German Officials Find Letter From Suspected Hijacker

FRANKFURT, Germany – Authorities have found a package containing a lengthy letter from suspected Sept. 11 hijacker Ziad Jarrah to his girlfriend, telling her he would not return from the United States, German prosecutors confirmed Saturday.

Frauke Scheuten, spokeswoman for the federal prosecutors office, said a package containing the letter had been sent to Germany by Jarrah, suspected of flying the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. The package was later returned to the United States, where authorities discovered it, she said.

Besides the letter, which Scheuten described as a love letter bidding his girlfriend farewell, the package also contained papers about Jarrah's flight training and diving instructions, she said.

"I have done what I had to do," the German weekly Der Spiegel quoted the letter as saying in a Saturday release of its Monday edition. "You should be very proud, because it is an honor and in the end you will see that everyone will be happy."

According to Spiegel, the four-page letter is dated Sept. 10 and authorities believe it was written hours before the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center were carried out. Because of a mistake in the address, the package was returned to the United States and fell into the hands of the FBI last week, Spiegel said.

"Hold on to what you have until we see each other again," Spiegel said Jarrah wrote to his girlfriend.

Jarrah, a 26-year-old Lebanese native, often visited his girlfriend Ayse Sengun, in the western German city of Bochum where she was studying medicine. But he lived and studied in Hamburg along with two other suspected hijackers, Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi.

The three are thought to have been the organizers of the attacks and pilots of three of the four planes used to carry out the attacks.

Meanwhile, Focus weekly reported Saturday in an early release of its Monday edition that German investigators believe Said Bahaji, suspected of organizing apartments, documents and money for the Hamburg cell, may be in Bahrain.

An international arrest warrant has been issued for Bahaji, who left Germany eight days before the Sept. 11 attacks and flew to Pakistan. Focus said the German-Moroccan national is believed to have left Karachi three days later for Bahrain.

German investigators could not immediately be reached for comment.

In addition, Scheuten said that two men who were arrested in Pakistan while trying to cross illegally into Afghanistan have been returned to Germany and questioned as part of the investigation here into the attacks on New York and Washington.

Identified only as Bekim A., a German citizen, and Ibrahim D., a Lebanese native who was seeking asylum in Germany, the two are believed to have been involved in Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.