Intel official wars of possible new Hamburg terror cells

HAMBURG, Germany -- A top German intelligence official warned Wednesday that nearly 100 Arabs with suspected links to militant Muslim groups, including al-Qaida, could slip through tight surveillance if Hamburg doesn't quickly pass laws giving state authorities the same investigative powers already granted federal agents.

Manfred Murck, deputy director of the Hamburg agency that tracks extremists, said that surveillance alone can reduce the chances of another terrorist cell forming in Hamburg, where the Sept. 11 hijackers hatched their plan. But his urgent concern is that extremists already operating in Hamburg will act before law enforcement can move in.

"We are working against time," Murck said in an interview at his Hamburg office. "Every day I wake up and I think, 'Good, nothing happened.'"

Germany's strict arrest and surveillance laws, formulated as a response to Nazi-era excesses, have made it difficult to build cases against people involved in suspicious activities.

Until Hamburg adopts a state version of a new anti-terror package that took effect Aug. 30, Murck said his agents can't get access to suspects' bank, travel and telephone records -- evidence that might lead to further arrests.

The state terror package, which gives Hamburg authorities greater latitude to use wiretaps and bugs already used by federal agents, is before the Hamburg state legislature. It will debate the measures Thursday.

"With the new law, we will have some better chances to determine what is going on," Murck said. There are a lot of suspects "we think are in sympathy with international Muslim militancy ... but it is difficult to prove.

"They have guests from Lebanon or elsewhere whom they meet in mosques ... but we don't know what this means. Is it an international terrorist structure or is it just two brothers in Allah meeting?"

Germany has in recent months made clear it believes Muslim militants linked to international terror are still operating in the country. Murck's remarks, however, reflect an urgency to prevent a repeat of the Hamburg cell that produced lead hijacker Mohamed Atta and two other suicide pilots.

Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah led quiet student lives in Hamburg while preparing for the attacks, and although police had monitored some members of the cell, they say there was never any evidence of the group's intentions.

Murck said agents are looking at about 100 people, mostly Arabs, some who had contact with the Sept. 11 plotters and others tied to "the international scene of militant Islam" including Osama bin-Laden's al-Qaida, Lebanon's Hezbollah, the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

The 100 individuals came under suspicion due to vastly increased monitoring of Muslim extremists in Hamburg after the Sept. 11 attacks, Murck said. Suspicious activities included contacts within the group in Hamburg and with others elsewhere in Germany and internationally, but Murck would not elaborate.

"Our work is determining who else stayed in Hamburg and had something to do with them, and who else may still be here," Murck said. "And most importantly, who else remaining in Hamburg may reach all the network and be able to found a new cell?"

An affluent city that has thrived for centuries on trade and shipping, Hamburg has a large Muslim community of immigrants, primarily from Turkey.

Liberal asylum laws have attracted a growing number of Arabs over the last 20 years, among them Muslim militants escaping authoritarian Middle Eastern governments or seeking to take their jihad, or holy war, to the West after they fought in places like Afghanistan, the Balkans and Chechnya.

With the capture last week in Pakistan of Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni suspected of being the key contact between the Hamburg cell and the al-Qaida network, Germany can tick off its list one of three men for whom it had issued international arrest warrants. The others are Zakariya Essabar and Said Bahaji.

The main focus in Hamburg now is ensuring no new cells are formed, and much of the leg work falls to state authorities.

Hamburg police have 40 to 50 officers devoted to the anti-terror effort, including checking out 811 people whose names were generated through computer profiling, said Bodo Franz, the head of the police unit that investigates extremist groups.

In July, Hamburg police brought in seven men for questioning -- including a former roommate of Atta's -- after monthslong surveillance led to suspicions the group was plotting a new attack. All seven were subsequently released for lack of evidence.

Murck said police are still going through computer files and other evidence, but so far there is "no clear proof they plotted a new attack."

On the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Hamburg police raided a downtown mosque on a tip that an Egyptian living in a guest house there was building a bomb, but their search turned up no evidence and the suspect was not located.

Days earlier, authorities raided homes and warehouses belonging to a Syrian-born merchant and his family on suspicion they had ties to "potentially violent Islamic fundamentalists" -- including the Hamburg cell -- and had been falsifying documents and money laundering in order to smuggle in militants.

The federal prosecutor's office said Wednesday that agents are still evaluating the materials seized in those raids.