Finland's Security Police (SUPO) have launched an intensive investigation to determine whether any of those alleged to have carried out the September terror attacks on the United States might have connections or contact-groups in Finland.

   

The reason is that SUPO has discovered from routine follow-up checks that one of the terrorists claimed to have been on the plane that struck the South Tower of the World Trade Center actually applied for a visa to enter Finland last October. The application was received at the Finnish Embassy in Riyadh, Sauda Arabia. The Finnish Foreign Ministry turned down the request because of discrepancies in the application, after passing the details on to the Security Police.

The recent information distributed by the FBI

and other bodies (and inadvertently revealed to all in this country by the actions of the Financial Supervision Authority) threw up the same name as was on the visa application papers, and the alarm-bells started ringing within the Security Police.

   

The applicant was one Hamza al-Ghamdi, 20, a Saudi citizen.

   

The FBI believe this man was one of five who hijacked a United Airlines Boeing 767 bound from Boston to Los Angeles on the morning of September 11th and flew it into the South Tower of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. This was the second such suicide action that day, with the North Tower being struck only minutes earlier. Both towers subsequently collapsed with massive loss of life, and further hijackings followed in Washington (where the Pentagon complex was hit) and in Pennsylvania.

The FBI published the names and photos

of those whom they believed were responsible for the hijackings shortly afterwards. Hamza al-Ghamdi's surname appears in the FBI files in the form Alghamdi (see photo accompanying linked article from 4.10.2001, where a different picture is shown). The recent RATA list of terrorist suspects gives the form as Al-Ghamdi, and his date of birth is listed as 18.11.1980. Several addresses are given, all in Florida.

   

According to SUPO, the FBI photos published on the Internet and the birth-date listed by RATA match with the data given in the man's visa application. SUPO's Chief Officer Seppo Nevala stated on Monday that the bureau's experts had no doubt that it was the same individual.

   

However, elsewhere in the world there is less confidence over who might be the suspected terrorist named "Hamza Saleh al-Ghamdi". For a start, the identity itself may be stolen. Saudi newspapers reported the father of Hamza al-Ghamdi having claimed that the picture in the FBI list bore no resemblance whatsoever to the son he knew.

Press reports have said that

Hamza al-Ghamdi lived previously in the city of Baljursh in Saudi Arabia, and that he went to Chechnya in the spring of 2000.

   

According to the Security Police in Helsinki, there is no specific information in the visa application to suggest why al-Ghamdi sought entry to Finland, or whether he was invited here by some individual or group. On the other hand, it is made clear that he already held a valid visa for residence in the United States.

   

There must in any event have been something in the original visa application that raised antennae at the Foreign Ministry, as the documents were forwarded to the Security Police for vetting, and thereafter the Ministry decided to reject the request. Nevala would not state the reasons for the unfavourable response from SUPO.

The incident has now resurfaced

after SUPO routinely cross-referenced the FBI information with its own files. This is the first link between Finland and the terror attacks on New York and Washington. The search is now on to determine if al-Ghamdi had been supposed to make contact with some individual or group in this country. As yet no such contacts have been discovered.

   

According to US authorities, Hamza al-Ghamdi was one of the hijackers known to have had links with the al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden. It is also believed that he was one of those who received flight training in Florida prior to the attacks.

   

One suggestion put forward was that al-Ghamdi might have tried to get into a Finnish pilot training school, but those in the branch do not think this is a reasonable scenario. The idea is dismissed as highly improbable, since foreigners have not applied in the past, for the simple enough reason that training here is carried out in Finnish.