Investigators probing a possible German-based network behind the anti-US suicide attacks have been going through a list of 13 persons, at least seven of whom were or are still registered as students at a Hamburg technical college.
A spokesman for federal prosecutor Kay Nehm said that not all 13 on the list supplied by the FBI were considered suspects, however.
The chancellor of the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg, Joerg Severin, said that the list had been shown to him by police the night following last Tuesday's attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Severin said he knew seven of the people on the list, at least three of whom were still registered as students at the university.
Two of the people on the list are believed to have been active participants who died in the attacks. They have been identified as Mohamed el Amir Awad Atta, 33, and Marwan Yussef Mohamed Al-Shehhi, 23, both from the United Arab Emirates.
A third suspect is Ziad Amir Jarrah, 26, from Lebanon. All three men suspected of taking part in the hijackings lived and studied in Hamburg and attended flight schools in Florida.
Marwan Yussef Mohamed Al-Shehhi is also said to have studied at the University of Bonn under the false name of Marwan Lekrab in 1997-98.
Ziad Amir Jarrah had also lived for a time in Bochum. His girlfriend there reported his disappearance the day after the attacks. The FBI believes he died aboard the hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania and that he was one of the hijackers.
German authorities said Monday they have searched some 20 apartments in their hunt for clues. These premises were mainly in Hamburg but four were in Bochum.
Bild newspaper meanwhile Tuesday reported that there was a worldwide hunt for Said Bahaji, 26, born in Germany of Moroccan descent and holding German citizenship, who disappeared from Hamburg shortly before the attacks, leaving behind his wife and baby son.
According to the newspaper, he had either gone to ground in Pakistan or died in the plane that crashed near Pittsburgh. He too attended the Hamburg-Harburg Technical University where he studied electrical engineering.
Bild said he was believed to have been a logistics expert for the perpetrators of the airplane attacks against the United States, renting apartments for them, obtaining US visas for the suicide pilots of the hijacked planes and organizing secret meetings.
The newspaper published a photograph of Said Bahaji's German passport.
According to his wife, he is in Pakistan -- BERLIN (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
