The Muslim Brotherhood Network and 9/11

“Most certainly [Osama Bin Laden] is a Mujahid. I do not doubt his sincerity in resisting occupation for the sake of God Almighty.” 

– Mohammed Mahdi Akef, Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide (2008)

The question of responsibility for 9/11 has always been a contentious issue. Not in the conspiratorial sense. There’s no doubt (among serious people) that the attacks were planned, coordinated and carried out by Mohammad Atta and his 18 fellow hijackers, all of them members of al-Qaeda operating under a plan conceived by Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, and ultimately at the behest of al-Qaeda Emir Osama Bin Laden.

But questions remain about how far the network of culpability should be extended. As the Center’s Dave Wursmer discussed, attempting to understand the vast scope of the worldwide terrorist network in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 was a pressing responsibility. While al-Qaeda was ultimately responsible for orchestrating the attack, a broader network made that attack possible.

There remain efforts in federal court to hold the nations of Saudi Arabia and Iran accountable for roles their agents are believed to have played in facilitating those who would ultimately bring down the towers.

Yet one entity whose culpability in the 9/11 attacks has been underplayed, and in some ways studiously ignored, has been the Muslim Brotherhood.

And not for lack of evidence.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s role in the formation of al-Qaeda is often misunderstood even though immediately after the attacks, elements of the Brotherhood’s role started to come into focus.

The Muslim Brotherhood is mentioned by name five times in the 9/11 Commission report. Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Sayyid Qutb is mentioned 18 times, and the Commission notes that Bin Laden “relies heavily on Qutb.”

Muslim Brotherhood member and founder of the terrorist group Hamas, Abdullah Azzam—who would also found Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK), which would become al Qaeda—is mentioned 16 times. The Commission report includes recognition that Azzam, a student of Qutb, directly influenced Bin Laden. Azzam’s MAK was funded and supported through the U.S.-based front organization, Al-Kifah Refugee Center. Al-Kifah Refugee Center would recruit American Muslims for Jihad through close association with the Muslim Brotherhood’s Muslim Students Association, particularly in Boston.

The architect of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad (KSM), was a Muslim Brotherhood member from the age of 16 and became interested in waging jihad while participating in desert training camps in Kuwait, presumably run by the Brotherhood. KSM attended college at Greensboro, North Carolina, with the brother of 1993 World Trade Center bombing plotter Ramzi Yusef.

But even beyond ideological influence, the Brotherhood network had explicit links to the 9/11 hijackers. To begin with, five of the hijackers had ties to Muslim Brotherhood-linked mosques, through which they carefully integrated into the U.S. and received various forms of support.

Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi attended the Islamic Center of San Diego, a mosque whose property was under the control of the North American Islamic Trust, which was later linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas in the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) trial. Almihdhar and Alhazmi met a contact at the mosque through alleged Saudi intelligence officer Omar al-Bayoumi. The FBI investigation also documented that Bayoumi had ties to the HLF. Contacts at the mosque helped the two hijackers acquire a vehicle, lodgings, identity cards, and to receive funds from a nephew of KSM. While in San Diego, these two hijackers also met Anwar al-Awlaki, later a major al-Qaeda ideologue in his own right.

Al-Awlaki went on to become imam of the Dar al-Hijrah in Falls Church, Virginia, the mosque attended by hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Hani Hanjour. Dar al-Hijrah is closely tied to both NAIT and the Muslim American Society, which would subsequently be known to prosecutors as the “overt arm” of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States. Dar al-Hijrah was led by Mohammad al-Hanooti, a major Muslim Brotherhood leader and suspected Hamas financier whom the FBI believed had raised more than $6 million dollars for Hamas.  Dar al-Hijrah was founded by accomplished Muslim Brotherhood thinker Jamal Barzinji.

Barzinji was also one of the founders of the Saudi-funded World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), whose president, Abdullah Bin Laden, was the al-Qaeda leader’s nephew. Four of the hijackers lived within 3 blocks of the WAMY offices in Northern Virginia. WAMY is often viewed as an element of the Saudi government’s support for jihadist terrorism, particularly in the context of the 9/11 lawsuit against Saudi Arabia. Yet WAMY was “so tightly intertwined” with the Muslim Brotherhood that “it was often difficult to tell them apart.”

