Date: 19 Sep 2001 00:28:00 +0200 From: ASWAD-AT-anarch.free.de (catkawin) Subject: Hamburg desinformation I already thought that a change of headline might be advisable, before I ended up with a 'Hamburg connection umpteenhundredandtwelve'. The information given suggest, however, that this word is a characterization highly inappropriate - this paper will today contradict the info it printed yesterday and so on, and looking at different papers from the same date, you will find enough discrepancies to wonder what's really going on. Hence a new headline was an easy choice. - Ziad Jarrah: Apparently it has been noticed meanwhile what I already said: plane construction is a course of studies which cannot be taken at Harburg Tech. So today's papers give the correct info that Jarrah was enrolled at Hamburg college. One paper reports that Jarrah lived in the same flat as Atta and Al- Shahhir. Another writes that he lived in student's digs in a neighbourhood in the north of Hamburg in quite well-to-do surroundings. One paper says Jarrah's father gave him DM 3,000 per months to live on, another says he even received DM 5,000. Both sums indicate that he must come from a wealthy family, as there are families who must make a living at less than even the first sum. One paper reports that Jarrah first enrolled at Greifswald university, but flunked and then enrolled at Hamburg college in 1997. Now, one probably might think: okay, no big deal, so he flunked once. However, German foreigners' laws make this highly improbable: when you get in on a student's visa, you have to renew your permit to stay once a year. And you are not allowed to change your course of studies. If you do and/or if you do not pass examinations in one course of studies, your stay permit will not be prolonged when it's time to renew it. You will be told by authorities to leave the country within one month. Additionally, papers say that Jarrah did not do well at Hamburg college and probably would have failed his upcoming exams again. A paper today publish a comment of a fellow student with whom Jarrah spent a lot of time preparing their examinations. This student said that, despite working with Jarrah all day round, he never heard any hateful remarks about America from him. - Mohamed Attah: He was at first described as being from the United Arab Emirates, but now papers say is was from Egypt and his father is a lawyer. A late TV news show just confirmed this, showed a house in Cairo where the Atta family used to live and talked to former neighbours. I take the initial info for desinfo because authorities must have been aware immediately where Atta came from: every foreigner must be registered with a special office which is called foreigners' office where they keep copies of people's documents. Police therefore will take about 10 minutes to find out which nationality his passport stated, instead of just guessing for several days. For the first days, he was said to have been enrolled for electrical engineering and having passed his exams already. Now in fact papers tell us that Atta was enrolled for city planning, and late TV news just said that before coming to Hamburg, he was enrolled at Cairo university and finished as a construction engineer. His thesis was written on 'City planning and development in an islamic-oriental town', concentrating in particular on the town of Halab in Syria. His thesis had a dedication, a verse from the Qur'an: 'My prayer and my sacrifice and my life and my death belong to God, the Lord of the Worlds'. Today's papers publish additional info on Atta: they now report about criminal activities, drug dealing and being involved in selling stolen cars. As a rumour they mention he might have done time in prison. A term in prison, on the other hand, would have been a sure-fire reason to withdraw his stay permit. - Said Bahaji He is the mysterious person of varying nationality whom police is looking for since last week. The info given now is that he is of Moroccan nationality but born in Germany, 26 years of age, married with one child, enrolled at Harburg Tech for electrical engineering. Bahaji is said to have rented the flat in which Atta and Al-Shahhi lived. Police issued an international warrant against him and assume he presently is in Pakistan. Papers describe Bahaji as being responsible for the logistics of the group. This late news report also mentioned that Bahaji has an e-mail account provided by Harburg Tech resp the students' union. They interviewed a person from the students' union who said that Bahaji looked for incoming e-mails 2 p.m. this afternoon, last time today at 5 p.m. It was explained that federal police office BKA had the means to find out from where Bahaji was doing netcalls. Today's papers also mention that police approached Harburg Tech with a list of 13 persons, among them Atta, Al Shahhi, and Bahaji. They said six persons of this list never were enrolled at Harburg Tech. Two persons are said to have been cleared of any suspicion, further two suspects police were not able to contact as yet. After a few days of not making much mention of the implication of NATO having accepted the attack as an incident of defence, the issue was taken up today again, concentrating on the aspect of what will this mean for our civil liberties and rights. What was merely touched upon earlier is the fact that these in fact are over and done with as soon as NATO will take action. During the sixties, the Adenauer administration introduced a number of so-called emergency laws. At that point in time, many people, including the students' movement, protested these laws. The Social Democrats, without government participation during these years, also protested. But things change over the years. Our present Home Secretary happens to be Otto Schily. Schily, a lawyer by profession, protested the emergency laws in the sixties. Now that he is in a position to decide if and when these laws will be in effect, we don't hear any opposition from him any longer. Instead, Schily is planning to introduce foreigners' laws which are meant to ascertain that no extremists will get access to Germany. We don't as yet get info re the measures with which this is meant to be ascertained. Visa for immigrants' relatives will be restricted - the age for children of immigrant parents to be allowed to enter Germany may be reduced to a mere 6 years of age in future. This means that parents leaving their children with relatives at home first will have no chance to reunite the family in Germany if their children are older than 6 years. Immigrant associations instead demand that this age should be raised to 18 years. The laws applying to registered societies will be tightened to prevent the registration of extreme Islamist societies. It is assumed that this will be first applied to those religious reg. societies already observed by intelligence authorities. In-famous $ 129a (offering regulations for what a 'terrorist association' is and introducing regulations against those who verbally support violence) will see an addition re international organisations. Papers mention that this addition means that you can be sentenced in Germany for supporting a 'terrorist organisation' abroad. As the paragraph includes verbal support already, this means that in future we will be in danger of doing time for expressing sympathy for liberation movements abroad, or for making donations to them. Data protection will be weakened to allow police and intelligence services better and easier access to data kept by other authorities, e.g. the foreigners' central registrar. Airport personnel will be checked thoroughly. This was not specified in the paper, but plans were mentioned before to have all airport personnel and applicants for jobs from now on checked by intelligence authorities. Whatever advantage it may have to check persons applying for jobs like cleaning the airport bogs. The Bavarian government demands 'routine checks' of all foreign residents by intelligence authorities. Papers say authorities are still examining whether they will introduce armed security personnel to German flights. They are also discussing further security measures for trains. Existing regulations re money laundering will be tightened so that banks will have to give more info to authorities. Nothing else specified as yet. catkawin
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