German militant tied to 9/11 attacks held in Syria: US

WASHINGTON: A Syrian-born German national accused of helping to plan the Sept.1, 2001 attacks has been detained by Us-allied forces in Syria, the Pentagon conirmed on Thursday.

“We can conirm that Mohammad Haydar Zammar, a Syrian-born German national, was captured more than a month ago by SDF partners,” Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon said in a statement, referring to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

A senior Kurdish commander said the previous day that Zammar had been detained “and is now being interrogated.”

Zammar, in his mid-ifties, has been accused of recruiting some of the Sept.11 Al Qaeda hijackers who carried out attacks on Washington and New York, killing almost 3,000 people.

He was detained in Morocco in December 2001 in an operation involving CIA agents, and was handed over to the Syrian authorities two weeks later.

A Syrian court sentenced Zammar to 12 years in prison in 2007 for belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood, a charge that at the time could have resulted in the death penalty.

But conlict broke out in Syria four years later, and many hardline prisoners were released from jail or broke free and went on to join militant groups ighting in the war. Al Qaeda operated a branch in Syria known as Al Nusra Front, but the afiliate has since claimed to have broken off ties.

The Daesh militant group also rose to power in the country’s north and east, but a Us-backed alliance has ousted it from swathes of its onetime territory.

The SDF, a coalition of Arab and Kurdish ighters, has caught several foreign members of Daesh in Syria in recent months, particularly since it captured the northern city of Raqqa from the militants.