Zacarias Moussaoui intended to be the “20^th hijacker” on Flight 93 but was detained by the FBI for an immigration violation in August 2001. Moussaoui was tied to the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma (ISGO), another Brotherhood-linked mosque, according to FBI documents revealed during his trial. ISGO was founded by Mufid Abdelqader, one of five Muslim Brotherhood leaders convicted of financing Hamas in the HLF trial, and the half-brother of Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal. ISGO Imam Suhaib Webb would later go on to serve as Imam at the terror-tied Islamic Society of Boston.

It was not a coincidence that the paths of the al-Qaeda hijackers crossed with the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood network set up to support Hamas again and again.

When the U.S. government began to pursue al-Qaeda’s financiers, one of the very first men to be designated was Yassin al-Qadi, accused of funding both al-Qaeda and Hamas with millions. Al-Qadi was a major investor, alongside Hamas leader and U.S. Muslim Brotherhood member Mousa Abu Marzook, in Bait-u-Mal International (BMI), led by Soliman Biheri. Al-Qadi was also connected to Yacub Mirza, identified by an FBI source as a Muslim Brotherhood member. Al-Qadi was the major investor in P-Tech, a Massachusetts-based software company that the FBI later raided for hiding its affiliation with the designated al-Qadi; Yacub Mirza sat on the board, and companies associated with Mirza were also intertwined with P-Tech. Al-Qadi would eventually be delisted as a terrorist financier in part due to influence from the Turkish government.

Mirza was central to the SAAR Network, also known as the Safa Group, an intricate network of for-profit and non-profit organizations that a federal agent described as a classic example of money-laundering techniques used to disguise the origin and destination of funds. SAAR is a reference to Sulaiman Abdul Aziz Al Rajhi, a wealthy Saudi businessman and member of the “Golden Chain,” a list of the earliest Al Qaeda financiers captured by investigators in a raid on the Bosnian offices of the Benevolence International Foundation, an al-Qaeda Charity.

Numerous known Muslim Brotherhood leaders, including Jamal Barzinji were affiliated with SAAR Network organizations, which reportedly moved money overseas to Youssef Nada, the man known as the Muslim Brotherhood’s foreign minister, in whose home the notorious “Project” document was discovered describing how the Muslim Brotherhood would organize globally to support jihadist efforts. One of the SAAR network organizations, the International Institute of Islamic Thought, described as the Muslim Brotherhood’s Think Tank, employed Tarik Abdulmalik Hamdi, a close associate of Bin Laden, who provided the satellite phone from which Osama Bin Laden directed the East Africa embassy bombings in 1998.

Another founding investor of P-Tech was Abdurahman Alamoudi, founder of Islamic Society of Boston, a Muslim Brotherhood member and al-Qaeda financier, later convicted over a scheme to murder the Saudi Crown Prince. Other individuals affiliated with P-Tech included multiple individuals connected to Care International, a Boston-based NGO proven in court to be a front and successor to the Al Kifah Refugee Center.

Two weeks after 9/11, on September 17^th, President George W. Bush appeared with a group of Muslim American leaders at the Islamic Center of Washington, where he declared “Islam is a religion of peace.” Representatives of known Muslim Brotherhood organizations attended the event and were featured in photos standing close to the President, including CAIR founder Nihad Awad (CAIR had defended two Saudi nationals accused of conducting a “dry run” of 9/11 in November of 1999), along with the previously mentioned Jamal Barzinji.

From ideology, to support networks, to financing, it is nearly impossible to separate al-Qaeda from the Muslim Brotherhood network, and specifically, from the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood network, which helped to facilitate and fundraise for the terrorist group responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

While it goes too far to say the Brotherhood knew of the al-Qaeda plot, an argument can surely be made that without the Muslim Brotherhood and its U.S. network, 9/11 may not have been possible.

25 years later, we have still not come to grips with that reality.