The Michigan Daily - Monday, September 17, 2001- 3B SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 The terrorists Many signs of bin Laden family wealth in Boston area The Baltimore Sun * * e *. *77* one affected by the attacks in New York and Relatives of Saudi exile have ivenS 2 million to Harvara outside Washington. So winding up in the BOSTON - Osama bin Laden's millions spotlight because of a neighbor's identity "is might or might not have helped pay for last its financial ties to the family, university Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which comprises nearly said Aleister Saunders, a biochemist who just a double whammy," she said. week's terrorist attacks But there have long spokesman Joe Wrinn said And in half of the 50 or so bin Laden siblines - but works near the brick Flagshi Wharf condos Four units of'Flashin Wharf are litd in s been signs, seemingly benign, of his family's wealth in the Boston area. One relative of the suspected Saudi terror- ist owns four condominiums on the water- front in the city's Charlestown section, according to records. The Flagship Wharf condos, which sell for $500,000 and up, have sweeping views of Boston Harbor, the down- town skyline and Logan International Air- port. And the bin Laden family has given $2 million to Harvard University - the coun- try's richest institution of higher learning with its $19 billion endowment - for the study of Islamic law and architecture. Since the attacks, several Harvard alumni have called the university to complain about ~'1 i V -1 . . Charlestown, Boston police officers now keep an eye on the condominium building, appar- ently to protect and reassure residents ner- vous about misguided retribution. There is no evidence that Osama bin Laden's personal money underwrote the real estate purchases or educational endowments, or that his relatives have any ties to terrorism. Harvard officials speak of a family rift in an attempt to show that plenty of distance exists between the Islamic militant believed to be in Afghanistan and his many Saudi relatives. "It's this perception that Harvard takes blood money," said Wrinn. "We do not." The university received SI million gifts in 1993 and 1994 from the Saudi bin Laden Group, a family-owned corporation based in not Osama bin Laden. Harvard uses interest generated by the principal to pay for research fellowships and the like, Wrinn said, all of which are under the university's control. "There is absolutely no connection, to our knowledge, of that money being tied to any terrorist act or Osama bin Laden in particu- lar," Wrinn said. As Boston residents can attest, family ties are not always the best guide to character. Still, some Boston residents say they find it odd that Mohammed M. bin Laden whose precise relation to Osama bin Laden is not clear - is a property owner in Charlestown, an area once largely blue collar but now home to many well-heeled professionals. "It's weird, even if he's a really nice guy," a short walk from the USS Constitution's berth and the Bunker Hill Monument. The sudden attention has unnerved some of those living at Flagship Wharf and prompted police to park a patrol cruiser outside. "A safety matter" is all officer Bill Toner would say when asked why he was there. Some residents said they were scared that vigilantes, fueled by emotion and blind hatred, might lob a bomb at the building because someone named bin Laden has a home there. "We feel threatened," said one resident, who requested anonymity. "Would you want some Timothy McVeigh-type coming here?" The resident said many of the 200 or so people who live in the building know some- Mohammed M. bin Laden's name, according to city property records. One of those is- a penthouse apartment, for which he paid S405,000 in April 1995; he bought another apartment for $780,000 in June of that year. Calls placed to phone numbers listed for- two of the units last week were not answered, and a person who answered a call to a third unit said it was the wrong number. No one could be reached in the fourth unit. A build- ing official declined to comment. Neighbors said they know little about Mohammed M. bin Laden and his immediate family. "They don't come very much," said a resident, adding that Boston is a cosmopoli- tan city home to thousands of people from the Middle East. Suspect leaves trail for FBI to follow Los Angeles Times PARIS - Mohamed Atta, a student of urban planning, militant Muslim and suicidal pilot, was a leader of his hijacking cell and shuttled among cities in the United States and abroad, offering investigators a trail that could lead to key managers of the conspiracy to attack America, according to records reviewed Saturday by the Los Angeles Times. He traveled into the United States from countries including Germany and Spain; which have many active terror- ist cells. In the months before the assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, he made two trips from Miami to Spain, the records showed. Atta's journeys fit a pattern taught by trainers for Osama bin Laden, the Saudi fugitive who runs a terrorist net- work from Afghanistan. The trainers teach followers to communicate instructions in person and to avoid telephones or any other means subject to electronic surveillance. Tracing Atta's journeys could lead investigators to middle-level handlers directing what U.S. officials describe as isolated cells of terrorists who infil- trated the United States. They commandeered airliners Tues- day and piloted them into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in the worst terrorist attack in American history. One side of the Pentagon was flattened, and the twin towers of the Trade Center were destroyed. The death toll is expect- ed to exceed 5,000 people. U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Pow- ell says bin Laden is the prime suspect. U.S. and