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Iraq Denies Involvement as U.S. Probes Further
BAGHDAD, Sept 19 (News Agencies) - Iraq played no role whatsoever in the September 11th attacks in the United States, Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said in an interview published Wednesday.
"The United States, Great Britain, the Western states and the rest of the world know full well that Iraq has no link, near or far, with the attacks against American interests," the minister told the
Al-Iqtissadi weekly.
In Washington, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) expanded its list of people wanted in connection with the attacks to nearly 200 late Tuesday, as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) poured over reports alleging that one of the suspects in the plot had a meeting with an Iraqi intelligence official.
The updated list has been sent to local police stations, border crossings and U.S. airlines in hopes of locating the individuals officials say could be helpful to the probe, an FBI official said.
But the investigation took on a new dimension when the CIA began looking into reports that one of the hijackers who took part in last week's attacks, met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official prior to the tragedy, a U.S. government source told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"There is an indication that such a meeting occurred earlier this year in Europe," the source said.
The hijacker in question was Mohammed Atta, the man believed to have been inside an American Airlines plane that was the first to crash into the World Trade Center, according to the source.
But, at the moment, the CIA is not certain the meeting "had anything to do with Tuesday's events," the source said.
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to make any comments when asked Tuesday about a possible Iraqi connection. "I wouldn't be in a position to discuss evidence in regard to questions about other responsible parties," he said.
The attacks, in which two jet airliners crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, have left at least 5,600 dead, missing, or presumed dead.
The third hijacked plane struck the Pentagon outside Washington, and the fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania after its passengers apparently forcefully resisted the hijackers.
One full week after the tragedy, investigators were questioning 75 people detained for immigration violations as they pursued more that 96,000 leads in the hopes of figuring out the full scope of the plot.
Administration officials have warned that members of the terrorist conspiracy may still be on the loose on U.S. soil and could strike again.
Meanwhile, federal prosecutors impaneled a grand jury in White Plains, New York, to make it easier to subpoena people and documents, according to law enforcement sources.
In Texas, FBI agents raided a flight school in Arlington while seeking information about a man they had removed from a train in Fort Worth,
The Dallas Morning News reported.
Ayub Ali Khan was arrested last Thursday along with Mohammed Jaweed Azmath during a drug sweep at a Forth Worth train station. The two men were traveling to San Antonio, the report said.
The men allegedly had $5,000 in cash as well as box cutters, the weapons assumed to tbe used by the hijackers to take control of the planes, according to police.
Khan reportedly had an outstanding deportation order against him before he was detained. Both he and Azmath were taken to New York for questioning, according to law enforcement sources.
The two were held in New York together with a San Antonio, Texas, resident named Albader Al-Hazmi, a radiologist from Saudi Arabia, who worked at the University of Texas Health Science Center, according to the
Morning News.
Federal investigators are also pursuing a lead in southern California, said an official without providing specifics.
The San-Diego Union-Tribune reported that an unidentified San Diego resident suspected of financially aiding Nawaf Alhamzi and Khalid Al-Midhar, two of the alleged hijackers, had been taken into custody late Sunday.
In Boston, federal agents searched an apartment complex supposedly said to be the home of relatives of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born exile claimed by the U.S. as the main suspect in the terrorist attacks, the
Boston Herald reported Wednesday.
Agents arrived at the Flagship Wharf condominium complex hours after the attacks, according to the paper, which said that at least two alleged bin Laden relatives - Mohammed and Nawaf - currently own units in the complex.
In Detroit, the FBI arrested three men after allegedly finding them with false identification papers and notes about a U.S. military base in Turkey, according to media reports.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Oman categorically denied that three Omani nationals briefly detained in the Philippines were involved in the attacks.
"It has not been proved that the three Omanis, whose names have not been mentioned by the office of the Philippines presidency, have a link with the attacks in New York and Washington," a spokesman said, quoted by the Oman News Agency (ONA).
"These Omanis have been able to return home after visiting Southeast Asia," the spokesman said, stressing that, "information published by media on the implication of the three Omanis is completely baseless."
Philippine President Gloria Arroyo's office said Friday that police had briefly detained three Omanis who filmed the U.S. embassy there on September 8th, three days before the deadly attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The three Omanis, identified in Manila by the surname "Al Sheihhi," were questioned by police on why they were taking video footage of the embassy, but were released after their tapes showed standard tourist scenes.
Arroyo's spokesman, Rigoberto Tiglao, said that, "the name of one of the three [Omanis] appeared in the flight manifest of one of the hijacked planes in the U.S."
A day after the attacks in the U.S., a Philippine police team accompanying a U.S. technician checked the hotel room where the Omanis had stayed and "an initial swipe of the room tested positive for TNT chemicals," he said.
Another named FBI suspect is Marwan al-Shehhi, a UAE national who is claimed to be missing.
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