Thursday September 27, 2001

BERLIN - Efforts to shed light on the Sept. 11 terror attacks focused yesterday on a web of accounts and associates in Germany believed to be connected with at least five suspects who lived here for years undetected.

Investigators are examining money transfers that could tie Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network to the carnage - a trail highlighted by President Bush earlier this week when he named a German company as a front for bin Laden. The import-export company in Hamburg, where three of the hijackers lived, has had its account frozen since then.

Mohamed Atta, Marwan Al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah were aboard airliners that crashed into the World Trade Center and in rural Pennsylvania. But until the attacks, they had studied and lived quiet lives in Hamburg. Two other suspects who also lived in Hamburg are being sought by police.

How they paid for their rent, frequent travel between Europe, North America and the Middle East and costly flying lessons in the United States is unclear, but stands at the center of investigations in Germany.

Investigators are "looking into the living circumstances" of the five and their associates, said Hartmut Schneider, a spokesman for federal prosecutors in Karlsruhe. "That includes their financial background and account movements."

Investigators are tightlipped about new leads, but Frank Bonaldo, a spokesman for the Economics Ministry, confirmed that the account of Mamoun Darkazanli Import-Export Co. has been blocked.

"We're still checking whether there are grounds to keep it closed," he said. Bonaldo declined to say how much money the account contained. German authorities have blocked 13 other accounts in the last two years believed to be linked to bin Laden.

Mamoun Darkazanli, a Syrian who says he has lived in Hamburg for 18 years, has admitted working for Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, a man accused of being bin Laden's finance chief.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Darkazanli also said he had seen Atta, the suspected hijacker, and one of the fugitives, said Bahaji, once at a wedding.

But he denied any role in the terror attacks against the United States and described the extent of his dealings with Salim in the mid-1990s as a one-time business deal for a radio transmitter in Sudan that fell through.

Salim was arrested in Munich in 1998 and turned over to the United States as a suspect in the bombing earlier that year of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which has also been linked to bin Laden.

Responding to a call from Bush for international action against foreign banks and financial institutions that let themselves be used by terrorists, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder indicated yesterday that the government may seek to alter bank secrecy laws.

"I understand that many people equate bank secrecy with the Magna Carta of internal security, but that's not the case," Schroeder told parliament.

"He who wants to fight money laundering and dry out the financing sources of international terrorism - something we have to do - must talk about how to get at these finance sources."

German law generally prohibits the publication of data about bank clients, but Deutsche Bank said it had already given authorities a list of accounts it suspects are linked to terrorists or terrorist activities.

"I think we've done our homework already," chief executive Rolf Breuer said. "But we may not have found all traces yet."

Breuer didn't name the account holders, nor did he say whether the suspect accounts - which so far number fewer than 10 and contain less than $1 million - have been frozen or not.