Germany Issues Warrants for Pair Linked to Hijacker

German prosecutors issued international arrest warrants Friday for two men associated with Mohamed Atta, the only one of 19 hijackers who is known to have contacted members of all four terrorist cells responsible for the attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

The warrants accused Said Bahaji, 26, and Ramzi Binalshibh, 29, of providing criminal assistance to the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks, which allegedly makes them culpable for “several thousand murders.”

The two arrest warrants are the first accusing anyone of criminal acts in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Center and badly damaged the Pentagon. The hijackers also crashed an airliner in western Pennsylvania.

Bahaji and Binalshibh were not in custody. Prosecutors issued international warrants, apparently believing the pair had fled Germany. The two men bring to five the number of former students that authorities believe belonged to a terrorist cell in Hamburg that plotted the attacks for at least two years.

Atta, a 33-year-old Egyptian, was a member of the Hamburg cell and has emerged as a leader among fellow terrorists who came to the United States. His travels abroad, in addition to his contacts with members of four terrorist cells in the U.S., positioned him to carry instructions from handlers overseas to all members of their conspiracy in this country.

“He is someone we have a particular interest in,” said a law enforcement official in Washington who requested anonymity.

U.S. law enforcement documents obtained by The Times reveal that Atta and at least two members of a San Diego-based cell, Nawaq Alhamzi and Hani Hanjour, journeyed to Las Vegas at the same time. Atta’s links to the other three cells were revealed earlier.

Atta stayed in Las Vegas from June 29 to July 1, according to a registration slip at the Econo Lodge, an inexpensive motel on the Las Vegas Strip in a neighborhood of street prostitutes, tattoo parlors, adult book stores and wedding chapels.

The Econo Lodge registration, also obtained by The Times, shows that he stayed in Room 122 and took advantage of an American Automobile Assn. discount of 10%. Atta paid $49.50 a night for the room.

A week later, he flew out of Miami on a 12-day trip that took him to Europe. He returned to the United States on July 19 on a flight from Madrid to Atlanta.

About three weeks later, 28 days before he and his fellow terrorists allegedly launched their attack, Atta spent another night at the same Las Vegas motel.

The registration slips in Las Vegas show that he paid cash in both instances.

The Las Vegas Review Journal, which first identified the Econo Lodge as where Atta stayed, said he flew into McCarran International Airport on his first visit and leased a Chevrolet Malibu from Alamo Rent-a-Car.

It was unclear from the federal document whether or precisely when Atta met with Alhamzi and Hanjour, the two members of the San Diego cell--during his first stay at the Econo Lodge or his second. The law enforcement source in Washington said the FBI was working to find out.

Investigators have asked casinos, hotels and other businesses to review videotapes from security cameras. “We’re routinely assisting the FBI, going through all our tapes,” said Michael Gilmartin, a spokesman for the Stratosphere Observation Tower, a tourist attraction and the tallest structure in Las Vegas.

The tower is half a mile from the Econo Lodge.

Agents also were trying to learn whether Atta met in other cities with any of the other hijackers, the law enforcement source said.

Atta was a suspected hijacker aboard American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles, which led the attack as the first aircraft to slam into the World Trade Center. His known terrorist associates on the other hijacked flights include:

* Marwan Al-Shehhi, possibly an Atta cousin who shared rooms with him in Hamburg and Florida. Al-Shehhi was aboard United Airlines Flight 175 from Boston to Los Angeles, the second jetliner to hit the twin towers.

* Hanjour and Alhamzi, who Atta may have visited in Las Vegas and San Diego. Both men were aboard American Flight 77 from Washington’s Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles. It crashed into the Pentagon.

* Ziad Jarrahi, a Lebanese citizen and regular visitor to Atta’s Hamburg apartment. He was aboard United Airlines Flight 93 from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco, which crashed in rural Pennsylvania.

While Atta’s identity has been confirmed in Germany and in the United States, new information shows that other members of his cell used assumed names and phony ID documents. One of those, appearing on the flight manifest as Waleed M. Alshehri--a 1997 graduate of a Daytona Beach, Fla., flight school--turned up alive in Morocco earlier this week.

Such confusion over names raises a question of whether others being sought in Europe and the U.S. could be among misidentified dead hijackers.

In Germany, Federal Prosecutor Kay Nehm said the Hamburg cell, which included Atta and Al-Shehhi, who was born in the United Arab Emirates, and Jarrahi, 26, who was a Lebanese citizen, “took part in preparations for the plan at least since 1999.”

Nehm cited no evidence to support the contention, but Hamburg police told reporters that all three claimed to have lost their passports that year within a two-month period.

