Law-enforcement sources say that Reid told FBI interrogators he came up with the bomb plot, recipe and supplies on his own in Amsterdam (with help from the Internet). But Dutch authorities don’t believe him. They are investigating contacts they believe he made in the Netherlands, including reports he may have hooked up with Jerome Courtailler, a suspected French terrorist. Dutch police arrested Courtailler on Sept. 13; he is still being held on terrorism conspiracy charges.
Investigators believe that Courtailler was acquainted with Moussaoui. They suspect that Courtailler and his brother, David, visited Moussaoui’s London apartment in the ’90s. U.S. and British investigators have also unearthed records from two British cell phones used by Moussaoui from which nine calls were made to the Netherlands.
Evidence of direct contacts between Moussaoui and Reid is still largely circumstantial. Abu Zakaria, a leader at a mosque in south London, told NEWSWEEK that Reid and Moussaoui both prayed there for several months in the mid-’90s. No one at the mosque remembers their being pals. Reid’s father, Robin, says that his son never mentioned Moussaoui, but adds that he hasn’t seen Richard for the last four years.
British and U.S. sources say the process of linking the two is going slowly. U.S. authorities are also troubled by the apparent “disappearance” of one radical London jihad preacher, Abu Qatada, whose prayer meetings, says an eyewitness, were frequented by Moussaoui. Qatada, whose assets have been frozen, has been described by U.S. officials as a key bin Laden representative. Around the time Britain’s new antiterror law (which provides for the detention without trial of alleged agitators like Qatada) took effect last month, Qatada left his west London residence. A radical Muslim source, who recently talked to Qatada’s wife, said she had received a message that her husband had “gone underground.” If he has truly disappeared, it could further complicate efforts to probe the London recruiting network that apparently swept up Moussaoui, Reid and other suspected terrorist “sleepers.”
