Is He Osama's Best Friend?

By Howard Chua-Eoan

How dangerous can an Afro comb and a plastic bottle of hot sauce be? When Officer Louis Pepe came by cell No. 6 at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan on Nov. 1, 2000, he was distracted by a squirt in the face from the bottle before the sharpened comb was plunged like a bayonet through his eye and 2 1/2 in. into his brain. The man in the cell, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, then allegedly took the keys from the paralyzed Pepe and began to wander down the hall. Guards stopped Salim, and he didn't get away. Or did he?

Arrested and extradited from Germany in December 1998, Salim was a prize prisoner for the U.S. government, which originally planned to put him on trial with four others charged with the Aug. 7, 1998, bombing of the U.S. embassies in Africa. Salim had complained that he should not be tried with the others in the trial scheduled for February 2000 because he had not been charged with directly carrying out the bombings. The judge had refused to sever the charges, but the assault on Pepe gave the court no choice but to postpone his conspiracy trial. Salim, 43, will first be tried for the attempted murder of Pepe. Three weeks ago, on Oct. 18, all defendants in the embassy-bombing trial were found guilty and sentenced to prison for the rest of their lives.

Salim has made himself out to be small fry in the search for bin Laden associates. But could he be something bigger? The portrait painted of Salim in the embassy-bombing trial is of a powerful and malignant personality. Prosecutors described Salim (whose alias was Abu Hajer al Iraqi) not only as one of Osama bin Laden's council of advisers, the Shura, but also as a key member of the fatwa committee, which helped formulate the theological justification for al-Qaeda's actions. Salim derived his prestige from being a religious scholar who has memorized the Koran, and he would alternate with bin Laden in delivering regular sermons to the al-Qaeda faithful. The government's star witness, a former top al-Qaeda operative, described Salim as bin Laden's "best friend." It was Salim, the prosecutors said, who provided al-Qaeda with a rationale for "collateral damage," citing an ancient fatwa calling for all-out war against pagan invaders, one that was likely to bring about the death of Muslim traders and civilians in the cross fire. If the civilian dead were indeed innocent, the argument went, they would be headed for heaven anyway.

The prosecutors provided evidence in the recent trial that Salim contributed more than theology. He was on the committee that helped al-Qaeda decide to relocate to Sudan in 1990 after the Afghan war. While Salim had told the Germans he handled finances for bin Laden's agriculture business, Themar al Mubaraka, the prosecution's witness claimed that a significant part of one large farm owned by the company was used for training courses in explosives. The witness also said that Salim, who allegedly received a monthly salary of $1,500, helped run bin Laden's Al Hijra Construction company, which ostensibly built roads and bridges but also had a permit to import explosives for construction use. The same witness said that Salim took him on a trip to a chemical-warfare-training facility in Sudan and was a critical link in the negotiations for an attempted $1.5 million purchase of South African uranium in 1993.

Salim admitted to German interrogators that he worked for bin Laden's business enterprises in Sudan, including Themar. But according to a transcript of his interrogation, he insisted that "my relationship with [bin Laden] was as an employee with a contract and monthly pay." When recruited to run the businesses, Salim said, he told bin Laden that "I was an electrical engineer, not a finance specialist. He said that was not important because he knew me to be an honest man and that I would manage."

Allan Haber, Salim's lawyer in the conspiracy case, says the prosecution's portrayal of Salim as a key bin Laden operative all comes down to the credibility of the government witness Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl and "whether or not you can believe a man who says he is a devout Muslim but steals money from his boss and tries to sell information to the government of Israel." (Al-Fadl sought protection with U.S. investigators after he embezzled $100,000 from bin Laden.) The government says al-Fadl's testimony is accurate and can be corroborated.

When Salim was arrested in Munich, he said he had arrived in Germany for the first time in 1995, to buy electronics to set up an Arabic-language radio station in Sudan. The U.S. says the real goal was to get radio equipment that could be used by al-Qaeda to communicate with its operatives. The following year, however, found al-Qaeda in confusion: Sudan expelled bin Laden, and the group's members were scattered until their high command returned to Afghanistan. Salim was living in Dubai and by 1998 had made four more visits to Germany, ostensibly to look for a new wife and a car. "My wife had three operations on her uterus," he told interrogators. "I talked with my wife about this, and she agreed I should look for a second wife." (German police note that Salim's airfare from Dubai cost more than the car he hoped to purchase, a used Mercedes-Benz 230 station wagon.)

More important, Salim acknowledged to his German interrogators that he had opened an account at Deutsche Bank and that he gave signature power over the account to Mamoun Darkazanli, a Syrian businessman who had settled in Hamburg in the 1980s and who has told reporters that he knew some of the Sept. 11 hijackers. Darkazanli attended the wedding of Said Bahaji, an alleged member of the cell that included suspects Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi. Bahaji's wedding album includes pictures of Atta and Al-Shehhi. Darkazanli's name is now on a list of 39 terrorists and organizations whose assets have been blocked by the U.S. Treasury Department. He remains, however, free to roam about Hamburg.

If Salim had been on trial for conspiracy in the embassy bombings, the U.S. would potentially have been able to establish his intimacy with the highest levels of al-Qaeda. In that case, the Darkazanli connection might be more than a tantalizing possibility: a clear link between a "best friend" of bin Laden's and someone in contact with the Sept. 11 hijackers.

In the past five years, al-Qaeda officials have shown deep concern over the secrets held by its high-ranking members. When their finance chief was nabbed by the Saudis in 1997, there were discussions about assassinating him before he could turn information over to Riyadh and the U.S. When the head of the military committee drowned in a ferry accident in Lake Victoria in Kenya in the spring of 1996, al-Qaeda agents were sent to verify that he was indeed dead and that no secrets had filtered out. But if Salim is a big shot who knows too much, al-Qaeda doesn't have to worry about him for a while. His trial for the attempted murder of Pepe was scheduled to begin the week of Sept. 17 and has been put off until early next year because of the logistical and bureaucratic chaos in lower Manhattan, where the court system is located. His conspiracy trial has not even been scheduled. The planes that devastated lower Manhattan have made sure that whatever secrets he holds will take their time coming to light.

--By Howard Chua-Eoan. With reporting by Charles P. Wallace/Berlin

With reporting by Charles P. Wallace/Berlin