TANGIER, Morocco — A Moroccan preacher imprisoned here for inspiring deadly bombings in Casablanca and implicated in the Madrid train bombings last year also had significant contact in Hamburg with leaders of the Sept. 11 attacks, say members of a Muslim congregation in Germany.
The preacher, Mohammed Fizazi, frequently gave sermons at Hamburg's Al Quds mosque while three of the hijack pilots were living in the city, attending Al Quds and becoming more involved in radical Islam.
Fizazi initiated several private meetings with the future pilots, says Fath Franzmathes, a member of the Al Quds congregation who later assisted German law enforcement. A second member of the congregation, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified, confirmed that there had been frequent contact between the future hijackers and Fizazi.
It is not clear how much influence Fizazi had on the Sept. 11 hijackers, but he appears to be the first person linked to participants in three of the biggest terrorist assaults of recent years: the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S.; the Casablanca attacks of May 2003 that killed 45 people; and the Madrid attacks in March 2004 that killed 191 people.
Fizazi traveled extensively throughout Europe and the Arab world in the years prior to 2001. He often preached to Moroccans abroad at the behest of the Moroccan government.
His travels help illuminate a world of Islamic preachers, generally not well known in the West, whose fiery words help provide a justification for religious extremism. And the case illustrates how even moderate Arab governments, like that of Morocco, can become entangled with the radicals they are trying to control.
Mohamed Atta, Ramzi Binalshibh and others in a small group that formed around them in Hamburg were well known within the Al Quds mosque, Franzmathes said. Atta piloted the airplane that struck the north tower of the World Trade Center. Binalshibh sought to join the plot as a pilot, but was denied a U.S. visa and became an important logistics operative for the plot.
Their group included Marwan Al-Shehhi, the pilot of the plane that struck the World Trade Center's south tower, and Ziad Samir Jarrah, the pilot of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania before it could reach its target -- the U.S. Capitol building. Hani Hanjour, the pilot of the plane that hit the Pentagon, was not part of the Hamburg group.
