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Edited on Mon Oct-04-10 04:02 PM by leveymg
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.” He's one of several Al-Qaeda figures who appears to have been everywhere and met with everyone in major al-Qaeda attacks, but for reasons that have never been satisfactorily explained, were repeatedly let go, and never spent significant time in prison, and are still living freely today under the protection of one or several intelligence agencies.
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 was convicted as a co-conspirator in the 1998 bombing of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Starting in 1995, Darkazanli had power of attorney over Salim’s bank account at a branch of the Deutsche Bank in Hamburg.
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.
Another Zarkazanli cohort, Rangzieb Ahmed, a UK-based Qaeda-operative was sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in planning terror attacks.
In late August 2001, shortly before the 9/11 attacks, Darkazanli was in contact with Barakat Yarkas, the then head of a Spanish al-Qaeda cell,is presently serving a prison term in Spain, is reported to have met with Darkazanli on several occasions.
Mohammed Zouaydi was also active in Spain at the time. Zouaydi is the former accountant of the Saudi royal family and a reputed al-Qaeda financier. Zouaydi is supposed to have financed terror commandos around the world. The Syrian-born Spanish citizen is said to have transferred no less than €667,000 to cells in the USA, Great Britain, Belgium, Yemen and Australia, among other places. €180,000 went to Mamoun Darkazanli (“Abu Ilias”), who was in charge of Mohammed Atta and his 9/11 suicide pilots. In addition to Atta, Darkazanli is said also to have recruited the logistics chief Ramzi Binalshibh. … In 2005, Zouaydi was sentenced to nine years by a Spanish Court.
In a December 2002 report that he prepared for the UN Security Council, terrorism expert Jean-Charles Brisard writes: “Money was funneled to the Hamburg cell through the Saudi Al Rahji bank to the businessmen Mahmoud Darkazanli and Abdul Fattah Zammar who provided the cell of hijackers with financial and logistical support.” In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, President Bush ordered the freezing of the assets of 27 firms and persons suspected of financing terror: among them, Mamoun Darkazanli. On the website of Interpol, one can easily find the “wanted” notice under which, pursuant to a UN Security Council resolution, Mamoun Darkazanli is sought around the world.
Everywhere, that is, but in the country in which he lives: Germany. German authorities have never brought charges against him. Having identified him as a key figure in the European al-Qaeda network, the Spanish investigative judge Baltasar Garzón indicted Darkazanli as part of the same Spanish al-Qaeda indictment in which Yarkas was charged. In October 2004, Garzón submitted a request to have Darkazanli extradited to Spain.
Darkazanli was arrested. But just an hour before he was scheduled to be flown to Spain, Germany’s Constitutional Court ordered the extradition stopped. The court would later find the German legislation implementing the EU arrest warrant to be unconstitutional and require it to be rewritten.
In the meanwhile, Germany’s federal prosecutor’s office opened its own investigation into Darkazanli’s activities. But this investigation was closed down on July 14, 2006.
(Parts adapted from: Al-Qaeda Financier Remains a Free Man in Germany: The alleged target of a CIA (Blackwater) murder plot has avoided justice thanks to the protection of German authorities. February 11, 2010 - by Stefan Frank)
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