Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani had two meetings Mohammed Atta who was the planner of 9/11 and one of the hijackers identified. This shows a definite connection between Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 Terrorist Attack and Osama Bin Laden.
U.S. officials revealed Thursday that Mohammed Atta -- one of the suspected suicide hijackers -- had two meetings, not one, with Iraqi intelligence officers in Prague, Czech Republic.
The first meeting was in June 2000 and the second one was in April 2001, sources said. In both cases Atta met in Prague with Iraqi intelligence officers operating under cover as diplomats. (Source: CNN)
Mohamed Atta, the leader of the September 11 hijackers, visited Prague twice in the fifteen months before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, in June 2000 and April 2001, and met with an Iraqi agent at least once during the second visit. Czech officials say they have a photograph of the meeting. Atta, who was not previously known to Czech authorities, turned up in routine surveillance by Czech counterintelligence officials of Ahmed al-Ani, a consul at the Iraqi embassy here. Whether Atta and al-Ani discussed plans for September 11 is unknown. But this is known: Iraq had targeted an American institution located in Prague, the headquarters of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Before he was expelled from the Czech Republic last year, al-Ani was spotted--and photographed by RFE/RL officials--lingering outside the headquarters just off Wenceslas Square. Since September 11, the building has been guarded by Czech soldiers.
The story of Atta's contact with an Iraqi agent has been disputed by some American and European officials. Time, the Washington Post, and Newsweek, plus other publications, have raised doubts about it. But last week Martin Palous, the Czech ambassador to the United States, gave me the same account of Atta's time in Prague as other Czech officials had given to New York Times columnist William Safire, who first wrote about the Atta visit last November. Palous was home in Prague for consultations and a vacation. Both Czech prime minister Milos Zeman and interior minister Stanislav Gross have also publicly confirmed the meeting between Atta and al-Ani.
The meeting has political and international importance. A connection between Iraq and Atta, an al Qaeda operative under Osama bin Laden, bolsters the case for military action by the United States to remove the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. President Bush has repeatedly said he intends to depose Saddam--without saying when. But some European leaders and American politicians have insisted a link to September 11 is needed to justify an attack on Iraq. While the meeting might not tie Saddam directly to those attacks, it does link Iraq to the al Qaeda terrorist network, to whom Iraqi agents might secretly have slipped biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons to be used against America. Atta was living in Florida and plotting the September 11 hijackings at the time he made his two trips to Prague. (Source: The Weekly Standard)
1) Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani served as consul at Iraq's embassy in Prague between March 1999 and April 21, 2001 and he was activity involved in agent-handling during this period.
2) Mohammed Atta applied for a visa to visit the Czech Republic on May 26, 2000 in Bonn, Germany According to Czech visa records, Atta identified himself as being a "Hamburg student." Since a visa was not necessary to catch a Czech plane to the US, Czech intelligence concluded he had business in the Czech Republic.
3) Just prior to leaving for the U.S., Atta made 2 trips to the Czech Republic in 2000. The first was on May 30, where he went without a visa to the transit lounge of Prague International Airport; the second was by bus to Prague on June 2 with visa BONN200005260024.
4) On April 4, 2001, Atta checked out of the Diplomat Inn in Virginia Beach and cashed a check for $8,000 from a SunTrust account, according to the FBI. Atta was not seen again in America by any witness before April 11, 2001.
5) Al-Ani scheduled a meeting on April 8,2001 with a "Hamburg student" according to an appointment calendar subsequently turned up by Czech intelligence in a surreptitious search of the Iraq Embassy (presumably after the defeat of Iraq in April 2003.)
6) Al-Ani was observed meeting a young Arab-speaking man on the outskirts of Prague on April 8th by a watcher for Czech counterintelligence.
7) After seeing Atta�s picture on September 11th, the watcher identified the Arab-speaking man as Mohammed Atta.
8 ) Al-Ani was expelled from Prague less than 2 weeks after that meeting.
9 ) After 9-11, Al-Ani denied that he met Atta , as did the Baghdad government. Al-Ani repeated that denial after he was detained by U.S. forces in July 2003.
10 ) The CIA determined, according to George Tenet testimony before a Joint Committee of Congress (June 18, 2002): �Atta allegedly traveled outside the US in early April 2001 to meet with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague, we are still working to confirm or deny this allegation. It is possible that Atta traveled under an unknown alias since we have been unable to establish that Atta left the US or entered Europe in April 2001 under his true name or any known aliases.�
11) Subsequently, Spanish intelligence found evidence that Algerians Khaled Madani and Moussa Laouar provided false passports to Mohamed Atta and his associate Ramzi bin al-Shibh. (Source: Prague Update?)