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Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company

The Boston Globe

August 4, 2002, Sunday JHIRD EDITION

SECTION: NATIONAL/FOREIGN; Pg. A30

LENGTH: 1072 words

HEADLINE: FIGHTING TERROR / THE INVESTIGATION Globe correspondent Brian Whitmore contributed to
this report.;
CLERICS MAY HAVE STOKED RADICALS' FIRE QAEDA SAID TO USE SOME RADICAL CLERICS TO HELP
ITS CAUSE

BYLINE: By Charles M. Sennott, Globe Staff

BODY:
HAMBURG - As a guest orator at the Al Quds mosque, Sheik Mohammed al-Fazazi delivered thunderous sermons
about Christian and Jewish "infidels" and the need to fight a "jihad" against America.
"The Jews and Crusaders must have their throats slit," said Fazazi, an Islamic cleric from Morocco, as he implored
those who listened to "fight the Americans as long as they are keeping Muslims in prison."
This vitriolic preaching was recorded on videotapes.
Some were seized by German police in a July 3 raid on a bookstore two blocks from the mosque, which was
frequented by Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks, and from the apartment of Atta's former
roommate.
As officials in Germany and throughout Europe piece together the disparate pieces of the Al Qaeda network,
Fazazi's relationship to the group remains unclear. But investigators have voiced little doubt that the cleric's fiery
speeches helped foment militant thinking among Muslims across the continent.
"We want to know if Fazazi was meeting with Atta and other members of the cell and whether he may have been
part of the theological inspiration for them," said Andreas Croll, a senior counterterrorism investigator for the Hamburg
state police. "We don't know a lot about him yet."
"We think sermons like this were the flame under the pot," said Manfred Murck, the deputy director of Hamburg's
Protectorate of the Constitution, the equivalent of a state attorney general.
Murck, whose agency is responsible for investigating extremist groups, said that Fazazi's language had violated
Germany's laws against hate speech. Of the 100 mosques around Hamburg, fewer than 30 were under the influence of
such extremists, and only a handful openly preached militant Islam, he said.
Riyadh Barakat, 52, an industrial electrician who performs the call to prayer at Al Quds, confirmed that Fazazi had
been invited to the mosque several times in recent years, most recently during the holy month of Ramadan in December
of 2000, and that he stayed until early 2001.
Both Croll and Murck said such guest lecturers were also part of a strategy of the Al Qaeda network to rely on
militant clerics like Fazazi, who were brought in to plant militant seeds and harvest new recruits. These guest lecturers,
and the mosques they attended, including Al Quds, are often funded in part through Saudi-based charities that seek to
spread the fiercely puritanical Wahabi doctrine that is the cornerstone of Islam in Saudi Arabia.
• Imam at German Mosque Preached Hate to 9/11 Pilots Page 1 of4

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ENTER THE BIRTHDAYS

Imam at German Mosque Preached Hate to 9/11

Pilots
Author: Douglas Frantz and Desmond Butler
Publication: The New York Times
Date: July 16,2002

The German police are examining the activities of a former religious leader at a small mosque
here who preached murderous hatred of the United States to Mohamed Atta and others who
planned and executed the attacks on Sept. 11.

The police and intelligence officials said the imam, whom they know only by his surname, al-
Fazazi, preached an unusually heated stream of anti-Western and anti-Jewish abuse at the
mosque, called Al Quds. Mr. Atta, the presumed organizer of the attacks and pilot of one of the
aircraft that hit the World Trade Center, attended the mosque, as did other members of the
riamburg cell.

The German police have no evidence that Mr. Fazazi was involved in the attacks on Sept. 11.
But investigators are intrigued by the number of paths that cross his door. FGs hate-filled
message, the fact that he left riamburg before Sept. 11 and his ties with people involved in the
attacks have all attracted the attention of the German police.

Mr. Fazazi said that "Christians and Jews should have their throats slit" and called on followers
to "fight the Americans as long as they are keeping Muslims in prison," according to videotaped
sermons seized earlier this month in raids by the riamburg state police on a bookstore two
blocks from the mosque, the police said.

Andreas Croll, a senior antiterrorism officer with the riamburg state police, said that in the light
of the videotapes, "It is fairly easy to make the conclusion after these excerpts that this was a
fundamentalist group, and this was the environment that Atta and his roommates were from."

Mr. Fazazi's name has not surfaced previously in the worldwide investigation of the attacks on
Sept. 11, and he remains a mysterious figure. German authorities said he was gone before they
knew who he was, and American investigators said they had little information about him. It is
not known whether Mr. Fazazi ever met with Mr. Atta, or other members of the riamburg cell,
outside the mosque. The plotters are known to have attended the mosque in 1998 and 1999
before Mr. Atta's departure for the United States in 2000.

http://www.hvk.org/articles/0702/130.html 9/25/03