foreign counterterrorism spe- cialists evaluating last week's events point to disturbing developments in the bin Laden organization: The complexi- ty of its cellular structure has increased. The significance of its targets has grown. Perhaps most disturbing, the sophistication of its technology has escalated year by year. These experts fear that the logical next step is chemical, biological or nuclear terrorism. Intelligence sources say U.S. reconnaissance satellites recently spotted numerous dead ani- mals in fields near one bin Laden camp, suggesting that the testing of chemical weapons might be underway. Atta who studied urban planning, reportedly co-founded an Islamic prayer group at the Technical Universi- ty in Hamburg, Germany, and shared an apartment there with two men, including a cousin, who would become hijackers in his terrorist cell, as well as with others linked to the bin Laden network. He is said to have written a thesis on the restoration of the old quarter of the city of Aleppo, which took him to Syria, long regarded by the United States as a promoter of international terrorism. American officials have said the bin Laden adherents who bombed the USS Cole last year received mater- ial support from Iran by way of Syria. Atta, older and better educated than other members of his cell, was respon- sible for paying the rent on the Ham- burg apartment and used his credit card to lease cars for himself and at least one other hijacker in his cell. He obtained a visa at the U.S. con- sulate in Berlin on May 18, 2000, and came to Newark, N.J., on June 3 on a flight from Prague, Czech Republic. Bin Laden denies any involvement DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect, issued a statement yesterday denying that he was behind last week's terror attacks on the United States. "I stress that I have not carried out this act, which appears to have been carried out by indi- viduals with their own motivation," said the statement, broadcast by Qatar's Al-Jazeera satellite channel. In the statement, read out by an Al-Jazeera announcer, bin Laden said that he was used to the United States accusing him every time "its many enemies strike at it-." Bin Laden, a Saudi exile who has lived in Afghanistan since 1996, has said on at least one other occasion that he wasn't behind the attacks. Jamal Ismail, a Palestinian journalist, has said a bin Laden aide called him after Tuesday's attack to say bin Laden denied being involved but "thanked almighty Allah and bowed before him when he heard this news." Bin Laden has often granted interviews to Al-Jazeera, known in the Arab world for its wide reach and its independent and aggressive editorial policies. He also gives AI-Jazeera videos when he has a message to relay to the world, such as a tape early this year in which he was shown reciting an ode to Jerusalem and decrying Israel's presence in the city, which is holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims. In yesterday's statement, which was signed "Sheik Osama bin Laden," bin Laden said that he had pledged to the leader of Afghanistan, Mullah Mohammed Omar, to abide by the country's laws, and Onar "doesn't allow those types of acts." President Bush has said that bin Laden is the prime suspect in the attacks in which hijackers battered passenger planes into the two towers of New York's World Trade Center and a side of the Pentagon. A fourth hijacked plane crashed into the ground in Pennsylvania. Bin Laden has been indicted by the United States for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Days after the bombings, the United States fired dozens of Tomahawk cruise missiles on eastern Afghanistan in an attempt to kill him. Meanwhile, newspapers in Pakistan reported receiving an e-mail from a man purporting to be bin Laden. The message railed against the United States and said killing Americans and "their allies, civilian and military" was the duty of every Muslim. There was no way to prove the e-mail came from bin Laden. The Taliban deny bin Laden has access to any communications. AP PHOTO Exiled Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden is seen in this April 1998 picture in Afghanistan. While bin Laden, the prime suspect for Tuesday's attacks, likely remains confined to a network of camps and caves in eastern Afghanistan, tracking him consistently has proven extraordinarily difficult for U.S. intelligence agencies. FBI. investigated 2, suspected hijackers prior to the attacks Los Angeles Times Three weeks before the catastrophic attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the FBI was warned that two of the suspected hijackers were possible associates of Osama bin Laden and were in the United States, intelligence and law enforcement sources said Saturday. The FBI began to search for the two men Aug. 21 but did not ask the field office in San Diego, where the men had been living,'to help in the investi- gation until a day or two before the infernos in Washington and New York, FBI sources said. The failed manhunt began after the CIA warned that one of the pair, Khalid al-Midhar, might have a link to the terrorist bombing of the USS Cole last October in Yemen. Bin Laden is the prime suspect in both the Cole and hijacking attacks. U.S. officials have adamantly insist- ed that they had no advance warning of this week's tragedy. The disclosure that the FBI was looking for two of the hijackers is likely to spur fresh ques- tions about the government's intelli- gence efforts. Al-Midhar appears in a secret videotape made last year at a meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, with a suspect in the Cole bombing. The CIA on Aug. 21 asked the FBI to find al- M idhar and an associate, Nawaq Alhamzi. Al-Midhar and Alhamzi are believed to have been aboard the American Airlines plane that crashed into the Pentagon on Tuesday morn- ing. ai t T "to o C:' ...i: