Militant terrorists used Internet communications in Germany
09-18-2001 12:36 PM
September 18, 2001
Hamburg (dpa) - An estimated 500 Internet users apparently frequented an online newsletter based in Germany on the activities of militant Islamists, a German website reported late Monday.
"Spiegel Online" said an unknown hacker found the mailing list of the newsletter, which originated from a website named as www.qoqaz.de and which is now offline.
The report said one of the first 20 e-mail addresses on the list is bahaji@tu-harburg.de, believed to be that of one Said Bahaji, who was a student at the Technical University in Hamburg.
Bahaji, 26, who is believed to be fugitive, is thought by investigators to be the chief logistics manager of the group blamed in the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.
According to the German federal crime bureau, BKA, it was Bahaji who procured U.S. visas for the pilots of the hijacked flights that crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
He also leased one of several Hamburg apartments which apparently were used by the terrorists.
"Spiegel Online" said the website www.qoqaz.de agitated for a "holy war", particularly in Russia's breakaway Chechen republic.
After the U.S. attacks, the site disappeared from the Internet but was found through the cache memories of various search engines.
A hacker named "Anonymous Coward" placed the list of 532 qoqaz newsletter recipients on a Swiss Internet forum named www.symlink.ch, the report said. Symlink gives any contributor who does not identify himself the standard pseudonym of "Anonymous Coward".
The majority of names on the mailing list appeared to be of Arabic origin, and several of them appeared to show that the recipients were using the e-mail facilities of German schools of higher learning, such as universities in Hamburg, Berlin, Bremen, Constance, Tuebingen, Stuttgart and Muenster.
The report said 122 of the e-mail addresses used the freemail service GMX, 81 used Microsoft's Hotmail, 41 used the German provider T-Online, and 31 used America Online.
"Spiegel Online" said the Islamist website www.qoqaz.de was the German version of the website www.qoqaz.com, which originates from the London publishers Azzam Publications.
The company is named after Sheikh Abdallah Azzam, who died in an airplane crash in 1989 and who was a close ally of Osama bin Laden, whom the United States blames in the attacks in New York and Washington.
Another report by "Spiegel Online" said FBI investigators had handed the Technical University in Hamburg a list of 13 suspects in the U.S. attacks.
The chancellor of the university, Joerg Severin, on Monday confirmed the existence of the list, adding that seven of the names on it are found in the university database.
Media reports noted that the list of 13 Hamburg suspects is much bigger than had previously been thought.
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Copyright 2001 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH
09-18-2001 12:36 PM
September 18, 2001
Hamburg (dpa) - An estimated 500 Internet users apparently frequented an online newsletter based in Germany on the activities of militant Islamists, a German website reported late Monday.
"Spiegel Online" said an unknown hacker found the mailing list of the newsletter, which originated from a website named as www.qoqaz.de and which is now offline.
The report said one of the first 20 e-mail addresses on the list is bahaji@tu-harburg.de, believed to be that of one Said Bahaji, who was a student at the Technical University in Hamburg.
Bahaji, 26, who is believed to be fugitive, is thought by investigators to be the chief logistics manager of the group blamed in the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.
According to the German federal crime bureau, BKA, it was Bahaji who procured U.S. visas for the pilots of the hijacked flights that crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
He also leased one of several Hamburg apartments which apparently were used by the terrorists.
"Spiegel Online" said the website www.qoqaz.de agitated for a "holy war", particularly in Russia's breakaway Chechen republic.
After the U.S. attacks, the site disappeared from the Internet but was found through the cache memories of various search engines.
A hacker named "Anonymous Coward" placed the list of 532 qoqaz newsletter recipients on a Swiss Internet forum named www.symlink.ch, the report said. Symlink gives any contributor who does not identify himself the standard pseudonym of "Anonymous Coward".
The majority of names on the mailing list appeared to be of Arabic origin, and several of them appeared to show that the recipients were using the e-mail facilities of German schools of higher learning, such as universities in Hamburg, Berlin, Bremen, Constance, Tuebingen, Stuttgart and Muenster.
The report said 122 of the e-mail addresses used the freemail service GMX, 81 used Microsoft's Hotmail, 41 used the German provider T-Online, and 31 used America Online.
"Spiegel Online" said the Islamist website www.qoqaz.de was the German version of the website www.qoqaz.com, which originates from the London publishers Azzam Publications.
The company is named after Sheikh Abdallah Azzam, who died in an airplane crash in 1989 and who was a close ally of Osama bin Laden, whom the United States blames in the attacks in New York and Washington.
Another report by "Spiegel Online" said FBI investigators had handed the Technical University in Hamburg a list of 13 suspects in the U.S. attacks.
The chancellor of the university, Joerg Severin, on Monday confirmed the existence of the list, adding that seven of the names on it are found in the university database.
Media reports noted that the list of 13 Hamburg suspects is much bigger than had previously been thought.
Copyright 2001 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH
