Average Student Who Met 9/11 Mastermind

Average student who met 9/11 mastermind

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...5/nbomb315.xml

By Duncan Gardham
Last Updated: 12:56pm BST 15/06/2007

Born a Hindu in the city of Baroda in the North West Indian state of Gujarat, the son of a banker from Nairobi, Kenya and an Indian mother, his parents fled the worsening political situation in East Africa in 1972, when Dhiren was a year old.

Manu Barot and his wife Bhartia arrived in Britain with Dhiren and his older sister, and moved into a 1930s semi-detached home in a cul-de-sac in the suburb of Kingsbury, Northwest London where Manu worked as a storeman at a local engineering factory and his wife worked at the local Sainsbury supermarket.

Barot, an "average student" took GCSEs in English, French, Maths, Chemistry, Physics, Art, Graphical Communications and Typewriting and was advised to follow a Certificate in Pre-Vocational Education at Willesden Technical College.

Soon afterwards he converted to Islam, causing a rift with his father, and began attending prayer meetings at Willesden Library, run by the radical cleric Abdullah el-Faisal and at Finsbury Park Mosque run by Abu Hamza.

He worked in a series of hotels before taking a job as a booking clerk for Air Malta in Piccadilly, central London, leaving in September 1995 to go travelling.

Barot flew to Karachi in Pakistan and traveled from there to Kashmir where Muslims and Hindus had been involved in decades of fighting over the disputed territory.

There, he said, he "witnessed a side of Islam which cannot be found in classrooms."

He took extensive notes about the weapons and explosives and moved to Afghanistan where he spent a year working as a trainer in one of the camps for Islamic fighters.

It was probably during that time that he met Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the September 11 attacks and became involved with al-Qaeda, where according to US sources, he gained the nick name Esa al-Britani and Esa al-Hindi.

In September 1999 he traveled to the Philippines where he was trained in firearms, munitions and explosives handling.

He traveled to Karachi in January 2000 and from there to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia with Osama bin Laden’s former bodyguard Walid bin Attash, known as "Khallad".

American intelligence sources believe he met the al-Qa’eda planner Hambali in Kuala Lumpur just as the September 11 attacks were being finalised.

It is also possible that he met two of the men who were to become hijackers on September 11, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who were meeting with Hambali in Kuala Lumpur around the same time.

In March 2001 Barot visited New York to look at potential targets.

The information was so detailed that it amounted to a virtual structural survey concentrating on how explosions could bring the buildings down but they were put on hold after September 11.

American supergrass Mohammed Junaid Babar said Barot called a summit in the Pakistani tribal area of South Waziristan in March 2003, shortly after the arrest of several senior al-Qa’eda figures.

His British plans were probably presented to senior al-Qa’eda commanders when Barot flew to Lahore in Pakistan in February 2004.

He returned to Britain on April 21 using a false passport after apparently receiving the go-ahead.