Shortly after departing this southwestern German city on a Paris-bound train, a mysterious foreigner was pulled aside by police at the French border. The passenger claimed to be Palestinian, but carried no identification. He wouldn’t say where he was going, or why.Assuming they had caught an illegal immigrant looking for a better life in Europe, German authorities jailed the Arabic-speaking man in June 1999 and prepared to deport him. But they were unable to confirm his identity or figure out where to send him, so they moved him to a loosely supervised asylum camp for illegal immigrants. Officials there paid little attention when he vanished two weeks before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States. The man who would later be code-named “Mohamed the Egyptian” by his Islamic radical friends resumed his illegal travels across Europe in 2001, taking advantage of the continent’s open borders to move freely among Germany, Spain, France, Italy and possibly other countries.Full Story
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