Police 'exaggerated evidence' against British 9/11 suspect

October 09, 2006

By Sean O’Neill

POLICE and prosecutors are facing allegations that they misled a judge and grossly exaggerated evidence against the only man to be detained in Britain over September 11, The Times has learnt.

There is renewed scrutiny on two fronts of the role played by Scotland Yard and the Crown Prosecution Service in making unfounded claims that Lotfi Raissi trained the 9/11 hijackers.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission has opened an investigation into the conduct of the Anti-Terrorist Branch detectives who arrested Mr Raissi in 2001 and prepared the evidence against him.

In a separate move, Mr Raissi will go to the High Court tomorrow to seek an apology and compensation from the Home Office as a victim of a miscarriage of justice.

Mr Raissi, 32, an Algerian pilot, was the first person to be arrested in connection with 9/11 when armed police raided his West London home at 3am on September 21, 2001. He was held for five months in Belmarsh high-security prison before a judge declared that there was no evidence that he was involved in terrorism.

The Times understands that the IPCC inquiry is focused on an address book which, prosecution lawyers claimed before a district judge in 2001, showed a link between Mr Raissi and a senior al-Qaeda terrorist.

The courts were told that the address book belonged to Abu Doha, who is currently in prison in Britain, and contained a telephone number for Mr Raissi’s former flatmate in Arizona.

The alleged link to a known terrorist was relied upon by CPS lawyers to oppose Mr Raissi’s bail application as he fought attempts to extradite him to the United States.

It later emerged, however, that the address book was the property of Abdelaziz Kermani, who has never been arrested, questioned or charged in connection with any terrorist offence.

The book had been in the possession of Scotland Yard’s Anti-Terrorist Branch since February 2001 — seven months before Mr Raissi’s arrest. It was discovered in a North London flat used by Abu Doha in a locked briefcase containing Mr Kermani’s identity documents. It was clearly marked with his name and Home Office asylum application reference number.

But police did not trace and interview Mr Kermani until January 2002, after Mr Raissi’s lawyers vehemently denied links to Abu Doha. Speaking from Algiers, Mr Kermani said: “That was my address book, no question.”

The alleged terrorist link was one of a number of false allegations made against Mr Raissi. Prosecutors claimed in court that he was the “lead instructor” for the main hijackers who crashed aircraft into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. The FBI was said to have video material showing him in the company of Hani Hanjour, one of the hijack pilots.

However, all the evidence was shown to be unsubstantiated and, in February 2002, District Judge Timothy Workman ordered Mr Raissi’s release. The judge said that the young pilot “has appeared before me on several occasions where allegations of involvement in terrorism have been made. I have received no evidence to support that contention.”

Mr Raissi has since made several unsuccessful attempts to obtain an official apology from the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police for his treatment. Successive Home Secretaries have resisted his request for an acknowledgment that he was wrongfully arrested.

Scotland Yard has also been silent even after The Times revealed last year that Mr Raissi had been arrested amid widespread publicity despite the FBI specifically requesting a “background investigation” to be carried out “discreetly”.

Mr Raissi said: “My life has been ruined. I lost my freedom, my reputation and my career. The courts have said I am innocent — why does the Home Secretary not accept this?” Jules Carey, Mr Raissi’s solicitor, said the Home Secretary’s decision (to refuse compensation) was “morally wrong. We hope to establish that his decision is also legally wrong.”

Neither Mr Carey nor Mr Raissi would comment on the ongoing IPCC inquiry.