Amer Azizi
A connection between 9/11 and 3/11.
MADRID, Spain (AP) — A Moroccan fugitive sought in connection with last month’s Madrid train bombings has been indicted on charges of helping plan the September 11 attacks in the United States.
Amer Azizi helped organize a meeting in northeast Spain in July 2001 that key plotters in the U.S. attacks, including suspect suicide pilot Mohamed Atta, used to finalize details, Judge Baltasar Garzon said.
Azizi was initially included in an indictment Garzon handed down in September against Osama bin Laden and 34 other terror suspects. Azizi was charged then with belonging to a terrorist organization.
The new indictment charges Azizi with actually helping plan the September 11 attacks. Garzon accused Azizi of multiple counts of murder — “as many deaths and injuries as were committed” on September 11.
The indictment was based on information provided by authorities in Britain, Turkey and the United States, Garzon said.
Azizi provided lodging for people who attended the July 2001 meeting in the Tarragona region of Spain and acted as a courier, passing on messages between plotters, Garzon said in the indictment.
The judge described Azizi as the right-hand man of Imad Yarkas, jailed in November 2001 on charges of leading a Spain-based al Qaeda cell that allegedly provided financing and logistics for planners of the September 11 attacks.
Azizi fled Spain in November 2001, shortly after a wave of arrests that netted Yarkas and more than a dozen other al Qaeda suspects.
The Interior Ministry released a photo of Azizi this month, calling him a suspect in the March 11 train bombings in Madrid, in which 191 people died and more than 2,000 were injured.