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U.S. bars Spanish bid to question a Qaeda suspect
By Renwick McLean
International Herald Tribune
06/25/05 "IHT"
- - MADRID The Bush administration has refused to allow the Spanish authorities to interview a man accused of being a Qaeda operative whose testimony could be crucial to the prosecution of two men on trial here charged with helping to plan the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Spanish officials say.
With little more than a month left in the trial, the chief prosecutor in the case said he was still pressing the request to interview the accused man, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who is suspected of playing a central role in organizing the attacks in New York and at the Pentagon.
The two defendants, Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas and Driss Chebli, are charged with arranging a meeting in northern Spain in July 2001, for bin al-Shibh and Mohamed Atta, one of the Sept. 11 hijackers, as part of the final preparations for the attacks.
"An interview with bin al-Shibh could change everything," Pedro Rubira, chief prosecutor in the case, said in a recent interview. "He is very important for knowing what happened at that meeting."
Kevin Madden, a Justice Department spokesman, said the department would not comment on the request from Spain.
Bin al-Shibh, a Yemeni who was captured in Pakistan in 2002, is being held by the Central Intelligence Agency at an undisclosed location outside the United States. The agency and the Justice Department have not been willing to give any outsider access to him, including human rights groups.
Yarkas, a Syrian, and Chebli, a Moroccan, deny having prior knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks or being members of Al Qaeda.
But Rubira said evidence showed many connections between the two men and the Sept. 11 plot, chief among them indications that they arranged the meeting for Atta and bin al Shibh.
Rubira said that interviewing bin al-Shibh could help him establish whether the two defendants participated in the meeting or knew that it was part of preparations for the attacks.
Spanish efforts to question bin al-Shibh date to a request sent to the American authorities by the investigative judge, Baltasar Garzón, in late 2003. Garzón never received a reply, and his subsequent inquiries were similarly ignored, said a senior Spanish investigator who helped prepare the inquiries but who said he was prevented from commenting on the case for attribution during the trial.
Rubira said he made a new request to speak with bin al-Shibh about three months ago, and had yet to get an answer.
He said that American officials had otherwise been very cooperative throughout his investigation, and he expressed confidence that they would do everything possible to accommodate him.
But, he said, "I can't wait much longer," or one of the suspects might go free.
Under Spanish law, a suspect can be kept in custody for up to four years without a conviction. Yarkas, who was arrested in November 2001, will be freed if he is not sentenced by December.
Because of a mandatory appeals process and other procedures, the trial must conclude by July to guarantee that a final sentence is delivered by then, Rubira said.
In March 2004 the refusal of the United States to allow German lawyers to interview a Qaeda suspect, widely believed to be bin al-Shibh, led a German court to overturn the conviction of Mounir el-Motassadeq, a Moroccan who had been found guilty of involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks.
The court said that the American refusal had denied a fair trial to Motassadeq, who is being retried in Hamburg.
The charges against Yarkas and Chebli are part of a case that went to trial in April in which 24 men, mostly Syrians and North Africans, are accused of belonging to or aiding a Qaeda cell in Madrid.
Copyright © 2005 The International Herald Tribune
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