From “Terror on trial”, from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, :
MADRID, Spain — Two dozen men sit behind bulletproof glass in a new courtroom built to hold the biggest al-Qaida trial Europe has yet seen.
In proceedings that began in April, the Spanish National Court is considering whether the accused men belonged to a terrorist cell that helped kill nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001….
Accused cell member Yusuf Galan is not one of the major players. Galan, a Spaniard who converted to Islam, faces only 18 years for being part of the cell, visiting an Islamic militant training camp in Indonesia in 2001, and having illegal guns and knives in his home when he was arrested after the Sept. 11 attacks.
He also had militant literature, a map of London with a church and synagogue circled, and a map of Hannover, Germany.
And he had a map of Pittsburgh.
The map is a mystery. It is at least 40 years old. The Point Bridge, closed in 1959 and demolished thereafter, is still shown as a traffic artery across the Monongahela River, while the “proposed” Fort Duquesne Bridge, built in the 1960s, is just dotted lines.
A sequence of numbers — 71, 73, 75, 76, 5, 64, 67, 68 — is scrawled in one margin. Crestview Road, a hilly residential street in Banksville, is circled.
Residents of Crestview Road say they have not noticed any suspicious behavior on their small street, which is lined with middle-class brick houses in a neighborhood popular with city workers. Pittsburgh FBI special agent in charge Chris Briese declined to comment on the map.
The map raises the question: Why was Pittsburgh on the radar of an alleged Islamic terrorist in Spain?
One possibility: In the 1990s, a group of Saudi students in Pittsburgh published an Arabic-language magazine, Assirat Al-Mustaqeem, that often featured jihadist rhetoric. For example, one 1998 editorial called the United States a “strategic target” and wished for its destruction. The magazine was distributed to hard-line mosques in Europe and elsewhere until it ceased publication in 2000.
The magazine’s publisher, Bandar Al-Mashary, and editor, Mohsen Al-Mohsen, headed an Islamic foundation based in Banksville and prayed at a temporary mosque in a Banksville hotel, both about a mile from Crestview Road. Both men returned to Saudi Arabia after getting doctorates at the University of Pittsburgh.