved by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that included the use of hoods, "stress positions" like standing or squatting for hours, dogs, and "mild noninjurious physical contact," officials told the Times, citing a January 2003 memo.

In May a senior Bush administration official told the newspaper that Kahtani had provided information "about a planned attack and about financial networks to fund terrorist operations."

But several other officials told the Times that Kahtani had given no information about al-Qaeda plots.

- AFP