Police speculated that the men wanted to get rid of visas from nations hostile to the United States, such as Afghanistan or Iraq, which could have alarmed American authorities when they applied for U.S. visas.

Bahaji, one of the pair named in the international arrest warrants, is a German citizen of Moroccan origin who police said provided apartments, transportation and falsified identity papers to the hijackers.

Binalshibh, the other of the pair, is from Yemen. Police said the two were occasional co-renters of a three-room apartment on Marienstrasse, where the attackers gathered before departing for Florida last year to take flying lessons.

The arrest warrants accuse Bahaji and Binalshibh of “belonging to a terrorist organization, [of committing] several thousand murders and [of] dangerous interference with air transportation.”

Investigators said they learned that Atta filled in bank deposit slips for monthly rent payments on the Marienstrasse apartment with the Arab notation “Dar el Anser,” which Nehm said means “House of Supporters.” Neighbors said the apartment was frequented by at least a dozen men.

Asked if the probe of Hamburg suspects had yet found traces of Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, Nehm replied: “We have no evidence that there is a link with Bin Laden, but we are investigating in this direction.”

Binalshibh was said by Nehm to be a business administration student at Hamburg University, but a spokeswoman on campus, Frauke Hamann, said he was studying German in 1999 in preparation for enrollment in business courses. He dropped out at midyear, and his activities after that were unknown.

He trained at the same Florida flight school as Atta, Nehm said, although he was unsure if they trained at the same time. The Venice, Fla., flight school said it had no record of Binalshibh as a student.

The prosecutor said Binalshibh, who was last seen in August in Hamburg, was denied a U.S. visa during the summer of 2000 to attend another Florida flight school after making a $2,200 down payment.

It was the school attended by Jarrahi.

Bahaji’s wife, Nese, 21, was taken into custody last week for interrogation and her own protection. She told investigators she has no means of contacting her husband. She and Bahaji’s mother have told police that he left for Pakistan on Sept. 2 to take a job in computer science.

An interview with Nese Bahaji’s stepfather in the mass-circulation Bild newspaper portrayed Bahaji as fanatically devout and obsessed with shielding his wife from any contact outside the home.

The stepfather, identified only as Osman K., said he last saw Bahaji on Sept. 1, when his son-in-law, impatient and carrying a suitcase, came to his home to say he was leaving for a job in Pakistan and needed to borrow 1,000 marks (about $450) for air fare. Bahaji left for Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, via Istanbul, Turkey, the next day, Nehm’s office said.

The stepfather described Nese Bahaji as “a completely normal girl” who wore bluejeans, had lots of friends and wanted to become a diving instructor. But shortly after she married Bahaji two years ago, he said, “I could no longer recognize my daughter.” He said she began shrouding herself in veils and rarely left home.

When she gave birth to a son March 25, Bahaji posted a guard over his wife to prevent hospital staff from seeing her and insisted that she wear gloves whenever she handled their baby, the stepfather told the newspaper. He also said he was forbidden to take any pictures of his now 6-month-old grandson because Bahaji insisted it was against the Koran.

Bahaji left a power of attorney for the stepfather to handle his affairs, Nehm said, “in case something should happen.”

In other developments Friday:

* Three men and a woman were detained in London in connection with the terrorism. They were the first arrests in Britain since the attacks.

Their nationalities were unknown and no further information on them or their suspected relationship to the attacks was available.

* In San Diego, a man detained earlier this week as a material witness was identified by a federal law enforcement source as Omer Bakarbashat.

The source said Bakarbashat has been sent to New York for questioning.

Agents confiscated at least two vehicles parked at an apartment where records show an Omer Bakarbashat lived, neighbors said.

* Tarek Mohamed Fayad, 33, arrested earlier this week in Colton, Calif., as a material witness because he once may have been a roommate of one of the hijackers, also was transferred to New York to be interviewed by the FBI.

Federal authorities have arrested nearly a dozen people as material witnesses, sources said, and nearly all have been sent to New York for questioning.

The Justice Department said 33 of 80 people being detained in connection with the case on immigration violations hail from either Egypt or Jordan. Others are from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Palestinian territories and Pakistan.

The Immigration and Nationalization Service said a few had been living illegally in the United States for as long as 12 years.

*

Times staff writers Williams reported from Hamburg and Rempel from Los Angeles; special correspondent Goodman reported from Las Vegas. Times staff writers Tom Gorman in Las Vegas, Marjorie Miller in London, Josh Meyer in New York, Scott Glover, Matt Lait, Patrick J. McDonnell and H.G. Reza in San Diego, John-Thor Dahlburg in Miami, Eric Lichtblau and Lisa Getter in Washington, and Greg Krikorian, Rich Connell, Robert Lopez and researcher Nona Yates in Los Angeles also contributed to this report.