U.S. Now Unsure of Iraqi Tie to Sept. 11

U.S. investigators say they no longer believe that suicide hijacker Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Europe last year, eliminating the only known link between Saddam Hussein’s government and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

American and Czech officials had believed that the meetings between Atta, the alleged ringleader of the 19 hijackers, and Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir Ani, an Iraqi diplomat believed to be an intelligence agent, took place in Prague, the Czech capital, in April 2001.

Some observers said the meetings suggested Iraq’s complicity in the Sept. 11 attacks--providing the United States with a reason to attack Hussein. The Iraqi government denied that the meetings ever occurred and charged that the reports were fabricated to justify making Iraq a target in the U.S.-led war on terror.

U.S. officials said the content of the alleged meetings was never definitively laid out. Some Czech officials said Atta had contacted Ani, who was later expelled from the Czech Republic, to discuss an attack on the Prague building that serves as the headquarters for U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

But Czech authorities have since retracted their statements to the U.S. government, saying that no such meetings took place. Atta is now believed to have been in the United States when he was supposed to have been meeting with Ani, said a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

U.S. officials have established numerous ties between the hijackers and Al Qaeda, but none to Iraq’s government. Similar efforts to link terrorist leader Osama bin Laden to Hussein have yielded few results.