The Case of the Missing Terrorist

Published in July 16 - August, 2002 Counterpunch,
http://www.counterpunch.org

The Case of the Missing Terrorist:
Where Is Alleged Moussaoui Henchman Atif Ahmed?

By Jacob Levich

In a mystery that raises further questions about
official accounts of the September 11 attacks, a man
named as a key player in the Al Qaeda 9/11 conspiracy
seems to have vanished from the face of the earth.

Atif Ahmed, 30, was scooped up by Scotland Yard
detectives nine months ago after the FBI, working with
the New York City police, linked him to accused "20th
hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui. At the time of Ahmed's
arrest, law enforcement sources told ABC News they had
found telephone records and other evidence suggesting
that Ahmed, a British national, was a co-conspirator
with Moussaoui.

In his own trial on capital conspiracy charges,
Moussaoui, an admitted Al Qaeda member, has identified
Ahmed as a "very important part" of the 9/11 terror
plot. Moussaoui has also claimed that Ahmed was a
double agent working for British intelligence. That
charge, if true, would have alarming implications
about the extent of 9/11 foreknowledge among Western
intelligence agencies.

Yet, since the day of his arrest, Atif Ahmed has been
all but erased from the public record in what feels
eerily like a deliberate news blackout. A
comprehensive review of online newspaper archives,
Internet search engines, unsealed court papers, and
relevant government documents has failed to turn up
any mention of Ahmed, apart from Moussaoui's pleadings
and a single ABC News story dating from November of
last year.

Where Ahmed is concerned, press coverage and official
acknowledgement are conspicuous by their absence.
Although the US government has been highly secretive
in its proceedings against the hundreds of persons
preventively detained in the post-9/11 dragnet,
arrests of alleged Al Qaeda conspirators, like
Moussaoui or Jose Padilla, have been well publicized
and widely reported.

Similarly, the press has closely followed the stories
of other alleged Moussaoui henchmen, like his
ex-roommates Hussein al-Attas and Ramzi Binalshibh. If
there is a blackout, it appears to apply only to
Ahmed.

Calls to the FBI's national and New York press offices
failed to yield any information about Ahmed's status.
"Never heard of the guy," FBI spokesman Joe Valiquette
said.

Thus the only publicly available information about
Atif Ahmed is contained in an ABC News item dated
November 14, 2001, which remains accessible on the
network's Web site. Headlined "British Police Nab
Terror Suspect," the story reveals that Ahmed was
picked up at his London dwelling and detained at the
request of US law enforcement officials, who claimed
to have uncovered telephone evidence suggesting that
Ahmed "was working with" Moussaoui. Further
unspecified evidence was said to have been found
during a search of Ahmed's apartment.

As of the story's filing, Ahmed was being held without
charge under the British Counterterrorism Act.
"Sources say the FBI wants Scotland Yard to keep Ahmed
in custody until it can be learned just how deeply may
be connected with Moussaoui," the story said.

The rest is silence. Despite the seriousness of the
allegations against Atif Ahmed, there has been no
press follow-up, and it is impossible to discover
whether he has been charged or released, or indeed
whether he is living or dead.

Ironically, the only person who now seems to care
about the status and whereabouts of Atif Ahmed is
terror defendant Zacarias Moussaoui, who has chosen to
represent himself in a desperate bid to save his own
life.

Moussaoui has moved for a court order compelling the
prosecution to produce any and all information
relating to Ahmed, but the government has so far
failed to respond. Meanwhile, on the rare occasions
when Moussaoui has been allowed to communicate
indirectly with the outside world -- through
incidental remarks in open-court hearings and in a
series of handwritten motions recently unsealed by the
court -- he has persisted in naming Ahmed as both an
al Qaeda conspirator and a British double agent.
Moussaoui's claims are self-serving, since his defense
strategy relies on establishing that the FBI and other
intelligence agencies knew all about the terror plot,
and therefore must have known that he himself was not
part of the "Nineteen Martyrs Team." Yet his charge
that Atif Ahmed was working for British intelligence
is suggestively consistent with the apparent news
blackout.

Jacob Levich (jlevich [at] earthlink.net) is a writer and
editor living in Queens, NY. The ABC News story about
Atif Ahmed can be found at
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/WTC_Investigation011114.html.